“I can only use my powers sparingly,” he replied distractedly, now rifling through the upper shelves. “I’ve already wasted a lot of energy these past couple of days as it is. There’s no point in wasting what’s left of my powers. If we can cut the loss and manually search for the tape ourselves, then we’ll do it.”
I was kneeling on the floor, searching through the bottom shelves when I looked up to respond to him. All coherent thoughts evaporated from my mind the moment I caught sight of his perfectly sculpted behind.
Oh my flying pigs . . .
Eclipse was still innocently searching through the tapes, unaware of my eyes growing wide on his delectable butt. All of a sudden, I felt like one of the many perverted girls at my school taking advantage of him and looking at him like he was a piece of meat.
Damn it, Grace! Look away! my inner self shouted in a fit of hysteria. Stop staring at his cute butt!
Unfortunately for me, my short-lived flirtation with depravity was made public not only by the blood that was starting to come out of my nose, but also by Eclipse himself.
“If you give me your soul, then it’s all yours, Teacup,” he said briskly, his back still turned to me. The cigarette smoke hovered around aimlessly as though to mock me.
“Who says I want it?” was my swift and self-incriminating reply.
Eclipse turned, smiling devilishly at me. With the grace of a tiger, he strolled over to me and sat down beside me. His enticing eyes lured mine in.
“So you weren’t admiring my backside a second ago?” he said casually, that sexy lilt dancing in his voice again.
I feigned offense while attempting to hide my embarrassing nosebleed. “Of course not, what kind of girl do you think I am?”
He caught my gaze and held it, almost coaxing me into drowning in the soft pools that were his brilliant brown eyes. After several beats of silence, he softly said, “If I was in my original state of power, and if you could handle what I want to give you, then it would be my pleasure to assuage any desires you may have. You may feel pathetic with your nosebleeds, but know that you can never feel more pathetic than me. The great Demon of Lust has to resort to merely using juvenile flirting and teasing tactics as opposed to throwing you into bed and giving you the time of your life.”
He shook his head self-mockingly.
“You have no idea how far I’ve fallen,” he said quietly before turning to me and giving me one of the most breathtaking smiles I had ever seen. There was hope in his eyes, trust that when the right time arose, I’d make the right decision that would save him from his pitiful state. “You better be worth it, Teacup.”
Something in the way he said those words touched a sensitive chord within me. Before I could even think, I asked something that seemed out of place, but made every bit of sense to me.
“How did you fall so far from your throne, Eclipse?”
He gave me a look that was a hybrid between being surprised that I would pose such a question and a look of irony that said he should’ve known I would be astute enough to ask something like this.
“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” was all the concession he gave me before he raised his hand up. My focus swiveled to the dark rectangular object he held. My eyes blossomed at the sight. I mentally pushed thoughts about my question aside and focused on more important matters.
“You found the tape?” I breathed out, staring unblinkingly at the videotape.
He grinned coolly in confirmation. “You ready?”
I assessed him and then the tape. “You’ll show me why we had to scour around like rats to find this in the first place?”
He nodded, carefully pulling me up with him. “We had to use manual labor to find this tape, but I plan on shelling out a portion of my powers to actually watch it.”
Curiosity piqued in my eyes. “What do you mean?”
He tipped his head sideways towards the TV-VCR combo television in the back corner of the room. “You’ll see in a bit.”
My nerves felt frayed when I followed him. With bated breath, I watched him stick the tape into the VCR outlet. The machine made soft, mechanical whirring noises while it adjusted the tape within it. The TV screen stayed blue for the longest time as it waited for its predecessor to prepare itself. Once the tape settled in, the screen flickered into an intelligible video recording.
Instantaneously, the memory that had replayed itself in my mind for as long as I could remember—one of the most important memories of my life—came to life for me within the confines of a television screen.
How surreal it felt to be watching the very thing that had been haunting me for so many years . . .
Disorientation assaulted my mind at the mere sight of this video recording. Even physically, just reliving something as horrid as this memory was taxing for me.
Wonderful.
My body was giving itself vertigo—that was how much I dreaded everything that was happening. The wooziness was exacerbating within me when Eclipse turned to me and extended his hand out, his eyes motioning for me to take his hold. It took me a second to register what he was doing. I stared at his outthrust hand for a few moments.
As a response, he smiled, raising his hand a bit higher as if to silently say, “You’ll see.”
Exhaling past the anxiety in my chest, I mindlessly did as I was gestured to do. Despite my own apprehension, I knew that he was going to show me exactly why he insisted on the physical tape. It was an invitation I couldn’t deny, no matter how much I feared finding out the answer.
Whish.
As soon as I touched his hand, a wave of air swam around me. Next thing I knew, instead of standing in the backroom of the police station, we were standing behind the two-way glass that sealed the police observation room from the interrogation room. The only source of light in the room was a battery-powered lamp sitting atop a black desk. Its flickering glow barely illuminated the room, only giving us enough light to see our own front hands.
I gasped when I registered what was happening.
We were actually in the scene of the video.
This can’t be happening.
Familiar chills overcame me as my astounded eyes peered through the two-way mirror. I could vaguely see Officer Joo’s back, I could barely make out my lawyer sitting beside me, and I could scarcely see anything else in that faintly lit room. The only thing that caught my undivided attention was the six-year-old girl sitting in the chair, completely oblivious to my presence.
My six-year-old counterpart.
In spite of all the unnatural things that I had seen as of late, it was incredibly unnerving to stand there, staring at the younger version of myself and watching as she lived and breathed like she was any other living being.
“How . . .” I managed to begin, feeling a mixture of awe and chills. My eyes were still firmly solidified on her. “How is this possible?”
“Have you heard the saying that when you take a picture, it steals a part of your soul?”
“Isn’t that a Native American superstition?”
“Among others,” he replied sagely, staring at six-year-old Grace as well. “Regardless of where that superstition originated from, you should know that they have valid reasons for believing it.”
I turned to him, another bout of curiosity making a home within me.
“I thought souls, for the most part, were unbreakable?”
“They are. But they do leave markings behind—fingerprints, so-to-speak. When something captures your reflection, it captures a mirror image of your soul as well. Though I would have to debunk the belief that a soul can be trapped within a photo, you should know that a soul is a very powerful thing. However much it doesn’t break apart, it does leave a lingering scent of itself behind. In pictures alone, you seal a memory, a moment in time for someone’s soul. But in a video recording, you don’t merely seal a moment in time, you seal several moments in time. This in turn means that you seal more of the soul’s residual power within it.
”
“Like a cartoon drawing,” I supplied, catching onto what he was explaining to me. “You may have one picture, but when you flip through the cartoon strips, these individual pictures come alive. They begin to live for you.”
He nodded. The smoke swam from his lips as he continued to speak. “This is why we’re standing here, reliving everything. This is your memory—your soul’s memory coming alive for us. If we go by the recap of your memories, then my power will not work because I will not be able to call forth your soul’s essence. The process of calling forth a soul’s memories is a very tricky one. One needs the videotape that holds the essence of the soul, one needs to be in the exact location where the recording took place, and one needs to exert the right amount of power to get it to work. Only when these conditions are met can we have a real life interrogation with the memory itself.”
With my eyes still on my six-year-old self, I furrowed my brows at his strange words. “What do you mean ‘a real life interrogation’ with the memory itself?”
“You wanted to know why we had to scour around like rats to find this tape,” he began as a cold draft came into the room. He dabbed his cigarette out and discarded it into the nearby trashcan. “This is why.”
As soon as he said this, the eyes of my six-year-old self started to dim. Then, when I heard Eclipse snap his fingers, the scene playing out in front of me paused midway—the characters frozen like statues in their positions. I was already baffled with what was happening, but I felt my bewilderment increase when I blinked and registered that my six-year-old self was no longer sitting in the chair within the interrogation room.
She was gone.
Whish.
Another brush of cold air came over me before I felt the presence of another in the observation room. My blood seemed to have stopped flowing after I spun around and saw her.
Standing before us, with her white dress dancing gently against her legs from the residual wind, was my six-year-old self. Her tied-up pigtails were swaying from side to side before the draft of air dissolved like quicksilver. Her tiny feet had mud and blood caked onto the skin, making her appear so much smaller and more haunting than she already was. What threw me off wasn’t the fact that she was breathing in the same air as me; it was the fact that she was staring back at me.
Her sparkly brown eyes assessed me quietly, her beguiling gaze thoughtful but empty of emotions. Though she said nothing, I knew she found immense interest in my presence—in my existence. She then veered her attention to Eclipse. The vacant expression that clouded her face evaporated when she set her gaze on him. Her already beautiful honey-brown eyes sparkled to life at the sight of him.
“Hi,” she said quietly, her fingers nervously playing with one another. She smiled shyly at him, her eyes lighting up like stars in the night. You could tell six-year-old Grace loved Eclipse, and she made no effort to hide it. If one’s eyes could tell a story then hers said it all: she couldn’t believe she was staring at someone so beautiful and so utterly magnificent.
I would have found this entire scene endearing if I wasn’t still so stunned that my six-year-old self was actually addressing us. She was actually speaking to us.
Holy crap, my life is getting stranger and stranger by the minute.
Feeling as if I was falling deeper into the depths of insanity, I could only gape at her in stricken silence.
She bit her lips uneasily, her eyes blinking at me in confusion. She was, no doubt, wondering why I was staring at her so strangely.
“Are you okay?” she asked anxiously, causing me to become more shocked now that she was addressing me personally.
Having a better handle on the situation than me, Eclipse smiled at little Grace. He walked slightly past me and crouched down to speak to her.
“Hi Gracie,” he greeted warmly, giving her one of his most captivating smiles. He easily lured her attention away from me. “How are you?”
She smiled shyly at him again, completely lost in her own adoration. She turned to me, her eyes teeming with elation. Without filter, she asked me a question that nearly had me keeling over in astonishment.
“Is he our boyfriend?”
“Our?” I was flabbergasted that she knew that I was her. I was so stunned that I was unable to do anything but continue to gawk at her in amazement.
Little Gracie may have been small in physical stature, but her mind and her way of communicating were so much more advanced than regular six-year-olds. Her high level of intelligence was not only evident in the manner that she spoke, but also in the energy that radiated from her. However logical she was, she was also open-minded. She wasn’t freaked out by me in the least bit while I, the adult, was more than creeped out by her.
It was only in that instant did I fully grasp how powerful a soul was. After fifteen years of being nothing but a “fingerprint” within a video recording, the lingering scent of my soul was still powerful enough to outlive time and exist past its life cycle. If the mere fingerprint of a soul was this powerful, then I couldn’t imagine how powerful an entire soul actually was. I had always treasured my soul, and with this revelation, I couldn’t have treasured it more. How could I ever give up something this powerful?
“Gracie,” Eclipse prompted gently, surprised as well with the deduction skills of my six-year-old self. “You know that she’s you?”
Little Gracie nodded before holding up her left wrist and showcasing her gold bangles as evidence for her conjecture. The bangles were a little bigger on her small wrist than mine, but the resemblance was irrefutable. Afterwards, she pointed her small index finger at the little beauty mark on her—our—left cheek.
“You’re really, really pretty,” she complimented, her doe-like eyes proud that she would one day grow up to be me.
It would be a lie if I said that her assessment didn’t boost my confidence. As we grow older, we rarely compliment ourselves. I took it to heart that my six-year-old self thought I was “pretty.” Our toughest critics were usually ourselves and I was pleased that I was able to impress my own toughest critic.
“So are you,” I told her. Just as she was in awe of my presence, I was also in awe of hers. Not to toot my own horn but, minus the creepy bloodstains on my white dress, I was a really cute kid. I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of the situation, feeling a bit more comfortable with the surreal circumstances. We gave a new meaning to the term “self-absorbed.”
Pleased with my reply, she turned back to Eclipse, her adoring eyes growing even more potent. Yes, even in the face of meeting her future self, little Gracie’s main focus was on the gorgeous creature in front of her. She smiled shyly at Eclipse again, her face glowing brighter and brighter with her endearment for him.
She tilted her head at him, her curly pigtails falling to one side of her head. “Are you my boyfriend?”
A beautiful chuckle escaped from his lips. Eclipse’s eyes beamed in amusement. “Do you want me to be?”
Before little Gracie could make my thoughts transparent, I moved forward and interrupted them. “Okay, let’s get back to the point of why we’re here, shall we?”
There was no way in hell I was going to give Eclipse the opportunity to get a confirmation from me, even from my younger counterpart, that I was superficial enough to want him as a boyfriend.
Eclipse chuckled at me, smiling devilishly before turning back to little Gracie. He took in her overall appearance. In a relaxed tone, he asked, “What’s all this on your pretty dress, Gracie?”
“Blood,” she answered indifferently, blinking innocently at him.
“Whose blood is it?”
She uncaringly looked down. “My mommy’s. My daddy’s. My brother’s. My sister’s.”
Eclipse nodded casually. He continued to fish for more tangible information. “How did their blood get onto your dress?”
Little Gracie shrugged, her eyes truly void of emotions and void of knowledge about how all the blood got onto her dress. “I woke up like this.”
Eclipse cocked his head in curiosity. “You don’t remember what happened?”
She bounced her head in concurrence. “I just remember waking up like this. I don’t remember anything else.”
This was when I started to become disturbed by her and her careless answers. I was stunned that she was so indifferent when there was so much blood on her dress. When I was her, I had always viewed myself to be normal—that it was everyone else around me who was abnormal. Now that I was staring at my six-year-old self from an armchair point of view, I couldn’t deny how inhuman she appeared. I wouldn’t exactly say that I was a model citizen on morality, but I had some semblance of humanity. And as it would be shown, little Gracie lacked more humanity than I did, which was saying a lot.
Eclipse nodded understandably, using his charms to get her to keep talking to him. “Do you remember what you did before you went to sleep then?”
Her eyes went upwards as she thought back. “I drank milk. I brushed my teeth and then I read the Bible with Mommy, Daddy, and my brother and sister.” She laughed, her face illuming at the memory. “Then we opened our Christmas presents. After that, I asked Mommy and Daddy if I could open my birthday presents, but they told me I had to wait until my birthday.”
“The 26th,” Eclipse provided for her.
She nodded proudly, pleased that he knew when her birthday was.
“Today’s my birthday,” she said to him, happily playing with her gold bangles. “I’m six today.”
Eclipse grinned with endearment. “Happy birthday, Gracie.”
She beamed at him, and he went back to the topic at hand. “I know that you probably don’t want to talk about this so you don’t have to if you don’t want to, but when you woke up, you only stayed in your parents’ room right? You didn’t go outside to your sister’s or brother’s room?”
She nodded. “I was with Mommy and Daddy and then”—she pointed at the frozen Officer Joo behind the two-way mirror—“that nice police officer came in, picked me up, and took me away.”
I felt my stomach churn in uneasiness when she labeled Officer Joo as “nice.” Of course little Gracie would give him that label. She hadn’t been nearly choked to death by him yet.