The Vanishing Act - The Return

This is the sequel to The Vanishing Act. A pair of loyal readers requested a different ending to my original series in five parts, so I am writing a continuation to give Eury her opportunity for revenge.

And no, I don't know how it will end yet. It took me this long to figure out how to start it again!

If you did not read the original series and want to see what all the fuss is about, or you just want to jog your memory before reading the continuation, visit the link below. Each part is linked to the next one for your convenience.

Reading the original series is not required, however. This story stands alone without it.

The Vanishing Act - Part 1

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Part 1 - Dark Magic

It was dark. Like Hell with the fires doused, the darkness so absolute that it swept away all meaning of time. Had an hour passed? A year? I cannot tell you more. What use are words for evoking absence? I knew nothing and nothingness and nothing more.

How might one describe the void or oblivion or nonexistence? I thought that when we died that our knowingness would end, our psyche's hitting an invisible and existential wall.

The problem was, I awoke in that darkness still knowing even though there was nothing there to know. At first, I thought that God and the Devil were real and that this might be eternal damnation.

But there were no demons, no tormenting spirits, no furies howling eternally in my earless ears nor terrifying my eyeless eyes with their wrathful visages.

No trumpet sounded in the heavens, no angel opened the book of my life to read aloud my crimes. Dante's nor Milton's poetry would have sufficed to evoke such a placeless place.

It was everything and nothing; it was everywhere and nowhere.

When light and oxygen and pangs of living finally returned and with them the excruciating pain of my burns, I soon wished to return to that terrible nothingness. I had briefly escaped limbo only to awaken in true Hell.

All around me was pandemonium. Why is she awake? a doctor yelled, my voice howling like a stranger's, unseen hands scrubbing my roasted flesh. An oxygen mask pressed over my mouth, the room dissolved while my pain chased me back into the armless arms of oblivion.

But I was no longer alone. A woman stared cruelly at whatever remained of me in this place, her hair glowing palely in the lightless black of that dark.

Do you know what the Harrowing is? she demanded, her voice at once familiar, alien and filled with contempt.

Though I could now see, I had no mouth nor tongue to form words and only stared mutely back, my thoughts veiled by dread.

The Harrowing is the dark night of the soul, her voice whispered, her features dissolving into black – life stripped of artifice and emptied of meaning.

That's when the thing appeared, a nasty little doll made of roots, its laughter hissing like steam from a trembling pot. I waited five thousand years for this, you stupid girl.

Waited for what? I wondered in renewed terror.

For someone who hated her life enough to throw it away! it shrieked in triumph and then like the woman, vanished.

The dread silence returning, I wondered at the words of the woman and the nasty little doll. It was then that I felt the first inkling of what had truly happened me.

The great absence surrounding me was not outside me. The vacant and knowledgeless darkness lived within me, everything that had once defined my life lost, vanishing into the mists of some dark and terrible magic.

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The Vanishing Act - The Return Part 2