Lacrima: Chapter Twenty Eight

To Be or Not To Be

Job crept between the ancient vaults. The moon, clear and round, made the night navigable by sight alone. Gravestones and markers grew up from the earth, designating hallowed ground. He kept to the grass, hoping not to make his steps echo. He brandished a mattock and a crowbar. Among the monuments, he eventually stood before the closed mouth of stone jaws. He jammed the mattock into the soft earth and then curved the crowbar into the black line formed by the stone doors. With the leverage, he hoped he could pry them open. Job exerted himself to widen the gap.

Across the churchyard, a sharp whistle cut through the night. Job stopped his work, let the crowbar drop, and equipped his mattock. A figure entered stage right with a rapier that gleamed in the moonlight. Bae Yuri, garbed with flared sleeves, an inverted conical hat, and ermine fur, pressed closer to Job.

“Leave me!” Job called out.

Expressionless, Bae lifted up her sword.

“Here to provoke me?” He let the mattock’s head clank against the stone below as he lowered himself. “Have at you!”

Still and as impenetrable as the stones around her, Bae pointed the long blade at him and lunged. Job ran past and cleaved the mattock into her. The iron crunched into her ribs. She stumbled back, but did not scream. He mustered himself and swung again. It struck the side of her skull with a profound crash. Bae landed in the grass, slumped and dead.

He nodded and returned to his wrenching of the tomb. As the door opened inch by inch with each pivot of his body, Job heard a phantom whisper: ‘Your love awaits below.’ He finally got enough space. Even lifted up his gore-slick mattock and jammed it into the newly afforded opening. After many incremental twists, he gained enough purchase for space and moonlight.

Shallow steps led all the way down into pitch black. Five light stairs descended to a plain slab. Laid within, a body was draped in linen.

Solidly, he nodded and went into the tomb. He bared over the body. Her body held the gray of death, but with the whisper of heat.

She looks much like how you left her. After the exile.

Job leaned over. Her lips were parted, almost pursed. Eyelids obscured the ghostly blue eyes he knew his beloved had. Tucked beside her body, a flask of liquid rested. He picked up the bottle and uncorked it. An acrid smell spilled from the spout.

“You want me to drink this?” Job squinted at Lucille’s body. She remained still.

Wouldn’t it be nice to let everything go? The ringing voice asked. To lie with your beloved? Isn’t that what you dreamed of? A final promise that you could actually keep.

Job gulped, turning the bottle in his hand.

“Why should I do that?”

Don’t you feel there are some prices too steep to pay with mere actions? Or rather, any other action besides this ultimate one?

Job remembered his parent’s phone calls, his fear of even walking back into a synagogue, all the women he had disappointed with his own inabilities…

“No.” He shook his head. Job lifted the bottle up. “Dying is a coward’s move.”

Without hesitation, he poured the poison onto the tomb floor below. The room then reeked of acid and alcohol. He leaned over Lucille’s body.

“You really are desperate at this point.”

The scene around him broke apart into digital geometry and the fluidity of dream. A light shot through everything. When the flash faded, Job opened his eyes to Lucille standing over him. She wore the same grave dress, white and flowing, as he saw in the vision. The lingering crackle of a Servant remained in the air. In his peripheral vision, he saw the being assume a neutral stance.

Lucille looked pale. She blinked twice, then retreated from his bed. He heard her footsteps hurriedly scuttle out of the door.

Job lifted himself up. He had to rub his muscles out from the soreness localized in his shoulders and core. When he stood up, his vision became blurred. His feet caught him from falling. He walked over to a half-drained glass of water. After downing the lukewarm water, he sighed and followed after Lucille.

Why did she think I would want to kill myself? he thought as he descended the staircase, now draped in the reds of Elysium. He passed Servants dressed finely, all in suits, and caught the sound of doors parting.

The greenhouse, he recognized. He dashed after Lucille, piecing together what she was about to do. Job found the greenhouse opened. Lucille hadn’t bothered to lock them behind her - perhaps because she wanted Job to catch her.

Good, he thought. There’s a chance.

The humidity of the greenhouse seemed to him worse than before. He could barely stand in there for a few seconds. The other end of the greenhouse, what he assumed was a wall, turned out to be openable. He noticed that the rain, though still powerful, was significantly less vicious. The raindrops came down with a plodding mercy. The open wall led straight to a finely blue lake with Lucille standing atop one of the stepping stones. She stared at the waters below her. Job ran out to the threshold, nearly knocking into some of the hanging potted plants.

“Lucille!” he yelled out through the piercing rain. She turned to him, hair plastered to her face and neck. Her expression was plain, resolved.

“What’s the point?” She made no attempt to yell over the hammering of the storm, but Job could still hear. “Lacrima is doomed and so am I.”

“How so?!” he demanded. He couldn’t let her slip into her delusions. Further into her delusions, rather.

“Bae and Konrad hate my guts. Catherine ran away the first chance she got. You-” A spasm ripped through her arm, making it a flicker of a limb. The energy died away. She looked utterly wilted. “Esau failed. I failed. We’re all hopeless.”

“No one is hopeless!” Job threw his arms up. “As long as we breathe, humans can change. For better or for worse!”

Lucille processed this, turning to profile. “Did I change for the worse?”

“I don’t know!” Job stepped into the rain and hopped to the first stone. The rain felt lighter on his skin this time. “Talk to me!”

“You don’t want to talk,” she moaned.

She projects a lot, he thought. Lucille’s very ego-centric in how she relates to other people.

“Tell me what went wrong!” he called out.

“I’ve already told you!” Lucille snapped with anger. “Esau’s mission was to make a place that healed people. I couldn’t do that! If anything, you’re all worse off now than when we first landed!” Lucille turned back to the water.

Job leaped to the next rock. He only had two more to go.

“You can still make things right!” Job jumped again. Only one more stepping stone separated them.

Lucille looked at him. “Maybe, I can make things right for you.” She straightened up. “But I’m damned either way.” With that, she dove straight into the water.

Job gritted his teeth, lunged over the remaining stones, took two lungfuls of air, and plunged after her. He forced his eyes open, even with the sting of water against them. Lucille ripped through the water, pulling herself down into the depths. Eventually, her armstrokes weakened. In contrast, Job maintained a steady dive and reached his hands over her. Lucille slipped out from his grasp. Her dress flowed out from between his fingers. Again, she flapped her arms to find release.

But Job could see her form waver. Her convulsions disturbed the water. He sensed her move from these waves than by vision through the ever-darkenening lake. Bubbles trailed off her. Job reached forward. His hand grabbed her calf. The bucks of her kicks made the wrangling difficult. He snatched her other leg to halt her progress. Stabilizing himself mid-suspension with his own legs, he pulled her up into his chest. He laced his arms under her armpits. This time, she didn’t struggle.

He prayed that he wasn’t too late.

With all the strength in his legs, he dragged them both up through the water. They breached. Job relinquished his spent air and gasped for more. Lucille coughed and sputtered. He pulled her up to the stone. Lurching, she puked up all the water she intentionally swallowed. She felt her face tense against her skull. She imagined the experience of drowning to be gentle. Water lapping against the life-worn person. The cold wet taking her in and pushing her down. Her body would be found drifting along the lake’s surface: a self-made burial.

But there was no soft descent to the lake’s bottom. She underestimated the pressure in her lungs. Lucille didn’t consider having to force water down her own throat. Her breath wasn’t taken away, but had to be forcibly ripped out. And midway down, as Job swam after her, her visceral instincts overwhelmed her. The flesh beat the soul’s fantasy.

Her savior stood over her. Job glowered down at her - the wretched thing he had dredged back up. She felt powerless before him in this. He literally held her life in his hands and chose to preserve it. Lucile hacked another cough.

Job cupped his mouth and aimed toward the hill.

“Bae!” Nothing. “Bae! Konrad!”

Then, Lucille saw Bae, in that dress she so hated, appear from the treeline. “I’ll be up there soon! We’ll make a plan to leave! Lucille won’t be a problem now!” He gave a knowing look back down to her. Lucille couldn’t respond.

Bae Yuri nodded and returned to being unseen.

“What makes you think I won’t be a problem?” Lucille asked, now kneeling on the stone.

“You won’t,” he said. “Not anymore.”

“Am I supposed to help you all leave?”

“Yes,” Job said. “That’ll do us a whole lot more good than watching you drown for your own stupid reasons.”

Ego-wounded, Lucille looked away with a pinched frown. “What if I don’t?”

“You will,” he said. “This is the way I’m giving you: to help you become better. Is that not what this place is for?”

“What? Is this my penance?”

“If you choose to see it like that,” Job said. “Though, I think of it more as ‘making right your wrongs.’ If you want penance, there’s plenty of priests for that. But that’s for later. Here and now, we want to leave. You will get us off Lacrima.”

Lucille looked back up. Job’s rain-soaked mane flapped against the wind’s dominant current. His deep brown, expectant eyes weighed her down. “What if I jumped back into the water? Are you going to force me?”

“I don’t need to,” he answered. “As for your first question, you won’t.”

“How do you know-?”

“Because,” he snipped. “You know now what taking your life actually means. You also didn’t have an omnipresent spectre forcing you into a loop of your worst memories, much like the ones you put us through.” He crouched down to her level. “Much like the one you put Argus through.”

Her pupils narrowed. Job grimly nodded.

“Once you admitted to locking Argus in that pool, I figured there had to be a reason he drowned himself. Drowning had to be preferable to whatever alternative existed in that room. I think you sicked a Servant on him, forcing himself into a tunnel of his mind. But you didn’t give him an exit like the rest of us. No, he didn’t belong. You never invited him. He had to go.” He stood up. “Because of you. An innocent man is not just dead, but stuck inside this mansion as a spirit - twisted into a Servant. If you want to wail about damnation so much, pause to think about that.”

Lucille’s jaw shivered. She grabbed herself and swayed.

“You saved me,” she muttered. “Just so I can set all of you free?” She curled into herself. “Did you love me? At any point?”

The steel persona Job put on cracked. He cast his eyes away from her. Job couldn’t deny that his heart still twanged. That was no illusion or script. The easiest roles to play are ones that invoke the realities of the actor.

Job opened his hand and reached down for her. “I made a promise to you, didn’t I? I can, at least, tell you that.”

Lucille, woefully dejected, looked at that palm. She placed a quivering hand to it. It radiated an ember’s warmth. He pulled her up.

“You can’t save us,” Job said, shaking head. “We can’t save you. But, maybe, we all can save each other.” His fingers curled over hers. “We have a lot of work to do.”

Job then let go and made his way over the stepping stones. Lucille waited for an inescapable moment, looked down at her traitorous lake, and then followed after him.