Project Twin-Fires 001

 The Old and the New Flame

Prologue


Zacharias Lockwood, as he called himself back then, still vividly remembered how he had returned to his home 27th of October 1929. It had been a Sunday. Actually it had already been Monday morning, with the sun already pushing itself over the horizon to claim its rightful place in the sky. For Zacharias though, it was morally still Sunday. He had not yet gone to sleep and before you don’t lay down to rest the old day is still alive. His mind and soul and heart where still filled with Sunday marinating incredible amounts of alcohol. This was not his style. Getting so enormously drunk that he felt the world spinning. For a moment he wondered if the spin was the other way round on the souther hemisphere. He’d have to find out one of these days. But first he had to board his bed, hope that he and what every was living in his stomach stayed there for the night and get some rest. Tomorrow, either moral Monday or perhaps just regular Tuesday, he burned the candle at every conceivable end this weekend, it was time to be very, very sober and deeply serious, because the world was ending.
Not plant earth and all its civilisations. It was not that dramatic. Just his own personal world. In the following days Zacharias Lockwood would get his affairs in order, prepare for the long sleep and handover his life to a higher power. His life was coming to an end, the world would not care, he had seen the signs and new that the coming years would be horrible fore pretty much everyone everywhere… But damn… He had been enjoying this life. It was wild and free the world had been changing so fast in a way that he had never seen before and it was just accelerating more and more. There even had been a Great War that had shaken humanity to its deepest core. A war so openly vile, that had escaped its constraints spreading over the world. After it was done humanity was stunned into silence for just a short moment and decided as one that it was enough. Never again. That was new. Zacharias had started to become cynical over time but this, this could change things. So he had immersed himself again into society, it had been such a rush.
He smiled as he grabbed hold of one column of his four-poster bed. He contemplated whether he should climb out of his clothes or just fall into his bed. Meh. Clothes could wait till tomorrow. No use for them anymore. Problems where for tomorrows Zacharias.

“I don’t want to go.”, he mumbled into his sheets, he had landed face first on his bed. “A dawn of a new golden age…” He turned him self around. That was an error. The thing that lived in his stomach had taken great offence in this sudden, deeply rude motion and was now trying to escape his body to make its displeasure known. A few dry heaven and some tears later he maneged to calm the beast which continued to slowly gnaw his insides. “Really bad timing.” He murmured. Truth be told it was less bad timing and him being an idiot. He had let him self be carried away with the times. Which is a good idea in almost every respect, but one: money. He should have known, he had known, the new stock market was in reality gambling. Gambling in the respectable clothes of commerce, clad in in the finest rationalisations the modern minds of the day had come up with. It did not change that it was a game of chance. The Lady Alania had warned him. He had not listened. He was going with the times. It was modern to invest in stock, it was very lucrative and the venerable Lady was the least modern creature Zacharias had ever known. So he dismissed her dire prophesies. For which he was to pay the price.

He had received a letter two weeks ago. On a Sunday. The 13th. The Lady had a sense of humour. The letter was short and to the point. His ‘investments’, the parentheses where placed with great care for maximum effect, had failed, the costs of his lavish lifestyle had exceeded his income and that his playground was right now burning to the ground. He was to get his affair in order until the end of the months at the very latest. Somehow despite being worded in the most neutral way it still manged to convey a very pointed “I. Told. You. So.”, to Zacharias.

He had done just that. He had liquidated his assets, sold back his Manhattan apartment to the American Radiator Company and gone to his last great party.

“This was a good life, cut far to short.” Zacharia sighed and fell a sleep one last time.

He woke up on Tuesday, his room and clothes smelling of death. “How fitting.”, he thought as he peeled his clothes of his body. He went to the bathroom, took a long bath, shaved and generally mad himself as presentable as possible. He look at himself in the mirror, his face was young, full of energy, only his eyes were already taken by sadness.
He got dressed, had a light breakfast and left the building. The stock-market was crashing has he walked to central park where he met that Lady Alania, who was wearing blue today, a blue so light it almost appeared white.

“You’ve taken your time.”, she said, her voice perfectly calm.

“It’s my last day on earth. I feel no need to hurry.” Said Zacharias.

Lady Alania blinked slowly, a small gesture containing a large amount of disapproval. “You always make it sound like you are going to die.”, she said.

“Well I am going to die today.” Zacharias said.

The Lady inhaled sharply her eyes turning cold, “No. You are not. It is always the same with you. This is your last day as Zacharias Lockwood. But you will live on. As always.”

“Right now I am Zacharias Lockwood, when I weak up from my long sleep I won’t be anymore.”, he said now feeling the first embers of anger coming to live.

“It is just a name. You will just go to sleep, while I take care of what little is left of your estate. Once it is healthy again, grown enough to sustain you and your…”, she paused for a tiny moment, “…occupations, I will raise you from your sleep and there you are again.” She said with a smile that had decided to find perfection without any trace of humour.

“Yes. But Zacharias will be gone. I will be someone else. I will find a new name, a new life and a new me. You know this. If I don’t do this it will drive me insane. I mean just look at the others who keep clinging to the past, how they turn out…”

“I turned out pretty well.”, she said daring Zacharias to step on that land-mine.

“You are a dragon, that doesn’t count.”

“It doesn’t?” she asked.

“No. You are supposed to live for millennia. I’m just a human.”

“There are others like you who know who they are, remaining that way without going ‘crazy’” she made air quotes with her fingers as she said that. Zacharias thought that this did not go with her Lady persona, however Lady Alania had never been great in caring about what other people thought about her.  

“It’s just not in me. Good for them. I guess. Most I know, go crazy. And then they die for real usually in the most pathetic way possible. Or even worse the ones who just keep inching towards death but never reaching it.”, he shuddered. “That’s not for me. That is not my way. This ritual, this is my way. We’ve been through this so many times. Why do you always get so angry?”

“Why do I always have to tell you this?” her anger was bitter cold, like frost cracking rocks, “It implies the death of a client. It implies that I would let you die, under my watch. I know about your little game. I have no problem with it, if that is what keeps your strange mind going. Do what you will. But the idea alone that I do not give the utmost care to those who are under my protection is deeply insulting. Maybe your next ‘you’ will be able to word it in a different way. Wouldn’t that be nice.”, she ended with a smile that was strictly teeth only. Not a promise of violence but a reminder that violence was an old friend and lived right next door.

Zacharias raised his hands. “You’re right.Sorry. I mean no offence. I need to do this, this way because for me it is real. It must be real, else it doesn’t work.”

“Have you ever tried…” she said in a flat tone.

“No. I don’t dare to. However I will word it differently next time. When I am talking to you. There are things that I don’t need to say. Not to you at least.”

Lady Alania raised one eyebrow, warming from deadly frost to the cold of a brisk winter morning. “That would be very kind of you. But now back to business. Where will you want to wake up? As who? Do you have any specific wishes?”

“Not really. I want a free standing house. Large enough for me to grow into, spending some time to get to know the new world.”, he thought for a moment. “Oh and make it South America.”

“Why South America?”

“Because I want to check something…”, he said.

The Lady Alania waited for him to elaborate, but when Zacharias did not say anything more she shrugged and got on with business. “Well then follow me.”

She walk him to her car an enormous limousine the colour of an old glacier. They settled into the car and were brought to the Lady’s home. A large manor outside the city that had a cavernous that stretched much further than the building on top of it. Deep with that labyrinth was the small comfortable room where Zacharias would go into the long sleep. He had a last cup of tea with the Lady, reminiscing about the old days for a while. After the lady had gone he undressed and went sank into the long sleep.

As he vanished into the darkness the man that was Zacharias Lockwood was left behind in the void, the body that once was his dreamed of his life, cataloguing his adventures, his experiences, joys and sorrows, storing them all away in the same place where all the other past lives of the man had gone until there was nothing left anymore to dream about just a warm nothingness waiting for the light to return so that someone knew could rise from what had come before.