Jailhouse Blues II

Why do bad things happen to good people?

“Well, I mean, nothing is real,” Priya said, painting her nails. “We’re all trapped in illusion and cycles, and you’ve got to figure your shit out and escape them.”

“That’s just Hinduism,” I complained.

“Well, pardon me for having a religion, you atheistpilled logicmaxxer.”

“Never say those words in that order again.”

“Pilledatheist maxxerlogic.”

“Not in that order, either.”

“The annoying thing about being Hindu,” Priya complained, “is they were not lying, that illusion is hard to escape.”

“Are you sure that’s not just because you’re a terminally online lesbian millenial?” I asked. “You’re not exactly in organized religion’s target demographic.”

“I’m Gen Z. And anyway, maybe. It’s hard to not care, and if I get too into not caring, I get worried that I’m not contributing to the world enough, or doing enough. So, I end up on these tides of emotion and mood swings like everyone else.”

No, really, why do bad things happen to good people?

I had a list of notes back home about the kind of story I wanted to tell, and worldbuilding notes on top of those. The world happened to be dark—it was based off stuff from real life and worldbuilding that made sense to me. Plus, it had to be dark for the story’s sake.

Why did so many bad things have to happen to her?

I was covered in blood, sitting in a dark prison cell.

Footsteps clicked on the cobblestones. The clear one-two beat of high heels.

At first, I didn’t see who it was that knelt down across from me. Her face was hidden in shadow. Then she pulled a chain and a light went on, and I could see it was Ky’sy’ana.

“Honoring me with your presence, huh?” My voice was husky and dry. “How come?”

“Naomi?”

Jayla had called out to Ky’sy’ana without thinking about it. Did we really have that much of a resemblance?

She sat with a straight back, poised and proper. When she was a teenager, Ky’cina had hit her on the knuckles with a switch for bad posture. My mom had, well, not done that. For the best, probably, but I sat like a crab now. Aside from that, we didn’t look anything alike. But there was something familiar about her—like a sibling, or a long-time childhood friend.

“I wanted to meet you. What were you trying to do?”

“God,” I said, “I’ve got no clue.” I shouldn’t’ve even tried.

“Do I know you? I know that’s an odd question, but I suddenly got the feeling that I did.”

I turned away.

“I’m sorry for bothering you.”

“If you want to apologize for something, apologize for your government’s actions. Apologize for killing her,” I said.

“That Asan girl?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Fuck you, then,” I said, knowing fully why she wasn’t able to. “Can’t you do something to help me?”

“Why are you expecting me to?”

She was sharp, like her mom. “Because you came down here,” I lied. “And you apologized earlier.” Solid reasoning, solider than I know you want to be on the side of good, because you’re my protagonist.

“I can’t bring the dead back to life. You’re a magician, aren’t you?”

I mean, I’m not going to tell you something like that. I turned away.

“Magicians can’t do that either, actually, can they.”

“Don’t think so,” I said.

That was a rule I knew, and that Sai-ee knew. But, are magicians powerful enough to play God? was another question I thought I knew the answer to, that answer being no, and now look where I’d ended up.

Hey. Maybe I could bring back the dead. Maybe there was hope.

How?

If I sat down with a notebook, or in front of my computer screen again, maybe. I could embark on this journey as a writer again—fixing all my mistakes.

“It’d be easier if you could,” Ky’sy’ana said. “It would solve my problems, too.”

Oh. Her thoughts were straying into off-limits, unfortunate territory. “You can’t bring him back to life.”

She leaned back, startled. “How did you—”

“It would defeat the whole purpose of your mission.” I should be a bit more careful with my words, but small, simple recording devices hadn’t yet been invented, so it wasn’t like this cell was bugged. “Do you know how many people are counting on it?”

“...Well, yes…”

This was a Ky’sy’ana who’d never met Casselian. Or dealt with Sy’anh much, actually, and the power-hungry, unethical side of the military he brought into stark relief.

In some ways, Sy’anh was better than whoever had probably replaced him. He was a piece of work for sure, but incompetence and denial could cost more lives in war than ruthlessness, and he had been cunning and intelligent. Self-serving, too, but who wasn’t?

Anyway, Ky’sy’ana didn’t really know the people who were counting on her in the same way that she had in the original story—not unless fate had twisted around to give her those pieces of character development without my pen bringing them to her.

“There’s people like me,” I said. “People like Jayla, who died, and the bits of her family who’re still alive, but have to hide from the government. People like Lil, who’s going to be executed, and Sai-ee plus everyone else who’re enslaved and forced to labor all day to the point where they sink into depression, or die.”

“...I know.”

But she still wanted Emperor Kol to live. I could hear it in her voice, and I knew it because I’d written her.

And I knew it because she was like me. I’d been projecting all that shit with Oliver onto her, hadn’t I? I’d woven my feelings into her, and that was where the familiarity came from.

At this point, as I was jailed and covered in my closest friend’s blood, Oliver’s death felt like a million years in the past and like it had just happened.

“You’ve got to do it, and commit to it,” I said. “You’ve got to let him go.”

Ky’sy’ana was silent.

“Hey, can I ask you for a favor?”