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JASH
I jumped off Lightning as we were about to pass Dawnstar. Once my boots sunk gently into the snow I held a hand out for Alex. He must be more tired than he appeared as he took my hand without the hint of disdain in his eyes.
“Do you want to stop for an ale?” I asked and titled my head towards the small town.
“No, let’s just get this over with.” Alex replied with a tone that was both bitter and without emotion at the same time.
As Alex walked beside me towards the fishing shack, Lightning followed close behind. If there was any trouble, he wanted to be close enough to protect me. It didn’t matter to him that he was the last of his kind and there was no other unicorn to breed with.
“That was a hard ride.” I said.
“You’ve done worse.” Alex replied.
“We rode through the night sometimes. I can do those hard rides but it doesn’t mean I like it.”
“Oh shut up, you’re more concerned about me.”
Alex was too tense and it couldn’t be helped. What we would see shortly would bring him to the brink of madness yet again. And he had barely survived the first time.
“I am concerned for your comfort, my love.” I said and he let out a nearly silent sigh.
“If I’m right about who we’re about to see, that ride will be the most relaxing thing that has happened to me all week.” Alex said.
Alex had guessed who the man we were about to meet was based purely on how long he lived. There was a film that Alex had seen that had been sixteen minutes long. It had burned its way into his darkest nightmares. Nightless Night was sixteen minutes and starred Aleksi Kesa.
My love had encountered the movie while investigating the Cult of the Word. The cult had risen during 2013 in New York City and believed they were helping to bring Alan Wake back. The bard had become famous due to writing about Alex Casey. He had thought my husband a mere burst of inspiration and never realized the man was very real until much later.
And so the Cult of the Word had ended up dragging Alex Casey into their machinations.
Aleksi Kesa had played Alex Casey and had died brutally by the end. At least that’s the only way my love had been able to describe the events of the film.
I remembered the days and nights it had taken me to explain to him that Aleksi wasn’t him. The man murdered in Nightless Night was just another reality’s version of him. I had pointed out that my entire existence and our eternal love for each other was due to the fact that reality was much more complex than most thought.
As we approached the fishing shack a deafening silence consumed Alex. He could keep quiet if he wanted to but this was different. It was painful.
A scream broke through the silence. My body tensed before relaxing when I realized it had been the strange man. Good, we had sixteen minutes before he died again. When we reached the fishing shack the man had managed to sit against one of the walls.
Alex had been right. The man whimpering looked just like Alex. Every inch of skin I could see was an exact copy of my husband’s. Even the pained expression echoed my love’s emotions. This was Aleksi Kesa.
I sat beside Aleksi in an attempt to relax him. My large form had to be diminished when sitting down. He looked at me and his whimpering quieted when my body was sat next to him. I smiled and hoped that my teeth didn’t frighten him.
“Aleksi Kesa, I’m Jash.” I said in the gentlest tone I could manage.
Aleksi’s mouth started to form a response then he looked at Alex. The stranger screamed loudly and I worried he wouldn’t be able to speak until after he died. My husband remained silent but I could tell how much this situation was breaking him. It must be the fact he wasn’t in a death loop that let him retain some dignity.
Could Aleksi even understand the Common Tongue? Did his reality only extend to the time shown in Nightless Night? It could be that in his reality, the Common Tongue did not exist. As the entire film was spoken and sung in Finnish, it stood to reason that was the only language he knew.
I allowed the music from Earth to flood my mind. As the notes called to me, I focused on those sung in Finnish. Maybe in my other life I hadn’t known Finnish but now, with the music in my mind, I was fluent.
“Aleksi Kesa, I’m here to help.” I said in Finnish and pointed to Alex Casey. “He is my husband. You are not him. He is not you.”
“What the **** is going on?” Aleksi asked, his voice a jarring opposite of Alex’s.
I recalled the events of the film as Alex had told me. Instead of working for the FBI, Aleksi worked for the FBC. No, he didn’t work for the FBC. He had lost his job. No, he hadn’t worked for the FBC. He had worked for the FBI. Or had I gotten that wrong? Maybe the version of Nightless Night he was from, he had worked at the FBC.
“Did you work for the FBC?” I asked.
Aleksi was silent as if he had forgotten. Being in a death loop must have shaken him more than Sithis could.
“After I was fired from the FBI I managed to get a job at the FBC.” Aleksi said as if it were a major revelation for him. “I don’t remember working there long. ****, I might have only went there for an interview.”
“Do you know what a pocket dimension is?” I asked.
“The story I’m caught in? I’m not real?”
“You are in pain. That proves that you are very real.”
“And the pocket dimension?”
“Your pocket dimension only lasts for sixteen minutes. Somehow it got displaced. So you are both still in it and also in Skyrim.”
Aleksi’s face became torn apart by pain as if he couldn’t accept the truth. If he was anything like my husband, he might not accept it. And I couldn’t watch him die time after time. I spared a glance for Alex who looked at me. His confused face told me that he had overestimated how well he could understand Finnish.
“I remember my childhood.” Aleksi said. “I remember a failed marriage. My whole life isn’t just sixteen minutes.”
“I should have been more clear.” I apologized. “From my perspective your pocket dimension only lasts sixteen minutes.”
“And now I’m stuck living and dying in that time.”
Aleksi’s face and voice seemed haunted. I didn’t know if he was the same Aleksi from Nightless Night or merely a version close to that reality. Or it could be that he was from a draft of Nightless Night. The possibilities in an infinite sea of realities was vast.
“Ask him how he got here.” Alex said.
I turned back to Aleksi but he responded before I could say anything.
“How did I get here?” Aleksi asked in Finnish and I nodded in confirmation. “I don’t know. One minute I’m about to be murdered and the next I’m freezing my *** off.”
“He doesn’t know, Alex.” I translated. “All he remembers is that one moment he was about to be murdered and then the next he was here.”
“Do you know how we can…stop this?” Alex asked.
My love was not going to like the only solution I had come up with. The only solution that made sense to me. It was violent and would likely traumatize Alex even more.
“We need to knock Aleksi’s pocket dimension back into place.” I began. “It is not ours to change his fate. The end of Nightless Night must come into fruition for him.”
“You already have an idea.” Alex accused me. “You also know I won’t like it. Are you going to kill him?”
“It is likely that if we kill Aleksi before the loop resets that the action will be violent enough to knock his pocket dimension back into place.”
“There has to be another way.”
“I can’t think of another way.”
“Are you talking about killing me?” Aleksi asked in Finnish.
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