Chapter 1: Made You Perfect, Babe

 

Sammaël has just died, which it finds mildly annoying. Eldritch entities, born in the blackness between stars before those pinpricks even came into being, are not used to being dead, but Sammaël is learning quite rapidly. The meat-brain it has just stuffed a chunk of itself into seems to have rapidly experienced deceleration and that caused the whole thing to stop for some reason. 

Now the rest of it gently circles the moon for a bit, considering what to do next. It could go down there. It might take the species a couple of centuries to rebuild, but that seems like a small price to pay. On the other hand, it has spent time crafting this identity, and finding a good body to put it in. It seems, to Sammaël, a little bit of a wasted effort if it was to try and find a different one. 

So, Sammaël does the most logical thing, and takes a diagonal step through time. Why this step is diagonal instead of sideways or backwards, for example, is a question only Sammaël can answer. While it has generally moved through time linearly, it doesn’t strictly speaking have to. It just hasn’t seen any reason not to. Until now. 

Sammaël steps diagonally through time. Just a few seconds. What, the eldritch abomination wonders to itself, is the worst that could happen? The brain that has just been scrambled is now not. Abe Douglas has just died. Again. So, this time, instead of fixing Abe’s neck completely, Sammaël just aligns things a little bit. Just enough for its mind to exist inside that fragile little brain. There. 

It resists the urge to immediately jump upright again, and instead lets the version of itself it has just stuffed inside of a human body take full control. With a bit of apprehension, it lets go and… Immediately, the identity blips away from Sammaël’s perception. Right. Abe’s body is still unconscious. 

Sammaël crosses its arms, leans its massive consciousness on top of the moon, and frowns, staring down at the earth. Nothing to do now, but wait. 

 

“Yes, I’m— No, I’m telling you I am a relative.”

“Fwizl blillip”

“I’m his fiancee.”

“Fz dvvnt lippit sip—”

“We’re going through a rough patch. Just let me talk to him. Please.” 

“Wivvy wip.”

“Thank you.”

Only one of the two voices was comprehensible. It was a pretty good voice, the kind of voice that promised things Sammaël didn’t quite know how to place yet, like mint tea and sunlit parks and, right now, possibly a smack around the ear and a lawsuit. 

The other voice was indignant. It was a voice that sounded like ashtrays and unpaid overtime. More importantly, it was muffled. Sammaël figured it was possible that was due to its brain being scrambled more than anything, though. It was trying to think, which was harder than it had previously thought. Up until recently, it had been an entity to which the concept of a continent was a curiosity, in the same way a person goes “Oh, really? Interesting!” when someone has told them for the first time what a quark is. 

Now, Sammaël was trying to find the words for what it was experiencing. There was so much. Sounds, which it knew was language. Abe’s brain was full of language, so it understood a good chunk of it. Smells, which were… unpleasant. It smelled like the side of a star, and Sammaël had gone through some real gastrointestinal issues last time it had eaten one of those. Touch. Something weighing down on it. 

However, there was something much more pressing, and much more present. It was a wholly new sensation, a fascinating one that it had no way to relate to, no way to place it. The sensation bounced around its skull, and was refusing to be ignored. Sammaël took a hard, long look at it, and decided to give it a name. And, in order to put some power behind that name, it decided to speak it, because names are Important. 

“I have a headache,” Sammaël said.

“He’s awake,” the indignant voice said, now audible. “Sir, please don’t try to speak or sit up,” the voice continued with calculated disinterest. “You’re in the hospital, do you remember anything?”

Sammaël opened its eyes. For the first time in its life, it only had two. And they weren’t even focusing properly. “I have a headache,” it repeated, hoping this would answer any questions the person had for Abe Douglas. Sammaël had the distinct impression that “Yes, everything,” would not be taken well. Humans were, as it had discovered, incredibly fragile. 

“I understand that, sir,” the ashtray voice continued, “but I’m going to have to ask you to answer the question.” 

“Jesus Christ,” the sunlight voice said. 

Sammaël thought for a moment. What would the voice find acceptable? Humans experienced time as a linear line of events, so perhaps, going backwards was the answer. “It was dark. I was asleep,” it said. 

The person the ashtray voice was attached to rolled their eyes. “Before that, sir.”

This line of questioning didn’t make a lot of sense to Sammaël. It had demonstrated that it was able to conceptualize linear progression of time, and memory of that progression. Wasn’t that the most important part? Regardless, it obliged. “An alleyway. Another person was present.”

“Do you remember who was there?” 

“His name is Morris Guthrie. He is thirty-one years old. He lives on the corner of Park and Fifth,” Sammaël said. It had no idea what any of this information meant, but Abe had known it so it did too. “He is the brother of the woman Abraham Douglas was recently engaged to.”

“And that’s you,” the person said. Sammaël frowned. That was an extremely vague statement. Were they referring to Morris, to the person Abraham Douglas had been engaged to, or to Abraham Douglas? It thought it best to answer with a — mostly — factually correct statement. 

“I am Abraham ‘Abe’ Douglas,” it said. 

“He seems fine,” ashtray voice said to sunshine voice. “Either you take him with you, or you give me his insurance information.”

Sunshine voice stepped closer, and Sammaël recognized her. “Sierra,” it said, reflexively, and then took a moment to reflect on that reflex. It had spoken without intending to. That was a new sensation. Sammaël had never done anything without intending to. 

“Yes,” Sierra said. “Get up.” Sammaël blinked a few times, then did as it was told, sitting upright. Moving a body around was remarkably easy, although disorienting. If it had possessed the right experiences and vocabulary, it might have compared itself to someone or something wearing an ill-fitting suit. “Morris told me what happened,” Sierra said. “Can’t say you didn’t have it coming, Abe.” 

Sammaël sifted through Abraham’s memories again, searching for context. There was a lot of context. Five years of it, and the human brain, it seemed, was not good at holding a lot of complex thoughts at once. Trying to think of all of it at once was not working. So, Sammaël was once again forced to approach these memories in order of reverse chronology. 

“The alcohol,” Sammaël said as Sierra helped it up. Hitting the floor made the headache instantly worse. Sierra shook her head. 

“No, you ass, not the alcohol. Well, okay, partly the alcohol, but you can’t just pretend like you didn’t skip on my fucking wedding day.” Her look was one of abject fury. “You’re lucky Morris didn’t kill you.” She led it out of the room. Sammaël followed dutifully, still trying to get used to the body. It walked slowly, since big steps seemed to make the throbbing worse.

“Yes,” Sammaël said drily. “Lucky.”

“What were you even thinking? Like, not even about the wedding! Drinking? In Morris’ watering hole? What did you think was going to happen?” Sammaël stopped for a moment. Memories were easy, if it knew what it was looking for. It was simply a matter of sorting through data. Meaning was harder. Who someone was in relation to itself. What the correct way to respond to a question was. But understanding what Abraham had been thinking? Why he had made the choices and decisions he’d made? That was beyond it. 

“I… do not know,” it said truthfully. “I am sure it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“You must’ve hit your head pretty hard,” Sierra said. “It’s not like you to be so introspective.” They reached the doors and sunlight, real sunlight this time, pierced Sammaël’s eyes. It squinted. “Take it easy.” Seeping through the apparently well-deserved anger, there was a hint of concern in her voice. When they got to her car, Sierra stopped and leaned against it. “Look, Abe. I don’t know what’s going on with you. But if this is some kind of cry for help...”

“I could use help,” Sammaël said. The relationship between Abe and Sierra had clearly been strained, but there appeared to be enough of a connection there for her to help it figure some things out. While experiencing new things like music was its eventual goal, it would be well served to be around longer. And that would require assistance. 

“Yeah, no shit,” Sierra said. “Get in the fucking car, Abe.”

Sammaël did as it was told and sat down. It felt a strange impulse, to move its arms a certain way. Searching through Abraham’s memories, there was a ritual that was done every time. Sammaël fastened its seatbelt. 

“Jesus, you’re really not alright, are you?” Sierra said, her brow furrowed. “Yeah, I’m not dropping you off at your place, you’re going to kill yourself like that.”

“I do not intend to,” Sammaël said. The look Sierra gave him was one of disbelief, but she didn’t say anything. Oh well, that just gave him more room to figure out where to go from here. He wanted to do well enough to exist on this little planet for a while. Experience plenty of things. Who even knew how many of those songs there were on this planet? Four? Five? It looked forward to listening to them all several times. “Sierra,” it said. 

“Abe.”

“I am having some difficulty in trying to know or understand what to say,” it said. Sierra looked at him for a moment but didn’t say anything, then started the car and drove out of the parking lot. “I do not know what to do in certain situations, and it seems you harbor me, Abraham Douglas, ill will.” Sierra scoffed. “And with reason. Actions I, Abraham Douglas have taken, have impacted you severely and negatively. What actions could I take that would impact you positively, and how?”

“Wh— Just like that?” The only reason Sierra wasn’t staring at it was because she was clearly trying to keep an eye on the road. “You can’t be fucking serious.”

“I am serious,” Sammaël said.

“I — Alright. Fine. Great. Fine. Okay, let’s start with the first thing then: I’d like a fucking apology, Abe.” She shot him another withering glance, this time out of the corner of her eye. “If you even know what you’re apologizing for.”

Sammaël looked back. This was going to take a while. Abe had done a great many things that had screwed Sierra over, and he hadn’t felt guilty about a single one of them. But he’d known they were awful all the same. But there was one that stood out.

“I apologize for ruining your wedding. For leaving you standing at the altar. For becoming inebriated and embarrassing you in front of people who mean a great deal to you. For causing you deep and possibly long-lasting emotional pain, in general and more specifically on a day that, as I understand it, is more important to you than almost any other.”

“Why did you do it?”

“Because Abraham Douglas is a coward.”

“Because you’re a coward?”

“No.”

“What does that mean?”

“I am not a coward.”

“But you’re—”

“I am not Abraham Douglas.”