The first thing that Rene registered when he came to was a throbbing pain in the back of his head. Then came the metallic taste in his mouth and the shooting pain in his tongue. After which his mind slowly focused on the blaring music. So familiar. Tom Petty?

He was sitting up. He opened his eyes, but the room was a blur. He tried to move, but couldn’t. Something was holding him in place. 

“Mmm,” He moaned as nausea began to sweep violently up from his gut and he knew it was just moments before he would be spewing the acid from his stomach. A soft voice assured him, a hand rubbing his back as a small trash can was placed in front of him. Rene threw up forcefully, his whole body clenching as he vomited bile and blood into the trashcan. After a minute, the urge to purge slowly faded, and he sat back. He made to wipe his mouth, but his hand wouldn’t move. 

Blinking repeatedly to try and sharpen his vision, he looked around in an attempt to figure out what the hell was going on. 

Khal was setting the trashcan on the floor. He’d grabbed a paper towel and wetted it at the sink, and was using it to wipe Rene’s face. 

“What happened?” Rene asked, looking around, the music still blaring. Petty crooning out “Don’t Do Me Like That.” 

Rene looked at the floor where he saw the dented remains of the tea kettle Khal had bought. There was water all over the floor where it had landed. Realization dawned on Rene, and he looked up at Khal in horror, flinching away as Khal made to wipe his face again with a new damp towel. Khal frowned at Rene’s action, and dropped the towel on the table, where Rene couldn’t help but notice his dream journal was sitting next to a pile of bloodied paper towels. 

Rene pulled against the chair, and confirmed that he had been tied to it, his wrists secured to the metal slats with rope. His heart skipped a beat as he pulled hard, but there was no give. 

“I think you had a seizure.” Khal stated matter-of-factly. “After we talk, I’ll take you to the hospital to get checked out.”

“Untie me.” Rene said, his mind buzzing from the combination of pain, fear, and confusion.

Khal took a seat next to Rene, drumming his fingers casually on the dream journal. He started humming along to the song. 

“Khal, let me go.” Rene insisted.

“Did you know you used to absolutely adore Tom Petty.” Khal said, grinning at what seemed to be a distant memory. “When you were Ling, you were so upset that Petty never toured in China. I was actually trying to get us tickets to the states for his Strange Behavior Tour in ’89 when, well, when everything happened. Fucking tanks.”

“Just fucking untie me now!” Rene snapped. 

Khal glared, and the look sent waves of ice shuddering through Rene’s body. 

“Khal, please.” Rene begged, softening his voice when the brunt approach wasn’t working. 

“I told you I would take you to the hospital when we’re done with our talk.” Khal said. 

Rene was at a loss. 

“I truly thought Ling was going to be the one.” Khal went on, sounding insane. “Of course, I also thought Charun would be the one, and Cody, and Aidan, and most of all Asim. My dear Asim, and so many others, but fate can be quite a real bitch, you know?”

“What are you talking about?” Rene asked. “Khal, why are you doing this?” His tongue felt painfully swollen in his mouth. It was clear he had bitten it, either in the fall, or during the seizure. 

“I didn’t do this. You did.” Khal stated, picking up the dream journal and starting to flip through it. “When you made a stupid fucking choice, you did this, to both of us.”

The song had changed. Now Tom Petty’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More” was blaring from Khal’s phone. 

Rene looked around for something, anything, but he knew that there was nothing that could help him. Not when he was secured so tightly. He wondered if he could break the chair, but it was made of metal and fairly solid. Plus, Khal would be there watching him, so there wouldn’t be much of a chance to escape, unless Khal left. 

“Seventeen lives, altogether.” Khal stated, looking through the journal. “You know, I must have read this fifty times. Getting to know all those different versions of you, from your point of view. I’m sure you’ve left some details out, but your descriptions are so thorough. So vivid.”

“Khal, this is kidnapping.” Rene stated slowly. “You have to let me go. Once you untie me, you can leave, a-and I won’t say anything to anyone. I-“

Rene flinched as Khal jumped up and kicked the tea kettle angrily, sending it hurtling into the wall with a crash. 

“You aren’t. Fucking. Listening!” Khal said. 

Rene’s heart hammered as he realized he wasn’t going to be able to talk his way out of this. His head throbbed painfully where the kettle had made contact earlier. His skin was sore where the boiling water had splashed on him. 

“I’m sorry.” Rene muttered. “I’m sorry.”

Khal looked at him, and his features immediately softened. He looked back at the tea kettle, then ran over to pick it up and throw it away. Grabbing some towels from under the sink, he used them to sop up all the water that had splashed out in the attack on Rene’s cranium. Khal took off to the other room, presumably to throw the towels in the dirty laundry, while Rene tried futilely to loosen the binds. Khal returned and cleaned the paper towels off the table, and straightened up the rest of the kitchen, before returning to the seat next to Rene with a smile. Rene noticed that Khal’s foot was bleeding where he had kicked the kettle. He didn’t seem to notice, or maybe just didn’t care.

“I’m sorry.” Khal said. “I’ve been rash. I thought I’d planned everything so perfectly, but even being alive for over 500 years, one tends to make mistakes.”

He sounded certifiable, and yet, Rene sensed that Khal was telling the truth. He just didn’t understand how that could be.

“You wrote all your dreams down.” Khal said, holding up the journal. 

Rene nodded, and another wave of pain throbbed in his skull as he did so. 

“The detail is incredible. I’m not sure you ever kept a journal like this in a past life. Not one that I remember anyway.” Khal said. 

“It was Misha’s idea.” Rene said, hoping that bringing up Misha wouldn’t anger Khal again. 

Khal nodded, “It’s been very helpful.”

“In what way?” Rene asked. He glanced over at the clock on the stove. He could just make out the time if he blinked repeatedly to clear his vision. It was 10:22am. He’d been out for at least 45 minutes. Jesus.

“In getting to know you, and how you see me.” Khal said. “For the longest time in your dreams, I was the faceless man, but then something changed. Somehow you started to remember.”

“I had no idea who he was.” Rene admitted. “And suddenly, it came to me.”

“I’m sure it had to do with proximity.” Khal said absently, looking through the journal. “Now Adam here, Mr. Korean War, what a fascinating individual. I would have loved to meet him, but I was otherwise indisposed. The woman he saved, that you saved, does she strike you as significant?”

“What do you mean?” Rene asked, but he had an inkling. A thought that had hit him before, but had seemed too far fetched because, well, it had all been a dream. 

Khal looked up at him and smiled, a strange smile, like he was excited to tell Rene something, but was holding back. 

“You added one about Cody last night. What a delight he was. Can’t say I saw that betrayal coming, but I probably deserved it.”

Rene struggled to come to grips with what Khal was saying. He had never really been religious. Never really believed in anything but the here and now, and that after you died, that was it. Yet, in the corner of his mind, the part of him that constantly replayed the reels of his dreams like they were movies, there had always been a little question, a naggling doubt. What if this was real? He had never dared to believe it though, because it sounded insane. 

Khal sounded insane. He came across like a crazy stalker who had picked up Rene’s dream journal, and decided to insert himself into these memories as though he had been there. 

It was impossible, it had to be. 

But…

“I killed you.” Rene muttered, remembering last night’s dream in all its vivid detail. 

“You certainly tried.” Khal said with a chuckle.

Rene shook his head, “It’s not real. It’s just dreams. It can’t be real. It’s stories made up from the books I read while working at the library.”

“I don’t know. It all felt pretty fucking real to me.” Khal said. “Watching you get crushed by those tanks was pretty real. Being buried and burned alive, entombed, and tortured was pretty fucking real.”

Rene continued to shake his head, despite the pain it caused. His mind refused to accept what he was being told. Khal leaned toward him, gently taking Rene’s head in his hands and looking him deep in the eyes, the dream journal resting on his lap. 

“You don’t have to fight this anymore.” Khal whispered. “I know you recognized me the first day you saw me. I could see it in your eyes. I wasn’t just a stranger.”

“Please don’t.” Rene begged, a wave of panic prickling his scalp as the truth of what Khal was saying hit him. He couldn’t believe this. The reality of it was too horrifying to consider. So many lives. And they all had been…no.

No.

“This is insane.” Rene muttered, closing his eyes, wanting to shut himself away from the situation.

“You know that’s not true.” Khal said, his voice so soft, so strangely calming, despite the situation. 

“It can’t be true.” Rene pleaded. “All those lives. How could I live all those lives? All those deaths…”

“You knew from the moment you saw me. From the moment you invited me into your home and asked me to stay. Every kiss and touch was you remembering. You remembered what it was like to be Charun, in that temple. Our first kiss in that life. I could feel the connection getting stronger day by day, and I was so sure that would be the one.”

“The one?” Rene repeated, opening his eyes now, looking at Khal who was looking so intensely back at him. 

“The life where we would connect. Where you would live immortal like me. The two of us, together, forever. I could see the glow in your eyes at times as Charun. The turquoise glow of our goddess’ eyes. It was meant to be. We were meant to be. Another day, or week, or year, you would have been blessed by her and we would have lived together in those forms for eternity.”

Khal let out a shuddering breath, his mood shifting in a heartbeat, “But I left to get supplies on the goddamn day the temple was sacked, and came back to find you had been run through with a sword, for protecting your goddess. The moment I found you felt like…felt like the first time I watched you die. Every time I watched the light fade from your eyes, it-it never got easier.” Rene could actually see tears welling in Khal’s eyes. 

Rene swallowed. He could vividly picture the moment. The Muslim seige had ransacked the temple. They were in the process of tearing it down when Khal slipped past them. Khal found Charun, and immediately took his hand, sobbing that everything would be alright, and begging him not to go. Not to leave yet. Not to die. Khal had faded in and out as Charun slipped away, a small smile on Charun’s face as he looked upon his friend, his lover. 

As Charun drifted toward darkness, he had prayed to Durga to bring him back to Khal in the next life…

“I noticed there was nothing in here about your first life.” Khal said, sitting back in the present and wiping his nose as he sniffed sharply.

“First life?” Rene repeated in confusion.

“Our first life.” Khal said. “In Egypt.”

Rene couldn’t recall a single dream about a life in Egypt. 

“It doesn’t matter.” Khal said. “I just found it curious. There’s likely a reason you’re not dreaming about it.”

Rene didn’t respond.

“This woman, in your dreams…” Khal said, tapping an image of the woman Rene had seen in the bungalow, an image he had drawn upon waking up. “She’s new. Who is she?” Khal asked. 

“I don’t know.” Rene said. “She wouldn’t say.”

“She’s important.” Khal said. “Significant somehow. She showed you memories of me. She must have told you something about me that you didn’t write down, didn’t she?”

Rene swallowed uncomfortably. It was those memories she had shown him that had been the nail in the coffin of his relationship with Khal. The reason he had decided to end it, and that he was sitting here now, tied to a chair. 

“She’s not just one person though.” Khal said, reading the entry about her and looking at the picture again. 

“No.” Rene agreed.  

“Turquoise eyes.” Khal was grinning, looking up at Rene. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

“Remember what?” Rene asked. 

“Growing up together. You saving my life. The sandstorm. Our blessings. Any of it?” Khal said. 

Rene shook his head no. 

“You know, this is the first life of yours where I knew for sure you were remembering. Thanks to this.” Khal held up the journal. “But I always wondered. In the past, we’d meet up, and there would be that recognition, but that’s all it seemed to be. You never shared whether or not you felt you’d seen me before, but we always seemed to click right away. Pure chemistry. I’d argue it was there even in our first life.”

Khal looked thoughtfully at the journal, then set it on the table. 

“I suppose it’s good you didn’t know about the first life. You don’t seem to recall the ankh in your dreams. I imagine that might have given some things away.” 

The ankh.

Rene felt his chest tighten.

“What do you mean?” Rene asked. 

Khal hesitated, biting his bottom lip, clearly uncomfortable. It took a moment before he spoke again. 

“I know that we’re going to come back from this, so I’m going to lay it all out there for you. You have to realize though that everything I’ve ever done has been for us. To bring us closer. To bless our lives together so that we can live immortal.” Khal took a deep breath before continuing.

“Our goddess gave us both gifts. You were blessed with reincarnation, and a secondary gift that, I’ll be honest, I’ve never been able to figure out. I was blessed with immortality and…call it influence.”

“Influence?” Rene repeated. 

Khal sighed, “Fine, mind control. It’s served me well throughout the years.”

“What do you…what?” Rene asked, flustered.

“It didn’t strike you as really strange how fast your neighbor changed her bigoted mind? How quickly all the reporters chilled out and left us alone? How I was able to procure so much money so often?”

Rene shook his head. Past lives were one thing, but mind control was ridiculous. 

“Don’t believe me?” Khal asked. “Do you need a demonstration?”

“I…” Rene didn’t know what to say as Khal sat back with a grin. 

“What are you going to do?” Rene asked. 

“I’m going to show you.” Khal said, drumming his fingers again on the journal. They waited in awkward silence for several moments with Rene trying to wrap his head around what Khal was telling him. Suddenly there was a knock at the door, and Rene jumped as Khal got up to answer it.

As soon as the door opened, Rene cried out, “Run! Get help, please!”

The door closed, and Rene watched in shock as Colleen walked into the kitchen with Khal behind her. She looked at Rene, but made no motion to move or flee. On the contrary, she looked perfectly content to be there. 

“Thank you for coming, Colleen.” Khal said. She looked at Khal and smiled. 

Khal looked at Rene, “I suppose I should tell you how this works. It’s all about eye contact. Once I’ve looked into someone’s eyes, I have them, for as long as I need them. I can look straight into their mind. I can see their thoughts, memories, fears, hopes. I can know their language, their customs. It’s helped me so much throughout the centuries. And of course, with a little push, I can get them to do whatever I want.” 

Khal smiled and Colleen walked over to the kitchen sink and pulled a sharp knife from the knife block. 

“I could make Colleen here slit her own throat, or carve herself a Glasgow smile.”

“Khal.” Rene spoke, “Khal, please, don’t.”

“But for our demonstration today, I’ll keep it simple, and we’ll stick to the pinky.” Khal said, a strange smile twisting up his lips. “Did you know that Colleen here once got a young black man arrested just for having the audacity to walk by her house? She was hoping the police would shoot him, but she didn’t get her wish that day.”

Rene’s breath hitched as Colleen laid her hand out and placed the knife directly over her left pinky, slowly beginning to apply force. 

“And the hatred she had for you and Misha, oof! She prayed every day that God would strike you down and remove your horrible influence from the neighborhood. She was gleeful when Misha died.”

Colleen was beginning to press down, blood starting to pour from her finger. The whole time, her body was passive and relaxed. 

“Don’t do this! Don’t!” Rene begged. “I believe you!”

“And you know the worst thing of all? She knew that her son was being sexually abused by his father, all this time, and she did nothing. She made herself believe that it was your fault. The queer, the minorities. That God was testing her love, and she had to prove it with cruelty toward her fellow man.”

Colleen pressed down now with all her weight, slicing her pinky off with a thunk like she had just sliced a carrot. Rene cried out, feeling faint as he watched blood spurt from her finger all over the kitchen. Colleen merely stood there, stock still, waiting for Khal’s next commands. 

Khal walked over and grabbed a towel from under the sink, handing it to her. She immediately put pressure on the wound. Khal picked the finger up and shoved it into her pants pocket. 

“You’re going to go to the hospital. You’re going to tell them you had an accident. You’re also going to tell them every horrible thing your husband has done to you and your son.” Khal said. 

Colleen headed out, somehow managing not to leave a trail of blood as she went. Khal opened the door for her and closed it behind her. He returned to the kitchen, and sat down once more across from Rene. 

“It never worked on you.” Khal said. “Things would have been so much easier if it had, but then of course, it would never have really been you loving me back.”

Rene was sure he was going to be sick again. He concentrated on steadying his breathing, on keeping the lump of nausea at bay. 

“Want to know something beautiful?” Khal said. “I know that you and Misha never tested to see which one of you was Emory’s biological father, but I can tell you beyond doubt that it’s you. I’ve never been able to get into her mind either. She can’t be controlled.”

Rene was somewhat shocked at this revelation. He had always vaguely wondered, but never in a million years would he have imagined finding out Emory was biologically his in this way. 

Khal placed his hands on Rene’s thighs as he looked down at the floor, seemingly unable to meet Rene’s eye now.

“I’ve done some things. Things I’m not proud of, but that I felt needed to be done, to get us to the next place, the next stage in our relationship. I know it’s going to be hard for you to forgive me, but I know you can. You have to. Our goddess gave us a limit, a number of years and lives that we’d have before it was too late, before you wouldn’t be coming back anymore. Before I’d lose you forever. In 27 years, it’s all over. 550 years from our blessing. One more lifetime, and we’re out of chances. So, I accelerated things. I…I brought in someone to give you the mark, the ankh. You had it in your first life. We both did. I wanted you to have it again.”

“You gave…” Rene trailed off, the reality of Khal’s words a crashing wave now as he was transported back to that basement, to that torture, the tattoo, pleading for Khal’s life. 

“You didn’t.” Rene muttered. 

“Nothing was done to you that wasn’t done to me.” Khal said. “And most of the things done to you, you’d already done to me, in a past life. Albeit sometimes indirectly.”

Rene felt the hot sting of angry tears in his eyes. 

“I regret using Jeff Aquino. By all accounts, he was a great man. He was also the only one with the skill I needed to perfect the Ankh. To make an exact replica of mine. He needed some test subjects first, but I can assure you that not a single man brought to that basement was innocent. Every one of them was a rapist, a narcissist, or a sociopath. Their families claim to miss them, but I can assure you they’re much better off.”

“You’re insane.” Rene breathed, tears streaking down his face now. “What you’ve done is completely insane!”

“I was looking out for us.” Khal said, still not meeting Rene’s eye. “I was bringing us closer together. And it worked! We found that bliss again. That perfect relationship we were so blessed to find before. I could even swear I saw glimpses of the turquoise in your eyes.”

Rene swallowed, “You-you sick fuck! You made me kill an innocent man! You ruined his life, his reputation! You killed people! You killed Frank, for fuck’s sake, a man who never had a cruel bone in his body! Who are you to decide if any of them deserved it!”

Khal stood up and began pacing anxiously.

“I knew you’d be upset,” Khal said, “but we have to move on from this.”

“You let me squeeze the life out of Jeff Aquino and did nothing!” Rene said. All of his fear and anxiety had turned to anger. “It wasn’t Jeff Aquino torturing me! It wasn’t him murdering Frank! It was you!”

“Stop.” Khal said, his voice a warning. 

“Or what? You’ll drown me some more?” Rene snapped. “You’ve already probably given me brain damage today. You might as well just finish me off. Good luck next time, buddy.”

Khal shook his head, “We’ll get past this.”

“I don’t think so.” Rene said, his voice seething with rage now. “You should untie me or kill me. I’m done talking.”

Khal froze, still unable to bring himself to look at Rene. 

“I’ve always done what I’ve had to do. Do you think I would choose to keep pursuing you if I didn’t have to? I’m bound to you. Drawn to you in every single life. Unless I was locked up or buried somewhere, I was always on the move, my soul was drawn across the world to yours in every moment of my existence. You, somehow, had the luxury of forgetting I existed. You had the privilege of living your lives without me. I never had that privilege.” Khal suddenly grabbed a towel from under the sink and used it to clean up Colleen’s blood. “You think I’m doing this out of malice, but I’m not. I’m doing this for us. I’m doing this to end the torture of living without you. I’m doing this to save you.”

“I never, ever, want to see you again.” Rene said. “Not in this life, not in any life. I hope you do live on forever without me. I hope you suffer every day for the rest of your pathetic existence. You’re a sick sadistic fuck, who deserves no sympathy from me.” Rene said. “I don’t love you, and I never will again.”

Khal, who was rinsing the bloody towel out in the sink before soaking up some more, took a moment to respond.

“I knew this would be difficult for you. You feel betrayed, and why wouldn’t you. But you’ve betrayed me too. You’ve buried me alive, you’ve burned me beyond recognition, and you’ve shot me and tossed me into the ocean to live out a fate worse than death. You’ve thrown me aside when I’ve done everything for you, and yet, I still love you. I still come back to you.” Khal set the towel down, washed his hands, and dried them off with a paper towel before turning back to Rene. “I will never stop loving you. I don’t think I’m capable. So, I will do everything in my power to make you love me back. You can imagine just how far that power stretches, just how many friends and loved ones might be affected.”

Rene swallowed, his breathing shallow now from Khal’s threat. He pictured Ari cutting her finger off, as Colleen had done. Pictured her plunging a knife into Emory, if Khal willed it. And what could he do to stop it? Khal was seemingly invincible. Death wanted nothing to do with him. Rene was still mortal…ish.

He sat there for a moment, holding back on the harsh words he wanted to lash at Khal with. Anger would do him no good in this situation. He had to reason with the beast.

“What do you want from me?” Rene asked hesitantly.

“I want another chance.” Khal said, walking back over and sitting down in the chair across from Rene. “I want to show you that I can make things right. That I will do whatever it takes to make this work, to make us work. I love you. Let me make it up to you.”

Rene was surprised to find himself feeling pity for Khal in that moment. As angry as he was, as terrified, he still saw the same man he had spent lifetimes with, that he had shared so many firsts with. He saw his best friend throughout the ages, just as much as he saw the twisted monster who had locked him in a basement. 

He looked at Khal, and he saw a scared little boy who loved him, and didn’t have the tools to show it properly. 

And he saw the viper, ready to strike and destroy everything he held dear. 

Khal really wasn’t giving him much of a choice. 

“Promise me two things.” Rene said finally. 

“Anything.” Khal said, sitting up straighter in anticipation.  

“You won’t hurt anyone I love and care about. And you won’t control Ari, under any circumstances. If you already have been, you will let her go.”

“It’s done.” Khal said, his face breaking into a grin. 

“Promise me.” Rene insisted.

“I promise.” Khal said. 

Rene nodded, and Khal finally untied him. 

Chapter 26 https://storiesfrommontana.com/2023/07/23/chapter-26-khalid-and-asim/