It was the performance of a lifetime.

Of seventeen lifetimes. 

Rene’s stomach was churning when he stepped out of the car to see Khalid waiting for him with a huge grin on his face. 

“Asim!” Khalid cried, rushing over to embrace him. 

Play the part, play the part, play the part. 

“Khalid!” Exclaimed Rene. 

It was easy to play the part. He was Asim. He had lived as Asim for many years, and had all the memories of that life within him now. His accent wasn’t the same, but he spoke with a similar cadence. Khalid noticed immediately. 

“You sound different.” Said Khalid, looking at him curiously.

“I can assure you, my love, that it’s me.” Said Rene in flawless Coptic Egyptian. 

“You’re beautiful.” Said Khalid, also in Coptic, holding Rene’s face and looking deep into his eyes. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you more.” Said Rene. He pulled Khalid into a passionate kiss, forcing himself to forget about Misha for the moment, about the perfect life he was forced to leave behind to reach this point. He embraced his former lover, and played the part so well that he actually began to feel the butterflies of emotion he had felt for Khalid throughout his many lives. 

How strange to be back here. Back with Khalid for what he hoped would be the final time. Rene had planned meticulously for this situation, with Future Emory’s input back in the temple. He had had a long month to finesse all the details. And here he was. And Khalid didn’t seem to suspect a thing. 

Khalid pulled back from the kiss, his face flush, lips pulled up in a grin. 

“Tell me everything. How did you get here? Who is this version of you? Everything!”

Rene told him the entire story that he and his Grown daughter had come up with. Every vivid detail. And he told it with absolute conviction. 

As far as Khalid now knew, Asim had simply woken up one day in this new body with no memory of the life that came with it. He had wandered, lost, and fallen in the river, almost drowning. There, his Goddess had sent him a vision of Khalid and given Asim the number to call him by. 

And here he was, with no memory of the man he had been. He didn’t even have a wallet for identification, by design. Khalid wasn’t terribly interested in finding out who he had been, and Rene had figured this would be the case. Why risk potentially losing Asim again when he had him now, physical form be damned. 

“She brought you back to me,” said Khalid, “I can’t believe she brought you back to me. Finally. After all those years of searching.”

“I’m here.” Rene smiled. He would be spending most of a year with Khalid, and was happy to see that Khalid didn’t suspect a thing. 

*****

December 2023

Emory watched her dad try to put on a happy face as he put up the Christmas decorations, but she could see the pain in his eyes. It was another tradition that he was meant to do with daddy, but now daddy was gone, and everything was different. Dad still smiled, but the smile never reached his eyes anymore. 

Mommy opened the front door as dad handed Emory a purple bulb to hang lower on the tree. 

“Hey, Ari.” Said dad, giving her a half-hearted wave before returning to the box of decorations. “You’re just in time to help us decorate.”

“Oh good!” Said mommy, also hiding the sadness behind a small smile. “I brought chocolates for everyone!”

“Oooh, chocolate!” Said dad, actually perking up a bit. Emory watched him rush over to mommy and help her out with a large box of chocolates, as a familiar tickle twitched at the edge of Emory’s mind. It was her future self, peaking out for the umpteenth time from behind her eyes. 

“They look so sad.” Said Future Emory inside her mind. 

“Yeah.” Emory thought. “We all miss daddy.”

“He misses you too. So much. You have no idea.” Said Future Emory. 

“I wish they could remember now.” Said Emory. “I’m tired of hiding it from them.”

“I know. I know. Just a while longer, to keep everyone safe. You understand.” Future Emory sighed. “Mom is so beautiful. I could look at her all day.”

“I know,” Said Emory. “That’s what I do. Then I remember her cutting her throat, and I feel like I’m going to be sick. But I can’t say anything. I can’t tell anyone, or they’ll think I’m crazy.” 

“If I could give you a hug, I would. I understand how hard this is. I really do. But hang in there, okay. Time will pass faster than you think, and then you won’t be alone with your knowledge anymore.”

“But then daddy will be dead.” Emory pointed out. 

“He will be waiting for you in the Duat. And after you’ve had a good long life, you will see him again, and it will be like you were never apart.”

“And what will happen to you?” Emory asked. 

“I’m not sure. But I can tell you that I’m not scared. Not one little bit. For the first time in a very long time, I’m excited for what is to come.” 

“I wish I could say the same.”

“Hang in there, little Emory. And do something for me, please. Give mommy and dad a big hug from me. I miss them so much.”

Emory nodded vaguely to herself before walking over to where her dad and mommy were standing, talking quietly about Christmas arrangements. She walked up to both of them and did the best she could to pull them into a group hug. Dad picked her up, giving her a better vantage point to pull them both together. It took Emory a moment to realize that all three of them were crying. 

“He was supposed to be here for this.” Said dad, sniffling and wiping his nose with his sleeve. 

Mommy nodded, and Emory watched the tears dripping from her lashes, down her cheeks. 

“Hey!” Mommy said, sniffing and wiping her face with her sleeve, “Let’s play some music! We’ll have a decoration dance party.”

Emory nodded enthusiastically, and mommy played some music from her phone through the Bluetooth speaker as she kicked her shoes off and headed over to the tree. Dad gave Emory a kiss on the cheek, then set her down as “Lean on Me” started to play. Emory wiped her face with her sweater, before taking a moment to just stare at her parents, letting herself fill up with the love she had for them. Mommy saw her watching, and with a grin, came over and picked her up, dancing her around to the music. 

As Emory was danced around in her mother’s arms, she let a smile, a real genuine smile, creep onto her face and take over for a bit. She looked to her dad, who was looking at her, and for a moment, she saw the twinkle he had lost in those last months finally reach his eyes. 

It felt good to feel good. 

*****

October 2022 – July 2023

Rene hadn’t realized how busy he would be over the months, and how hard it would be to get a moment away from Khalid in order to breathe. Of course, Khalid never slept. He didn’t require any sort of sustenance or bathroom breaks. And his favorite place in the world to be was anywhere that Asim was. 

Which was fine, if exhausting. It also meant that Rene never really had the chance to look up his family on social media and see how they were doing. Which was probably for the best, as it would just make him miss them all the more. Plus, he never wanted Khalid to have the chance of discovering that they existed and trying to get rid of them. 

So, instead of mourning everything he had lost, Rene busied himself for his journey to the afterlife, intending to leave this world that much better than he had found it. It took almost no coaxing at all to get Khalid to visit a few specific individuals and change their minds on some very key topics. Starting from the top down, but in a more subtle way than the gung-ho manner in which they had changed everything last time, they slowly began to disassemble the monopolies in place that were keeping their boot on the necks of the impoverished. 

Small changes, across the world, with Rene there every step of the way, explaining to Khalid that this was the path their Goddess wanted them to choose. Something he claimed she told him in a dream. He was able to make Khalid believe these dreams because he also claimed they gave him knowledge of the future. A future he had already lived. Rene wowed Khalid repeatedly with his premonitions of events that happened because they had already happened. Slowly though, those events began to change. Soon, he could not predict what Zelensky might say next in Ukraine, because Khalid managed to get a secret audience with Putin and force a cease-fire, before the dictator stepped down and accepted the charges given to him by his people and the world’s leaders. 

Rene was carefully able to use Khalid to influence Palestine and Israel, calling for negotiations on a global scale and the step-down of another genocidal leader. He made sure there was a warning about the Hamas plan to strike, but knew he would not be there when it happened and would have to hope that diplomacy would win out.  It left the situation shaky, but with a much more promising future for the many innocent lives affected previously. 

All around the world, little changes here and there. Subtle, but future-looking. Passing laws about plastic and pollution. Cleaning the water, the air, the earth. 

He tread carefully, so carefully. Reminded of the horrors of what happened previously, when everything went to shit. The world wasn’t ready for big sudden changes. That’s not how humans worked. Like evolution, it was a slow process. 

Part of that process involved suggesting working Khalid for his vast fortune, something he was fairly certain the man hardly cared about. 

“Sure,” Khalid said one night when Rene straight up asked him if he was willing to share the wealth, “everything I have is yours anyway. But why do you want it? We already have everything we could ever need.”

“I’m not sure.” Said Rene, in that fluent Coptic he spoke so easily now, “Another visit from our Goddess, I suppose. Perhaps she wishes us to give it to charity?”

“What can charity do that we cannot?” Asked Khalid, who took Rene’s hand and guided him to the bed. 

Rene smiled, “I do not pretend to understand our Goddess’s ways. All I know is that she returned me to you, and I am ecstatically happy! When I died, I thought I may never see you again. Then I awoke to this strange world, barely understanding how to use a cell phone or a car. Aset pushed me to keep going, to find you, and everything has come so easy now. When we’re together, when I’m with you. It all feels so right.”

It honestly wasn’t entirely a lie. As much as he hated Khalid and everything the man had done to him, a part of him still loved him, still felt that crazy spark he had felt in his first life. The want, the will to spend eternity with this man. Rene had a strange fear that he might actually end up falling for Khalid. He had to remind himself of all the horrors his lover had perpetrated against him and his family. 

Remind himself that he’d left his beloved family to protect them from Khalid’s wrath. 

There had been moments over the past months though where Rene had looked at his reflection in the mirror and seen hints of the turquoise in his eyes, the sign that he wanted that eternity with Khalid. It was so strange to acknowledge that he still held those feelings. It was terrifying that he could love a monster. 

But in truth, Rene knew everything that had gone into creating the man Khalid was now. Every moment of abuse, every pull of the tether he had no say in. While the things that Khalid had done were absolutely unforgivable, they were also understandable. Rene saw the man behind the monster now, and it was the man he had loved more than anything else in the world more than once in his long existence. 

Khalid gently pushed him down on the bed, running his fingers gently through Rene’s hair. He had that smile, that beautiful smile that had driven Rene absolutely wild when he was Asim. He grinned back at that smile now and leaned up to kiss his lover passionately. 

It was hard, not to think of Misha now. Not to feel a stab of pain at betraying him like this every time. As Rene made love to Khalid, he remembered that he was doing all of this for his family, and for the world. To make everything better for all of them. 

“Tomorrow.” Khalid said, in the throes of sex. “You can have all of it tomorrow. Everything. Take it all. All I want is you.”

Rene grinned and pulled Khalid’s face down into a heartfelt kiss. 

*****

August 12th 2023

Emory know it was time for dad to look at daddy’s journal. She had wondered over the last several months if he would, but it seemed he could never bring himself to do it. Or maybe he had forgotten. Either way, she brought it out to him now where he was sitting in the living room, scrolling on his phone, looking for his dopamine, he explained. 

“Dad, what do you know about Egypt?” Emory asked, holding the journal which had been left exactly where daddy had last put it in his drawer. 

“What’s that?” Her dad asked, looking up from his phone and spotting the journal. Emory saw a number of expressions rush across his face. He clearly remembered exactly what she was holding. “What are you doing with that, love?”

“I remembered daddy talking about his dreams, and I wanted to read them. To think about him.” Emory said, feeling nervous that she might have upset her dad. He set down the phone and gestured for her to come sit next to him. Emory scooted up next to him on the couch and held out the dream journal. They looked through it together, all of the words and pictures. Every dream. Every memory. 

When they got to the last marked page, they saw daddy’s final dream, though Emory knew it wasn’t really a dream. She remembered it happening on the news. It was about the Lahaina fire in Hawaii, the very fire that had just happened a few days previously. Emory remembered that in the past, a lot of people had died, but in the news the other day, it seemed there had been very few deaths because everyone had received warning to get out before it was too late. A miracle, sources claimed. Emory felt her stomach jump as she realized that daddy had been the one to save all of those people. 

“How…” Her dad murmured. “how could he dream about this? It hadn’t even happened!”

“What’s that?” Emory asked, directing her dad’s attention to the markings at the bottom of the page. She watched her dad zero in on the words and numbers, clearly caught up in his hyper-focus. Daddy had laid out directions for him, directions he claimed were given to him in a dream. Emory knew, as she looked at her dad, that it was working. He was trying to figure out where the directions led to. He even used his phone to input them, then muttered about Egypt. 

Emory hoped it was enough to send her dad on his journey. She traced her fingers over daddy’s written words as she leaned against her dad, feeling content now that things were going as they should. 

*****

August 26th, 2023

It was almost time. In two days, Mt. Hood would erupt. That was his window, and what’s more, he needed to get as many people off of that mountain as he possibly could. Rene felt a flutter of anxiety, knowing how close he was to the end. He had managed to talk Khalid into returning to the states, and specifically Oregon, telling him he felt pulled there by their Goddess, but not yet telling him why. 

Rene managed to get away from Khalid for a bit by telling him he wanted to explore on his own, and hinting that he was getting a gift for Khalid. In reality, he was mailing out a package. One that would reach Ari at just the right time. He also took a moment that he hadn’t been able to take in the last several months, and stalked his family on social media. It appeared that Misha was going on a trip out of the country. Good. That likely meant that he had seen the message. Misha was always up for an adventure. 

Rene scrolled through pictures of his sweet Emory, of his dear Ari and beloved Misha. He could see the pain in their faces. The loss they felt for him. He felt the same for them. How strange, to be in the same state as them again, but not be able to see them. 

He picked up a few items, some of which required a whole lot of money to procure. Money he now had in abundance. He carefully hid the items as he returned to Khalid, teasing him about the gift he would be giving him in a few days time. 

The next day, Rene awoke, and immediately put into motion the evacuation, telling Khalid that once more he had been visited by their Goddess, just as she had “visited him” before the fires in Hawaii and told them to send out a warning. Khalid didn’t even question it, though he was shocked that a dormant volcano like Mt. Hood was going to blow her top in such a way to rain down great destruction and death.

Rene had an idea, and rushed with Khalid to find the nearest scientist monitoring the Cascades. It took Khalid one glance in her eyes, and she was immediately putting out the warning to the whole world, even without the data to back it up. Khalid forced her to create the data, and she worked diligently to prove that Mt. Hood was indeed dangerous, and about to kill thousands. 

The evacuation was intense. All day and throughout the night, they watched as hundreds of people left the mountain. Folks in the valley below, including Katrina’s parents, were also forced to leave their homes, having enough time to grab their most precious possessions and their pets. 

The group that had been camping at the top of the mountain was quickly bussed out. Throughout the night, Rene and Khalid watched the progress of everyone leaving, though they were all confused as to why there were no obvious signs that the mountain was ready to blow. 

Midnight came and went, and still cars were leaving the mountain and the valley below. Rene hoped that everyone was out, though he couldn’t help but feel for everything many of them were about to lose when their homes and livelihoods were destroyed in the lahars, Lava, and pyroclastic clouds.

When the last truck rolled away, Rene stepped out of their car to stretch and get some fresh air. Khalid got out and looked at him with concern. 

“Shouldn’t we be going?” Khalid asked. 

Rene nodded, opening the trunk, “Of course. I’m just getting something really quick.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt, you know.” Said Khalid. 

Rene looked at Khalid, who had come around to the back of the car, looking genuinely concerned about him. 

“I know how much you care.” Said Rene. “Believe me.”

He leaned over and gave Khalid a sweet kiss on the lips. 

“I love you.” Said Khalid. “Let’s get going.” 

“I love you too.” Said Rene as Khalid turned away from him to get back into the car. He never had the chance to do so as Rene brought the tire iron down sharply on the back of Khalid’s head, sending him sprawling unconscious to the ground.