Christopher’s fingers wouldn’t stop shaking and this time it wasn’t his old age causing the tremors. His heart was racing. He couldn’t get his breathing under control and his mind oh god, my mind, it shakes. Like my fingers it shakes. Fumbling with the bottle’s cork, Christopher finally yanked open the whisky and shoved it through his lips tasting the sweet forgetfulness it brought. The blissful release. The vile taste of cowardice. I was getting better. Christopher had been drinking less. It was no longer a nightly occurrence as it once had been, but now he drank after each appointment under the cathedral and into that hell he walked every day. Tipping the bottle down, Christopher fought the urge to gag. He did anyway, but he didn't throw it up. No, never. He needed it, needed it now.

  Christopher was standing by the roadside. It was midday and the pub he stood outside was flowing like it was their peak – an hour past dinner - but in a sense it was always night in Kerioth under the looming mesh of skyscrapers. Some passing customers gave the doctor a glare as he unabashedly drank from the bottle in public, but why would it matter? This was the afterlife. This was Hell or close enough and he would experience it again tomorrow morning.

  He raised the bottle for another swig when someone gripped his wrist. The bottle wouldn’t move any closer to his lips. Someone with an iron grip - that gave his skin carpet burn - was stopping him from taking his medicine and as Chris turned to give him a piece of his mind he flew up. Not just to his feet, he literally flew, flying off the ground and continuing to sail. He didn’t know what was going on until he was two stories high and still ascending. The bottle smashed on the pavement below. My friend, your time was not yet up. Yet someone, probably the owner of the rope tied around his wrist, snatched him from this world, still half full. His shoulder ached under his weight and his wrist burned, but then the world stopped and Christopher's mind kept going in a spin. Someone pulled him into a window and he collapsed on the wood floor. He puked.

  It all came up at once. No food, just liquid, cloudy orange, and it trickled through the wooden planks into some poor fellow’s home below. Three great yaks and he felt mildly better. His eyes were struggling to focus, they kept moving up and down like he was ascending, but slowly they came back to reality and what they found was a woman standing above him. She looked like shit and smelt like it too. Her clothes could pass for beggars on the street and her left eye was covered by a crooked patch. Her skin was nearly as dark as her black hair with white scars across every piece of skin she was showing. In one hand she held a spear and in the otter a whip. So this is where I die, Christopher thought and although he worried he had not repented enough - he could never repent enough for what he did on Earth - he felt relief. I will never have to go into that dungeon again.

  ‘Get up,’ she said, kicking him. ‘Why are you looking at me like that? It’s creeping me out.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Stand up already, we need to chat.’

  He pushed himself up, hands on his knees. ‘You are not going to kill me?’

  She seemed taken aback by this, her one eye widening with surprise. Then she laughed. A speck of spit landed on Christopher’s cheek which he wiped off.

  ‘Are you crazy? Why would I kill you?’

  ‘Am I crazy?’ he asked, but it wasn’t a question. His voice was rising, a bit of liquid courage - whatever survived - fuelling it. ‘You just abducted me! And now you ask if I'm crazy? Yeah, I might be, but you’re insane.’

  She stopped laughing, but didn’t show an ounce of remorse. ‘I had no choice about that,’ she said. ‘I can’t exactly show my face in public, but I needed to speak to you.’

  Christopher rubbed his wrist, he instinctively wanted to heal the carpet burn on his wrist, but he stopped himself. He could save that lifespan for someone else. A small repentance from a small rule. ‘Talk about what?’

  She can’t show her face in public? She must be a dangerous woman. It would be best to escape at the first opportunity.

  She stuck out her hand. ‘My name is Rez.’

  Reluctantly, Christopher shook her hand. ‘Chris.’

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  She smiled. ‘Now we are in business.’ She didn’t let go.

  Christopher tried to yank his hand free, but her grip was stone. ‘I didn’t join any of your business,’ he said, tugging futilely.

  Finally, she let go and he nearly stumbled over.

  ‘I am a revolutionary,’ she said and Christopher wasn’t the least bit surprised. ‘I need your help.’

  ‘If you have someone who needs healing, I will help, but if it's anything else then I can’t help you.’

  ‘It is healing someone, in a sense.’

  Christopher shook his head. ‘I’m not interested in joining any revolution. I’m especially not interested in joining a band of outlaws who kidnap people and spread propaganda posters with “THE CHURCH KILLS CHILDREN” all over Kerioth.’

  Rez looked confused at this comment. ‘But they do kill children.’ she said as if correcting someone on the simplest topic; two plus two does in fact equal five. ‘Has the world forgotten what that war was fought over?’

  He scoffed. ‘I will believe the Church is corrupt. I’ll believe it's full of selfish egotistical freaks more interested in living forever than helping the dead repent, but those claims take it too far. At the end of the day most of them are good people with good interests. We need the Church to maintain world order. You know what I think?’ He didn’t wait for her to answer. ‘I think that the revolution is just a band of thugs who don’t want to remove the Church, but replace it with more of the same, except they are at the top. All a revolution will cause is death in the process. And pain, so much pain that will be left to people like me to fix.’

  ‘If the Church is so great then why are they torturing a child underneath their place of worship?’

  He staggered, mouth agape. ‘How do you-’

  ‘Why are you complicit in it doctor? Why do you help them?’

  He shook his head. ‘That boy, he is a threat.’ But his voice was wavering.

  ‘Say his name,’ she said. ‘Not that boy. Say it, Alek Howell. Tell me you help them torture him and you’re fine with it. I know they torture him, the timing lines up too well and why else would they need you. The great Christopher Windsor?’

  ‘You know my name?’

  ‘I keep tabs. Now say it. Say his name. Say you are okay with what they are doing.’

  He pushed her, but she didn’t move an inch. ‘Of course I’m not okay with it. Don’t you see my vomit on the floor, the bottle in my hand?’ His voice broke. ‘I can’t bear to see the boy like that every day, but I have to.’ His voice was choking. ‘I have to.’

  ‘Know someone who travelled with Alek before they took him. He thinks Alek is dead and I don’t blame him for his believe, the Church is cruel.’

  ‘They have their reasons, that boy isn’t normal.’

  At this she nodded. ‘Difference can be scary.’

  Christopher was looking at the floor, but she took his chin and raised it so they were looking eye to eye.

  ‘You want to help people, you want to repent don’t you? Well I have an offer for one job and that’s all. I won’t push you, you can decline and leave, but would you hear it?’

  Christopher didn’t answer. Her face was so scarred. She looked no older than thirty, but her one eye not covered was a faded grey. How old is she truly? How many battles had she seen?

  ‘Help me rescue him. I can manage slipping into the cathedral at night, but no further. If you can get me through the cellar doors, I can do the rest.’

  ‘Impossible, there are a dozen red guards there at any moment.’

  ‘Figure it out. In exchange I will give you twenty years of lifespan. Enough to heal every stubbed toe in the backstreets of Kerioth if that’s how you choose to spend it. Enough to repent. But first, help me save that child we both know is innocent.’

  He backed away. ‘I can’t. I don’t know anything about his innocence and I know nothing of you. You will have to find someone else to help you.’

  ‘There is no one else.’

  He saw her reason, but she was wrong. Christopher backed away. He believed her, he believed that there was no one else, but he would not join her cause.

  Then Alek will rot and I will heal him until my lifespan runs dry.