‘Come on, open it! I want to see what you think.’

I held the wrapped box in my hand, covered in its red wrapping paper. I peeled away the strip of tape holding it all together.

Underneath the wrapping paper was a small black box with a smooth surface. Upon opening the box, I was greeted with a surprise.

Wrapped around a small cream silk pillow, the box contained a golden necklace. With its chain tucked behind, out of view, I was faced by the necklace’s clean, gold design. It was made of a larger circle, with a single diagonal line striking through its centre. From the top and the bottom of the circle’s interior there extended thin lines, which supported two slightly thicker dots just above and below the strike. It was geometrically simplistic. It managed to glisten in the weak light of the classroom.

‘Oh my, Amy,’ I said to my sister, in awe, ‘it’s beautiful, thank you. How much did you pay for this?’

‘Happy birthday!’ is all she said, and I understood she would not answer my question.

‘What does this one mean?’ I asked. I knew this one she would definitely answer.

‘Oh!’ she squeaked cheerfully—I rarely asked about the meaning behind her designs. ‘This one is about protecting the family,’ she said. 

Surprised that this was where she chose to leave it—her explanations could drag on for hours—I chose not to inquire deeper.

‘Thank you. I love it,’ I told her, removing the necklace from its box and putting it around my neck. ‘Can we go now?’ I asked with a smile.

‘Yeah, let’s go,’ she answered, skipping away from my desk and out of the classroom door before I had time to get out of my chair. I stood up and pushed my chair into place. Walking towards the door, I could see Amy’s head playfully peeking around the frame. We joined up in the hallway and walked out of the school.

We said nothing to one another on our way to the bus stop, and at the bus stop we stood in silence. Typically, Amy wouldn’t have been able to stop talking, her mouth only ever closing on occasions of severe importance. She could tell I wasn’t all right.

Our bus arrived and we got on board, taking adjacent seats near the back of the bus. I sat down by the window and rested my head on it. The bus had barely moved when she broke our silence.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

I took a second to gather my words.

‘Every year, each of these birthdays—they make me think about Dad,’ I eventually said.

I didn’t need to look towards her to feel her smile fade.

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘I wish he was here too.’

Our silence resumed and we spent the rest of our bus ride sitting in it.

We got off our bus and ambled up to our front door. I was taking my keys out of my pocket, fumbling looking for the right one on the keychain, when the front door opened.

‘Oh, if it isn’t my birthday boy!’ shouted my mom, a little too loudly for our close circle of three. I was defenceless against her swallowing motherly hug.

After an eternity, she released me.

‘Come on in,’ she told us, like we were guests rather than her own children. Her excitement over my birthday was adorable, and I couldn’t help but spread a genuine grin. ‘Dinner will be ready in just a moment,’ she said, rushing into the kitchen. ‘It’s your favourite chicken soup—and I’m making it just like I made it when you were younger—don’t get too excited, I still prefer my new recipe.’

My sister and I walked up the stairs and into our respective rooms, tossing aside our bags and changing into more comfortable clothes. As I took off my school shirt I saw the golden necklace again. A bittersweet sense of guilt tainted the joy I felt looking at the gorgeous present. How much pocket money did she spend on this? It was heavy, it felt genuine. My initial impulse was to return it to her, asking that she return it to the jeweller, but I knew my sister too well. She would never allow herself to take it back, and I think part of her pleasure in gifting jewellery came from seeing others wear her artwork.

I put on a white t-shirt and pulled the necklace out over it, wearing it proudly and clearly in view. Back downstairs in the kitchen, our mom was standing at the soup pot pouring steaming liquid into everyone’s bowls. Amy was sitting at the table, neutral—almost polite—until she saw me come into the room, wearing her gift. She grinned widely, and it helped me grin back. I sat opposite her at the dining table.

‘Here we go,’ said my mom, walking over with a bowl of soup in each hand. ‘Oh my God, Tom, what a beautiful necklace!’ she gasped in disbelief. She put a bowl down before each of us and inspected my necklace more closely.

‘This is the protector of the family,’ she said admiringly. ‘It’s my favourite one.’

‘I thought it was fitting for his eighteenth,’ explained Amy proudly, like an artist to her admirers. My mom smiled at her, then turned to fetch her own plate from the countertop and place it alongside ours at the table. Once we were all seated, we started eating. I could not help but glance towards the fourth, empty chair at our table. 

‘You miss him on your birthdays,’ said my mom.

The air fell quiet.

‘We all do,’ added Amy caringly, extending her arm to cup my hand.

‘It just makes me wish he was here,’ I said.

I felt understanding in the silence that followed. Eventually we returned to eating our soup, and with each spoonful of the hot, savoury liquid, some of the sadness was alleviated. In time, we finished, and found our spirits return to normal. They were about to be lifted a little higher by our mom.

‘So,’ she began with an energetic smile, ‘now that dinner is finished, how would you like to see your birthday present?’

I nodded pleasantly. Neither of them had to get me anything, and I got the impression my turning eighteen was a bigger deal to them than to myself. Either way, I could see how much it cheered them up to give me my presents. ‘I’d love to,’ I said.

The three of us got up from the dinner table and placed our soup plates in the sink. My mom led us out of the kitchen and into the main hallway, walking us to the back of the house, a place I rarely ever visited. It held the pantry, a spare bedroom, and a door we were to never approach. Mom stopped before that door.

‘Dad’s workshop?’ I said, uncertain. After his death the room had become off limits to us. 

‘I think it’s time,’ said mom.

I looked to my sister for approval, expecting her to show equal apprehension after years of warning and forbiddance—but such emotion was missing from her face. She looked happy, excited—almost thirsty for what was behind the prohibited door. Our mom took a key from her pocket and unlocked the door. It swung open slowly, revealing stairs that went down into the basement, and plunged into a thick darkness that concealed the bottom. My mom searched the wall just beyond the door and found the lightswitch, illuminating the stretch of stairs with an old lightbulb that hung from the sloped ceiling.

‘Go on,’ she beckoned me, gesturing in a way that suggested  I go first. I still felt unsure. I gave my sister another look, but her eyes nearly scared me when I saw them. She had become almost feverish, passionate about going into the basement—her eyes were fixated on me, and in the glimpse I saw of them, I could feel her commanding me down those stairs. 

I looked away immediately, directing myself towards the open basement door. I was more nervous than I could have imagined, and for ephemeral moments of time I felt immeasurable dread at the idea of going doing those steps and seeing what lied beyond. But over those moments, cold, lucid reality won out, and I knew I was going to walk down those stairs, notwithstanding any fear of surreal or preternatural possibilities that surfaced in my stomach, and reached in sharp jolts of pain my hands’ quivering fingertips. I stepped through the door and walked down.

Each step felt more difficult, and after the first few I looked behind me. My mom was standing just above me, and my sister poked out from behind her. I turned back around and moved farther down. As I neared the bottom, a putrid, sweet smell hit my nostrils and caused me to wretch nearly vomit on the spot. I kept myself composed however, although the stench did not wane in intensity. It only grew more potent and vile the farther down I went. When I reached the bottom of the final step I saw why.

Before me was my dad’s old workshop. I had seen it before, but only faint memories of years gone by survived in my mind. This was not what I remembered, however. The tables, chairs and workbenches were rearranged, and I believed some to have been removed entirely. The room had been reworked to focus on the middle, the centre of which was visible when I first walked down the stairs. The few chairs were arranged in a semicircle, all facing a single table which seemed to be the room’s focal point, with a solitary chair slid under it. The other furniture was scattered to the extremities of the room, discarded and dusty in its insignificance. On the far wall, opposite the stairs we had come from, a large symbol was cast onto the dusty wooden surface in rusted iron. The shape resembled a circle, with a single strike down its diagonal. Two dots were suspended by thin wires in its centre.

But it was the table, and I was paralysed. I thought I turned to run, but it was only manifest panic, and I didn’t move. I must have run a million times over in that short millisecond, without moving but an inch. I felt my insides collapse. I felt myself suffocating. I felt cold, and afraid.

Laid upon the length of the table there was a corpse. It looked preserved, and was dressed in fine, fanciful clothing. It wore too an expression I recognised from pleasant memories and distant fantasies. It was my dad’s.

My limbs were finally set free, and I turned to my mom in search of any kind of reassurance.  Instead, she now shared my sister’s fanaticism, and the both of them were regarding me with a surreal pleasure I could not fathom.

‘That’s…—Dad,’ I choked out, but to no sympathy from my company.

‘I know,’ replied my mom, ‘I’ve kept him that way for years.’

I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to scream and cry, all at the same time; and I wanted to collapse, and be eaten by the earth. I was no longer breathing. I needed air. It was so claustrophobic down there.

‘We kept him like this for you,’ said Amy in a compassionate tone. ‘He would have gone bad by now. But we kept him cold. We kept him dry. And after all this time, he looks perfect. Perfect for you, on your special day.’

I managed to untangle my tongue. Sounds left my mouth, and it was fortunate they made the words I wanted to say.

‘You mean you kept him?’ I exclaimed.

‘Yes,’ my mom replied, ‘and now that you’ve turned eighteen, we can finally share him with you, and you can fulfil your role.’

Only some of their words were reaching my ears, and of those only a select few reached my thoughts, which were racing beyond what I could comprehend. The thoughts I could understand were only as sensible as that which I could see before me. After an eternity of life-threatening instants, in any of which my heart could have stopped and I could have collapsed into absolute death, I finally understood what was said.

‘What role?’ I asked through a choked breath.

Mom approached me. I would have flinched had my muscles not been constricted of expression.

She picked up the necklace around my neck, regarding it admiringly like a precious jewel to be valued above all else in the world.

‘The protector,’ she said, ‘the warrior.’

She lowered the necklace. It swung down and hit me in the chest like a siege engine; I thought I was going to fall over.

‘For centuries our family—our community—has sought protection from the evils of the world. We have sought a leader: a king, a ruler, an emperor—a warrior,’ she continued. ‘One who would defend us against the violence of the hostiles; one who would summon all strength, and in a single blow execute all danger: both that which exists, and that which is yet to come. This protector has been the nexus of our community for centuries, but unfortunately over the past years our members have worn thin, and at this moment in time, we are the last surviving heirs of this undying tradition, which is beginning to see the dark horizon of mortality in its future.’

She took a moment here to gather her thoughts. She looked moved by her own words. I thought I could see tears in her eyes.

‘We cannot let our history die,’ she finally said, ‘and it is your responsibility to help it—help us—persevere.’

‘This tradition must live on,’ she explained. ‘It must live on in you. You are the warrior, the protector of our family. Without you, our family will not survive, and our legacy will perish to nature.’

‘It’s an honour,’ interjected my sister, who had been listening in an adoring trance to her mother’s words. ‘The warrior is the one,’ she said.

I understood little to none of what was being said to me, but the words only kept coming, and I was not given the comfort of comprehension. 

Mom grabbed my shoulders then, and she looked me in the eyes. I was frozen in her glare, and I did not dare to look away.

‘It is demanded that the warrior be of age, and that he be a succeeding male of the previous warrior,’ she said, ‘and there is no closer successor than that of blood relation. It is said that he who can wed is of age. For us, this means the eighteenth year of life. You have just finished yours, and with no other male to succeed him, you are our last hope of a new warrior.’ 

‘We have been without one for so many years,’ interjected Amy again, ‘and look how we have crumbled and fallen apart. Look how the world has spoilt in those few years. We need another warrior. We need to be saved, Tom!’

It was all as if in a dream. None of it was real. None of their words or movements were real. Their bodies were celestial, distant like stars in a dark, empty night sky; the battlefield of a nightmare that refused to end.

I felt myself being moved by the mother, who was still holding me by my shoulders, though I was missing the will to refuse or object. We traversed the semicircle of chairs, moving closer to the body.

‘But the warrior must be strong,’ she said as we walked, ‘he must grow from his own strength, yes—but beyond this he must grow from the strength of his predecessors. He must learn and adapt,  transform and remember—always remember.’

We reached the table. 

I saw my dad lying right before me, and for but an ephemeral glimpse of happiness, all the worries of the present had been banished. He looked so real, so alive—they really had preserved him well. The warm memories filled my hollowed limbs, his empty presence reigniting the flame of optimistic youth that had been snuffed by his passing. I felt my distant love for him lathering my heart in hot, molten sugar, which sweetened my core and set my world on fire. Each closing step was another kiss goodnight, like the ones he had given me only sparingly when he was alive. I had always wished that I might go back, and ask for another million of those kisses. But there would be no more kisses. His lips were cold now.

The mother’s grip tightened, and I found myself being pushed down into the chair next to the table on which the corpse lay.

‘There is only one way to guarantee the passage of strength and knowledge from one warrior to the next,’ she told me, passing something just under my vision that I failed to notice. I stared straight ahead of me in numb indifference, buried under an avalanche of emotional shock.

‘This is the Rite of Consumption.’

The sister approached from the other side, contributing her own items to those that the mother had put down in front of me. The mother took hold of the corpse’s arm that was closest to me, and rolled up its sleeve. She stood beside me until I could once again move and assess my surroundings. I looked down at the objects before me.

‘You must eat him.’

They were a plate, and a knife and fork.

16.X.2022