Part VII: Last Words

By Nevena Dals, Apostate

Everybody always talks about what skooma will do to you, but they never talk about the taste. They never talk about that acrid taste as the abrasive smoke fills your mouth and gets sucked down into your lungs and how every part of you wants to cough, but you know if you do, you’ll waste the hit, and skooma isn’t something you want to waste. So you hold it in as long as you can even though your lungs hurt from this smoke that’s hard to describe—it’s not like Hackle-Lo smoke. Hackle-Lo goes down smooth and it comes up smooth after the first couple times, but skooma—skooma is different. Skooma never gets better to smoke. Every time it fills your lungs, it feels like you’re breathing in a big mouthful of ash and soap, but you can’t cough. Coughing is wasteful and you don’t waste skooma; skooma is all you got. It’s your only friend. It doesn’t judge you. It doesn’t condemn you. It accepts you for who you are and isn’t that all anyone wants? To be accepted? To be loved unconditionally? I guess that’s why I fell in love with the idea of Cerebel; he—it—whatever he is—he didn’t care about who I was and he even saw through my ruse, but he didn’t care. At least he didn’t show it if he did. If he was even real.

I wonder about that a lot more lately. I wonder about if he was real or just something I made up to make up for the fact that I never really fit into the Temple. I didn’t ever wake up one morning with the zeal to devote myself to the Three, it just sort of—happened. Lots of things in my life have just sort of—happened. Like that. Like this. Like really everything in my life. I’ve always just kind of fallen from one thing to the next and now look at me. My back is covered in scratches and I can’t look in a mirror anymore—at least, I don’t want to. Not anymore.

I used to be someone.

Something.

And now I just see a husk when I look at my reflection. I’m used up. The men who used to frequent my corner have moved onto better, prettier girls than me, but that’s okay. I never was too pretty. I was just—me. But even that’s better than what I am now. I’m just a used up old hag now—my hair is falling out in thick clumps and my skin has become akin to drapes hanging from my frail bones, but that’s okay. Maybe this is just how things were meant to happen. That’s what Eno always used to say—some things are just meant to be. I miss Eno. I miss Eno more than anyone, but I suppose that makes sense.

Eno and I, we used to be—more than friends—but I wouldn’t say we were ever lovers, at least not, committedly, but he was always there for me. Always looking out for me and making sure I was safe. He found me when I was a gutter-rat in Balmora, not unlike this, but things were different back then. I was different back then.

I would pull my usual cons on the tourists and the businessmen coming to arrange trade deals with the Hlaalu, but I was innocent back then. Sure, I swindled more people out of their gold than the Elsweyran Carnival, but I wasn’t like I am now. I wasn’t—broken. Twisted. I wasn’t—this. I was a girl doing her best to survive and now, I don’t know if I can say that and it be true. In fact, I know I can’t say that and it be true; I’m not that little girl pulling tricks in the back alleys of Balmora anymore. I wish I was. ALMSIVI knows how much I wish was, but I’m not. I’m just a used up whore who threw away everything she ever had because she got caught up in some fantasy of what could have been. I just wish things could go back to before that. To before everything changed. To before Kirinibbi.

But there’s no going back. I wish there was, but there’s not. I wish I’d never have accepted that assignment, but I was so damn sure that it’d be what’d get me my Curate Seal and now what does that little pin mean to me? What does it matter? It doesn’t. It doesn’t matter and chasing it—chasing it ruined my life.

Eno always saw in me the things I didn’t see in myself. He always saw a good person where I just saw someone with a penchant for separating fools from their money and maybe he’s why I ended up in the Temple, maybe. I can’t help but think that if I never met Eno, none of this would have happened either, but who knows where my life would’ve gone if I hadn’t. Would I still be on the streets of Balmora pulling tricks or would I have eventually been caught up in the gang war between the Tong and the Thieves’ Guild?

I don’t know.

I just don’t know anymore, but I know this, anything would be better than this. I can’t keep living like this—I can’t keep doing this. I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t get away from this damned pipe for more than a few hours even though it makes me cough harder than anything I’ve ever experienced. I can’t go back to who I used to be. I can’t do anything.

If you’ve read this far, then I’d like to thank you, whoever you are, for caring enough about me to have read my diary, but I hope you know, by time you read this, I will already be dead. I’ve made my peace with this world and I can’t keep clinging to it when I’ve made the wrong choices all along. I can’t keep fighting for a life that I want release from, so I’m done. I’m done fighting. I’m done trying to make it better. I’m just going to—stop. I’m going to stop existing entirely.

I’ve always been afraid to die, but this is different. I still am afraid to die, but I must confess, I’m more afraid to live than to die anymore, but I still can’t find it within myself to take the knife to my throat or to my wrists. Certainly, it will end my existence and I will be washed of my memories and all that I am in the Dreamsleeve, but I will be made anew and forced to live a new life, and I can not risk that. I will not risk that. So I will find the Vaerminan and I know that when I find it, I will be consumed in whole and I shall be spared the mortal coil forever.

Do not follow me.

Do not come for me.

Do not try to save me.

My time has come and I am ready to face it.

-Nevena Dals