EORZEA NOIR

It’s been years, but I still see him in my dreams now and then when there’s a lull in life that needs to be filled with some bullshit, as though I don’t already put up with enough. Like a bat in the rafters, he comes alive and reminds me he’s been hiding there the whole time like a little creep, probably doing something like watching my husband and I fuck so he can sit and judge and make up shit about how pathetic Jannick is, how his dick doesn’t compare. I mean, it doesn’t, but we’re all just doing our fucking best, okay?

He’s got the eyes of a hellbeast, red like fresh blood, a perfect circle in pitch black that’s enough to raise the hair on the back of your neck. I see his rare smile, all teeth, and when a man like Ezen-fucking-Khotgor bares those teeth at someone like Elia-fucking-Hext, it’s because something terrible has happened and he is thrilled to see it. It boils my blood.

Sometimes I give him the finger and turn away, and surprise-surprise, there he is again in front of my face. I push him, but my hands touch nothing and he slips away like smoke, becoming one with the cigarette hanging out of my stupid, slack mouth. I get fed up, because who wouldn’t? What do you want, asshole? He laughs. Hey, fuck you. He laughs louder. What are you, some kind of clown? Are you a fucking clown, Ezen? Can’t stop laughing, can you, you fucking joker. He doesn’t answer.

I take off through the streets of Ul’dah, slinking from shadow to shadow. I feel those eyes burning into me, watching me. I greet my buddies in the Brass Blades and oh, hello, every single one of them has his ruddy eyes. I run, because who in their right mind is going to stick around to see what that’s about? This is a dream, it can always get worse. I flee to my husband, to his fresh-pressed Immortal Flames uniform, and I throw myself on him. You wouldn’t believe the shit I just saw, I murmur into his chest, and the voice that answers is enough to send me sprawling backwards, tripping over my own two feet until I land square on my arse.

"Honestly, knowing that you're better now just means there's farther I can push you,” he says not in the voice of Jannick, but the voice of Ezen-fucking-Khotgor, the man who tried and nearly succeeded in destroying me for a sick sexual game of chicken that I still get wet to think about. It’s as bad for me as the drink. I’ve been sober for a year and a half now, can you believe it? But in this dream, by contrast to my waking life where I am a total fucking genius who’s got it all under control, I am an absolute moron, so I recite the lines I already know by heart without skipping a beat. The ones I’ve said over and over and over in a hundred dreams just like this one, as tangible as the burn of liquor going down the hatch.

We can set our lives up like dominoes and then just flip the fucking things over on purpose.

I think I died. It sounds beyond crazy, but Let me try this again, alright? With a little more conviction this time.

I was fucking murdered.

I clearly remember jotting some notes, minding my business when the icy bite of a sharp knife drew like a bow to strings across my neck. I barely had time to understand what was happening to me before I buckled and went black.

All my stuff from my apartment is gone, the door locked, nothing left. Was it a robbery? Well, if it was, then whoever did the deed is a complete and utter knob for choosing the poorest bitch in the Dunes to hit up for a quick coinpurse. Enjoy the stacks of case files I couldn’t turn into gil before they went cold. I hope you like ratty women’s clothing that smells like the business end of an industrial chimney. I think there was a stale loaf of bread from the food pantry in town, ripe for the taking, and about 4 gil rattling around in a leather pouch. A real fucking treasure trove. More likely than not, my landlord cleaned the place out five minutes after my body went cold and turned it over to a new tenant. We’re all just trying to get by in the desert.

But here’s where it gets good, right? You wouldn’t guess who I woke up with when I came to. Pitch blackness, a man on either side of me. I know what you’re thinking, and I had the same thought, too. Did I somehow get drunk again and outdo myself? Absolutely not. I’ve been drying out quite effectively thank you very much and, in case you forgot, I was fucking murdered. I’m sure of it. But I digress. Who else but Ezen and Lachlan should be at either side of me, equally as confused as to how we got there.

Turns out that Ezen was murdered, too. It’s not just me, alright? You can write me off as a drunk or a burnout, but Ezen? Safe bet. He was even able to go dig his own body up. Wild. I have no hope of finding mine—not like I have any family who would want to bury me properly (let’s not even talk about my cousins). I’m probably tossed in a sand pit somewhere, wasting away. And Lachlan? Who can even say. He was too hung up on the idea that something salacious had happened to say anything useful. An absolute gobshite. I’m almost certain two of us didn’t die and go to Lachlan’s bedchambers as some sort of afterlife. Gods alive.

But it leaves sort of a big question open, doesn’t it? A few of them, really. Got a pretty good idea of how I died, but who did it and why? What does this have to do with Lachlan and that creepy book? And...well, how the fuck am I standing here?

Whatever the case, we’re lying low—Ezen and I, anyway, at this bizarre little place in Gridania manned entirely by automatons. Lolah’s doing, that’s what he told me. Glad to see she’s managed something useful since she broke out of prison. He was supposed to return home to fix things up with his girlfriend...fiancée, whatever you want to call her, and then that whole murder thing happened. It seems in retrospect like it might have been trivially easy to try to drive a wedge in there if I wanted. A return to the good old days of flirting with disaster in exchange for a good fuck. But for once, I’m leaving well enough alone.

Would you look at that? Maybe I can still learn.

I’ve been reading Amell’s shitty novels for more hours than I care to admit. He ran out of source material quick on my journals he swiped, and if they were trash before, they’ve become the hell in which trash enters to be further denigrated after it’s rotted on earth. Enjoy this excerpt:

As they lay there panting after their third (or was it fourth? Maybe even fifth?) romp of the evening, her smile became like the sun coming up between two hills—her breasts.

Can you believe I used to be married to this guy? I cannot. I will not. If I was the last bastion of quality keeping him together, then I’m really and truly sorry for all the women who came after. He didn’t used to be this way, you know? Money changes a guy.

The point is, I’ve been looking for something, anything to go on with this creepy novel-as-someone’s-life debacle. Ivy’s up my ass nightly wanting to know if I’ve found anything and no matter how many times I explain that investigations can’t be fit into a neat little timetable on her fuckoff schedule (does she even work?), it just doesn’t seem to sink in. Still, I have to be grateful for the income. Wherever this petulant little pink skidmark is getting her money, I send them my regards. It’s good to eat again. Good to have a pair of boots without holes.

I’ve got a journal full of notes at my side, but it all seems to be pointing in a direction I don’t particularly like. Amell’s no stranger to unwitting stints with the Void, is he? Maybe something g

(Big CN: Frank discussion and depictions of suicide and death)

Now that I’m back on my feet, I spend my days in a purgatory called ‘petty investigations’. It’s technically a bit beneath my skillset, but when you burn bridges with the law enforcement arm of three separate city-states, you go back to the basics. The basics in this case are composed of short conversations with clients that rarely deviate from a script:

1. Someone is missing 2. They were poor 3. They were involved in something shady (drugs, gangs, prostitution—take your pick)

It’s a pretty quick mystery, all things considered. You do a little math, carry the one, and they’re almost always dead. Suicide, murder, it doesn’t really matter. The particulars aren’t really my concern anymore. It’s not to say it doesn’t bother me; even after all this time and trouble, I’ve still got a real bleeding heart for law and order, but I don’t exactly have the resources to chase down the bad guys for my ideology and these people don’t want it either. Do my clients call the authorities after I report back? Of course not, or they’d risk a chunk of their own seedy biz going straight down the shitter.

Look, to be honest with you, it’s kind of therapeutic to come face to face with the temporary nature of being these days. I’m not saying I love unraveling the mystery of what unsurprising method someone used to end it all, or to happen across the brutal terminus of a vicious gang member, but it forces me to keep myself honest about my own circumstances. It’s a healthy dose of perspective. Today, I jimmied open a lock and came face-to-face with a woman whose feet barely skimmed the ground from where she’d slung a noose over the wrought iron light fixture in the ceiling. The shock barely registers, so I wind up talking to her as I cut her down and prepare to match her tattoos to the ones described to me.

I can't fake another smile I can't fake like I'm alright And I won't say I'm feeling fine After what I been through, I can’t lie

Picture it.

Some grungy woman in a scuffed, too-big leather jacket smoking a bummed cigarette outside the Quicksand with a beat-up flask in her pocket marked to ration a serving of liquor hour-by-hour for a whole day. Her hair’s unwashed and tied back out of her face, and she looks like she might have been a whole person once before she became this revenant still caked in grave-dirt from the hole she crawled out of. Muscle has dropped off the bone, and now she’s a lanky thing looking for trouble.

A day before, she scratched out an acceptable-looking flyer on a piece of paper and slapped it to the wall when Momodi wasn’t paying attention and put two gil pieces at an altar to Nald’Thal to curry a bit of favor. The good twins saw fit to dunk her in the black well of death and wring her out, hang her up on the line to dry out. And sure enough, her offering was accepted by another woman who was worth those two gil exactly and not one more.

Ivy Starling is a little bitch and I would have flicked ashes in her face if it weren’t for the offering she brought with her.

“You’re Elia Hext?”

“In the flesh.”

“I saw your flyer. Are you sure?”

“Am I sure?”

“Yeah, are you sure you’re her?”

“Who the fuck else would I be?”

“You don’t need to be rude, you just look like shit. Like, are you okay?”

Before I could respond, she pushed a book into my hands, nearly knocking my cigarette to the ground. I eyed her, but gave it a once-over until the name on the cover caught my notice. Amell Beck.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a book, obviously. But like, it’s haunted. I know that sounds crazy, but this guy has written a bunch of shit that he shouldn’t know about.”

What this vapid little cunt wanted to tell me is that Amell was writing about her. Her life, at least in as much as it intersected with the protagonist, a man named Lachlan Hawke. He knew details he shouldn’t, about encounters that they had, about her time as a drug-dealer (which she insisted wasn’t true, then admitted it was sort-of true, and then made me promise not to use it against her...), and yet he didn’t recognize her at a party when they spoke. And Lachlan? Missing.

Jannick leaned against the doorway of my infirmary room and shook his head. “Sorry it took me so long to get here. The conjurers found me mid-rotation and I couldn’t get anyone to cover...”

“You don’t have to apologize. It’s not like people plan their nights based on the possibility that their ex might drink themselves to death. It’s a miracle you’re here at all.”

He moved from his position and slung a canvas satchel down next to my bed. “Brought you some of your stuff. I remembered it was still at my place and figured you could use some clean clothes while you’re here...”

I sighed in spite of myself. “You’re too damn good. Don’t you ever just want to leave me high and dry? I would, in your position.”

“No, Elia. I’m not like that.”

The silence stretched on for longer than either of us wanted it to, two estranged lovers who don’t know how to exist together anymore. I twisted the bedsheets in my fingers and he crossed his arms, stoic as ever. I noticed him looking at me in some kind of way and tilted my head. “What?”

“You look like shit.”

“Hey, thanks.”

“You look like a shit took a shit.”

“Nice, I’ll take it.”

“You look like something my dog coughed up.”

“And he does occasionally eat his own shit. Send him my regards.” We both tried to hold it together, then started to bust up with laughter.

--

It’s good to have a laugh at your own expense, and since that day, it’s like a nonstop fucking circus around me and I’m the lead clown. And you know what? I do look like shit. Have you ever seen a sexy corpse? Don’t answer that. But that doesn’t stop me from walking down the street with a spring in my step and you know why? Because I fucking can, that’s why. Not a single person I run into who gives me a pitying or disgusted look has any idea what I’ve been through and probably doesn’t care, but you know what else? They also can’t hurt me. Nothing can. What can anyone possibly do to me that I haven’t already done to myself? I kissed death on the mouth and still got to wake up this morning, so why don’t you just fucking go ahead and try me?

Look, I’m not going to pretend that everything is suddenly okay, but the complete inability to give a fuck or worry about anything has been absolutely liberating for me after spending years feeling terrible about the most mundane garbage. I ate a cheap bowl of stew from the Drowned Wench that tasted about how I look and it was objectively great just to taste anything shitty at all. The waitress asked if I was okay and I just fucking laughed. I nearly died. I’ve already told you this, but I can’t stop thinking about it. I nearly died! Am I okay? No, I’m fucking not! But you know what I am? Alive. That’s nice. That’s a solid state. I can work with this. Don’t worry about me.

(CN: alcoholism, near-death, suicide)

I couldn’t keep my eyes up.

That was the last thing I thought of as I felt the dark pall draw shut around me. Some people dream of routing death in a bloody match when they feel their time come. They believe that the thirst for another minute of life will be so strong that they’ll have to be dragged clawing and howling into the hereafter, but me? I sank into my coffin both drunk and docile. Another pile of bones for the dogs to chew. It was a long time coming—me and death go way back and I’ve racked up a tab.

I like to imagine what my corpse would have said, if it were able to speak during the time in which I was resolutely dead. What the fuck happened?, it would say. Things were good. And they were, weren’t they? A fairytale ending, or at least as good as one for someone like me. Maybe justice couldn’t save or sate me, but so long as I stayed out of the bottle, I could dare to even dream a little from time to time. In spite of the smudges in my memory, I can distinctively remember the last time I thought about marrying Jannick. It was just a few weeks before the night—that night, the one we don’t talk about—where it all turned to shit. I remember picturing him perfectly in uniform smiling down at me. I remember thinking that I’d finally done it, I reached the finish line. I could finally take a breath and relax, for the worst was over.

How’d I get here?

That was the first thing I asked when I woke up in an infirmary with a team of panicked conjurers circling my body. I wondered who in the medical squad had been drinking because the place smelled like a seedy tavern and then I realized it was me. I am the seedy barfly. Not exactly the thing you dream about as a kid. Not exactly the way your parents wanted to raise you.

“Your landlord found you on the floor of your apartment. Do you remember anything?”

“I was drunk, what do you think?” I groused in return. That’s me, always a ray of fucking sunshine.

“You weren’t breathing. He said you were turning blue. He called for help and luckily Chantaille was close by and heard.”

“I’ll be sure to send a bottle of champagne to Chan--Chant...” I started coughing, an ugly and ragged sound, and by the time it had passed, I was too weak to finish that thought. Serves me right for being an asshole.

“Do you know how fortunate you are?”

“Spare me the pep talk,” I groaned, squinting hard against the heavenly light that may as well have been Dalamud’s brilliant white twin coming down to smash my face in. It certainly felt like it.

But the truth is, I do know.

I’ve never wanted to die before. Can you believe that? After fighting, cheating, death, divorce, loss, injustice, pain, and about a thousand idiotic decisions, not once did I go to bed at night hoping I wouldn’t wake up again. I feel sorry for myself, I make a pathetic show of things, I stick my greedy little straw into everyone around me and try to suck the life out of them to make up for the debt I’ve accumulated inside...And I carry on. This has been my hallmark for longer than I want to think about, and although the future has always seemed like an optional chapter, for whatever stupid, thoughtless...dumb reason, it never occurred to me that there would be a cutoff point after which life bucked me off because I just wasn’t trying to hang on anymore. It seems obvious in retrospect.

“Elia, what a su--”

He never had a chance to finish his thought because my fist connected with his mouth so forcefully that there was already blood on my knuckles when I went in for a second hit.

“You son of a bitch! You good-for-nothing drunk deadbeat shit-for-brains--” I howled like a woman possessed. I clipped his cheek, and he caught my hand in his gorilla-sized palm, wrestling it backward. His lip poured blood and we tangled for a tragically short amount of time before I was flat on my ass with his boot on my chest.

“Get the fuck off my property, Elia.”

“Everything you wrote! It’s mine! Did you steal my fucking journals? No, no, no -- Don’t fucking answer that, I know you did! You used my fucking writing to--”

The pressure behind the boot increased and my hands clamped around his thick ankle, yanking with all of my might to absolutely no avail.

“I saw an opportunity. You should be happy for me.”

“You should have had the decency to die! You should have been dead all along, you miserable cunt!” I spit with virtually no dignity left.

Full collection of IC entries are tagged together here for easy reading.