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One day in the park Started by: Revenant on Dec 01, '21 20:03

Revenant is playing chess with a Capo in a Las Vegas outfit. They are sizing him up for some work they need done.

 

My name? Its not important, I lost it a long time ago. I was born on the first tick of the clock for the new century 1-1-1900 in the Village of Sevanavank in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire.  To say my family name aloud would bring danger to myself and any left alive but my first name was Yerazum meaning dreaming. It was said when I was born I cried only a moment then went to sleep soundly with a smile on my face. This was taken as a good sign the first babe of then new century was so content and peaceful. 

More is the pity it was not so. The new century ushered in a new age of darkness for my homeland. I remember when I was 8 and the men who sat about the cafe in the late evenings and discussed anything of importance were particularly active. The ones who shouted loudly for a free Armenia were very quiet and all had worried faces. I was to young to understand then but would soon come to know of the Young Turk Rebellion. By my 9th summer word of a place called Adana was repeated time and again. Could the Turks really be killing Christian? My childish mind could not understand this surely nobody would stand by as entire villages were wiped out and taken. It had to be like the stories I was told as a child of demons and things meant to frighten me and make me behave. Surely its a test of my faith to see if I would be afraid to worship our Lord as we are taught to do.  

My summers rolled onto winters and the wheel of the seasons turned. More and more stories of how the Turks were killing or relocating Christians. Many new families came to live in our village which was far North from the center of the empire. Near the Georgian lands of the Russian Empire who were Christian we felt like these troubles were far away but moving closer each day. One day in July when I was fourteen the men of the village were very troubled. The ArchDuke of Austro-Hungary had been assassinated. War had been declared and the Ottoman empire had joined the Triple Alliance. Soon the whole world was at war.

The Turkish leaders saw Armenians as infidels, and enemies they killed many outright. Others they forced to leave as the army moved their front lines north to meet the Imperial Russian army. Moving ahead of the line thousands of our people flooded into our village. Father and some other men of the village would use their fishing boats to ferry people across Lake Sevan and avoid patrols. They made their way north where the Russians were more friendly to Christians but not much. I was fifteen by now and helped Father load their belongings carefully disguised. I would await his return oddly enough always missing a few crew to unload the nets each day. One day near the end of autumn he did not return. I took up his cause and used our backup boat to do what I could becoming notorious for my skill at evading the enemy patrols. 

Over the winter things went from bad to worse. People were shot on the streets, churches burned and more and more refugees arrived only to find they were caught without anywhere to go between the advancing armies. Meeting in secret I was sworn into the underground resistance. For my sixteenth birthday I was given a pistol and taught to make firebombs. It was like a game of war played by children. We would hide and seek the Ottomans every night. In the morning say our Lords prayer under our breath while kneeling as the Imam sang the prayers of the Turks.

One night on my seventeenth summer while out on my missions we heard the thunder of artillery. The Russians had advanced a small group of boats into out towns port. The Turks deciding our neighborhood was enemy territory shelled it. My Mother, sisters, brothers, for all i know my entire neighborhood was killed that day. I never got to find out for I was shifted to the North and East to help the advancing armies as a guide and translator. It was this day I left my name of hope behind and became the Vrezhkndir,(V-rez-kun-dish)  the revenant, the haunting ghost, the vengeful spirit.

I was proud and felt like I found a new home but it was to be a short lived one. In the fall of my seventeenth year someone called the Bolsheviks assassinated the Czar and his family. Now I was in between a army who wanted to hold their line with the land they gained One who no longer cared about a local boy who helped them. To the south a army who hated me for where and to who I was born, who wanted to kill me for my faith. Over the following year I hid in safe houses when I was lucky and in barns and haystacks when I was not. My pistol always at hand more than one Turk met his end at the hands of the revenant. When the news came in November 1918 of peace the world forgot all about us and the Turks, angry at being defeated intensified their campaign against all Christian Armenians. 

One day just past my nineteenth birthday a convoy passed through town. Heading North with supplies and equipment salvaged from the casualties. I signed up as a teamster and worked my way up and over the Black Sea to the Ukraine. Making connections with the Odessa Mafia who were selling the arms and equipment on the black market. When I was 22 I bought passage to America eventually landing in Chicago where my skills from running a fishing boat full of refugees transferred into smuggling whiskey up and down the Great Lakes. 

Only spoken about in a whisper, a tale to tell the rookie cop new on the beat. The story the old gangsters told their children to frighten them into behaving. The tale of the revenant, the spirit who kills without sound and vanishes like a shadow when the sun bursts forth from behind a cloud. The walking ghost, the man whos soul died long ago but is condemned to walk the earth till judgment day. Nobody's story is quite the same some say his mouth is like a crack in a featureless face. Others say his eyes are polished gemstones and he's some kind of golem sent to avenge his people. Some say his skin is pale and spotless as deaths. Some say he's always shrouded in darkness. The only thing all the stories agree on is if the eyes are the windows to the soul his are shattered panes laying on the blackened soil of that bombed out village where the dreaming was abruptly ended. 

"checkmate" I say and without another word get up and leave the table. 

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