Episode 46 - A Relevant Interlude

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  Welcome back to the podcast, to an episode that might feel like an interlude but also isn’t. Lately, as I’ve been trying to stitch together the pieces of a story The Haunted Void laid out while using the comparatively lackluster threads that are my prose, I’ve thought more about the man that I never knew well but undoubtedly–because of the overlap in our lives that came from this story–had a marked impact on my life. I think so many of the good parts of me that managed to endure against overwhelming odds can be traced back to his influence. To the point that, sometimes, when I am faced with a truly confounding issue or quandary, I think back to him and what he would think of it.

And maybe you would know where this is going. Maybe the issue surrounding true crime and its potential lack of ethics are not too far from your own mind. Yes, there are some documentaries on certain online streaming platforms that are a bit less dubious. The crimes or misbehavior they go over are not so morally reprehensible. The stakes aren’t so high. There’s no clear figurehead for a community to latch onto, etc, etc. But that doesn’t undo the damage that’s already been done. Or the fact that there is other content up on those same platforms, content that came out relatively recently, that plays into the worst of what that genre has to offer. So yes, it is still a relevant question, a question whose answer may seem obvious but remains just out of reach. 

Collectively, I mean to say. I don’t want to discount those who try to champion or orchestrate some sort of change. They should know more than anyone how much this problem has endured and all the reasons that they come up against as they try to dismantle it. My reasons included. Guilt included, I should say. 

In times like this, I give the Haunted Void a lot of thought. Not just as an arbitrator of what is or is not good. That’s part of it, yes. But The Haunted Void has a fairly compelling vantage point. 

The Haunted Void’s brother was murdered. So what would he say about the genre that only exists because of the sort of suffering he and his family endured? I can’t imagine he’d be all that thrilled about it.

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The duke had already laid in the royal crypt for a few days. The smell of death lingered in the air despite all the flowers meant to chase it away. Some of the bouquets themselves were dying. They were the ones closest to the duke, those that were laid out around his body, as if they had offered themselves to him, offered their lives to try and restore his life, which is as pointless of a thought as it is a metaphor. No matter what the poets might want to say or how the artists want to paint, the dead remain dead. There is little that can be done about that. 

Vernin kept his eyes ahead as he approached his brother. They took in the entirety of the sight before him, but the details did not register in his mind. He did not recognize the duke’s body for what it was until that final step, when on a whim he turned to look upon his brother’s face. 

His heart stopped while his brain still scrambled to accept what it was seeing. Of course he had already known that his brother was dead. He had known that for quite some time. This was the reason for his trip, after all. He would not have willingly subjected himself to the presence of the royal family for any other reason, but to see his brother’s face. But to see his brother’s face, lifeless and falling away, sealed what he had been trying to avoid. 

He shut his eyes and took his place right at the duke’s side. It was a moment he had envisioned, briefly, on the ride over. In his mind, he assumed he would make made any number of promises or vows for vengeance or justice, depending on his mood, but in the moment, nothing came to him. He stood still. He held his breath for a moment, then did what he had to do to survive, only to hold it again once he did it enough to physically sustain himself. The cycle continued.

Vernin waited. For what, he was not sure, but as he stood there, as he stood there, he felt himself be washed in memories of his brother. He found comfort in it. 

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The Haunted Void did what he did in part to ensure that his brother was never forgotten. And, in hindsight, it was an endeavor that had multiple purposes to it. The most obvious was justice. It was what the Haunted Void always called out for. It’s the sort of goal that resonates with all of us. And as destination or end goal, it lined up perfectly with the actions the Haunted Void was taking. It is harder to disregard the case of a victim whose name is constantly spoken. The face that is always hanging up creates a sort of pressure that leaves the assailant sweating and panicked. The panic leads them to make more mistakes that authorities–who cannot let up the search lest they risk the face’s wrath–will find. 

But on the other hand, I think the Haunted Void drew comfort from keeping his brother’s memory alive and with him. I think he liked the reminder of that which he had lost. If the pain was going to be there regardless, which it was, that is how grief works, then there was some sort of solace in having an accounting to support said grief. It was validating to know that there was a reason one was grieving. But it was also the only way he could have his brother with him at all. The physical man was no more; there was only his ghost. And I think some people do well with being haunted. 

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The two brothers were not so unlike, but they were divided by the identity of their mothers. They looked similar, though Vernin was always larger with a harsher countenance. They both took to fencing and horseback riding with ease. They impressed their tutors. And while Jemes had a mother, she did not take much interest in raising her child herself. It was mostly the final product that consumed her mind. 

Jemes was the duke’s heir, she constantly said, in lieu of giving any sort of love to the child whose mother had died in childbirth, the brother to her own. That was the compromise she had struck with her husband. There would be no love for his bastard, but her scorn would be more indirect. It took several years for Vernin to hear what she did not say directly. And a few months after, Jemes started to hear it as well. 

“And when I’m duke,” he added one day, “I will punish you for the way you speak to my brother.”

The threat was met with a slap across his face. But the child was not deterred. There had never been much love between mother and son, unlike that shared between the two brothers who spent nearly every moment together. 

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When I think about the true crime phenomenon and what the Haunted Void would have taken so much issue with, that observation is at the root of all my thoughts. He wanted to keep his brother’s memory not just to try and get him justice but because he wanted to hold onto to he who had been unjustly taken from him. 

The most gaudy of the true crime content creators might want to hide behind that desire for justice. They might want to say that their content helps to that end, and they would have any number of carefully rehearsed lines to make that point. But at the end of the day, they don’t adhere to that latter need. They cannot hold onto the memory of someone they never knew. They cannot build shrines to the departed. They cannot entertain a ghost that did not know them in life. 

They forget the person. Sometimes innocently and sometimes not. But no matter the intentions, they forget the person, and those who still remember suffer for it. 

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Christmas Day at the estate was a grand affair for the duke’s legitimate family, but for the bastard son, it was a day meant for disappearing. When he was older, the old duke vowed, the child would be sent away where the duchess would not need to see him, but for a child so small, transporting him safely was too much of a production to plan when there was already so much to do. 

At that, the duchess would bite her tongue. Her thoughts had already been made clear when she flinched at the word “safely.”

And so, as a compromise, Vernin was locked in the room given to him at the furthest end of the castle. It was a room that was only fit for hiding a bastard. The chill made it inhospitable for anyone who mattered, and the rats made storage impossible. They frightened Vernin. Their beady eyes were full of threats and malice, and the light that crept in from the cracks in the wall would hit their fangs just so. 

When he was seven, he had begged to be given a candle to take in there with him. It would keep the dark away better than it would the rats, but even if it was not wholly effective against them, he would not be so defenseless. But for his pleas, he lost the privilege of the blanket he had been sent up with the year before. 

And so, he was alone, wholly forgotten and cast aside in that farflung room. Vernin was much too young to count out the hours until he was freed. And even if he could, what if they forgot about him entirely? What if they left him there to die unintentionally or even intentionally? He shivered, though he could not know if it was from the thought or from the cold. Likely both. 

He pulled up his legs towards his chest and wrapped his arms around them. Exhaling, he closed his eyes. Vernin knew what the duchess would wish for this holiday. It was the same thing she always wished for. He wondered if this was going to be the year she got her wish. 

As his eyes drifted shut, he heard the faint rustle of movement. It was a rat, he feared. He shot up his head in time to hear the key slid into the lock of his prison door. The turn of the key did not come to the holder without much difficulty. It was not until the third attempt to turn it over that the tumblers of the lock gave way. 

“Hello?” Vernin asked. 

Jemes peaked his head in, smiling. “Merry Christmas, Brother,” the young man said as he marched in, his arms ladened with blankets and gifts. “We’re celebrating together from now on,” he vowed. 

It was hard to argue with the son of a duke, particularly when the duke never had much of a fight in him at all. 

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If it had ever been my place to ask the Haunted Void about his brother, I would have. I just knew it was not the sort of thing I could do. It was not my right. And in any event, I had more than enough fodder to grieve the man. Of all I did not do, I could have still done that.  

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Jemes had been called to his father’s bedside first. It was only proper that he, as heir, be told as soon as possible. In some cases, no one ever remembers to tell the bastard, and he learns of his father’s death as he sees the funeral procession march towards the mausoleum, but Jemes had sent for him before he even sent for the duchess. 

Vernin crept into the room before Jemes noticed him. “I suppose I should bow to you,” Vernin said. 

His tone was joking, but Vernin did not know if he could joke with his brother anymore. In the aftermath of his father’s last breath, the world had changed. Their world had changed. And perhaps it had come to more closely resemble the world that everyone knew and took for granted. 

“Don’t,” Jemes warned. “I won’t allow it.”

“What will you allow?” Vernin asked. 

Jemes paused and considered it for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said. “But anything is better than what you had, right?”

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It’s not just that the victim stops being a person, is it? With true crime content, I mean. Or the most heartless of it. It’s not just that the victim is no longer a person, that in addition to whatever they lost in that crime, they also lost their humanity. It’s that the family they left behind also stops being people. The weight of their loss and grief has to be undercut or else it cannot be profitable. Negative emotions on the whole aren’t profitable. It’s the methods through which one can escape them that one can attach a price tag onto. It’s the thrill that comes with brushing against something so unimaginable. That’s what people adore. That’s what people buy. Damn everyone else. 

Although, in and of itself, that refrain is disturbingly common. Not just in true crime circles but everywhere.

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“This is a stupid plan,” Vernin said for what felt like the hundredth time. 

“You keep saying that,” Jemes acknowledged, “but how is it stupid? And even still, stupid plans do work.”

Vernin studied his brother carefully. Jemes had never lost his youthful naivety. There was still that youthful twinkle in his eye. And in the face of that, Vernin did not have an argument. 

“I’ve been illegitimate my whole life,” Vernin reminded him. “It suits me. I’ve come to wear it proudly after so long.”

“But it never should have been that way,” Jemes insisted. “The king has the power to make things right. I just have to ask.”

“He’s said no already.”

“To a duke, yes,” Jemes acquiesced. “But not to his brother. And I heard the princess would not mind a marriage of convenience. Just wait. On my wedding night to her, I’ll explain the whole scheme to her, and she’ll be thrilled. She’ll have her freedom, and you your rights.”

“But what will you get?” Vernin asked.

Jemes thought about it for a moment. “I would have more time for hobbies.”

“This is serious.”

“As am I.” the duke said. “I’ve heard the king loves his sister. He’ll be thrilled too.” Jemes smiled. “Just trust me, brother. All manner of things shall be well.”

But audience, they weren’t, were they?

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Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, produced, performed, and edited by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show, please leave a review, tell a friend, or donate to the show’s Ko-Fi account.