This is a short story I wrote for a writing contest by Story Unlikely, deadline 31 January 2024. It had a maximum word count of 4500 but was otherwise completely freeform. Pick your own genre, theme, topic, style, etcetera.
As usual, I picked an idea that is too good for a short story, and thus doesn’t really come to life in so few words. I think the end result is quite good, but just way too fast-paced, trying to move through too many events and ideas in such a short time span. And in my attempt to make the main character appear as a young woman, some phrasing or langauge use might be off-putting at the start. The original idea of “what if there was some technology/spell that could completely erase an existence” deserves a full novel by me one day. It feels more powerful than threatening someone with death.
You can read the full story on this page, or download the Word document to read in some other way: I Shall Erase You.
I suppose the aliens weren’t as bad as I feared. When you expected eternal torture or immediate destruction, stern faces and two annihilated capitals seemed mild. They even let us keep our clothes on.
Scrap that. The humans were getting downright friendly with these aliens!
My brother declared one such being that raided his house … sexy. He was now learning their language to write a love letter.
Then again—fortunately, for all of us—my lovable brother wasn’t the queen. I was.
They summoned me to their mothership to hear their demands. And when I say summoned, I mean violently shoved in a direction. All my subjects smiled at their lovely new queen as I passed by, hope and confidence in their eyes.
But I can’t complain. They had instantly learned how to make tea, coffee, and hot chocolate, offering me all of those beverages at once. In fact, they seemed incredibly eager to collect all our knowledge and become a little more human.
They really weren’t as monstrous as everyone feared. That didn’t mean I was absolved of my duty as queen.
“You are invaders,” I said defiantly, as I stepped into a bright spherical room. “This is my country, and I will not bow to you.”
Lights flashed around me and streaks of pure electricity slithered across the curved walls. The translation was near instant.
“Such passion. Such confidence.”
An alien circled me. They looked strikingly similar to us. Same size, same number of limbs, merely a much larger head and a tail. Or was that also an imitation, a show they put on for us?
“It is the truth. We can negotiate. State your demands.”
“Accept us as your supreme leaders. Obey us. You can go back to playing queen, if you want. From the data we gathered, those figures never truly made important decisions anyway.”
“You … you’d let me stay the ruler of Arthmark?” I stumbled through my sentences. These aliens were like the dream of a dream of the best-case scenario. We must be missing something. “Full privileges, full power? Nothing changes?”
Their leader—did they have a leader?—shrugged. Their tail curled, as if curious to look at me. “As long as you do what we say, when we say it, without question.”
At age 16, I was the youngest queen of Arthmark ever. People had sung my praises and awaited my arrival eagerly, for I’d proven my leadership wits and devotion to the country many times over during my youth. Not in the least by saving the previous leaders twice during the devastating virus outbreaks. Events I’d still rather forget.
I’d earned my place and reputation, all right. I wasn’t just going to hand it over.
I looked the alien up and down. This wasn’t how you wielded power! It certainly wasn’t how you kept it. These aliens had big guns and imposing spaceships, but within a few days they’d lose authority.
“And what if I don’t do exactly as you say?” I said.
“We can’t force you, not with violence. From the data gathered, we’ve learned that humans are more stubborn than a tree. If you tell them to do one thing, they’ll go out of their way not to do it.”
I stepped back, jaw dropped. I wasn’t even restrained or guarded.
Yes, yes, we all grew to love the friendly aliens within a day.
Until they revealed the most curious piece of technology.
“Then you know I will not change my mind,” I almost shouted. “I decline. You are invaders. Go away! I must protect my people from the … the … "
“Murwaka. That’s the name of our species. Now, little girl, are you sure you want to decline?”
The lights in the room changed to a dark red, which made it near impossible to see the Murwaka, except for her grin lit up by bright teeth. No, really, they looked like they had lightbulbs permanently stuck down their throat. Silly aliens.
Someone grunted behind me. A body was dropped to the floor.
I looked down. My brother. His eyes went wide as they gagged him.
“What are you doing with him?” I demanded, as I held out my hand to help my brother to his feet. Head high. Back straight. Damn it, I was almost taller than this Murwaka. “Your precious data must have shown threats as the least effective—”
“Not all threats are created equal.”
I scoffed. Stay confident. Head high.
“Kill my brother. Kill me. It will not help you,” I said, voice wavering. “The people of Arthmark will riot. They will never accept you again. You’ve doomed yourself!”
“Not if they … don’t remember you at all.”
The Murwaka held up a device not unlike a remote control, except it was covered in blinking lights that made me dizzy. It radiated a loud buzzing noise and the smell of dead flesh, creating an aura that filled me with regret for being alive in the first place.
She pointed it at my brother.
I rushed to write his name on a slip of paper. To take a photograph of him with my smart device. I yelled at them: “Listen to—”
She activated it. A flash. I stumbled backwards.
I came to my senses on the floor, flat on my back. My mind raced to reconstruct events but could not find anything that caused my fall.
The Murwaka towered over me and helped me up, for both my hands held an object. But why was I holding an empty piece of paper? Why did I take a picture of some random corner in this room?
“Of course, this demonstration would be truly ineffective if we did not make some exceptions,” the Murwaka said. “We learned that the last time.”
“What demonstration? What …”
The creature showed several pictures of me standing next to some guy. What a creep! Even threw his arms around me!
Then it showed official records of the monarchy mentioning I had … a brother?
“If you do not obey our commands, little queen of Arthmark,” the Murwaka hissed into my ear, “we shall erase you too.”
#
I lowered my gaze as they hung the traitors. Their agonizing screams still passed through the hands pressed against my ears. They didn’t understand. I commanded them to do it, yet couldn’t bear to watch. An evil queen who couldn’t even accept she was evil.
The Murwaka forced me to allow an audience and make the hanging public. They also forced me to never tell a living soul about their technology or our agreement. They were eager to show off their erasure devices to me alone, but protected them all so well that I was never even able to get close to stealing one such device.
After our first negotiation, the Murwaka had suddenly retreated and backed off. They claimed I’d made threats of violence and weapons that scared them out of Arthmark for now.
In every way, they wanted all the bad stuff to be pinned solely on me.
Which forced me to get up from my throne and make the long way back to the palace past angry crowds.
“Queen of Monsters! Look at me! Look your dirty peasants in the eye!”
The sounds came from everywhere. Pieces of fruit hit my back. My personal guard grunted and shoved shields in people’s faces, but could never protect me entirely.
“Devilqueen! Your time will come! Vengeance will be sweet!”
“The Murwaka will come for your head!”
A stone hit my temple. The Captain of my Guard, Moses, instantly raised his gun and shot the perpetrator dead where he stood. So much death. All blood on my hands.
We turned the corner. One more street and I’d be safe—
Five men in black were waiting for us, guns raised. They shot without hesitation.
Two guard members fell dead. Some men in black fell to the ground. I ducked. I panicked. I crawled over filthy, bloodied stones, growing numb to the shouts and gunshots behind me. My knees bled. A strong hand grabbed my shoulder, pulling me upright.
Why? Why me? Make it stop. Make it stop.
I looked over my shoulder. Everyone was down, except Moses. He hurried me to the palace gates, almost kicked me through them, then barked orders to lock the whole place down.
Once inside and alone, Moses transformed back into his Murwaka shape. Their true bodies were larger than ours, more muscular and with a hardened shell for their back. Almost nobody else had seen their true bodies.
He grinned. “I must admit that was close. But we can’t lose you now!”
My fingers itched to close around his throat. My voice, once so strong, longed to expose the Murwaka’s true identity to the world. What good would it do? I’d be gone, literally forgotten as if I never existed, before I was finished making my declaration.
Instead, I yawned and said I was going to bed. Moses followed me to my bedroom, but granted me privacy once inside. The one gap in their armor. My singular hope, for years now.
There was an understanding, however strange and brittle, that pushing me too hard and denying any semblance of a life would not benefit the Murwaka in the long run. Their data probably dictated it; I didn’t care anymore. I embraced it with all I had, as it allowed me to take a loving husband and raise a family.
But I did not slip under the covers next to my snoring husband.
I amplified his snoring to cover the noise of the bookshelf I pushed aside. Behind it, back-breaking manual labor had carved out a section of the walls that led to dungeons that hadn’t been used for centuries now.
This was an old castle, once called impregnable. It would—it had to—outlive and defeat these aliens.
I pushed the bookshelf back into place behind me, then walked down the stairs by the faint light of candles haphazardly stuck to the walls. Soon, I heard the clang of metal on metal, accompanied by sizzling and cursing.
I entered the secret workplace. Sparks flew into my face. A middle-aged man wearing overly large spectacles repeatedly offered his apologies and turned off his machine.
“I did not hear you coming!” he said.
“That’s the point, Parson. We have little time. Progress?”
“Yes!”
My heart skipped. Actual progress?
Parson walked to a group of scientists leaning over a table covered in scribbled notes. The brightest minds in Arthmark. Or, at least, the ones I could trust and make disappear without Murwaka growing suspicious.
“You might remember our first theory: that it was a trick.”
“Easily disproven by checking literally anything in the world and realizing my brother was somehow removed from it.” I still couldn’t remember anything. I couldn’t picture his face or hear his voice. Nor could I recall memories with everyone who had known him, for they would swear they’d never heard of him.
“And then our second theory about a setup. They’d planned this all in advance and specifically chose your brother. Somehow, they could scan the world and find everything with which he was connected. But then, of course, they …”
I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples. Parson fortunately stopped talking. No need to remind me of the hundreds of people who had been “erased” since, which seemed a whimsical show of force from the Murwaka.
Then again, I didn’t know.
Maybe they hadn’t erased anyone, or they had erased billions, and just told me some random number. I can’t know!
“Anyway, this led to our third theory. Everything you influence, during your life, somehow bears your signature. Each memory you create. Everything you do. All of it has a unique, traceable signature.”
I stood between them, a queen amidst her peasants, but no matter how much I leaned over the table, the millions of notes made no sense to me. I depended on these people. If anybody turned, if anybody lost faith …
“And?”
“Their device instantly finds all of it and plucks it out of existence. Like a device that sniffs out a toxic gas or radiation, then has built-in measures to deal with it.”
“Which helps us how?”
“We found that signature left on all we do,” Parson said, grinning ear to ear.
My curious questions were cut off. The bracelet around my wrist blinked. The Murwaka summoned me once more.
#
Graffiti covered the artful murals of the palace walls. The colors, letters and signatures were always different. But the logo and message were always the same: We shall not be erased.
My rioting subjects got closer and closer. Break-ins happened regularly, which means I hadn’t left the palace in years. My children had reached an age at which they asked questions.
“We can’t leave, dear. The people love mommy so much that they want to hug me to death!”
“It’s suffocating,” my daughter said. “I want to go outside.”
“Well, you can’t. Even if all the people protected you—which they will, because you are a good person—the Murwaka aliens will get you. Just wait until you’re older. We will defeat them and you will be the best queen there ever was. Go to daddy and learn your lessons.”
She ran away, sulking. Without her light, the hallways seemed a dead place ever bathed in darkness. I sank to my knees. Streaks of grey had entered my hair. Would we figure out the technology in my lifetime? Would I ever restore my reputation? I lost faith with every passing second.
Noise came from behind. I turned around and, to my surprise, found Parson outside of his dungeon.
“One of my scientists didn’t come in today. Halina. I fear,” he took off his glasses, “she might have turned.”
“We can still remember her in the first place. Her work is still written on these notes. That means she’s not erased yet!”
“Which also means we do not know if we haven’t already been betrayed long ago. It might be a trap.”
I made a split-second decision. “Copy all her work. Leave. Now.”
Parson did as requested.
“Queen’s Guard!” I yelled.
The Murwaka had given me a powerful strike force to use for executing their commands, such as burning a neighborhood just because or tracking down some hungry kid for stealing a loaf of bread. Over time, however, they’d become my actual guard and did almost anything I pleased.
The secret of their technology had gotten out—but they had masterfully spun it as an invention from me to instill fear in all my opponents.
Soon enough, twenty guards, heavily armed with erasure devices, surrounded me. I’d never stopped trying to secretly steal one such device, but they seemingly had eyes in their back and never let me close.
My daughter was right. It was suffocating. As if a heavy boulder pushed me down with every breath. And the only moments I could even think about lifting the boulder, was the precious time I spent with my family, making happy memories with them.
“I have a potential problem to … solve. I must come with you this time, for I have the best chance of locating her.”
“Are you sure that is wise?” Moses asked.
“You know I’m safer with you than on my own.”
We left the palace. The streets emptied at the sight of my Queen’s Guard. Faces I recognized, faces who’d yell at me and spit on me before, ducked away in silence. The aliens had shown me one truth about humans: they were not afraid to die for a good cause, but they were afraid to not be remembered for it.
It took nearly half an hour of walking the streets before the first insult was hurled at me. From a safe rooftop, at a distance.
“Devilqueen! Your end is near! The Murwaka will erase you!”
“The Murwaka will save us all!” multiple voices cheered, hidden by the chimney. Rocks flew my way, but landed on shields.
My guard pointed their devices. I pulled their arms down. “Don’t waste your energy.”
The fresh air was invigorating. The sky, the sunlight, the simple sight of a tree or a laughing child. A sliver of light split the darkness in my mind.
We arrived at Halina’s house. They kicked open the front door and ran inside.
Darkness. Furniture was upside-down and stacks of paper covered the floor, as if my guard had been here a few hours earlier and ransacked the place. Damn it! If she was already on her way to the Murwaka, I had no hopes of surviving.
A thump sounded on the second floor. The guards rushed upward, to the only bedroom that shone bright from candlelight.
Halina sat up in bed, dazed and sleepy. Only two guards fit inside the room. She yelped at the sight of them and tried to get out of bed.
“I am sick, my queen,” she croaked. “I can barely stand, I—”
She fell onto one of the guards, who stood his ground but did not help her in any way. She held on to his uniform for dear life.
“Please, please,” she pleaded, shivering in her pink nightgown. “I did nothing wrong.”
“Indeed,” I said, hugging Halina as warmly as I could. “I appear to have been mistaken.”
“You’re not,” Moses said.
He had pulled all drawers out of her nightstand, then moved the whole thing. It revealed a stack of schematics guessing at the technology behind the erasure devices.
Moses pushed Halina away from the other guard, back into bed. He towered over her, device pointed, and declared solemnly: “Halina Swordborn, I shall erase you.”
“NO!”
I threw my arms around Halina. A flash.
I woke up in a corner of the bedroom. The floor had an imprint of something, maybe a box or paper, but it was gone now. My chest still felt the warmth of a hug, but whom did I hug?
Somehow, a functioning erasure device found its way into my hand. Pressed deep into the flesh by a sweaty hand.
I stuffed it into a hidden pocket inside my jacket.
Screams came from outside the house. Guards rushed up and down the stairs. The other guard inside our room patted his uniform, searching for a device that he lost. He didn’t dare tell Moses the truth.
The Captain pulled me out of the bedroom to check the disturbance.
We ran out of the building—and immediately regretted it.
An enormous crowd swarmed us. Sunken faces and bony bodies stared at me with murderous eyes. There were thousands upon thousands, surrounding me on all sides. They’d planned this. They’d waited for years until the next time I left the palace.
Traveling with a Queen’s Guard of twenty men suddenly seemed a silly idea.
They attacked, screaming and pointing weapons. They stepped over each other for the honor of killing me. We retreated to the house, but they’d already infiltrated. Hundreds of people climbed down from the roof or picked up furniture to throw at me.
My guards panicked and zapped at will.
I ducked. Stay close to the floor. Don’t listen. Don’t watch. Let them handle this.
By the time I opened my eyes, ten of my guard had fallen. In their last moments, their device had self-destructed as to be unrecoverable.
The crowd had been decimated. Ten thousand became thousand, thousand became a hundred. All erased—but not entirely, for I could still remember there used to be more. A cruel trick by the Murwaka once more.
Soon enough, Moses and a few others were the only ones left. Not enough to completely surround and protect me. I was exposed at the back, and several women with clubs jumped at the opportunity.
I reached inside my pocket to use the erasure device. No. Can’t. Must keep it secret. Must bring it to Parson. Must—
The clubs hit me and broke my ribs. My arms were poor protection for my head, but enough for now. The women called me a traitor. Screamed for my head. Burst with joy at the opportunity to hurt me, as I’d apparently hurt their husbands and their children.
I wanted to yell I understood. I would never want somebody to hurt my husband or children. But another hit cracked my jaw.
Until I looked up and could not, for the life of me, remember why my body was bruised and broken. I was alone, with three guards, in a desolate city square.
They hauled me back to the palace. I cried the whole way, I cried while sleeping, I cried as I heard Murwaka’s proclamation that was transmitted on all radio channels.
“The Devilqueen has gone too far,” they stated. “Her latest gruesome deed erased nearly fifty thousand people from this life. It will be dangerous. Many of us will be erased. Heroes who will never be remembered as heroes. But we will use ALL our might, and urge all other human leaders to join in, to defeat the Devilqueen once and for all.”
It was met with cheers all over the city. Despite losing half its population, it was still loud enough to be audible from within the palace. Apparently, amidst the chaos, Moses had managed to leave some evidence behind of some people’s lives, otherwise nobody would even know what happened here. Increasingly, I wished that were actually true.
Their plan all this time became abundantly clear. Tomorrow, they’d blast me to pieces, and the country would love the aliens for it. They’d accept their rule as infinitely better, no questions asked, no opposition.
No more. No more.
My body was too broken to leave the bed. I summoned Parson and discreetly handed the erasure device to him.
“Be quick about it. Get my daughter. She must be the next queen. And she will be a good queen, the best leader Arthmark ever knew. Let her be our family’s legacy. Let her see the aliens as invaders, let her never know the truth about me. I … only wish we had more time.”
I fell back from exhaustion. Parson already took the device apart as he fled the bedroom, straight into his dungeons where the other scientists eagerly awaited.
I awoke in daylight, to a rumbling palace and the sound of explosions.
#
Moses grinned at me. An evil green filled with those strange lights. “Had to make it look real, of course. The bombing will stop at 12.04. You will be dead by 12.08.”
“You will fail,” I said, my strength returning. “One way or another, the truth comes out.”
“It won’t. You will be erased. Only your worst deeds are left behind as evidence, nothing else. You will leave a legacy that is so foul, it becomes a cautionary tale for eons that only helps the Murwaka.”
Another explosion shook the bed and shot a crack through the wall. “Then do me a final favor. Let me be with my family, alone, in my final hours.”
“Why should we care? It’s over. We’ve won. You played your part to perfection.”
My thoughts were reserved for my daughter and my husband. The only warmth and joy I’d known for as long as I could remember. The only ones, together with the scientists, who knew the real me.
I realized I wasn’t asking a simple, predictable favor—granting me a few final hours with them would actually put my mind at rest and be invaluable to me.
I wagered.
“In return,” I said, “I will publicly own up to all I did. I’ll give you the foulest legacy. You will own this country forever.”
Moses frowned, then grinned again. “Fine.”
I gave a passionate speech about how all my subjects were worthless, my slaves and my toys, how I’d hated all of them. How I wished I’d been even more ruthless. How I’d killed a large number of Murwakas in my life—a random number made up on the spot.
Then he left me alone with my family.
My husband tapped the bookshelf. Parson immediately appeared on the other side, throwing his glasses down and wiping sweat from his brow.
“We cracked it. We cracked it!”
He lifted my daughter into the air and swung her around. My husband almost hugged him to death, even though he’d never known the details of this operation, for his own safety.
He produced a device of his own. Bulkier, less stylish, with rough edges and wires growing on it like a spiderweb. Whereas the erasure device had a dizzying aura of death and destruction, this one had the opposite aura. I could feel it. It drew me in, even though I could barely move.
“This should shield you from erasure,” Parson said. “It inverses the process. We can’t be sure, obviously, but we’re … pretty sure.”
I sighed. My daughter, despite growing too old for it, crawled back into my arms. Each explosion sent her screaming with eyes wide. I held her with all the warmth and strength I had left.
“Give it to my daughter.”
I kissed her on the cheek. “You hide it, okay? They’ll threaten you and try to depose you. You resist. Pretend you’re magical and can’t be erased. Do not fear. Claim your rightful throne and be a good queen.”
I turned to Parson. “Can the device also invert the inversion? As in, can it erase?”
Parson smiled, putting his broken glasses back on his red nose.
“We think so.”
“Make as many as you can. Give them to all you trust. Zap those aliens to oblivion for me.”
Parson bowed. “Already started, my queen.”
Time flew by in a haze. Their spaceships entered my country. The explosions neared my bedroom. It was almost time for them to claim victory.
My lips trembled, my voice unable to speak the next words.
“But now grant me one final favor. The hardest of all.”
Everyone in the room held their breath. Moses knocked on the door but would surely just barge in soon. They knew what was coming. They must have always known.
If I can’t be remembered for good, I’d rather not be remembered at all.
Let the Murwaka struggle to explain why they invaded a poor and impoverished country with a 16-year-old innocent girl who suddenly rose to queenship. Let them write their own foulest legacy that will help my daughter write a better story.
I grabbed my husband’s warm hands and pulled him close. I kissed him one last time, until Moses indeed came to grab me for my public execution.
My husband grabbed the erasure device and pointed it at me.
With tears in his eyes, he whispered: “My dear, do not be afraid. I shall erase you.”
“Thank you.”
Many flashes streaked across the room, past my window, at the palace gates.
One flash destined for me.
Gone.