Fiction Fantastic 2026 Winning Story: “In Living Memory” by Keiko Weible

“In Living Memory,” by Keiko Weible, South Eugene High School

First Place, High School Level, 2026

In Living Memory

by Keiko Weible

South Eugene High School

There have always been gods. For as long as there have been stars and planets, there have been beings guiding them. And sometimes, the gods place their blessings or their curses on certain objects or people.

My family had both, a blessing and a curse passed from mother to daughter. We were caught in a feud so old the reason behind it was long forgotten. Our curse was to die at twenty, struck down by something in our sleep. Our blessing was immortality. From a young age, we were told that if we swore to remain loyal to our patron, we could live forever. If we swore to never forget our allegiance, our funeral would be followed by resurrection, by a life that wouldn’t end until we were ready.

18th Century

My mother raised me just outside a small village in Ireland. We were the last members of my family that I knew of. I assume everyone else had sort of faded away over time. They got tired of watching history repeat and prayed for death. I knew I would die like that too, so tired that all I could do would be to pray for release. I didn’t know how long that would take. I didn’t bother to think about it when I was young.

I had a friend as a child. Her name was Anna. She had a gorgeous smile and eyes that almost looked turquoise when the light hit them just right. No one approved of our friendship, except my mother (and that was only on some days). The people in the village never approved of me hanging around Anna. I was the child of the strange, unmarried woman after all.

Anna was told to stay away from me, but by the time we fully understood why, she was already so close to me and my mother that she wouldn’t leave. She found us fascinating. Me especially. Not just because of the curse. She thought I was funny and kind. She found it intriguing that I knew how to make myself look like a boy, even after puberty hit.

“How is it that you seem so comfortable as a boy?” she asked me once.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I know I was born female, but sometimes I prefer looking like a man.”

The first nineteen years of my life were good. I don’t remember many details since time has a nasty habit of making things blur together the longer you are on Earth. But I remember how everything went wrong.

Ireland was not the place to be during the years of 1740 and 1741. What started out as a cold spell very quickly turned into famine. And what do people do when something out of their control happens to them? They look for someone to blame. My mother and I happened to be the perfect “someones.” My mother didn’t need to eat because of her immortality, so she wasn’t affected by the lack of food. She put all her energy toward keeping me fed. I lost some weight, but other than that, I seemed unaffected as well. So of course, rumors started. Why are they not suffering with us? Who are they? Evil. Demons. Unholy.

Anna never believed any of it, but she didn’t have as much time to worry about me. She had just gotten married and was having to worry about her family. When the people from the village proper came to take care of what they thought was “unholy” and the “root of their suffering,” she didn’t know.

I don’t remember exactly what happened. I know there was blood. A lot of it was mine. I like to think some of it might have been theirs, but I’ll never know. I just know that after the mob left me bleeding on the ground, my mother decided to try to save my life the only way she knew how. She dug a grave for me. Anna must have found out about the mob because she showed up at some point. She talked to me, told me I would be okay. She was the one who lowered me into the grave.

“We’ll be here when you wake up,” Anna said as my mother began to bury me. I closed my eyes. It will be all right, I told myself. They’ll be here when I wake up.

I don’t remember losing consciousness. I don’t remember being asleep. But I remember waking up. I remember the terror I felt as I realized all I could see, all I could breathe, was the soil I had been buried in. I remember clawing at the dirt above me, tearing at it until I burst through the grass, coughing mud out of my lungs. I didn’t know it then, but I had been lying in that grave for five years. I didn’t know that my mother had faded because she believed she had lost me.

Anna was the one who found me, covered in dirt and sobbing by that grave. She fell to her knees beside me and wrapped me in her arms. Lord, she was so warm. I could feel her pulse, the movement of the blood in her veins. She was scared. She said that she didn’t think I would come back. But she had never stopped waiting. She took me to her home, introduced me to her husband and children as her childhood friend who had gone missing five years before. She cleaned me up and made a nest out of spare blankets for me to sleep in. Anna slept in the nest with me that night, just like we had when we were younger.

I couldn’t sleep. There was a strange stillness in my chest. I could feel Anna’s heartbeat, but not my own. That’s the price of immortality, I guess. I held back tears and hid my face in Anna’s shoulder until the morning.

I left sometime after that. I knew that I had stopped aging even before I had clawed my way out of that grave, and I didn’t want to draw attention to Anna or her family. I think some part of me also knew it would be easier to leave rather than stay and watch my best friend slowly wither and die.

19th Century

I don’t know when the thought of rebirth entered my mind. I guess I must have just accepted it as fact after I realized that there was a spirit following me.

I remember the first time I saw Anna’s spirit in a different body. America’s Civil War had just ended. I had moved over to the States shortly before conflict broke out. Not the greatest choice in hindsight, but there is always war somewhere. I would have gotten caught in one sooner or later.

I kept myself looking like a boy during that time, pretending to be in my early teens. It was arguably safer to be a young man fighting in a war than a woman without a husband or father. I bound my chest with spare fabric I sewed together and kept my hair a little bit longer than fashionable while keeping it acceptably masculine.

I found Anna’s spirit for the first time in a public square in Boston. I had fought with the Union army during the war, and my unit was coming home. Anna’s name was Sarah now, and she had come to reunite with her brother, Ernest. Ernie was a friend of mine and had offered to give me a place to stay until I had my life sorted out. I had declined his offer, but he had convinced me to at least stay for dinner. I had told him that I had no family, and he had taken pity on me (“just saving you from being lonely,” as he put it). The reunion was beautiful. Ernie ran up to Sarah as soon as he saw her and crushed her in a bear hug, spinning her around. He introduced us and I was struck by her eyes. They were the same turquoise-blue as Anna’s.

“I’m so sorry to be blunt, but are you sure we’ve never met before?” she asked. “I could have sworn I’ve seen you somewhere.”

I shook my head, keeping a polite smile on my face to mask the torrent of emotions that were swirling around my head. “I’m sure I would remember meeting someone as beautiful as you,” I told her. I did remember. It just wasn’t Sarah I was remembering.

Ernie laughed. “Don’t flirt with my sister,” he said. “She’s engaged, for goodness sake.”

I forced myself to grin and said, “Sorry, Ern. I guess I’m surprised. I mean, it’s obvious who got the beauty in the family.”

Ernie slung an arm around his sister’s shoulders. “Of course she’s the beautiful one. I mean, what use would it be for her to be handsome? That’s my role.”

We all laughed, but I could barely understand why. My mind was still reeling with the possibility that I had found Anna’s spirit in a different body. Sure, I could have viewed it as a coincidence, but we had recognized each other. I could see Anna in Sarah. The way she stood, the presence she had. All of it was Anna. I had tried not to think about Anna for a long time because I knew she had died. But here was someone who was like her in every way that mattered. That moment was the first time since I was a child when I had considered the possibility that I might not be alone.

20th Century

I ran into Anna’s spirit a couple times throughout this century. I knew it was her spirit because both times the brief flash of recognition on her face mirrored the one I felt. Every time there was that same pull, almost like being yanked into a planet’s orbit after drifting around in space. And the eyes. I’ve never seen anyone other than her with that shade of blue-green eyes.

I ran into her spirit during the Roaring Twenties. His name was David. David was a small-time smuggler working in New York. I caught him grabbing moonshine from a stash he had hidden under someone’s porch one night. I recognized his eyes, and I told him that I wouldn’t snitch if he gave me a bottle. I didn’t drink it (I’m not that stupid), but it was a good excuse to have a conversation.

Over the next few weeks, I learned when he would go to that stash, so I took to waiting for him. Eventually, he even let me help. If a stash was in a spot that was in danger of being found, I would move it.

“Ain’t no one gonna expect a smart-looking, respectable young lad like you to do a bootlegger’s work,” he told me.

David never told me where he was getting the stuff from, and I didn’t ask. About a year after I met him, he got caught. I didn’t see him again, and I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t too worried, though. I was sure that I would see Anna’s spirit again.

The next time we met, it was 1943. Her name was Rosie. The two of us worked building planes together. She would talk about how women were finally allowed to work and how excited she was to have met me. She wanted us to be long-term friends and to settle down near each other someday.

“Can’t you imagine it?” she asked. “We could live on the same block, see each other every day. Our kids could grow up together. Do you have a man you’re waiting up for?”

I shook my head and said, “I’ve only ever had eyes for one person.” I didn’t bother to tell her that person is the reason she would catch me watching her sometimes.

“Well, he must be a charmer if he caught your eye.” She laughed, and it sounded like coming home. I just shook my head and went back to our work.

I did visit once or twice after the war, but I didn’t stay long. I knew I had to move on. Better to get it over with quickly.

21st Century

Despite rising complaints that the world was getting smaller, I only saw Anna’s spirit once in the 21st century. With the turn of the millennium, I changed who I was a bit. I spent most of the early 2000s in underground music performances, chasing feelings and momentary companionship. I wore dark clothes, played myself off as a loner, and tried not to get meaningfully attached to those around me.

I saw Anna’s spirit on a trip to Chicago in the early twenties. It was on the Red Line north of the Loop. That was one of my favorite encounters with her. I remember exactly what happened. It was a beautiful June day, sunny but not too hot. I was standing near the middle of the compartment watching the city go by when we pulled up to a station. People slipped past, on and off the train. I wasn’t paying attention. I doubt anyone else was either. But then I saw him.

He was beautiful, of course, stepping through the door. He had wavy blond hair spilling over his shoulders and looked around the same age Anna was when I last saw her. He had paint smudges on his shirt and wired earphones attached to the phone in his back pocket. Of course, his eyes were the same, and so was his smile. He saw me looking at him and smiled. I felt myself blush and smiled back. I could imagine what he saw. Dark hair, gray denim jacket even though it was summer. Probably a bit of a mess. But Anna never cared about how much of a mess I was.

We didn’t say anything to each other, but when I stepped off the train two stops later, he waved at me through the window. He had the same wave as Anna. I waved back as the train pulled away.

I love that memory. I think it’s so special because, of all the times Anna’s spirit found me, that was the one that reminded me the most of her. Over the centuries, we had been friends, acquaintances, and more. But in that moment, it felt like everything had led up to that wave.

Present

It has been a long time since the fall of humanity. Of course, the end didn’t have a set date, but human life has been gone for a while. I haven’t seen anyone else in years. Nature is taking over everything, swallowing man’s supposed progress. Broken buildings are filled with things growing and dying, always moving in that cycle. I’m still here, the only thing that doesn’t fit in. The oddity.

I replay my story in my head so I do not forget. The people I met, the lives I lived. And of course Anna, although I couldn’t forget her if I tried. I don’t know why I kept seeing her throughout the years. Maybe everyone is reincarnated and it was just a coincidence. Or maybe my patron brought her back time after time to give me something to live for. Regardless, I’m grateful to have seen her again and again.

I’m going to pray for release tonight. If I am still alive, then that means the old gods must still be with me, right? I can’t die from anything that a normal human can, but as long as the gods are listening, I have a way to leave this world.

I’m sitting in an old building. I think it used to be a house. The roof caved in at some point, and the only things living here now are bugs and small rodents. I lit a fire earlier even though the sun hadn’t gone down yet. I want to make my prayer at sunset. Anna always told me I had a flair for the dramatic.

***

Sunset comes a lot faster than I’m expecting. Golden hour spills across the hills, making everything glow. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, digging my fingers into the soil beneath me.

“I’m ready to leave,” I say quietly. “I’ve lived as much as I wanted. I’m ready to go.”

Something in the air changes. “Victoria,” a voice says behind me.

“Anna,” I gasp. She’s standing behind me, backlit by the setting sun. She looks like an angel.

“Hello.” Her voice is soft. I’m on my feet in a moment and hugging her, and suddenly it feels like no time has passed at all. Her arms are around me, and I can feel the phantom beat of her heart. I pull back and look at her. She hasn’t changed. She’s changed so much. It’s like I can see every version of her in every lifetime all at once.

Anna reaches out and gently runs her thumb over my cheekbone. With a start, I realize she’s wiping away my tears. I hadn’t even noticed that I was crying.

“I remember everything,” I whisper. “I remember every time you found me.”

Anna smiles. “I remember too. I remember every time you saw me and knew I was there with you.”

I cough on the tears. I’m a wreck. “I missed you,” I say.

“I missed you, too.” She murmurs. She doesn’t seem to mind my crying. “Are you ready to go?” she asks.

I look at my campsite, at the world, one last time. The sun is already slipping behind the hills. I take a deep breath. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

Anna takes my hand, pulls us close together like we’re twelve years old and giggling over village gossip.

“Let’s go,” she says. The air in front of us shimmers, and I just barely catch a glimpse of something on the other side.

Together, we step into the beyond.