I sat before the mirror in the large, ornate bathroom next to my room. Black was everywhere around me. Usually I find it comforting – the obsidian hue of the tub, the subtle ornate patterns catching soft threads of light where raised from the black walls, the cool smoothness of the vanity before me, my onyx-handled brush, combs, cases... But on this night I felt something oppressive, cloistered; a damp heaviness in the air around me. My own breathing caught my attention unduly.
Focus, I told myself, staring hard into the reflective glass before me. It was not mere self-appreciation that held my gaze fast; not this time. My pallor was stark under the wan moonlight whose shafts slid in through the small window to my right. My eyes did not shine in the dark as they usually did. I could not have this; I could not let those I work with see my vulnerability, and I could not rely on simply being able to avoid them for a while. Things come up, unexpectedly. I always have to be ready.
I closed my eyes and fixed a mental image in place; it was one of my father's memories. It was myself a few months ago or more, with my love, my arm around his shoulders, drink in hand, smiling wide, looking radiant. Yes; that is how I like to remember myself. Focusing on the image, I held myself in a place of stillness until I felt a shiver of energy run through me. When I opened my eyes again, I had shifted subtly. I still looked entirely like myself, only much healthier. I smiled. Like a diseased whore who paints her face to be sold to the night, I had my disguise. Such are the perks of being a shifter.
But what would I do about Katrina? She could see through my shifts. My mind chewed over how to manage that variable; could there be some way to turn it to my advantage? I laughed softly, entertaining notions of feigning madness, playing that I had succumbed utterly to addiction once again, of luring she -- my enemy -- into complacency. I imagined her crowing over knowing my secret, my illness, when others as yet had no idea. Would she try to blackmail me? No, too obvious. After a moment, I shook my head and decided to think more on it all later; there were more pressing tasks on the agenda for today.
I tried to turn my thoughts to more present matters, but my mind lingered on the thought of drugs like a hand lingers on a gun. There was a brief impulse of clawing lust for the forbidden powders, but it was quickly overtaken by memories that sunk my heart to the lowest reaches of my stomach. Why must I have the memory I do? One would think that being as stoned as I was, it would all be gone. No, no. Far from it.
I remembered vividly the sight of my dearest one slumped in his chair, unable to even aim the needle very well anymore, hardly awake, but mumbling that he wanted more. “Here, love, let me...” I had smiled, kissed his face and neck slowly, tied him off, calmly and sensually pierced the graying skin of his arm with the needle. I had fed off the rush of pleasure that filled him, sucking in that energy to accentuate my own high. I had swallowed down his drug-laced blood with a snarl and he loved it. I saw one thing, then – willing prey – and it had always awoken the beast. How many times had I picked him up, thrown him on the bed, pushed myself on top of him...? I wanted to vomit. What was I thinking? What kind of remorseless fucking creature am I? It had all seemed like good fun at the time, a perpetual party, us blind in our reverie to any sight of the consequences that lay in our path.
But sitting there seeing it all with the hard clear lens of sobriety, I beheld a dance of destruction I had done but little to prevent. I remembered my father; the dire warning in his eyes. “You will consume him,” he had said, his gaze intent upon my face. No Father, not me, my love is like me -- tough, wild, strong... It will all be fine. He loves it as much as I do. He wants this. We're different.
We weren't different. We were no different to anyone else who threw their life away, piece by piece, on senseless gambles of pleasure. “I like living this way. I'm happy. I revel in the decadence; there, I am alive.” More words, spoken in the heat of the narcotic fire. More defiance -- yes, brilliant! Rebel! Fuck what other people think! Fuck ANYTHING else in this godforsaken universe but my own pleasure, right? ME, ME, ME, the great axis on which all of creation fucking spins!
That is the voice of rage -- rage that became selfish, decadent masturbation as I ground my heel into the face of the life that hurt me.
As emotions welled up in me, my focus wavered and I shifted back to my natural form suddenly. I was faced again with the pallid, sickly face in the mirror. My eyes looked black, empty, dead like a shark's eyes, the eyes of a creature that does nothing but drift and consume, trailing the scent of blood for miles.
"You are disgusting." The words echoed deep, with finality, their powerfully masculine reverberation surging up from some hidden place within me. It took me a moment to recognize their origin but then, with a chill tracing up my spine, I knew.
That voice, that voice in the back of my mind, grating and dark and biting like the grind of steel. Not my voice, and yet it must be a part of me. It echoed not from without like a true auditory hallucination; it was clearly within, but oddly apart, like a splinter of thought that had slithered away from me to grow new life alone. It had been with me all my life; God knows I have always been more than a bit fucked in the head, but I had not heard that particular inner demon in so long that I had nearly forgotten about it. The last I could recall speaking of it, I spoke of it as a distant memory, a mere footnote in my history of madness, an unanswered question destined for the annex of all the torn pieces of me.
All I really knew to this day was how badly 'it' wanted me dead. It wanted me to suffer. It was in control when I tried to harm those I should have loved, years ago; it had tried to keep me from ever finding love, it had scared me so God damn badly I drank and drank trying to escape it and it got worse, and worse – I lit rooms on fire, drove knives into my arms, I...
Too many memories, too many. I was so weak then, so starved, so ill. As I had grown more and more in power, as I had filled my life with lost family regained, the voice had been drowned out. I had grown stronger than it. It had become a part of my past -- its hateful, vicious hissing no more than the hint of an old nightmare that stained days too dark and muddy to grasp in the clear stream of the present.
But I was not strong now, I was not powerful, and there it was again, as clear and alive and raging as ever before. I could feel it wanting to eat me alive. I could feel it writhing in my gut like a heaving, slithering sea of tar. I was frightened; truly frightened. Guilt, panic. I thought I had left those behind, too.
I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry, I wanted to lash out at something, release it. But not for me, such small mercies. My long-honed walls of composure held fast. My face remained calm as a moonlit lake on a still night. Tranquil, tranquil... No hasty, haphazard reactions to mar the mask -- just silent horror gripping at my chest, leaden fingers resting there with the threat of hells I never wanted to contemplate, but am, because I somehow found them buried within my own person. I had stumbled upon the yawning maw.
I gazed into it and it smiled -- leered -- back at me.
"Hell is yourself," it whispered. Who was it that had once said that? Had he known my secrets? My mind was growing clouded, the shadows of memory crowding around me, a dizzying throng of specters.
I winced; I hurt. My body was starting to shudder, convulse. Pain stabbed through my arms, legs, drove itself hard into my stomach like a kick. I reached desperately for the little cup of methadone on the vanity before me; my hands were so weak that my fingers trembled, drops spilled before I drank down the liquid. I waited, desperate for some ease. The pain only worsened. I saw stars and heard deep throaty laughter before the world went black and I, along with my chair, crashed to the floor.
© 2013 Phoenix Jackson. Do not use or reproduce this work in whole or in part without written permission. Any unauthorized use will be
punished to the fullest extent of the law. All rights reserved.
Becca J. Campbell is the
author of the New Adult Romantic Science Fiction novels Foreign Identity and Gateway to Reality, and Sub-Normal, a series of short
stories. An avid lover of stories that tiptoe the line between fantasy and reality (even when they plunge
off one side or the other), Becca looks for new angles on bridging the gap between the two. She holds a
special place in her heart for any story that involves superpowers or time travel. Her passion is defying
the limits of her own creativity. You can find her on her Author Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Pinterest, and Amazon
