Thank you for those who have been reading my updates, it certainly makes me feel less alone. As always, I will keep updating in the following days and the other parts can be found below.
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Part III
I first was comforted by his shared experience. I was, in part, relieved. I had mounting evidence to prove I was not crazy. But another part of me wished I had never found out. It was killing me, it was slowly taking my life and rotting me inside out.
In the days after Elijah told me, it started following me home. I’d fall into my pile of blankets, smush myself between the endless stuffed animals and pillows. I waited. The darkness enveloped my room, my glow in the dark stars shining through the dim gray. I waited. I counted the owl hots outside. I listened to the distant sounds of cars. The swoosh of them across wet payment. I heard my brother yelling at someone in a video game lobby miles away.
I waited. It waited.
The house grew quiet, too quiet for the crowded apartment that it was. My dog did not stir, my mom didn’t snore, and my brother’s TV was quiet. The glow in the dark stars dimmed. My door knob turned. Slowly. It ducked under the frame. I could look at it through the dark. It sits. Hands reach around me. It moves my blankets. Cold. Cold. Cold. It steals me, steals my warmths, steals anything it can.
It whispers, over and over. Almost a lullaby of, “Don’t turn around. Don’t turn around. Don’t turn around.” I don’t fall asleep.
Its coldness is my new normal. Its hands guide me from place to place. It leads me to the forest. I drive 40, then 50, then 60, up and up the steep mountain curves. I pray for my car to flip. To crash. To hit a spot of ice and lunge off the mountain top. My thoughts turn sour. They are rotten. Their smell matches those of the dead - the lost ones. It leads me to a bridge. I watch it in the water below. Its horns frame by head. It pushes me as close to the edge as it wants. I beg it to let me jump. I beg it to let me go.
I didn’t tell Elijah. I should have, what if he was also rotting? What if it had been stealing his thoughts too? Was he just as cold? His skin didn’t feel that way. I couldn’t bring myself to, I didn’t want to bring any more life to it. I was scared to speak it into existence. I still am as I write these words. What am I bringing into existence?
Elijah introduced me to Emily. She wore a red skirt, and her blue eyes twinkled in the sun. Looking at her brought warmth to my cheeks. I laughed, ease working its way into my life again. My thoughts were still rotten. It still came, I still saw its green eyes. Shining through any window I passed. My bruises never faded.
Emily started joining Elijah and I on work calls. Her and Elijah taking the front seats, me directly behind her. She’d sneak her hand through the crack between the chair and door. Our fingers would interlock in secrecy. I could finally sleep with her hand in mine.
But it still came. This time in my dreams. We stood, face to face. Its form changed every time. At once a deer on hind legs, a crown of green eyes nestled in its antlers. Other times a cow skull, long looping horns casting shadows on the floor. Once, it was a snake, coiled in a thousand tight circles. I’d beg, “please kill me. Please put me out of this misery. I am so fucking tired” Itd reach its hands - no matter what it’d always have the same long, boney, white fingers. They’d wrap along my throat. Tighten, make it hard to breathe. I’d wake up screaming, gasping for air.
Emily’s calming words, calming touch, would be there soothing me forward.
I dreaded the day I’d finally see it face to face. The real day its hands tightened around my throat. I longed and feared the eventual death I knew would bring it one fail swoop. I tried to soak up every laugh, joke, hug, smile, and kindness shared between Elijah, Emily, and I.
May came, spring slowly breathing life into the flowers, trees, and grass around us. The broken Christmas lights in the funeral home finally came down. Covid slowed. 100 hour weeks simmered towards 60 or 70. Elijah, Emily, and I started spending more time away from the funeral home.
We drove and blasted music, following the same sitting pattern in Elijah’s truck as we did in the MiniVan. I chain smoked in the back, resting my head on the shoulder of Emily. She always smelled like incense, and sunlight. Which always felt ironic for a girl shrouded in black.
I tried not to look in the mirror. Its face started to reflect back at me. In full mirrored view. The windows and water, the foggy nature of its old surfaces no longer distorted my view. It had a bull skull for a head, or perhaps it was a mask draped over its true face. The skull itself was yellow, with carvings throughout the bone. Each one was laden with dark, thick blood. It had congealed and clumped, its brown color flaking off in places. Its large horns twisted in three spots, forming into two large, sharp points. Each dipped in blood, but not the brown thick substances that marked its deep carvings. It was perpetually wet, fresh even. Dripping dark red arterial blood. It still had no true mouth, just the opening of its skull. Its eyes remained the same, if not a little brighter in the true image. Its head seemed to connect to a robbed body, feet and arms not visible. The unnatural fingers protruded from gaping tears in the robe. They were actually bone, with skin shedding off the way in which skin sheds off of deer antlers. The loose skin draping over the boney connections.
It rarely whispered then, instead speaking in my head - a loud layered voice. It sounded like 1000 whispers at once. Some hissed, others yelled, but most cried. It sounded like the hooves of animals running through a river. I wondered when it would collect my voice, collect me, and add it to the symphony. I wondered when my blood would paint its horns. I felt like my time was coming.
Elijah, Emily, and I joined each other for sushi one night. I saw its green eyes peering at me through my mug of jasmine tea. It was getting harder and harder to look away. Its fingers would force my head down, leaving soft spots on my skull. The voices sang. “Don’t turn around.” Emily rested her hand on my knee. I blushed; it pushed my head closer to the mug. Blood dripped down, splashed into the cup. Tea splattered on the table. Emily and Elijah did not notice. Elijah’s phone rang, his brows frowned. He bit his index nail. “We have a call.”
“Can I come?” Emily tightened her grip as she asked.
“It’s on a reservation, it’s 3 hours there, three hours back. 2 hours to do the call. It’s going to take at least 8 hours…..You’re welcome to if you want.”