Dried tears cake my cheeks. It doesn’t end. Over and over, I’m thrust into memories that hurt more than a broken neck. I can’t do anything to make it stop.
I’m unlocking our apartment door again. Making dinner. Checking Ella’s medication. Yelling at her. Finding her dead.
Then the cycle repeats.
Again.
Tick.
And again.
Tick.
And again.
Tick.
I can feel myself screaming at the back of my mind, but I’m stuck, forced to watch the scenes play out as if I don’t know what’s about to happen, so I feel that same raw, horrific sorrow each time I get to the end. By the time it restarts, I’m in the sameheadspace as I was when I walked through the front door all those years ago.
I don’t know where I am. I don’t know how I got here. I don’t… what is…
That night plays again. The clocktick, tick, ticksin the background. I look down at the pill container, and rage bubbles through me. After everything I’ve done for her, everything I’ve sacrificed, thehoursI’ve worked, she can’t even take her fucking medication? That spoiledbrat. God, how dare she?—
The skin at the back of my neck prickles. Something distant tugs at my mind. It’s… strange and unfamiliar, yet… sobering somehow. The unsettling stage of consciousness between sleep and waking. It comes with the awareness that something isn’t right.
Slowly, I turn toward the source and choke on my scream. The sound refuses to come out, caught in my throat like it’s trying to suffocate me. I can’t move, or run, or cry for help. I’m locked in a perpetual state of fear-induced agony.
This isn’t me watching from the recesses of my mind. I’m trapped in my own body like it’s no longer mine. Forced to stare at the creature with flames licking up its body and out the holes of Its rotting flesh. Crimson drips from black fangs, down Its naked chest of decaying fur, matting the dark tufts all the way to Its taloned paws.
But let’s face it… this is the type of darkness that no light could break through. The shadows flicker and swirl around Its sharp bloodstained teeth and glowing red eyes.
“You have caused much trouble.”
Its voice shakes the walls, a full-fledged vibration that makes the dishware in the kitchen sink clink and the ground tremble beneath my feet. Terror rains down on me, and every single one of my instincts tells me to run, but I still can’t move.
My body curls of its own accord, shoulders hunching like I’m cowering away, head dipping in submission.
The most I manage to accomplish on my own is to squeak, “Who?—”
“Silence,” It booms.
The windows explode from the force of the single word; shards of glass fly across the living room, slicing through skin and catching in my hair.
I whimper before I can stop myself, squeezing my eyes shut as I wait for a blow that never comes. My frozen body is still capable of trembling, I realize as It steps forward, growing in size until Its horns scrape the ceiling that’s rising at the same time.
“I am a being of many names. I have taken many forms. I see. I hear. I listen. I take. Iammerciful, despite what you humans believe. The scales of justice may not be in my hands, but it is I who tip them.”
It tilts Its head to the side, studying me like I’m a pitiful thing.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
“No, you still do not know who and what I am, child?”
My head shakes—the barest movement that It might miss if It wasn’t paying attention.
“I am the first hunger. The clawed hands beneath creation. The unmaker. The wound the heavens pretend has healed. I am the sin before sin existed. I was there when you first learned fear, curled around your heart like the flames of dying candles.”
“Satan,” I whisper.
