This is not Little Baby’s voice. It’s a deep voice. One of a man, but of course, this thing on top of me isn’t a man. And then, just as I think that, it morphs into one. A man who is me. Who looks just like me.
“The truth is the only thing that matters,” I tell Dark Me.
Dark Me smiles and I recognize this smile because it’smysmile and it’s meaningless. It’s a lie. It’s me, pretending to care about the petty problems of whomever it is I’m talking to.
“Because, Josep, you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
And because I’m a liar, I can’t tell if this is some existential exercise in knowing oneself, or… I’m just hallucinating and the whole conversation is pointless.
“Can’t you see it?” Dark Me asks. “Can’t you see how God has touched you?”
I make a face. The word ‘God’ alone is enough to trigger this face, but the underlying sentiment is equally repulsive. “That’s ridiculous,” I tell myself. I mean, Dark Me. “God has never touched me.”
“Were you not human once?”
“I’m not having this conversation with myself, Dark Me. So if you want me to participate, morph into someone else.”
It wriggles on top of me, kind of… humping me. Its hands start caressing me, its legs moving alongside mine, its cock growing against my stomach. And even though I don’t want to be turned on, my cock grows in response.
In response to what, Josep? Yourself? The madness of this whole thing suddenly hits me.
What if it’s just always been me? What if the Darkness is nothing more than my own insanity?
“What if,” Dark Me says, “you have always beenme, dear Josep? What if that were true? What ifyouare the Darkness? Havealways beenthe Darkness? And this entire life you’ve been living was just your own personal actualization?”
I sit up in the dirt. Mouth full of it. Heart beating so fast, I can’t seem to catch my breath. I can still hear Paul above me. He’s still talking to the scions who didn’t join us in the dirt. “Now go. All of you. Hunt me some wolves!”
There is a small commotion above, then a dispersal.
Paul, in a lower voice, says, “Come with me, blood lover. I have big plans for you.”
What is he doing? What is he plotting now? How will he fuck me over?
Whoever he is talking to, it’s not Ryet because even through the dirt, I can smell his rotting corpse. Ryet’s body has been decimated by the scions all around me.
No, whoever leaves with Paul is someone new.
But it doesn’t matter who this new person is, whatever Paul is up to, it’s got something to do with Ryet. He has an unnatural obsession with that man. Ryet is a tool. That is all he’s ever been, and Paul knows this. But Paul, he’s an ideas man. He has lots of them. He’s always up to something. Something he shouldn’t be up to, of course. But he likes it that way. It’s part of the chase for him. The deception, the waiting, and the angst that comes from the waiting.
I don’t understand him. Not even a little bit.
“Well, Josep,” Little Baby Darkness coos into my head, “haven’t you always been my tool too? And haven’t I loved you the most, above all others?”
But the Little Baby Darkness is wrong. She is the hammer and I am the nail.
The blood bag, not the blood.
“So?” I say back.
“I gave you favors, I gave you magic, I gave you everything.”
“So what?”
“So, this is how Paul feels about Ryet.” Little Baby Darkness pushes some hair out of my face because she’s next to me now. Here in the dirt. Which means this is, again, some kind of dream.
I can’t seem to find reality. And it bothers me. Because Paul doesn’t seem to be having the same trouble.
She leans over me, covered in dirt, pushing it off my face and caressing my cheeks. “That’s because Paul isn’tyou.” Little Baby Darkness boops me on the nose with a fingertip when she says this last word.
