Aching Hope aka Naomi's entry

You are creeped out. You are terrified. Your heart beats hard in your chest and you want it to be quiet, but it keeps shuddering through you, making you tremble. The wall is wet, slick, but there isn’t time to look and see what’s on it. It could only be condensation, but its staining your fingers. It could just be wet paint… No. Don’t think about it.

You wipe your hands on your jeans, feel the shredded bits of cloth, and then you run. Your feet squeak against the stairs, causing it to tremble worse than your legs. It’s going to topple and fall, but you keep running. Keep huffing in breath, even though the lungs inside your chest are shuddering, and gasping, and closing in. Of course they are. Just like your stomach is squeezing itself shut, just like your muscles are stretching and tightening as they shrink. That’s the way it works. That’s the way it should be.

Your foot slips and the whole staircase falls down around you. Dust. Wooden boards. Sharp nails digging into your skin. More wounds cover your body but you get up anyway. Shouldn’t have. You see him then, dangling from the ceiling, hung by his own entrails. You don’t think it’s artistic, though I thought it was a nice touch. No. You’re retching and trying not to scream, scrambling backwards on shredded hands while your body folds and snaps in on itself.

“I have you,” I whisper and you scream. Pitiful. I open up my maw to devour you… And all stops. I grow cold. I am turned invisible and am pushed away. You laugh, cackle, look like a worn out old hag. There is a dagger in your hand. You must have fallen on it. A mistake. A glitch. Impossible.

“You have nothing.” You wave the dagger in my face and spit on me. Then, very carefully, you cut me apart and strew me around the room. The blade doesn’t touch my soul though.

You thought it would be easy. Thought that the police could wipe away the memory of your dead lover, of my dead face. It doesn’t. I see the way you shudder, still. I see the way you warm yourself with coffee that reeks of heat and warmth. I watch you, bent over a few scraps of paper, the hum of a nearby laptop. I smile. Never expected. Still not expected.

I bide my time. I watch you. You huddle under covers at night, you scream when no one’s listening, when the music blasts to uncomfortable levels. You drown yourself in a life that bores you, until you hide around corners and gasp in breath. You can’t see it, but the back of your neck is stained red, from pressing against the wall. My wall. You’ve been stained completely. Not just your skin, ridiculous, your soul. I feel it now, pulsing, bright with life.

You sit back at your computer. You sip at your coffee, grimace because it’s too hot, or because you hate the taste. It doesn’t matter. I wait while you lose yourself, distract yourself, and then I dive. For a moment your eyes widen, your mouth parts slightly in surprise. I taste your fear.

And then it doesn’t matter.

Because I am you, and you are me, and we are – at last – one.