“- and you act like that? What wrong wit’ you?”
“It worked, didn’t it? The Dark elders were fighting for my imprisonment. All decisions have to be unanimous, but if he speaks, then that’s that. I was released and it was promised that I would no longer be hunted as long as I never returned there. I thought I had victory, until, apparently, since my return, I became Lydia Smith with absolutely no memories of anything. Finally get my chance to live my life, and Lydia was pretty pathetic, wasn’t she? Doing everything to keep from having a life.”
“Memories can easily be erased and forgotten, but the body don’t forget,” Cherise said. “You might go by Aliyah, now, but to me, you still my girl, Lydia, and because you my girl, it’s my job to watch out fo’ you. Are we doin’ this or we goin’ sit here jibber-jabberin’ while your Light knight need our help?”
“He’s not mine.”
“Whatever.”
“Hold my hand. Do not forget that you are holding my hand. Keep it in the forefront of your mind all the while. Oh, and Cherise?”
“What?”
“If there’s ever a certain kind of look you ever wanted to have, other than nude, remember it.”
CHAPTER 22
Humans were easy, too easy, pathetically easy. Dwayne remembered his life as human, all the fears, the anxieties, the disbelief in the unknown, and neither caring about it, really. Human life seemed intolerable, time being your worst enemy.
For disadvantaged people like him, who could rarely find a job, or keep one, for that matter, because he refused to be owned or controlled by anyone after his father, 24 hours a day was spent wondering where the money would come from to buy enough food to satisfy the body, to get warm enough shelter and clothes to keep the body from freezing to death, let alone all those other needs of the human body.
In his human life, he thought he’d hit a jackpot with his former wife. She’d loved him for the way he was, didn’t seem to care that he couldn’t hold a job, provided him those three meals, those vital needs of the human body, as well as some comfort, too.
Things changed once they’d married. She began complaining about him not bringing in enough income, not doing enough around the house, not being the kind of man she wanted in her life, and that old insecurity that his old man had always encouraged returned to him. Not good enough. So he’d gotten her pregnant. The first one she was able to, with good conscience up until, get rid of, saying they weren’t ready, but it had haunted her, so when she ‘accidently’ got pregnant again, she couldn’t go through with another termination procedure.
Throughout the pregnancy, he’d gotten a job and had become that ‘better man’ she wanted. She thought he’d changed and was doing it for her. Humans, so ignorant, so self-centered. He’d just needed her to need him, because that would ensure that she wouldn’t leave, so he waited for the baby, let her struggle with trying to find childcare and paying for it for the first three months, before he presented to her his usefulness again. He’d stay home and take care of the child, because his employment was only seasonal to begin with.
No more transporting the child to and from sitters. No more sitters calling last minute to say they couldn’t babysit that day, earning her write-ups at work and threatening her job. No more waking up an hour earlier to get the baby fed, dressed, the diaper bag filled, with no time for coffee or pre-work preparation. Nope, he’d take care of it all.
Did her appreciation last long? Nope. Humans. Never satisfied. She’d come home from work after a long day of his taking care of the baby, and she’d be mad about the house being a mess, nothing being done, about having to make dinner, about giving him a break after all day spent taking care of a baby’s needs. She’d started throwing it in his face about how she worked all day and the least he could do was this, and the least he could do was that, and once again, he wasn’t good enough. Any type of passion he attempted to take care of his other human needs were met with a cold shoulder. She would want him again when he was a better man.
He’d endured this treatment for years, constantly being reminded that he wasn’t good enough, constantly threatened that she would leave him the moment she found someone else. But when they’d fight … when they’d really fight … he’d show her who was boss and put her back in her place.
It was life, but it wasn’t happiness. As his daughter, Aliyah, grew, he began to find those moments of happiness. The way that she smiled at him when he held her, or didn’t hold her. The way that she smiled at him no matter what. Her big twinkling eyes that loved him. It didn’t matter if he didn’t dress her right, or if it took him a few hours to change her diaper, or if he left everything a mess – she loved him, anyway.
The moment he would hold her. The moment he would look at her. She’d smile.
He entertained a life of constantly not being good enough, yet, in his daughter’s eyes, there were no conditions. She loved him no matter what. It became his only source of happiness.
Instead of getting Most-Devoted-Dad-Of-The-Year award, however, it just became something more unpleasant from his wife. She’d become jealous of his attention toward the child. She’d made it very clear that he wasn’t good enough for her, so he’d focused his attentions and energies on the child, instead. He’d stopped even remotely attempting to please his wife. She couldn’t be pleased.
But then school inevitably started for his daughter – his usefulness to his wife to continue to support him ended. He’d kept her out of school as long as he could, but almost six years old, he’d had to let her go. His wife began threatening to leave him, so he’d given in, picked up another inconsistent job, did some other things on the side to provide her with the money she wanted, while also pretending to pay more attention to her and be romantic and provide for her love needs, even though she was the one that cut them off to begin with.
He’d gone from having his happiness throughout the day with the child while she was working, to having to work, and by the time he got home, he had to act like he didn’t care for the child. It was torture doing all those things, being controlled by another person, just to keep the one thing that made him happy, day after day, second after minute after hour and hour, waiting for his wife to fall asleep so that he could finally have those few moments of unconditional love with his child.
All his human body had ever wanted was unconditional love – to be loved as he was. His mother only knew her duty to her husband, even if that husband was a bastard. His father was an ‘upstanding’ man that put over 40 years into his factory job, but would come home and not be an upstanding father or husband. He’d been a brute. Cruel. Horrible. He hated children. Hated everything outside his job. His expectations were to be like him without ever dishing out a piece of love or pride, rather force, fear, punishment.
Dwayne being the middle child – he was fat, ugly, unmotivated, disrespectful. He’d always been found wanting, especially in comparison to his older brother that maintained the same ideals as their father. Dwayne had had to suffer the consequences of his father’s ‘upstanding’ work and job all throughout his upbringing, and he’d wanted nothing to do with that. He’d wanted to be better than to have his entire existence ruled by a boss that would expect so much, give so little, and not care about the consequences at the home front.
His human body had endured so much and so many conditions that it had become obsessed with the feeling of finally being good enough, finally not being judged, finally being loved the way he was without conditions. Being able to do whatever he wanted, yet still be loved. Someone in the world that finally understood him, his need, but continued to love him nonetheless.
By the time his child was seven, his wife had taught her how to clean, take care of the house, be by herself for a few hours while they were both working, and how to feed herself. He should have known what was happening, but he’d been so focused on pleasing her on all fronts in order to have his satisfaction, he hadn’t seen it, until it was too late. The child became old enough to take c
are of herself and serve her mother’s purposes, so he was no longer needed. She’d left him, just like that. No backwards glance, nothing. Taking the child, his only source of love, with her.
No matter, he knew how much his daughter loved him. He’d practically raised her after all, while the mother spent her days working and not having enough time to ever play with her. Her mother didn’t love her like he did; she was merely using her as she’d used him. So he’d set up everything to get her out of there so that it could just be him and her, forever. But when he’d gotten her, what he hadn’t counted on, was the mother’s manipulation that would brainwash her into wanting to be with her mother instead of him.
As much as he’d become obsessed with his child, she’d acted just as obsessed over returning to her mother, hurting him extraordinarily. He’d tried so many things to get her to forget about her mother, and recognize that he was the one that loved her most in the world. Then he tried to show her that he needed her more than her mother did. And when that didn’t work, he decided he needed to show her how much she needed him. He needed her to remember that he was the only one that loved her.
But instead of calling out for him, crying for his help, she’d screamed for her mother to save her. Only then did he realize that all those times the mother was forcing him to work and everything else, she’d been turning his child against him. It was no longer his child. Her mother had turned her into her mother. Even before she was dead. Even while she was still crying and fighting to stay afloat, he mourned the loss of his daughter. The one person who had ever unconditionally loved him. To him, his daughter had already died, and he’d grieved more than ever before.
Only after his grieving did he come to understand his new situation. She’d been floating atop the water, the shore taking her away for quite a while. Dead. Once he’d had a moment away from his grief did he recognize the problem. He was the child’s guardian. They’d come after him for her death, figure out who she was – that she’d been abducted – and he’d have to take the fall for everything his ex-wife did, when he was the innocent one. All he wanted was love. She was the one that used everyone and everything for her purposes, turning and manipulating so many, including his own beloved child, for her own purposes.
Knowing the justice system, at that point, after so many court battles when he’d tried to do things the right way, he knew what he had to do. Find a replacement, another child, that wouldn’t cause suspect for anything. Eventually she’d love him like his own child had, but he had to ensure that there was no wife, no mother, not anything that would taint her love.
Savannah just so happened to be the same age, and just so happened to look like Aliyah. It was all too easy. But something had changed inside himself the day Aliyah, his true daughter, betrayed him. He’d known that he would never again feel that deep contentment from unconditional love, or believe in it. His thrills, from there, became control. His father after all, why fight it any longer?
He came to love his new Aliyah even more than he loved his old one. His old one had been entirely complacent, doing everything he wanted without voice or complaint, and quite passive. Something he had entirely loved until she began choosing above him the very woman that had ruined everything, because his child was complacent to everyone.
The new Aliyah had not been so easy, and still wasn’t. She’d fought every step of the way … every … step. Yet, in the end, just like it had been in his years growing up with his father, she didn’t have a choice. He saw more of her in him than he’d ever seen in his true child. He’d shared with her ‘the knowing’, so she was more like him than anyone he’d ever known. He’d given her a gift.
To understand suffering, so that she could love those that suffer when no one else in the world could understand.
But she’d lost sight of the game, the way they played. She’d wanted a normal life without recognizing that once you’re in, you can never get out. She’d tried eliminating him and everything else to have that, but in the process, she’d done him a favor. She’d freed him. After all, she was but human, as all the rest of them were, oblivious, close-minded, and easy.
It didn’t take the Dark souls long at all to find bodies to possess. Humans just working their jobs to make a paycheck to support their home would throw up their hands the moment there was a threat, so just like that, prisoners were released – the worst of the worst – the serial killers, the mutilators, the pedophiles, the anti-socials, willingly possessed to gain their freedom. The terrified guards practically handed the prisoners the keys to their escape.
Dwayne, an eternally imprisoned Dark-souled criminal in Otherland, was now the leader in the creation of the new world here, because his soul had shown to be the blackest of the black, as dark and as evil as they come. All his life’s work had meant something after all. For him, this was heaven.
“Possessing a human body, you will have all forgotten its requirements. You’ll get accustomed to hearing the owner of the body’s voice behind the scenes, though only you will hear it, so don’t act like a lunatic. Before we leave, does anyone have to go to the bathroom? Does anyone need food or drink?” Dwayne directed his words toward the newly-possessed prisoners.
They all, as huge and dangerous-looking as they were, looked at one another. “Once we get started, we are not stopping for any breaks, so it is important the human body needs are taken care of now. Believe me, I possessed a 60-year-old previously, and learned all of this the hard way. He had a bladder the size of a pea.”
One man, probably 5’9”, but 250 lbs of raw muscle, tattoos covering more of his body than not, raised his hand.
“What’re we in kindergarten? What?”
“Um, my guy, Bones, here, says he’s been locked up for nearly two decades, and he would love to have some drinks and a woman or two or three,” he chuckled.
The rest of them boisterously agreed on that front, wanting the same thing.
“Idiots,” Dwayne mumbled. “Once we take care of the business that needs to be taken care of right now – the girl, Aliyah – then you can have all the drinks and women that you want. She’ll be on the move shortly. We need to get her while I still know where she is. Let’s move.”
The prison guard could be heard on the phone, calling for as much backup as he could get. Dwayne, irritated, lifted his hand quickly, and the phone flung across the room and shattered against the bars.
“You want me to kill him? I really want to kill him. My guy here says he used to piss on the bars of his cell at night, raunchy-smelling piss, that he’d have to go to sleep to every night,” the one who possessed the pedophile’s body said.
“No, leave him. The more police that come here to handle this situation, the less there will be to be called to the house we’re going to.”
“We’re not afraid of a few dozen piggies. There’s nothing they can do to us,” a gruff voice belonging to a massive dark black body said.
“WE’RE WASTING TIME!” Dwayne snarled. He quickly had his hand around the guy’s throat. “If the body you’re possessing gets killed, you won’t have a body to possess, now will you? Then you’ll be entrapped in the same darkness that you came from, because our Dark souls have no tolerance for any type of light, just as I have no tolerance for idiots. You do as you’re told, and only what you’re told, because if you mess up, I will send you right back to where you came from, because there are many, many more where you come from, and don’t think, for one second, that you’re irreplaceable. Now let’s GO!”
CHAPTER 23
Cherise was decked out in black leather pants, five-inch stilettos, a red leather shirt, and dreadlocks nearly to her knees, with different colored bands at the end of each dreadlock, carrying a – .
“A gun is not going to do anything, Cherise,” Aliyah chuckled. “They’re spirits.”
“Oh, this ain’t just any gun. This a super power demon blaster. Betta’ than any sword you carryin’, lookin’ like TombRaider.”
“This is a special s
word engraved in white light. It scorches them.”
“My piece blow them up, so they nothin’ but smoke. I got dis.”
There was a low guttural moan, and many more to follow, seemingly surrounding them on all sides.
“What in the hell?” Cherise said.
“Lost souls. We gotta keep moving. This way, toward the white. Keep your eyes straight forward, and whatever you do, don’t stop and do not acknowledge what you see. You just keep moving, no matter what,” Aliyah warned.
“Girl, I ain’t see nothin’. It like bein’ blind, ‘cept seein’ all white instead of black.”
There were child cries of terror. “Mama, Mama, please, come back. Help us. Help us, Mama.”
“Those my kids,” Cherise yelled shakily.
“Cherise! It’s a trick. It’s meant to make anyone that walks this way turn back. Keep moving forward.”
Aliyah heard a harsh smack and knew that sound all too well. A child’s cries. The awful sound of the belt striking. “Stop crying.” His voice.
“Please, I’m sorry. I’ll be Aliyah. I’ll be your little girl.”
“Aliyah!” Cherise said alarmed.
“Just keep walking,” Aliyah said, her words trembling.
“You … shrinkin’.”
“My Aliyah loved me no matter what I did. She didn’t fight me like you fight me. She didn’t cry. She didn’t beg and plead. She loved me. SHE LOVED ME! And you will, too. I’m only doing this because I love you. You make me do this because you continue to betray me. One day you will not feel the hurt. One day you will not feel the pain. You will learn how not to cry, just as I was taught.”
Cherise kept pulling at Aliyah’s arm, as she’d begun dragging behind, her legs smaller, having to run to keep up. Right before Cherise’s eyes, Aliyah had become a child, no more than seven years old. After three more steps, the white blinding area opened up to a room with a bunk bed, crayon crudely drawn on the walls, a large man on his knees, leaning over a sniffling, frightened child. The knife glimmered in his hand.
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