Almost Alive

by Christina Barr

  I wasn’t looking at myself, admiring me. I was somewhere else watching those eyes crave my body and lean in close enough for its breath to fog up the glass. It whispered, “Give me this body.”

  I was frozen, yet my body shook from uncontrollable laughter that would chill your spine like something out of a horror film. It was so cunningly evil, and it was in my body!

  “No!” I managed to scream, and the glass cracked in half, splitting my forehead open and causing it to pour blood down my face. I panicked and ran for a stall for toilet paper, but one by one each door flung open while simultaneously flushing the toilets. Out of fear, I backed up into the sink, which also sprung to life and began to shoot out water faster than the drain could allow, and all three began to overflow. Even with all of this, I didn’t head for the door until the lights began to flicker.

  “Help!” I pulled on the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. I banged and screamed, hoping that at least one person cared. “Somebody, please!”

  Someone should have heard me, but no one had come to my rescue. Someone was bound to find me eventually, but I felt helpless. I lost the will to fight and collapsed in the corner crying like a child trapped within my nightmare.

  “Stop!” Once again, everything obeyed the word of Julian barging in to save me from a mystery.

  Stay away from him! But there was nowhere to go. Why would I want to run from my hero?

  “Michelle!” He got on his knees and held me in his arms—the only pair of warm arms left in existence.

  “This school is haunted!”

  “It’s not the school, Michelle. It’s you.”

  I ceased all mass hysteria and became still and whimpered lightly to myself.

  “You killed yourself.”

  I wanted to deny it, but he had already caught me with no pride twice. “How do you know that?”

  “I’m afraid I speak from experience.” He let me go and took off his wristbands, revealing vertical scars down his forearms. “I killed myself too.”

  I didn’t know what to say. If I were among another freak, did that still make me a freak too? Would he ever understand me, or would we be two separate problems with uncommon solutions? Then there was still a part of me that didn’t want to trust him.

  “This is very important, Michelle. Do you remember hell?”

  His words plunged right into my chest, making it ache and robbing me of my breath. “What do you mean?”

  “When you died—”

  “Nothing happened!” I yelled. Perhaps it was a bit excessive, but that’s what made my new life so miserable. “There was no light, no greater truth! Our lives amount to nothing!”

  “No.” His blue eyes told me how kind he truly was and how he desperately wanted to keep me naive, yet he was honor bound to make us both brave. “You thankfully blocked it out, but you’re not unscathed.”

  I didn’t remember what it was like to be dead. The only feeling I had was the ache. “I don’t understand.”

  “When you left hell, a demon attached itself to your soul, and it will feed on it until it’s completely gone.”

  Was that why everything was so dull and why people had no warmth? How much of me was already gone? “Then what will happen?”

  “It gets to live in your skin permanently.”

  “I don’t believe you!” I hid my face in my knees and covered my head. Life wasn’t a dream. I had to wake up from the nightmare. Somehow!

  Then he touched my shoulder. “Do people always feel cold? Do you look yourself in the mirror and know your eyes aren’t right? Do you hear thoughts in your head that sound like yours, might even sound like reasonable suggestions, but you know it’s not you? Are you haunted, Michelle?”

  He was right. I could feel it clawing on my insides trying to take control and do wicked things to him. When I thought about it too much, I couldn’t breathe. It had hidden so well inside of me, even pretended that we were one in the same, but I finally accepted the truth and broke out in a fit of tears. “Can you help me?”

  “Of course.” The demon played me for such a fool to ever make me think such cruel things about Julian. He was odd, but there was even a handsome face hiding under all that mascara. But as nice as he was, there was still an inner strength worthy enough to stop demons in their tracks. “There’s only one condition.”

  “Anything!” There was no price too high.

  He smirked, allowing another side of his personality to manifest. He wasn’t going to be my sponsor or guru. He had the spirit of a true warrior, and I knew that I would also be called to fight. “After I save you, you’re gonna help me hunt them.”

  Chapter Two

  I never thought life could get more complicated after death. I guess I was terribly mistaken. I was almost beginning to miss staying in my bed every day with nothing better to do than envy corpses. I didn’t even have enough emotion inside of me to cry myself to sleep. All that time I wished for something big enough to happen to force myself out of my nightmare was suddenly regretted. I wished I could go back to sleep. At least the nightmare would explain the monsters.

  “I hope you don’t mind that we cut school.” Julian took me to a place where we could talk privately. I don’t know why he felt the best place would be under a graffiti covered bridge on a murder scene waiting to happen, but alas! That’s where we had our meeting.

  “Well, since I’m still hoping that the school is haunted and I’m not possessed with a demon dinning on my soul, I think skipping out on trigonometry is just peachy.”

  “I like your sarcasm. It’s adorable.” I couldn’t tell if he were serious since he kept a completely straight look on his face.

  “Well, yours isn’t!” I yelled. “Let’s cut the crap and just get to how I can be cured from this. Do I need a priest? Do I need to go hot tubbing with some holy water? What?”

  He chuckled. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple.”

  “Then make it simple!” I knew that I was still being too vicious toward him, but I found it hard to help it. Every fiber of my being was telling me to run away screaming from Julian. I don’t even understand how I found the will to stand fidgety in front of him.

  “I wish I could.” Even the way he leaned so lackadaisical on the wall sickened me. He should have been more sympathetic or freaked out for me! Everything about him made me see him as a bigger jerk, despite knowing that it was the demon that made me feel that way about him! “You see, most demons have the common goal of obliterating humans. They want to destroy us in the best possible way.”

  “I got that from the ‘demon wants to eat my soul’ bit.”

  “No. Your demon is different. Any typical demon would want to make your life miserable and ultimately have you destroy yourself just because they hate you and want you dead. The demon inside of you wants your body intact, but your soul gone. You’re an extremely rare opportunity for a demon.”

  “But I thought catholic priests did all those exorcisms. Isn’t possession common and curable?”

  He laughed again and I swear I wanted to slap him! “You’ve seen too many movies. The demon isn’t in your body. It latched onto your soul from your time in hell. Demons can possess and influence regular people, but their life is still their life and there’s always a chance for redemption. You gave up the right to your life. It just so happens that you were able to come back.”

  “So are you saying I’m dammed to hell regardless of whatever I do?”

  “I don’t think God works that way.” He actually looked a little sad, like he really wasn’t sure. “If you prove yourself, I think you can make it into heaven. However, that’s irrelevant right now.”

  “And why is that?”

  He pushed himself off of the wall and walked in front of me with his arms crossed and glaring me down, which made me feel extremely uncomfortable. “Because we have to work on making sure that you have enough soul to make it to any sort of final destination. You don’t want a demon to eat your soul. Not only will it become more
powerful, but it will probably destroy everyone you care about with your face.”

  I was freaked out by that notion, but I also couldn’t think of anyone worth fighting for. My parents might have had some emotional strings attached to me out of obligations of being my parents, but they couldn’t care less about me as an individual. Then there was no one from my former life that I could afford to get close to again. “Well, I can’t say that I have anyone that I care about.”

  “Believe me. You don’t want this demon to win. It won’t be a pleasant ride while it eats your soul. You saw what it did to you today. Imagine tomorrow. You have to fight it.”

  I guess I very well couldn’t have nervous breakdowns in school or pounce on random guys just because they were cute. “How do I do that?”

  Julian enjoyed being my superior a little too much. He raised his finger and began circling around me. “Rule number one: do not entertain the demon.”

  I pretended to be horribly disappointed. “You mean we can’t play checkers?”

  “I’m serious.” He grabbed my arm and looked into my eyes. I wanted to pull away from him at first, but things were suddenly becoming clearer again. I realized how irritable I must have been. He was trying so hard to help me and I was pushing him away. I didn’t even hear the demon talking to me, but it must have been making me feel like I couldn’t trust him. “Don’t talk to this demon. It’s not your friend. Don’t let it pretend that it is. It will make promises to you, some that it can and can’t keep. If you accept it, it will pretend like it’s cooperating with you, but you lose your soul in the end and then it gets your body. That’s its goal. Period.”

  He let me go and I was still myself, but I could feel a gaping hole in my chest. I tried breathing slowly and quietly so Julian wouldn’t worry about me. I felt like I should apologize, but he must have known why I was acting so horribly. “Rule number two?”

  “Don’t sin.”

  I cocked my eyebrow. “Like stealing and killing?”

  “Like all ten commandments and beyond. If you think it’s a sin, then it is. Every act against God chips a piece of your soul away. Some sins will be more destructive than others.”

  I didn’t even know what was all in the bible. I don’t even think I had read a single page of it before, but I figured I could manage without it if I let my conscience be my guide. “Can I get pieces of my soul back?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  I gulped a little bit. I never really felt whole, but I certainly felt less ever since I came back. I hardly even felt alive. “Have you met anyone who lost their soul?”

  “Several people.” It was hard to take him serious with him being so calm. I wasn’t comfortable with monsters living among us. It could have been my school teacher or my friends. Was anyone really safe to be around?

  “And what are they like?”

  “They try to act like everyone else, but they’re not. They’re very cunning killers, always plotting against humanity. They may get to live human lives, but they are still demons.” I didn’t get Julian. He couldn’t have been older than eighteen, yet he was like some kind of old war veteran. A bit more compassion or uneasiness would have been appreciated, but I felt like he was gearing me up for war.

  “And what do they want? What’s the big plan? The apocalypse?” I got that they wanted our bodies for whatever reason, but it couldn’t have been cataclysmic if they expected to live our lives in our world!

  “I’m not sure. I just know that if we let them escalate, it will be bad.”

  “And is that what you’re expecting me to hunt?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what do we do with them once we find them?”

  He smirked. “That’s not lesson number three.”

  He might have been trying to charm me with his smile, but all he did was scare the crap out of me! “Then what is?”

  “Never just react. Think things through. If you can’t shake a negative emotion, it’s probably the demon.”

  “And we’re just gonna blame everything on the devil?” I was getting snippy with Julian again, but I don’t think I could have blamed that on the demon. I thought he was being too vague and simplistic about some very complicated and seemingly impossible things!

  “Demons influence a lot of people. No, not everyone is possessed, but they might have a spirit on them.”

  “What do you mean by that? I thought ghosts were spirits.”

  “No. It’s like a condition they can put on you. It’s a lust for a person you can’t shake or an anger that you can’t forgive or one too many drinks when you know deep down you’ve had enough. It’s that push from moderation to destructive, mostly disguised as fun.”

  I felt that heavy blow to my pride again, realizing how much I had been played. “The demon made me feel like no one else mattered. I have to live my life.” I thought I was making a healthy choice for my mentality and the demon totally tricked me.

  “That’s one of their favorite tricks. Think of two people who love each other. They might get attacked with a spirit of lust, but they’d never go through cheating on their spouse if they have a family. Then a spirit of selfishness gets thrown into the mix and they suddenly say ‘I’ve got to live my life’ and then everyone gets hurt.”

  If I didn’t know better, I would have said that Julian knew about my parents constantly cheating on each other. I guess what he said should have made me feel better and I should have been less judgmental, but it only made me angry. “I refuse to blame every bad thing in the world on demons. People suck!” I couldn’t let him convince me that Mom and Dad couldn’t help that they were terrible parents and whores. They didn’t deserve excuses when they ruined so much of me!

  “People do suck, but you don’t want to take responsibility for almost having sex with Michael.”

  It felt like a slight slap in the face, but I was somewhat justified. “I’ve got a demon in me!”

  “Demons aren’t only in hell, Michelle. They’re here and they are everywhere. They’re a whole lot smarter than we are. We don’t know how much they foresaw or how much of your life they anticipated. You didn’t wake up one day and decide that your life wasn’t worth living. It didn’t start out as a big, overwhelming thought. It was planted in your life until you couldn’t shake it. Then it made all the sense in the world. Now you’re a human pumpkin getting your insides craved out until the demon is ready to plaster whatever scary face it wants on you.”

  Was that really possible? Did they somehow maneuver every bit of my life from my parents disgusting behavior to the way it made me feel just to make me swallow a bottle of pills from Mom’s medicine cabinet? How could I fight against something like that? It knew me so well and I knew nothing about it. It already might have made me kill myself. What could I do now that it was making me lose my soul simply by convincing me to be myself?

  “Are you handling all of this okay?” Julian asked. “You seem a little whacked out.”

  “Maybe that’s because I am!” I yelled. “I can’t deal with this, Julian. I really can’t!”

  “I understand this is a lot.”

  “No, you don’t!” He was just too freaking calm! It was like he wasn’t human. No one had that much Zen or whatever to deal with this situation. Shouldn’t a normal human being be sympathetic toward me? It was like he was waiting for me to flip a switch and become a gun blazing, demon killing machine!

  “Do I need to remind you that I killed myself as well?” Then he only offered a small hint of frustration. “I went through the exact same thing as you. Honestly, you’re handling this a lot better than I did.”

  You’re not the same. He doesn’t have it as hard as you do. He was pissing me off! No, he didn’t understand what it was like to be me. I got that he killed himself, but the reasons why I killed myself were still present. He must have mellowed out or he was just the type of person who didn’t care!

  And then he wanted me to convert my entire life and then become some kind of demon
hunter. That wasn’t any kind of normal or acceptable! I had my own problems. If he weren’t being such a douche, he’d want to genuinely help me instead of making deals for me to be his army slave! “I don’t know what you have in store for me. I don’t know if I can fight them. I just want to get rid of it. How did you get rid of it?”

  He looked at me completely calm. “I didn’t.”

  “What do you mean?” I waited for his explanation, but apparently he didn’t have one. “You mean it’s still inside of you?”

  “It’s not a problem.”

  “What do you mean, ‘it’s not a problem’, “Julian? How do I know you’re not being controlled right now?” How can you trust him if he’s got a demon inside of him? He might have been feeding me a bunch of lies to get me thrown into a mental institution or prison. Maybe he wanted to lure me to that underpass so he could eat my skin or something! There had to be a cannibalism demon! How did I know he didn’t have one of those?

  He took a step closer to me and I took one back. I didn’t want him to eat my face off! “Think about it. If the demon had any authority over my life, the one inside of you wouldn’t be making you so hostile toward me. We’d be confidants.” He smiled. “Probably even lovers.”

  “Oh, what a shame!” I wasn’t usually so sarcastic, but he was a sick pervert!

  “I’m just being honest!” he laughed. “Last time I checked, having sex with someone who isn’t your marital spouse is a sin.”

  Oh, screw that! “You mean I can’t have sex again?”

  “Is that your human flesh crying outrage or is it the demon? I know I caught you about to screw Michael, but you don’t seem like a slut to me.”

  I tried to think about it. I did only have sex that one time with Jason and it wasn’t exactly the greatest thing ever. It was okay, but certainly not worth losing my soul over. “I don’t know!” Why does Julian have to butt in so much? “It’s not like it’s any of your business, but I’ve only had sex once.”