Demon Girl

by Lisa M. Cronkhite

  He sat down beside me and touched my face. I could feel his energy seep into my skin; he was restoring my strength yet again. My eyes could see more clearly as my thoughts became open and fresh. I wasn’t worried much at that point, but I had to figure out how I could help Jesse.

  “You care too much for these humans, girlfriend. You’re too attached to them. Hey, you know you can ditch all this nonsense and live with me in my cave. Wanna?”

  “Please, Benjamin. Not now. I need to think.”

  “Just trying to lift your spirits. It worked, didn’t it?” he said, smiling at me.

  He was right. I did feel better. It was like he was his own energy source. The only other person that could do that was my father, but Benjamin was different. His aura was much stronger than any human could ever have.

  “So, sexy…you should take a look at yourself now!”

  “Please, Benjamin, how many times do I have to tell you?” I tried to deny his powers, but he was right. As I got up off the couch, I looked into the mirror on the wall across from where I was standing. I was surprised to see I was human again; completely human, like I had been before. I felt amazing, like I was glowing somehow. “How do you do it?”

  “Aww, shucks, it was nothing, my lady! Any time, any time.”

  I turned around back to the mirror and noticed he was gone.

  “Benjamin?”

  Later that night, I could feel my body changing again, but this time the metamorphosis was faster and less painful. After the change, I opened the balcony doors and flew away in search of Jesse. My senses told me he was at a bar in Chicago. Why he was in Chicago was beyond me.

  He was in the city at a local bar binge drinking. I could see a vision of him talking to someone as I flew above the buildings, circling around and looking for a landing spot on one of the rooftops.

  As I scanned through the walls of the bar, I heard him talking to a man dressed all in black.

  “Hey, fucker, we need to talk!” Jesse said, standing next to the man as he shot pool.

  “Who the hell are you?” the man asked, staring him down.

  I was surprised at Jesse’s tone of voice. He was pissed off as all hell and wanted to lash out at the guy, but why? What had got to him to this point?

  “Let’s step outside, or are you too pussy to own up to it?”

  The man threw his pool stick down and walked over to him. “You have a serious problem, buddy, yeah…let’s take it outside!”

  Jesse and the man walked through the back door of the building and out into the alleyway. I had a bird’s-eye view and could see everything very clearly. Even though it had been dark and rainy that night, my senses were extremely high and exact. I could zero in and intensify my sight to adjust to the weather.

  “It’s yours, isn’t it?” Jesse asked with a slur.

  “What the fuck are you talking about, asshole?” The man raised his hands and pushed Jesse down. As Jesse got up, he pushed him back.

  “Sarah Hudson, you fuck-face! You’re the one who knocked her up. You bastard, I’m gonna kill you!”

  Instantly, I could read Jesse’s thought pattern. “Fuck this world! Fuck Charlene! Fuck Sarah! Fuck ‘em all!” His swearing cut through me like a knife. He was overwhelmed with hate and regret. The alcohol levels in his system were at an all-time high as he had been drinking for days; I could smell it in his thoughts. He had just learned that Sarah was pregnant—by another man―and after the incident with me, that just compounded things even more. However, I couldn’t understand. He wasn’t in love with Sarah; he was still in love with the Charlene he knew, the Charlene who wrote poetry. I could sense his thoughts were intermingling with rage and anger, and he wanted to lash out after hearing the news of Sarah’s child. He thought it was his at first, but later found out it was all a lie. The truth was Sarah had cheated on him, and that was why Jesse left her the first time; that’s when he found me.

  The man stared long and hard into Jesse’s face. He flashed a knife out and lunged at Jesse with full force. “Not if I kill you first, mother-fucker.”

  They wrestled each other, Jesse swinging his fists, while the man swung his knife. I kept a close eye on the flashing blade as the man continued to pounce on Jesse. As the two pushed each other around, Jesse reached for the knife. The man had slashed Jesse’s hand.

  “You fucker…that’s it. You’re dead!” Jesse snarled out.

  As Jesse charged, the man punched him in the face and instantly he was down.

  Just as the man was ready to make his next move, I made one first.

  I swooped down, knocking the knife right out of his hand. He turned around, a look of shock on his face.

  “Jesus Christ, what the hell are you?” the man shrieked.

  I scanned through him with my demon eyes, reading his thoughts. He was in fact the father of Sarah’s baby, and, knowing that, I didn’t want to kill him.

  I gave him one hard look as he stood there, then picked Jesse up and left.

  I placed Jesse down on a bed of leaves near his house. He was still unconscious from the fight. Checking again to make sure he was still breathing, I put my face close to his. He looked so helpless, all beaten up and broken down. I could feel the slow rhythm of his heart as I placed my hands on his chest. My mind wandered to the time we first met. Why had he come to visit me without telling me first? Why was there that sudden urge to see me? Had I been giving out some kind of force? Was it my fault?

  My feelings for him started to grow again, and as my heart fluttered faster, his wounds started to heal. Right before my eyes, Jesse’s slashed hand sealed up. Was I causing this? Were my powers healing him? As I stood there, feeling more and more confident he would be all right, he began to awaken. I gave him one last glance, kissed him softly on his lips and flew away.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Days passed, and I was alone, yet again.

  My metamorphosis became sporadic, and I wasn’t changing every night. Instead, I felt like I had it under control. I noticed when my emotions took over I changed faster, and at that point I wasn’t feeling out of control, but the depression set in. All I could think about was my previous life and Drake. How had he been? Would I ever see him again?

  I called the psychiatrist so I could vent about the things that had been happening to me, yet how could I explain? I was able to get an appointment later that day.

  I reminded myself I still had the file from the last visit. I thought of what it said, remembering the name Chris. Who had he been? Would he know anything about the lost days spent near the lake? How in the world would I find out who he was?

  I looked at the file again, noticing the nurse’s name on duty that day—Goodson. Maybe he would know. I made a mental note to go to the hospital after the doctor’s appointment.

  As I finished looking through the file, there was a knock at my door.

  “Charlene, it’s David,” he called out through the door.

  “Just a minute.”

  I quickly put the file in my bedroom and answered the door.

  “Hey, David, what’s up?”

  “Well, I was wondering if I could talk to you. Do you have some time?”

  “Sure, come in.”

  He walked in and took a seat on the couch. “You really do have a beautiful view here.”

  “Yeah, you mentioned that before. So, what’s going on? “

  “Well, I was wondering if you heard from the police about the breakin?”

  “No, why do you ask?”

  “Well, because I could have sworn I saw someone last night. It was too dark to tell, but it was as if the shadowed figure flew.”

  Oh, no! I thought. Maybe what he saw was Benjamin. Perhaps it was me? What else had David been seeing? Suddenly, I felt uncomfortable. Something wasn’t adding up. What did David really know about me?

  “I don’t know, maybe I’m seeing things,” he said, getting up and looking out the window, “but it sure seemed like it was real.”

  “
I don’t know either, David. I haven’t really been around lately.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that. Where did you go?”

  I didn’t think it was any of his business. He was acting a little strange as he stood there looking out the glass doors. He seemed distracted, and for some reason, while I tried to listen in on his thoughts, I couldn’t. They were blocked. It was too hard to tell whether I was able to in human form.

  “I was out of town.”

  “You know, Charlene, I thought we were friends…” his voice stalled for a moment, “but I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”

  “Listen, I’m running late. I don’t have time for this right now.”

  “Oh, sorry. I should go.”

  I didn’t want to sound mean, but I really did need to get going.

  “Can we continue this later?” I asked.

  “Sure, how about later tonight?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Maybe some other time then?”

  “Yes”

  “Oh, wait! I forgot. Here, you might be needing this,” he said, pulling something out of his pocket. It was the rosary the priest had given me when I had visited the church. I was surprised to see it. I didn’t remember losing it.

  “Oh, thanks. Where did you find it?”

  “In the bushes along the back of the building.”

  I wondered how he knew it was mine. I knew we were the only two living in the apartment complex, but still. The bushes were along the end of the building and nowhere close to where I remembered being. Maybe the wind took it, but how did he know?

  David left just minutes before I walked out.

  As I drove, I thought of the time when it first started—when we started having sex. Back when I was younger, back in my past life, I hated him. I resented him. The vision of Drake’s father still burned in my mind. I often wondered why it even happened in the first place, and how? Did I make it happen? He didn’t love me, I knew that. When I felt his hands touching me in the middle of the night, I’d fake being asleep. He would crawl through my window to make sure he was undetected. In my sick way of thinking, I pretended he did love me.

  “Shh,” he had whispered. “This will only take a few minutes…I promise, you’ll enjoy it.”

  I had lain there in the bed, acting as if I didn’t care, but it broke my heart he was cheating on her—and with me no less. At first I was scared and didn’t know how to react. He made me feel dirty. I felt everything I knew was just a lie.

  Every night the same thing would happen. As soon as we were alone, he would crawl into bed with me. It wasn’t until I felt something growing inside me that I left him—when I left home. That something growing in my belly was Drake. Adam would never hurt me again.

  After waiting in the doctor’s room for a while, he came in and asked me how I was. I got into it right away.

  “I have these images of my past life…before the incident,” I said to him, looking down into my lap, then out the window.

  “Everyone goes through this, Charlene. Amnesia is an illness. Some people never recover, and some remember things they never even knew happened.”

  “Yes, I know, but it still feels so real. I believe it is.”

  “Remember, it takes time to heal,” he said sifting through his papers.

  I wasn’t getting anywhere with him. Clearly he didn’t understand or didn’t want to. I was beginning to see it was all a business. I finally noticed my doctor had no bedside manner, and all he cared about was the money he made.

  “This isn’t working for me,” I said.

  I got up and walked out.

  As I drove to the hospital, reminding myself I might get answers there, I thought of the incident again, when I was rescued. How could I have spent ten days in the lake, or around the lake, until help came? I remembered falling in the lake, descending off the bridge and hitting the ice-cold water.

  New images started to form in my mind. It was too hard to drive, so I pulled over on the side of the road, just like I had done before only weeks ago. Again, I heard a voice: “She made a mistake and unintentionally killed herself. It wasn’t supposed to happen this time. She accidentally slipped and fell, cracking her heart open. She thought it would release the pain, but instead it backfired. Shattered, and now the pieces infect her as she reflects on what she did. She walks along the lake of her fleshy tides, now collecting the shards she mistakenly broke, looks at them, thinking they are now beautiful in a different way…feeling the fall may happen yet again. We must save her, dear Lord.”

  It was Delmara’s voice. As the image grew, I could see a woman in the water. She had given up feeling, gone numb, let her skin freeze. She watched her organs fail to thrive below frigid water and turn to stone. Her face, pale white like the winter clouds, gazed upon a November moon as snowflakes adorned her eyelids, sealing them shut. Her flowing hair breathed along the current—a blonde mane of silk, with flecks of blue, caressed her as she lay beneath sheets of ice, a place she had gone before. It was the lake of my dreams. The woman in the lake had been me as ten days passed before my eyes, and the man that saved me looked vaguely familiar. As I watched these new images form in my mind, the man turned around, yet I could not see his face.

  I remembered how the transformation felt.

  I began to feel a different side—a side I wasn’t familiar with―spreading inside me; a future. Thinking only of this growth, I removed my dead mind of the past, washed my eyes of doubt and loosened my heart to free my love. I was unclothed of skin to provide warmth for my new unborn thought. There I lay with my chest open, letting the spindled array of light breathe new life into me as I kissed my past life good-bye and welcomed the sun.

  As I floated upward under the water, I could feel her thoughts run through mine. “This is not the end for you, Charlene, yet a re-birth of the new. It takes time to mend death. Your sin will remain on trial until you are healed.”

  My vision seemed like I had been experiencing it all over again, and in the blink of an eye, it was gone.

  I started the engine of the car and went to the hospital for more answers.

  Chapter Twenty

  After lingering in the E.R. waiting room for nearly two hours, Nurse Goodson finally walked up to me, introducing himself. “Hi, are you Miss Peters?” he asked, reaching his hand out to shake mine.

  “Yes, I wanted to speak with you about an incident that happened a year ago.”

  “Okay…a year ago? A lot goes on here, but I’ll try.”

  “Last year, around this time, I had to be hospitalized.”

  “Yeah, I thought you looked familiar—bipolar, right?”

  “Yeah, how did you remember?”

  “Hard to forget a beautiful woman like you. You were very distraught.”

  “Oh.” I blushed. “Well, you might remember the man that brought me in. Chris was his name, I believe.”

  “Don’t remember much about him. All I know is he brought you in through the E.R. doors and waited around to make sure you were okay. He didn’t ask much.”

  “Do you remember what he looked like?”

  “No, like I said, people walk in and out of here every day, hard to remember everyone.”

  “Yeah, sorry. I just thought…well, is there anything else you remember?”

  He stood here and paused for a moment, holding his hand up to his chin. “Ahh, yes! There was one thing.”

  “What?”

  “His last name.”

  “What about it?”

  “That was his last name; Chris. I remember now. I thought it was odd.”

  “Do you remember his first name by chance?”

  He thought for a moment or so and replied. “Yes…it was Ben. Ben Chris.”

  Dear God, I thought. Benjamin brought me into the hospital that day.

  My thoughts were spinning as I drove home. It was getting late, and I had to rush. I could feel myself changing again. As my thoughts raced as quickly as I sped, I wondered about Benjamin again
. I must have been one of his suicide-save missions, yet it went horribly wrong. He was too late.

  The transformation continued to get stronger and stronger. Please not now! I must get home before I fully change!

  The bones in my hands and feet were starting to break, and I could feel my wings scratching underneath the skin of my back.

  Let me just make it home, dear God. God? If there is even one!

  I pulled up to my apartment complex, parked the car and got out.

  I ran inside and up the stairs.

  Once inside, I shut the blinds and locked the doors. My metamorphosis changed me within minutes. I felt the urge to escape and fly, but I trapped myself in, hoping to control it. The room spun, and yet my body was still and stiff. I could feel myself being closed in. I tried shutting my eyes, but I could see through my eyelids. I could see through the walls too. It was like I was encased in glass, yet I could see inside the whole building.

  Something caught my eye in David’s apartment. In a room in the back, there were pictures pasted on the walls. As I zoomed in closer, I was shocked at what I saw. The plastered photos were of me! Some were profile shots and others were of a more disturbing nature. I couldn’t make it out that easily since the room was so dark, and the photos were in black and white, but I was certain they were all of me. The one that struck me the hardest was the one where I lay there on the beach. Dear God! I thought. It was David that been watching me this whole time, but why have all these alarming pictures of me? How long had he been doing this, and why was I seeing all this now?

  “Because you had to figure that out for yourself,” a voice said from across the room.

  I opened my eyes and saw a dark figure in the corner of my room. As he stepped into the moonlight peeking through the cracks of the blinds, I could see it was a man, yet something else entirely. It was like a projected image of a man. As the shadowed physique moved closer, I remained in shock. “Dear God! David! What are you doing here?”

  Suddenly, I couldn’t move. It was like he had me strapped to the bed with his eyes. His eyes began to change into a brownish yellow, and his hair changed into a salt-and-pepper gray. His face melted and moved, then formed another face.