Wraith ; Semblance

by Riley Mason

  I watched as she sat there and carved these new details into her soft flesh. Feeling that singe run through her body. That cross of pain and pleasure swapping their impulses with one another as she sacrificed her body for the feelings she’d being supplemented with.

  I wanted to look away, but something about it just wouldn’t let me. I couldn’t pull my eyes away from it and put them back on the person trying to hurt me. I know he couldn't see it, that figure buried in the darkness, the room absent of lights but her silhouette was so clear to me, so exact, so perfect.

  Every feature on her face is clear to me because I know I’m looking at a version of me that once existed, buried in my history. This woman stepped out of the memories that trapped her, the one I never thought would be let out again.

  I knew she was there, watching me, watching this whole thing unfold because, at this moment, she thought this was her moment, her pivotal return to favor. When she could step out of the chains that had bound her to parts of my mind that I’d long forgotten about. The bits that had scarred me that I’d still managed to forget. Her arms there, dangling at her sides, blood still sliding down the soft milk colored skin as the raw fluid that gives them color slipped out.

  CHAPTER 34

  It did that because I had done it, I’d shed the skin holding it, I let out the blood out of her, I let it be free.

  I thought for a moment that she wanted revenge, that that was why she’d come here, to watch a handiwork that might not be her own but one that she’d recognize, one she might appreciate. One she’d be familiar with. It was what she wanted, I know it because behind those lost, glazed eyes, clouded and milky, my mind sat. My mind from another time but a mind of my own familiarity and design nevertheless, as much as I might regret it, as much as I might want to forget.

  She was waiting because she knew it’d be her time soon enough, to come back, to thrive. As the air was thinned inside my throat, the man I once loved asphyxiating me, she was watching, staring. Waiting to step back into a spotlight that she’d longed for. She knew that if I survived this, if by some chance I made it out of this alive, I’d go back to her, my hands out, my eyes filled with tears, exactly how she wanted me. That I’d become that woman all over again because in reality, she never really left me.

  I looked back at the man that had placed my delicate neck in the palm of his hand while his fingers buried into the soft flesh there. I tried to plead with him, but my voice was lost in the air that was meant to fuel it. His eyes had not changed, his feelings hadn’t wavered.

  I hit his arm with mine, as hard as I could. My hands balled into a fist, pushing it into anything that I could, his forearm, his bicep, his shoulder, whatever I could reach. He didn't move, his body didn't budge. Anger grew in his face and I wasn’t even sure he could feel what I was doing to him. He was going to kill me, and I finally realized that this was how I was going to die.

  CHAPTER 35

  Blackness swept into my vision, Luke’s final parting gift to me. It started as small circles of black bubbling into what I could see, floating through my vision. Now that the oxygen has all but depleted inside of me, it was stretching, like long thin arms with claws, swiping at my eyesight. Even the face of the man who was killing me no longer had the crystal clarity he’d held.

  I wanted someone to knock on the bathroom door, I begged for it. I thought that if they could do that, just allow me a second of distraction, maybe the grip on me would loosen, fall apart.

  Maybe enough air could get back into me for my voice to work again. In all the mayhem of the coffee house, it’d been alone, abandoned, as if Luke had found the one room off limits to both the general public and the employees.

  This was meant to be, it’s what I thought as my hand gave its last bit of effort to fight off the grip that proved too strong for me, even when I had my strength. I could feel the muscles surge under his skin, the veins that lined his forearm curve over the length of his arm, even if he were to let go, his handprint was no doubt tattooed into me. Charred into my flesh in blossoms of blue and black for everyone to see.

  I looked over to her again, this relic of my past. Her face pale and cold, her eyes white from the blood that’s fallen out of her. Her lips cold and cracked, her mouth slunk open, a corpse that still held a slight tremor of her heart, keeping her alive when her mind had long forgotten its way, the only emotions she understood were violent, her only language was a pain.

  I tried to give her my thoughts, project them out to her. To tell her she hadn’t won because I couldn’t survive this, I had no chance to do so now. It was over, I’d come to grips with that, I couldn't be saved anymore.

  It wasn’t until everything went quiet that I knew it was coming. The sounds of blood crashing inside the caverns of my ears had gone soft, quiet. The ocean had become tranquil, no longer turbulent from the storm of panic that my body had put on. The weight of me had become too much to support, and I slouched, my arms and legs went limp. My heart was slowing, it could no longer manage the strain being put on it.

  My lips began to move, dry and cracked like the reflection of this other version of me. They framed words, I didn’t know if Luke could read or understand them, there was no sound that was tied into them, my voice has already been killed.

  I mouthed the words, I’m sorry, for all the good that they’d do. They meant nothing, at this point it was more for him then it was for me. I did it to keep myself alive, to change this fate that had fallen on me. That my stupidity had driven me to, cornering myself in a public place, allowing someone so dangerous to get so close to me.

  I wanted to forget my mistakes but there was no chance to do that. That time had come and gone, and I’d failed to do my part to prevent them from happening. This sacrifice, my life was now my penance for that accident.

  I couldn’t be forgiven, as much as I wanted to be.

  CHAPTER 36

  My eyes floated to the woman, this rendition of who I was, this living memory of my past troubles, my sickness.

  I looked at her one final time, for her to see what path I was bound to. I was no longer being pushed to her reality, my own was far worse and much darker, despite the pools of blood that lay around her dead fingers, slipping in red strings to the floor to dry on the public stall tile.

  That’s when I saw someone step into view from a shadow that’s been perched over this former outline of the woman that I was, no longer alone.

  A face, lifeless and cold, like the one that she’s standing over. A face dressed in ghostly features, bleached white eyes, short hair, wet and slicked back. I see this frail woman step into this reality. It was like she was some lost figment of my own imagination that had the signature of my memory on it but gave me no recollection, absolutely nothing.

  I felt empty when I saw her, I thought there was nothing left to feel because there was nothing left at all, this was the moment of my death.

  The instant I saw her I could feel my heart suspend in my chest. It was not a stall, it didn’t just skip, but stopped altogether. It was gone and that last bit of air, that puddle of air at the very abyss of my lungs that had fought to preserve itself spilled out of me.

  CHAPTER 37

  I was standing in my office overlooking the body that had been wheeled in for examination by the local police, the one they’d had no time for.

  I was no longer in the coffee house, I was no longer on that cross-section of street or avenue a handful of blocks away from the hospital. I was no longer pleading for the last bit of breath hiding inside of me. There was no one trying to kill me, Luke was gone, the woman was gone as well.

  My hand moved and touched my throat, trying to feel the impression of skin that was locked around it, that tarnished it.

  I ran to a mirror, the one hanging over the massive sink that I used to prep for procedures, lifting my head and studying the lines of my throat. I couldn’t see anything.

  I wiped my wet hands over it, like the touch of my fingertips would wipe away some
concealer, some cover-up that’s masking the bitter colors waiting there for me. Like bleeding watercolors hiding in plain sight, I couldn’t find them, they just weren’t there.

  My breath locked in my throat but I could still use it. I could feel that sensation there, that vice grip that was suffocating me but there was no evidence of it, nothing to show me that it ever actually happened.

  For a moment, the shock dripped down to some part of me that didn’t feel familiar. A disgusted flavor ran through my body and for a second, I could feel what it was like to be that version of me who watched everything. That moment that apparently never happened, my homicide that never took place.

  I rubbed at my eyes vigorously, not stopping when the pain stepped up or the tears started to fall. I didn't feel right, none of this sat well in my stomach or in my head.

  Throbbing started to jolt through my temples and I could feel that searing pinch slide into the center of my face, through soft tissues that shred as this feeling moves. I pinch the bridge of my nose to try and freeze it but it's stubborn and insistent, it stayed despite my argument, nesting in that center region between my eyes, slightly above my nose.

  I took steps backward, away from the corpse, I almost forgot all about what else was on the agenda for today. What I just saw seemed so real that it was hard to turn off, to forget about, to write off as something that wasn’t real, a world-class hallucination, a dream.

  Eventually, I backed into the metal doors and they swung out as I put pressure on them. I needed to get some fresh air, I needed to get out of the basement that was caging me in, trapping me.

  My lab coat was almost sticking to me by the time I was upstairs in the main lobby with regular suits walking around. My lab coat was not the status quo for the building, it was not the chic version of what was commonly accepted in woman’s attire up here. The people on these floors prefer scrubs and jackets and living patients, I fit in, sure, but not in my pencil skirt and blouse.

  The second I step outside, violent winds whipped at me, pulling my hair in every direction like it took a handful of it before it went. The clouds overhead were dark, menacing, searing with blue aura’s as they punished whatever grounds lay beneath them with spears of lightning falling from the rain-soaked sky.

  The thunder exploded, echoing through the massive structures of buildings as it seemed to roll into my ears, like a boulder rolling down a hill. A wave of sound so violent, I could feel it rattle the inside of my chest, chattering my teeth.

  There was almost no one out here. Even the homeless, it seemed, had taken up shelter to wait this storm out until it was finished. I waited there and looked, my hands across my chest, my body tucked under the hospital awning, still feeling the pellets of rain attacking my ankles as water splashed up from puddles.

  The streets were sparse and scarce, abandoned almost completely. Like no one wanted to be out here while this storm tore through the island of Manhattan.

  Despite the shadowy air, I needed it. To breath in something that wasn’t wasted and recycling, something not quite sterile and disinfected.

  That institutional air, stale and old, wasn't sitting well in my stomach. My mind wasn’t playing very nice in that room. Even out here, I couldn’t help but look around, trying to find the person who was at the center of my nightmare both in the sleeping world and my past life. To see if I could see him, standing there, maybe waiting behind a building, watching me from some alley.

  Weather aside, the man that I had envisioned would stand through a tornado if it gave him another chance at me. I ruined who he was, I had slaughtered the life he wanted to have. It was my fault, I had been the enemy to his happiness, the one who killed his spirit.

  I was terrified to look in any direction. My arms wrapped around themselves to prevent the cold but mostly to keep my hands still and calm. They were trembling as if I was having a seizure. I didn’t want to see him, I didn’t know what was going to happen to me if I did.

  CHAPTER 38

  Eventually, I realized there was nothing for me out there, nothing I’d want at least. Despite the rain that was soaking into my lab coat, the violent sheets of water that were soaking into my hair, I finally realized I’m not settled either inside or out.

  I couldn’t seem to get this out of me. Another memory stuck in the sap of my mind. Like some great animal, locked by the adhesion of a tarpit, trapping me until I starved to death, trapping me until my life was over.

  It was hard to think of anything else as I walked back into the office, the sounds of the PA going off, announcing doctors and codes throughout the facility, chants of morbid announcers. Those grand voices diluted silence as I walked, almost stumbling, through the flow of human traffic that moved through the blanketed white hallways.

  I was rarely up here, it was because of this that I didn’t like to be, I preferred my dungeon. I knew there was nothing fantastic about the mortuary, about working with the newly deceased, but it was quiet and it kept me disconnected, focused on my work, away from politics, from gossip. I preferred solitude. As I walked through the people that passed me by, I saw them look at me, indifferent, confused. We didn't know one another, I didn't know them, I'm certain they didn't know me. I preferred the isolation, the fortress of my lab, the privacy that came along with it.

  I’d spent hours looking at the bodies of those who had perished both by natural and accidental causes. I’d also seen the deliberate ones, where people themselves authored the death note and killed the person who lay in front of me.

  It wasn’t long before my mind went back to what I was still expected to do tonight. To deliver the silent sermon of a toddler to parents, to see a body I couldn't turn off once I saw it.

  My mind had punished me so thoroughly that I’d forgotten that it was still on the schedule. That I hadn’t handed it off to another person who maybe wasn’t willing to do that but was willing to do me a favor. I didn't have many friends who I could go to with this sort of request. There are few favors you know better than to ask for, regardless of the profession, this was one of them.

  CHAPTER 39

  I’d put some thought into it, weighed the options, and realized that part of me wanted to speak to my supervisor, a stiff asshole but at the same time, he listened or at least he pretended to fairly well.

  I knew that he had a stressful job, I didn't think there were many who would disagree with that. He was responsible for a whole host of things in the hospital I’d rather not go near. But I felt I owed it both to myself and to the family to say something, knowing I might not be ready or as prepared and professional as I should be for something as serious as this.

  My mind was too frail, especially at the moment. There was still work to be done on the spillover brought in by the NYPD and I felt my time would be better spent on that.

  Someone else could stand, sentient and still, while the corpse of a dead baby lay there, the last rights of a child whose body was about to be infused with preservative so they can bury him far too soon.

  Without realizing it, my hand went to my stomach, more specifically down to my uterus. To the barren wasteland I knew was under my skin. I imagined a toxic environment, geyser’s spilling noxious gases into the sky, acid rain cutting through the poisonous air, a dry, arid place.

  It was no place for any child to grow, to be nurtured or to develop. My own body had failed me, I couldn’t bear to look at someone else who was failed. A mother who had to deal with the loss of life of a child that at the very least huffed their own breaths, free of the chord that anchored them to a life they were borrowing for a time, is much more difficult. This woman had her baby, enjoyed him, felt his touch, felt his small breath on her as she held him.

  When I rubbed my face, I realized there were tears coming out of my eyes. I hadn’t even realized they’d started to fall but when I pulled my hand away, there was a sheen of saltwater slathered on my palm. Every time I went to wipe them free, it just didn’t stop, more and more came out because I wasn’t ready
to stop this. It was like I could feel something inside of my mind break, split.

  That image of that woman, the body I used to be because I refused to accept that as a real time of my life, standing there, bleeding from the same scars I drew into my flesh. My old blood soaking into that bathroom floor.

  I bent down, tucked into a corner, away from the lab, hidden by a wall-unit that held a variety of instruments. I didn’t want someone to come in. For someone to see me in this state. I didn’t want to answer questions, I didn’t want anyone asking them, either.

  The sounds of my own sadness ripped at my ears though I was trying to keep them as suffocated as I could. In the silence of the morgue, sound traveled freely, without prejudice to any ear that might be nearby.

  It wasn’t until I tried to close my hands over my lips that I tasted something, some flavor slipped in between my lips and slid along my tongue. A metallic taste, like putting pennies in your mouth, that filthy, bitter metal aftertaste.

  I ripped my hands away, but that taste still trampled on my palate. It wasn’t until my hands were in front of my eyes that I could see that my fingers were covered in a blush of watery red, the same red that had stained the flawless white of my lab coat.

  My heart slowly rose into my throat, beating almost sideways in my chest, its thrum like the violent quake of sound, ripples from the beats of thunder outside. The scars on my forearm, all of them, the maze of angled fury that I’d once punished my flesh with, were all bleeding again.

  My blood, sliding out onto the floor.

  CHAPTER 40

  A sound rolled out of my mouth that I’d never heard before. It’s a chord between shock and fear and panic and horror that broke the tomb of silence around me. It shattered the quiet as that note floated around the room.