MY HAND SLID across the mirror, wiping away condensation in a smear. The shower ran behind me, hot water rolling steam into the bathroom. My bathroom. I stared at my reflection.
I look like shit.
A fine layer of grime covered my face, turning my eyes into black holes. My eyes are dark—it’s part of my heritage—but now they looked painted, Cimmerian circles around both as though I’d been awake for days. The skin over the right one was discolored. It hurt to touch, a deep soreness under my fingers. It also felt mushy, swollen.
It’s from when your face got slammed into the door.
All the way back at the beginning of this night. God, that felt like weeks ago, but it had only been a few hours.
Damn.
I turned my head slowly. I didn’t want to, but I had to. I looked at my right ear.
It wasn’t as bad as I had thought it would be. It looked a little weird, but I couldn’t really see it. Using a finger, I moved the hair curling over the top rim of cartilage. The curl of hair was stiff, hard with dried blood that cracked and crumbled under my touch. It stuck to the torn flesh like a hard-packed bandage. I took a deep breath and pulled it away.
It didn’t hurt—I couldn’t feel it at all because of whatever Nyarlathotep had done earlier—but I still had to grab the sink to keep from falling down.
My ear was ruined.
Taking a deep breath, I pulled together my resolve and looked again.
The ear looked perfectly normal on the bottom half. The lobe still curved delicately to my jaw, and it still bore the diamond earring given to me by my dad as a graduation present. But the top half … the top half was destroyed. It had been torn into four jagged sections, and a piece was missing. I could see white cartilage in the rips. It didn’t look like an ear. It looked like mangled meat.
How will you explain what happened when people see this?
This would be out there, out where the world would see it forever. Maybe a doctor could fix it, but I couldn’t afford that. What would I do? Wear scarves or hats? Grow my hair out?
The thought made my stomach hurt.
I had short hair.
I’d cut it short the day I got out of the hospital and had kept it short since. The thought of growing it long tripped the ugly old feelings. It dragged my mind off my ear and shoved it toward what had happened earlier.
I’d killed someone earlier.
No. You killed three people.
Mason, Donnie Zito, and Tyler Woods.
Brad Curson and Jimmy Deets were dead because of me too. I hadn’t stuck a knife in them or used magick … I still couldn’t believe I used magick at all … to turn them INSIDE OUT.
That thought made my stomach lurch. I bent at the waist, aiming for the trashcan, but nothing came up. I stood there, bent over, with the room spinning lazily. The air grew hot, the shower steaming up the tiny bathroom. That didn’t help.
Pull it together.
Reaching deep inside, I forced my mind to think clearly. I stepped outside myself so I could look at the feelings inside me without being caught up in them. It was a trick I had learned on my own, and I could only do it by myself when I was someplace safe.
My therapist hated it, always worried that the dissociation might cause a hard split in my personality, so I didn’t tell her about still doing it. I could see her reason for concern, but it worked, so I did it when things pushed my issues too far. Tonight had definitely pushed my issues all the way over the edge.
In seconds, my mind cleared and my heart slowed down.
You killed Mason.
I had. It was self-defense, and he’d been a monster. Did I feel bad about it? No. I didn’t. I should.
I thought I should.
The whole thing felt surreal, a nightmare that almost didn’t feel like it had happened at all. The image of him, of his face as the knife sank into his chest, swam up in my mind. My body had the memory of the knife sliding in, stopping when the hilt hit his sternum, his weight pulling down on my arm as he slid to the floor, and the jerk upward as the weight fell off. I could feel all these things as though they were happening at that very moment.
But I didn’t feel bad about them.
What about Tyler Woods?
The image of Tyler reduced to a mound of meat smeared across my mind. It blared, filling my mindspace with lurid colors and grisly shapes, a geometry of gruesomeness. It was a disgusting picture that I could feel would come back on me, in nightmares and flashbacks, anytime my mental defenses drop it would appear. I would see it for a long time, maybe even the rest of my life. My nose filled with the wet-hot scent of raw flesh dredged from memory.
It repulsed me.
But I didn’t feel guilty about it.
I hadn’t done that to Tyler Woods. I hadn’t actually wanted that to happen to him. It was an accident of my magick. Magick that I didn’t want. What was I doing with the ability to cast spells? How did I have the power to do something like that with just a casual wish?
I looked down at the symbol in my hand, the open cuts now turned to raised red lines of angry flesh. They’d sealed over and lay stark across the plane of my palm. Looking at the symbol made it tingle. I rubbed it across the front of my hoodie. My mind went back to the fact that I hadn’t done anything to Tyler on purpose. It had been the magick’s fault, not mine.
But did you try to wish him back to life?
Guilt panged across the dissociation, echoing hollowly in the space between me and my feelings.
No, I hadn’t tried. I should have. I should have wished for him to not be turned inside out. It might have worked.
Even as I had this thought, something inside me knew it wouldn’t have.
Donnie Zito shot Brad Curson because you stabbed him.
The gap I’d made inside myself narrowed, squeezed in by the truth. I hadn’t meant it, but it had happened that way.
And the Man in Black killed Jimmy Deets because of you.
He did.
The gap slammed shut, dissociation crumbling as my feelings swarmed into my mind.
I hadn’t wanted any of it to happen.
I had wanted all of it to happen.
They all deserved it after what they did.
I hadn’t tried to kill any of them.
But they’re still dead.
I stumbled, my knees suddenly unhinged, and slid down to the floor. The weight of all that had happened pushed me down. It crushed my chest under its weight.
God, please forgive me.
The tile was cold under my face as I wept.