I found a family heirloom
sealed shut in a dusty box
and wrapped in a tattered cloth
It wasn’t meant to get passed on
A small round mirror just bigger than my hand
the glass as black as Satan’s soul
its convex shape absorbing the room behind me
I hold it up to my face, turning left and right
There’s a shadow in the corner
The floor creaks
I glance around the room
The lights flicker
Dark
Light
Dark
I’m shivering
Light
There’s a shadow in the mirror
I’m frozen
It stares at my reflection
Do not turn around
It creeps closer, its body convulsing
its amber eyes boring through mine
darkness swirls around it
Do not turn around
It groans and croaks with the floorboards
its head tilts like a confused dog, bones cracking
With a decaying finger, it beckons me
Do not turn around
Stiffly, my body turns
Its ashy face charges me
eyes bulging, mouth agape
a never-ending blackhole
set on devouring
black smoke suffocating
a sticky feeling rattles my body
the mirror falls from my grip
the smoke disperses
I look at the shards of black mirror
the demon stares at me
through my eyes.
It wasn’t an heirloom
It was a curse.
One I thought I had outrun.
Glass shards rained from the light shade as darkness descended. Blood bloomed from my sliced skin like weeds in the cracks of pavements–ugly and diseased yet evidence that life is everywhere. A darkness, darker than the black emptiness coiled around me, looms before me. I already know what it is, but I still light a match from the box I always keep in my back pocket. As the flame travelled down towards my fingertips and as the dark parted for orange flickers, two lines of rotted teeth grinned at me.
It’s found me.
Before the flame nipped my fingers and fell to the floor, I saw the demon from my childhood: its contorted frame like someone had used it as a Rubik’s Cube; its bones that almost pierced through its single layer of skin; its amber eyes devoid of life; and its broken yellowed teeth. Darkness reclaimed the room and I shuddered as its withered voice slithered between us, “Hello, old friend.”
My eyes screwed shut as fear cut me deeper than the bulb and terrified memories bleed behind my eyelids. It’s not real. It’s all in your head. It’s not real. I said the mantra over and over even when I felt the coldness settle over my bones, even when I felt its gnarled hands wrap around my throat, especially when those hands squeezed and its nails bit my flesh. I choked and splurted around the words all my life and now those words were consuming my life.
I thought I had escaped it; we all thought I had escaped, but it had found me at last. Memories of my first childhood home flashed behind my eyes: the beige bricks; the small front garden with tiny shrublike trees; the orange slide in the back garden that wobbled on the grassy hill; my first lilac ‘big-girl’ bedroom full of teddy bears and bratz dolls; the first time the demon appeared. Cupboard doors had slammed in the middle of night; glasses threw across the room and shattered against walls, whatever liquid inside transformed into artwork; growls that woke the dead roared day and night; never-ending darkness from blown or smashed bulbs. My mother thought it was the house until we moved across town, and the demon came too. Only by then it wore my father’s skin.
My mother and I watched, horrified, as it devoured my father. First it was his liveliness, then it was physical energy, then his happiness, then his love. It sucked out everything that made my father my father until he became a horrible and nasty man that no one recognised. His skin yellowed and angry red veins crawled across his equally yellow eyes, like a freshly squeezed spot. Finally, it took his life. I watched it break and suffocate my father and when its eyes found mine, when it knew I could see it, I became its next victim.
I thought I had outrun it.
I thought I was safe.
But as I stared at a half empty glass
of whisky,
I knew I’d never be free
of its demonic clutches.