The Imitation Phantom

Chapter 12

Monsters Like Us

Insanity comes slowly, Erik had said once. "It creeps up onto your shoulder and whispers in your ear." He had sighed and shifted his head on the pillow, trying to explain to her what it was like to slowly lose control of himself. He scrubbed a hand down his face. "It breathes on the back of your neck when you begin to question yourself. It giggles in the pitch heart of night, when you think you're not alone." He whispered across the bed to her, trying not to wake the sleeping form of their son between them.

She had asked if either of the children might be like him. He explained what it was like and as he did, she watched him quietly, unconsciously tuck Felix closer to himself.

Lying prone in the unrelenting heat, she understood now. Insanity stayed close once it had someone in its sights. But it could never touch her. It could never grab hold until it broke her. Until every belief was followed by a question of its validity, until the world begins listing to one side. When sound is in your mouth and taste in your eyes and touch in your ears and nothing, nothing, nothing ever seems right.

Insanity comes when you begin to reason that sanity is not a necessity.

Insanity comes slowly. And then it kills you.

Lunette jolted from her thoughts to find herself staring blankly at the intestine noose in her hands for the third time since she'd fallen in here. She dropped it and backed away to the mirror. She refused to walk the length of the forest. It would only disorient her. It would trick her. She'd already seen something moving in the trees. She didn't want to know what it was. Maybe it was a tiger. Or jaguar? Something come to kill her.

It was insanity in the form of a monster that did not belong in Paris. A caged animal set free to circle closer until it could sink its teeth into her. And then there was the noose. Offering relief and morbid death, two options that were different and the same, offered each in a swing of its hypnotic, pendulum-like swing. She didn't want to leave her mirror. She didn't want to let the noose out of her sight. It would wrap around her neck and drag her into the air and swing her around. She could keep her hand at the level of her eyes but it knew ways around that. It would kill her if she didn't watch it. And as she swung beneath it, there would only be the blessed thought of relief to come when it was finished with her.

No she would not leave her mirror.

The mirrors weren't smooth. They were scratched and cracked, one was smashed where something had hit it, a boot maybe. There was blood on some of them.

People had been in here. People had died here. Joseph Busquet, whoever he had been, died here. The noose had killed people when they grew sick of this abominable heat. It had grabbed them and made them dance. She knew what they saw.

She had stood under that branch and looked around and known that for their last moments, the noose's victims had seen hundreds of thousands like them, dancing, struggling, dying. She would not join their morbid quadrille. She would not let the noose 'round her neck. She would not...

She jolted awake. Her clothes were drenched and her hair sticking to her face. She wrenched her eyes open, smacked her cracked lips, squinted at the sun. The forest was still a forest. The noose was still lying there, beckoning her. She wasn't tempted. She would stay here. Erik would find her soon. And then she could berate him for this horrid creation. She could scream and kick and he would let her, wouldn't he? He would let her. He would plead with her to understand. To forgive him. To stay with him. Lunette sighed mentally but didn't have the energy to breathe in so much dry, boiling air and let it out so heavily.

She would not berate him for this horrid creation. She would be glad he had locked it when she stayed with him. She would be thankful that he hid the keys. She would be happy that she had never looked inside.