The Outside

Section XII

 I awake in a wooden armchair in front of a blazing fire. My father looks down from his portrait on me with a disapproving glare. I smell bacon. A hand falls lazily out of the fire. I am startled to awareness by a hand lightly brushing on my shoulder. I look up in a daze. Marion smiles down at me. She's holding something; a cup of tea. From the smell, I'd wager it's Earl Grey. I take the steaming cup in my hands and clutch it delicately between my forefinger and thumb. I lift it slowly and gently to my lips, taking a small sip. Marion pulls a chair up next to the fire and sits down lightly. She smiles a tight-lipped, restrained smile at me.

"I'm ready, Edgar." She says quietly. The house creaks. I snap around in my chair to look at the door. She reaches out and draws my head back towards her. She says, "I need to know now."

I take another sip of my tea, looking out of the corner of my eye at the door, "What do you want to know?"

"I need to know everything."

"Your little mind couldn't take everything."

"Fine, anything then. I need just one thing. Give me anything."

"You know that I've killed. You've helped me stalk my prey."

"Yes."

I look at her steadily, "Then I suppose you deserve to know why as well."

"Yes."

"I kill to pay off a debt, why do you kill?"

"To be with you."

"I've never asked you to kill."

"I wanted to."

"Then their blood hangs over your head and pools at your feet. Not mine. The blood I funnel from their veins goes elsewhere."

"Where?"

"The outside. That's what I've come to call it."

"What is it?"

"To understand what the outside is, you need to know more about me."

"What do I need to know?"

I pull my glasses off the crook of my nose and fix with a stare with both eyes.

She leans in with knitted eyebrows, "What happened to your eye?"

"It happened at birth. My umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck. My little baby lungs tried to fill with air, but they couldn't bring any in. Pressure built in my skull. Part of my brain imploded and my eye was irreparably damaged. I was born dead. My mother couldn't bear it. She slit her throat open and bled her life into my mouth. I awoke and she fell asleep."

"So you kill to repay your mother?"

"At first. But, you see. There is an afterlife. A place beyond. A realm outside of our own that exists in the same place in space-time. This is the Outside. The unseen reality. There, there are creatures like gods; lords over their own dominions of reminiscences of spirits. I came back but I am still tied to the master of my spirit. In return for power and life in this realm, I pay him with expanded dominion in the Outside. That is why I kill."

"But what's happening here?"

"There are other dominions in the Outside than my own master. One of them exists here. The dominion to which my father belonged."

"Your father was like you?"

"Somewhat, but not quite. They contacted him however they could but they had no true power over him. He could not really see the Outside. I can only see because of my dead eye. But he acted out their will anyway. He was severely weakened by my mother's death. He hunted and provided for me and my brothers, taught us until we were prepared to provide for ourselves. Then, he took a knife, and skinned my brother David. He used David's tendons to hang him from a tree upside down like that. Dripping blood. Quite horrific really."