The Touch of Anubis

I remember when I could touch her.

Whatever I touch dies.

I was once alive. Once I had a heartbeat. A time when I felt more than just this emptiness.

It all ended the day I woke up to no feeling at all. Alone in a long-abandoned Egyptian tomb. I tore the bandages off my cold carcass. All that I knew, all that burned in my mind, was the constant need was to fulfill my dreaded purpose. I looked in the mirror to be greeted by a horrifically hideous face. It was dead, dry, scary.

I was so ashamed. I was scared of my own face. To wake up alone, confused, and with the burning desire to take life is a putrid thing.

When my desires could no longer be contained by the isolated, rotten tomb, I began to read the writings on the walls. It's hard to see in the dark, especially when you can't light a candle if the flame instantly dies by your touch.

There was a mask on a podium that was the same as ancient paintings riddled on the walls. To hide my ugliness, I donned the mask and  finally accepted my fate.

I could feel it from the beginning, the manuscripts, the legends, the myths that moulded my destiny.

A feeling of isolation burdened my entire existence as this being of darkness, knowing no one will embrace you, no one will ever understand you. Everyone is different from you.

"You are different" they say, "you're special, embrace it". Lies. I could spend years having pity on myself because of this hollow statement.

As the embodiment of death, doomed to wander the world to carry out a purpose of taking life and evoking sadness and tears, there simply is no happy ending for me. In fact, it hurts. A lot.

"We love you because you're different" makes me want to claw out my ears - if I had any.

I am not loved.

Because I am different.

Maybe it's simply because all humans have different characteristics, but in finality, the end game is that they are all still human beings. They are all the same.

I am not one of them.

They fear me. They hate me.

Why?

I'm different.

Years wallowing in my own darkness, marching on, with the only thing keeping me from running mad is the hope of one day finding my love once more. Yes, my love; the single, thin string that stitches my entire existence together. If that thread were to break, I do, too. I've spent this entire existence searching for her. That is my bedeviled eternity.

Now I can't even remember my name.

Possess, horrify, run wild with the sword of havoc, burn broken hearts just to taste the mouthwatering ash, kill.

I've done it all just to find her again.

Ava-Lee.

Ava-Lee loves honey-dew soap.

Vanilla candles are her favourite.

And when she blows out the candle, she takes in the strong, musky scent of the smoke; and she smiles contently.

Because that's beautiful, too.

I lurk in the shadows she cast, because that's where I belong. Even if I cannot be with her, this is the closet I can be to my love. Yet, I pray she can not see horrific face; for my face is bone; dry and dusty like the dead. I wear the mask of a jackal to hide my hideousness from the world. On my back is a coat of black feathers, those of fallen angels and vultures alike. The cloak I where is darker than night, darker than the obsidian pupils in her midnight eyes, darker than my richest desire for her.