Monster

"Come on Jameston, let's go for a walk!" Abby says with a smile. Her coffee-colored hair sweeps to the side as the wind enviously attempts to take it for its own. The signature curl on the left side of her bangs bobs slightly in the wind. Her one sparkling green eye focuses on me. Her other eye was covered by the onyx fabric of an eyepatch, obscuring the hue beneath. She was cursed, cursed by me. Her other eye was a bright red underneath, the pupil in a diamond shape identical to my own.

I was a demon, a stain to her perfection. She was forced to serve as my host form, keeping me alive. But at the expense of part of her beauty, marred by the unsightly color red.

I stare at the ground and nod silently. I couldn't look too long at her, for fear that the demon within me would awaken. My bloodred eyes were dull, but I knew the moment I changed, they would become frighteningly bright.

"Jameston? Is something wrong?" Her innocent voice asks. I force myself to look up and smile a bit, if only to make her happy.

"No, I'm fine." I say through gritted teeth. It hurt to contain this, to feebly attempt to control it.

"Oh, okay! Let's go then." She says, all business.

The two of us walk silently, me with my head down and Abby with her head held high as she always did. I closed my eyes for a moment and visualized what terrified me, the beast lurking in my soul.

I was in my old home, the house I lived in before I died and became a demon. Everything was dark, except for a few flickering lights. It was eerily quiet, enough to make my skin crawl. I looked down and saw that the tips of my nails were no longer pointed. I glance at a mirror and realize that here, I wasn't a demon. I had no horns, no fangs, and no unnatural red eyes. I breathe a sigh of relief, but only for a moment.

I heard footsteps, echoing loud in my head. Someone else was here, although the place seemed deserted. I panic and take off running through the halls. Those footsteps terrified me. They belonged to the one thing I couldn't face, not ever. The footsteps in the halls got closer, closer. I duck into my old bedroom and slam the door shut, eyes wide with terror. I sit down in a corner of my room like a small child would do.

"Please... Go away..." I whisper to the air.

As I surveyed the room, I noticed something looking at me. Multiple somethings, actually. Beady red eyes stared at me from under my bed, from the open closet. As I watched, the eyes moved forward and carried the shadows with them. I could hear scratching, on the walls. Terrible screeching of claw against plaster that made me cover my ears.

The shadows laughed and surrounded me, taunting me with their crimson orbs of death. "G-Go away... Go away..." I whisper, reduced to a trembling child.

All at once, the shadows converge in upon themselves and whirl around in a swirling mass of onyx mist. They form the shape of a human, identical to my own. The shadows disperse to reveal an alternate version of myself. His hair was the deepest shade of ebony, even darker than my own current hue. His eyes were bloody crimson, the pupils shaped like diamonds. His skin was deathly pale, as if he had died and risen. Identical colored horns adorned his head and made his appearance even more demonic. He grins widely as he sees my fear. This reveals his mouth to be lined with razor-sharp bladelike fangs. I briefly wondered how he could speak this way, but it didn't seem to bother him.

"Hello, Jameston. I see you're still as useless as ever." He rumbles in a voice slightly lower than my own. I had no strength to reply, he seemed to dominate the room and make it impossible for me to breathe, much less speak.

"You kept me caged, did you know that? I bet you didn't even know." His voice becomes serpentine.

"But now I'm free. And you can't do anything to stop me." He laughs evilly.