Hers

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Three

I woke feeling even more tired than when I went to bed.  My eyes burned against the light, my head pounded against my skull.  My skin felt wrong.  Like it wasn’t my own flesh that clung to me.  I kept waiting for some sign that everything was going to be okay, but none came.

Sam was nowhere to be found, and I couldn’t really blame him.  If I were him, I wouldn’t be here either.

I groaned at my own stupidity and buried my head in my hands.  Long claws scrapped my scalp and sent a cold shiver down my spine.  I pulled my hands away to see long talons erupting from the ends of my fingertips.  Clambering quickly out of bed, I ran to the bathroom.

In the mirror, I saw my eyes, black and soulless.  My teeth were jagged and pointed inside my mouth.  Frustration welled up inside me to the point that I felt like a kettle on a stove, screaming from all the pressure.  I turned to my shower and ripped the plastic curtain down, sending the little plastic rings sprawling on the bathroom floor.  I tore the curtain into sheets with my claws and threw one of the shreds haphazardly over the mirror.  I ran through the rest of the house, screaming in frustration and covering mirror after mirror so I would never have to see what I’ve become.

But it wasn’t just the mirrors that displayed a monster.  The windows, the kitchen appliances, my own eyes reflected what I was.

I dumped the silver utensils on the ground and threw the toaster into the living room wall.

There was no stopping me.  My grief had taken over, fueled by the way my succubus side loved the destruction.

I tore the clock in the living room down, shattering the glass that covered the clock’s face.

“Lilly!”  I heard a voice yell over the sound of chaos.  Glass was shattering, nails were tearing into walls and fabrics, an odd mix of screams and sobs racked my body.

Hands came down on my shoulder and turned me so my face was buried in a solid chest.  After that, there was no holding back the tears.  I sobbed, but it was more like wailing while tears streamed down my face.

There in that moment, I was suddenly aware of a few things.  One, my nails were back to normal.  Two, glass was buried in the bottom of my feet and hurt like a mother.  Three, whoever was holding me smelled a lot like fresh linen or cotton that’s just been picked.  Four, Sam was holding me.  Five, Sam’s heartbeat was incredibly soothing.

“It’s okay,” Sam cooed, his voice vibrated against my heart.  I nodded just to let him know that I had heard him and wrapped my arms around him.

I closed my eyes and just breathed.  I’m not sure how long we stayed like that and it didn’t really matter.  After a few minutes, he picked me up and carried me into the bedroom.  I felt so completely drained that nothing mattered.  He could have handed me over to Satan himself and there would have been nothing I could do.  But he didn’t, instead he walked into the bathroom and eventually came back with tweezers, peroxide, and a roll of toilet paper.

Silently, he began plucking glass from my foot and placing it on a little square of paper.  I watched as he took extra precautions to make the whole process as least painful as possible.  I couldn’t feel anything anyway.  I was numb to just about everything.

After all the glass was out, he poured the peroxide over my wounds and dried the skin with soft pats.  He sat on the ground looking at each of my feet with his lips set in a tight frown.  With his eyes closed and his lips shaping some foreign rhyme, I felt the skin on my feet pull together.

He didn’t look at me as he got up.  He just gathered his materials and walked back into the bathroom, where he stayed for a while.  I pulled my foot onto the bed and examined the fully healed flesh on the bottom of my foot.  The realization did little to make me feel better, as a matter of fact, I felt all the more heartbroken.