Diamondback

1: Old Places, Old Faces

My eyes were crusty.

Could barely open them without maximum effort. My arms and legs were numb underneath my own weight. The baseline pounding in my ears tore my eyelids apart. It still seemed as if I was floating, staring wide-eyed into a dark abyss of nothingness. As my eyes adjusted to the absence of light, the blur in my groggy vision gradually began to disappear.

A decaying wall.

Pushing myself up off the blistering carpet was a challenge in itself. The house was dusty, torn up, and looked like Hurricane Katrina itself had blasted through it. The wallpaper was peeling, the furniture was worn, and glass shards from the broken windows were scattered across the floor, threatening to stab into me if I wasn't careful about my next moves. No lights either. If I thought that I found a working one, the lightbulb would switch off immediately after forcing itself awake. Heavy drapes adorned all of the windows. Everything was dark as far as I could see.

But there was a sense of familiarity.

As if I could walk around here with my eyes closed and be able to find the exact position of the shower knob. I called for Eliza over and over again, but the only thing that answered me was the sound of my own echo. Several rounds around the house and several minutes of exhausting my voice later, nothing. Nothing. No one. The pitch black front room, the sparse kitchen, the endless hallway, the three cold bedrooms, the grimy kitchen. Nothing. No one. Just me. Inching hesitantly back to the front room, I passed by a cracked mirror standing next to the demolished TV on the wall.

That's when I saw it.

Tainted scaly pitch black skin.

Deep blood red eyes.

The monster that Eliza had faced.

My braids were a blinding snow white and these large, orchid downward-pointing horns sat just above my newly pointed ears. Every inch of my body was covered in swirled, orchid tattoos, save for my face, which had only one swirl going up my neck to my cheek. I used my claws to trace the new swirled tattoos on my body and once I found the heart in me to gasp, a black devil-like tail, aligned with orchid diamonds, wrapped itself tightly around my torso.

Opening my mouth to scream, rows of sharp, murderous pearly white teeth screamed back at me.

Holy-

Oh God.

Oh Lord.

Oh Jesus, why?

Gripping the mirror, my reflection snarled at me, breathing heavily. Nearly naked. Nothing but tight black shorts clung to my figure, its color nearly disappearing into my skin.

My eyes landed on the cracked, black diamond planted in the middle of my forehead. That's the thing that started it all. The resurrection, the diamond, the crack. That's always been there since Eliza had brought me back to life, but I know — deep down, I know — that that's not supposed to look like that. Diamonds don't crack. Period. Heaving out a shaky, asthma-induced sigh, I rubbed the small, empty hole in my nose where my piercing used to be.

"She's really gone, huh?" I tried my best to smile for myself, touching my hand to the monstrous reflection. "We'll get outta here soon, Z. Just you wait, man. It's a dream. It's just a bad dream. You'll be back home with Eliza before you know it."

I reached into my back pocket.

No phone.

Great.

Who would I call anyway? Eliza? My parents? 911? "Oh, hey, Mr. Officer! I'm just a young fifteen-year-old minor who's in desperate need of adult advice. What's that, officer? What did I look like before I was a monster? Well, I was Afri — Hello? Officer? Are you still there?"