《Shots in the Dark》The Demon

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There lives a demon within me.

It is a fleeting shadow, lingering at the edge of my field of vision, reflected for a brief moment as I pass by a storefront window. I quicken my pace and don't look back.

It is a whispered curse, threats uttered under my own breath, snaking their way into my mind between the notes of the songs I listen to. I turn on the volume and close my eyes, losing myself in the music.

It is the conclusion at the end of a line of thought, the ultimate end, the answer to all questions I do not dare to ask. It lies there in wait, beckoning for me to come and see, to embrace it and its promises. Just three little words, that's all it takes. I call it a liar, and I turn the other way.

I hide its influence on me, I put on a mask with a smile, and a clever disguise. It gives me an illusion of security, a sense of adequacy.

I sit on the train and watch the other commuters, wondering. Do they have demons too? They don't look like it. At least not as if they had a demon quite like mine. My demon is special. Because the moment I acknowledge its existence, it disappears, leaving me behind with nothing but a dreadful truth.

Truly, there is no demon.

There is only me, and I am all that the demon claims I am.

I cannot blame it on anyone else. It is all my fault.

And yet there is this vague sense of hope, flickering, beckoning. The hope that I am more than that, that the demon is a trickster and a liar.

That I am better than this, that I am not a monster.

I am drawn to the light like a moth to the flame. I cling to this hope, but the harder I hold on, the more I suffocate it, like ivy growing and choking what lies underneath, until not a glimmer of hope can shine through.

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At the end of that line of thought, the demon waits again, and it laughs. And I hate myself for being tricked again.

I never allowed myself to feel this way when it came to other people. Those who hurt me? I pity them. I know that they have worse crosses to bear, their own peculiar demons that haunt them.

Still, it seems quite paradoxical that the only thing I ever learned to hate is myself.

Maybe it's not true.

Maybe I hate the demon.

Maybe the demon is my hate, bottled up inside for so long that it has festered and turned inward, against myself. It's the smallest flaw in symmetry, the little tug at the edge of the picture frame that makes it even more unhinged than before. The crack in the masks that gets bigger and bigger the more I try to cover it up. Darkness seeps through those cracks.

The demon whispers, over the deafening sound of the music in my ears, and it stares at me through my own eyes. A speck of dust on polished glass, the smeared trace after trying to wipe it away, the distorted, horrific features of what I see in the mirror. A black spider web carves itself into smooth glass, fragmenting the hated, hateful face, speckled with red.

I cover the mirrors.

I avoid looking at the storefront windows. I cast down my gaze when I sit on the train at night. I turn on the music, full volume, to drown out the whispering. I talk fast and laugh a lot, keeping my thoughts occupied, keeping my mind from straying too far.

Inside, there is only darkness.

But the demon is everywhere.

It is in the beauty of every flower, in the kind smile of every stranger, the flutter of a butterfly's wings. It is in the wind that carries the scattered leaves, and in the way the glass catches the light and refracts it on the wall in a miniature rainbow. The soft glow of a chain of fairy lights, casting muted shadows. The feeling of lacquered wood under dry hands. The scent of roses and vanilla. The taste of crisp, cold air on an early winter morning.

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What right do I have to the beauty of this world, when all I am and all I bear is so dreadful and ugly?

So I resign and close my eyes. I follow the path the demon lays out for me, towards the whispered promise. The irrevocable, final truth.

The only truth.

The answer, the reason, the essence of my misery.

I am what I hate, and my hate is me.

The demon is mine, and what I always will be.

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