I sit alone in a shadowy room, naked and frail and shivering with misery. Shaggy, sweaty hair falls into circled eyes. Translucent wings protrude from my exposed shoulder blades, shredded from some ordeal I can’t recall. I grip my head in my hands, rocking back and forth, trying to accept the pain. Trying to overcome it. This is not what I wanted to be…

I used to have this dream every night.

Every night I would be startled awake by the sound of my own sobbing and the sting of tears on my cheeks. When I recovered myself, my face would harden in the soft darkness with self-scorn. I would lie, the sheets damp against my chest, and act as if the anguish has disappeared alongside my dream. I am not weak, I would tell myself. There is nothing, no one I need. There is nothing to accept.



Perhaps my reoccurring nightmare was caused by the long hours of solitude I have condemned myself to live. I do not go outside; I do not talk to anyone. I avoid daylight. The isolation has turned my head mad, my soul desperate, my body deteriorated. But still I do not leave, for I am wary to be tempted... And yet I yearn, so that my heart aches, for something that I cannot- will not- name.


Regardless of the cause, the nightmare has recently changed. It has become that my body is mutated to appear reptilian, my spine jutting grotesquely from the skin of my back. My skin is sallow and slimy with perspiration. My fingernails, blackened, are twice as long as they should be and three times as sharp. They dig into my scalp as I clutch my head. Skin tears but blood does not flow. Instead, chunks of rotten flesh fall from my skull, leaving exposed bone and tissue, and suddenly I become two entities. One manifestation screams in tortured misery, scrabbling at the skin above its eyes, knowing that no matter how much pain it inflicts the inner turmoil will never cease. The other laughs madly, also clawing at its scalp. This one, however, seems to almost take comfort in the pain, as though it might serve as a distraction from the horrible truth. The thoughts, the thoughts! How does one come to terms--


When I awoke from this horror for the first time, I was so disturbed as to venture out into the city for the first time in years. But I did not approach anyone. Not again. One time, just once, I gave in. I allowed myself to take comfort in the presence of others, and eventually I gave myself over. Over to the feelings programmed into every living creature, the wants that some would recognize as love but are realistically tantamount to nothing more than a race’s genetic instinct to strive for continued existence. The desire… Oh, the toxic, lustful, tearing need for sex! Driven by impulses we are born with that tell us what we want.

…Only, some of those impulses are mutated. Wrong.

I am wrong.

I am vile.

One night. One night I gave in. He was stunning, striking, and he knew I wanted him. Badly. So badly that I didn’t try to resist, didn’t want to resist, and I allowed the instinct to take over. His lips were sweeter than the deadliest of poisons. I ran my hands over his skin, his body, and shivered with want. He took me and made me his. He made me his. I reveled in aberrant ecstasy, powerless to resist him, hating myself for being unable to turn away from his perfect form. I let myself be used.

I am an abomination. And I am twisted.

Later, I know not how long, I realized what I had done. I felt stained, putrid. So I ventured out again to take my revenge on he who had obliterated my resolution to never surrender to my desires for intimacy with another being. Another man. So I sought him out. I bound him, naked, cold and helpless on the filthy floor. I tauntingly caressed his flawless skin, telling myself that I only took pleasure in it because of the very displeasure it inflicted upon him. And then I cut the flawless skin. I slashed his stomach, his arms, his legs. I marred his perfection until the once glorious figure was reduced to a nearly unrecognizable shape, gory and bloodied by my desperate labor. . He is to blame. It is his fault.

I slit his throat, my bare body bent over his exposed figure. The blood smeared on my skin too, and I regarded it with slight confusion. I turned back to look him in the eyes. Sick, sick immoral pleasure! Staring at his face as the life drained away with shallow breaths, I found I couldn’t resist. I kissed him voraciously, imagining myself to be sucking the very soul from his corpse. And then the sobs began, because he was dead and I still wanted him. It is my fault. I am to blame.



That is why I stay now, hiding inside my prison of solitary fear. I force the beast inside me to tear me apart, for I would rather be tattered and broken inside than… Than give in to the foul urge that lurks inside, whispering that this is who I am, that this is irreversibly what I was born to become.



Of course, there is only so long a person’s resolution can last. My certainty began to deteriorate, and I found myself wondering if I had been somehow mislead.

Why do you resist? Rasping, the voices inside would not leave me be. Why do you deny yourself?

I am an abhorrence! I screamed – nay, moaned? Whispered? Not even this, though the intonations resounded in my head more loudly than thunder. I can’t be fixed, I fear to be dead – so I should suffer, and, if not right the wrong inside me, at least deny it of its craving.

The wheedling voices were not subdued. But once, but once! Once you weakened, and for all your efforts your soul is forever soiled. Would you continue to deprive yourself of satisfaction in vain?


This uncertainty roiled around in my mind until I became utterly lost in the vagueness of right and wrong. My insides became so sharp and agonizing that they tore at me like shattered glass, and I began to drink; I drank until the world was a haze and the question no longer mattered. All that mattered was the sorrow.

And then, once the colors ran together like the teardrops of the sky upon a dirty window, I began to laugh. It bubbled up, slowly, oozing from the depths of my stomach to stream forth from my tingling lips with the morbid sound of one who has found the ultimate solution. I’ll fly away…

Staggering, knocking to the floor several objects that appeared blob-like to my unfocused eyes, I stood up. The world bobbed and wove before me, and walking to the steps somehow reminded me of walking through jelly. The thought provoked another torrent of ghastly laughter to escape me, and I nearly fell over a chair six feet away.

I made it to the stairs.

I crawled upwards on my hands and knees.

I reached the top floor. Dragging myself on my stomach, for the world had begun to turn as violently as if it had been caught in a whirlwind, I made my way to the balcony. The tarnished handle gave reluctantly to my weak grasp, and the door swung open with the creaking sigh of aged hinges.

I pulled myself to the railing, using it to lean on as I stand on legs rendered unsteady with drink. I looked up to behold the white glitter of stars smeared into the tar black of the night sky, tasting salt on my lips as I did so.

I was astonished to realize that I was weeping.

“No, no please, don’t cry… You’ll be home soon. You’ll be safe. You’ll… You’ll be loved, I swear it.” I shushed myself as one would an unhappy child, the tears running faster and the sobs beginning to choke as I vainly try to console myself. “Be at peace, all will be right. We’ll go home, you and I. We’ll fly home! Just you wait!”

With this a hopeless sort of determination came over me, and, in my drunken state, I accomplished the feat of clambering up to stand and balance upon the rail of the balcony. I teetered, and finally smiled.

“For the end of this desolation, I go forth and seek peace in the Beyond!”

I jumped.

I did not fly. I had known from the beginning that I would not.

I hit the ground…

And no longer did I breathe the tormented sighs of one whose insides are torn with self denial.