three

My mother always told me never to stop.
And if I do, I might as well be L.O.S.T.
Nothing could ever be more right than my mother...

Right?

The door sucked me in, and I turned around to see myself.
It wasn't me; something deformed mimicked my body...
It felt like a terrifying glimpse of what seemed to be my worst self.

Twisted and contorted, some may say.
But for me, this thing had a malicious glee, casting distorted, mind-boggling games.
Stepping back into this apartment was like agreeing to something without knowing the terms and conditions. And now it was here for its payment.

The entity I was face-to-face with had familiar aspects of mine. But it felt ever so balanced, despite its condition. A nightmarish reflection of myself. Its form was grotesque, yet nothing but synchronicity felt like parrel to me; it felt like me.

An image twisted by some malevolent force.

My curly hair is frizzy and full.
It didn't have my body.
In fact, its body was nothing like mine.

The outer layer of teguments had been ripped from this creature.
The arms seemed scorched, swollen, and putrescent from this retribution.
Retribution was the only way to explain it; the carcass was so mutilated and disfigured.

Dysmorphic with its off-centered body parts.
Envy and control seemed to be its drives for power.

Despite everything I saw in it,
It was as if it were part of me.
Something similar to what this life has bestowed on me

It was holding a bowl containing a concoction of brownish liquid, drowning out the head of a dead jackal, with the snout of an antelope seeping over to the scorpions surrounding its feet.
Only seven were alive and red in color. Crawling with an unsettling scarlet hue.

As the scorpions inched closer to the figure, they slowly lowered the bowl, drowning everything in their eldritch brew. The once-living creatures now became mere red shadows, their forms fading into the glassy void. As they submerged in the liquid, my eyes opened.

Now all that was shadowed was the gaping, see-through hole on the right in the middle of their torso. I saw a miniature clay version of Okada's head swirling around in agony through the monster's chest cavity. Twisted by two star-struck veins intertwining their paths through Okada's eye sockets.

'Run'
'Run'
'Run'

'Little rat.'
A stern elder voice spoke as it hissed, each repetition a chilling directive to escape the clutches of this eldritch entity. The representation of me consumed a small teal rat that had seven dots going down its spine and five notches in its tail, leaking dried blood.

Yet, before I could process what seemed like a warning fully, the door slammed shut, obscuring Okada's tortured visage.

A disorienting shift in perspective, and suddenly, I was watching my own body take out Okada's dried, deteriorating heart. It was wrenching Okada's desiccated heart from his chest. The veins connecting his heart snapped like brittle twigs, and a wave of realization washed over me. This was my doing. My actions. My guilt.

In some way, somehow, something I did caused this. Being a viewer of cause and effect for the entirety of Okada's life I was causing a strange phenomenon, and Okada just had to be there. Through this realization, it struck a chord within me to watch my 'wake' body do this as my resuscitated, slumbering eyes were closed.

Like I was asleep this whole time.
Like I drove Okada to his death.

Nothing made sense.
Where did I go wrong?

'What did I do?
I thought to myself.
Only the echoes of silence hurled back.

The room felt off.
Out of place.
Out of mind.

Nothing coalesced into clarity. Questions swirled like a maelstrom. The room itself seemed to rebel against reality; its very existence was an affront to the senses. Although I had it memorized, my motivation to run was constrained by my fear.

Nothing seemed right; it was all too real, in fact.
Desperation clawed at me, yearning for a sign, a respite from the onslaught of the uncanny.
Anything to stop my heart from beating out of my chest

To stop everything from blaring itself in front of me.
What had to be the reason for this?

And then, my reanimated body stirred, eyes opening to reveal a gaze tainted by a hint of crimson red from the middle of those reflective pupils. Green, emerald eyes that weren't mine were all on me.

A groan emerged, intensifying into a deafening crescendo as it stepped onto a table. Flesh swelled grotesquely and unnaturally, contorting features into a nightmarish distortion.
It cracked its neck, stretching as it got up.

The groan skyrocketed, becoming louder as it stepped onto the table.
A side of its face started getting swollen with an unnatural pink, meaty expansion in the cheeks.

A scream.
A scream with thundering claps and bloody hands.

The air was filled with screams—a chorus of agony and malevolence, punctuated by the name it cursed: mine. Fingers like gnarled claws raked across my skin, drawing forth blood and anguish. Paralyzed, I could only watch as my own semblance became an instrument of terror.

The thing screamed, yelled, and cursed my name out.

It clawed its way at my face, scratching and ripping my skin off with chipped, dirty nails as if it were straight from a wooden coffin. I felt it all while being in a constant state of paralysis, frozen with the eyes of a dead woman.

The only person who had green eyes was my father.
Was this what was left of him?

Maybe it was.
We were always so alike.
A living clone of his past self,
of what he used to be.

I thought to myself while my eyes were still blurry. My breath stopped as I gasped for any sort of air. I felt as if I was drowning in my own inner words.

I heard my mother and two others in spectral unison.
"Swim, even if you're losing your head." Their voices lingered, offering a lifeline of a single shallow breath. As my body collapsed to the floor, gasping for air, I clung to those words, seeking their wisdom.

My mother's words reverberated in my mind, an eerie chant guiding me through what was an unsettling labyrinth of existence. Her voice carried an otherworldly resonance that seemed to transcend time itself. The words trailed off as I sat up from the floor.

"Is this reality?" I said it out loud, making it known I was back in my world. Within my own body. I look around, piecing myself together. Okada's body wasn't beside me; in fact, he wasn't anywhere.

I caught my breath while holding the glass table for balance. My focus shifted to what was on the table; it was a small makeshift stickman out of branches. I sat, observing that all the bottom tips of the branches were dipped in red wax.

It was definitely something I didn't see every day.

The stick-man had been adorned in red and gold ribbons that held all the assemblage of branches of the stick-man. He had a pebble face with a drawn smile and an etched-in grin. The stickman seemed to exude an energy that defied explanation, drawing me into its enigmatic presence.

Orange liquid smothered him and the paper that had succumbed to the weight of the small dollish thing.

I moved the cryptic little thing, almost breaking the walls of red powder and yellow stones that surrounded it. I fidgeted with the slimy, snotty substance that had gotten on my hands before readjusting my eyes. There was a tall yellow candle with a dim flame.

I watched the flame for a few minutes.
Before seeing the three floating rats swirling above me around a small yellow meditation bell that looked off of my mother's altar, I haven't seen that thing since my mother's departure for Africa.

The rats stopped as the small handle clashed with the bowl. The rats started to shrink at the ringing, their bodies falling down into ethereal wisps. The bodies burned to a crisp; all that was left were the bones.

A bloody note laid in a pool of blood. It was on the glass table, accompanied by singular strands of lilac hair. My eyes refocused, looking down at the scrap of paper. My palms imprinted marks across the table, and I didn't feel well.

The note blew away as the light bulb above started to flicker rapidly. As I reached for it, a chill permeated the air. The candle's flame extinguished, leaving a shroud of cold darkness in its wake. The note's contents remained teasing meanings that danced just beyond my grasp.

The note was outside of the random salt circle.
As I made contact with the sliver of paper, my arm tingled upon touch and was ignited with a causation of goosebumps. As if this paper resonated with hidden energies. Whispering secrets beyond the known and unknowable—what did I sign up for?

I held my shrivel gasp as Okada's door opened.

...

AUG 10TH 2023/EDITED SEP 18TH 2024