METAMORPHOSIS

I shoot up right in my bed with my body covered in a cold sweat, and my heart thumping against my chest. I'm shaking uncontrollably, it feels like electricity is constantly being shot into my body. I put my hand on my chest where my heart is, so I can feel it's beating, then take deep breaths to soothe myself. The lamp I usually keep on while I sleep is off even though I remember making sure it was on before I went to sleep, because I never forget. I would be swallowed by complete darkness if it wasn't for the little light that bleeds through from under my door frame. As I'm staring straight ahead at my shadowy figure in the black TV screen against my wall, I notice a dark figure in the corner of my eye and I feel my heart rate going up again, thudding against my palm. I'm too afraid to turn my head and see what's there. I close my eyes hoping it'll be gone once I open them again. I hold them close and my heart is beating so hard I can hear it in my ears- da duh, da duh, da duh, da duh- I open them again, and I feel a lump in my throat, like my heart is trying to escape my chest through my mouth, when I still see the figure in the corner of my eye. Finally, I build the courage to look. I slowly turn my head towards the direction I see it in the corner of my eye. I hear my heart beating faster and harder as I slowly turn my head -da duh, da duh, da duh, daduh, daduh, daduh, daduh-

Before I'm ready for it, I'm already looking directly at it.

I'm paralyzed in disbelief. It's an angel. It's an angel, but it doesn't glow. It's standing in the corner of my room, its robes look worn and dirty, its skin looks dull and gray in my dark room, it has its hands behind its back, and its wings are tucked closed behind its back like a vulture as well. Its face struck horror into me. It has the face of a man, but it's grinning from ear to ear without showing its teeth, with his head slightly tilted down like a Stanley Kubrick stare, and its eyes were full of evil. The kind of eyes that were delighted by pain and sin; the more evil, the more the eyes filled with pleasure. It feels like an eternity since I've been looking at it. My dead eyes speak more than they ever have, and they're screaming fear. My eyes bulging and shaking so much you can see my pupils dancing. I feel my eyes dry from not blinking once.

Then I hear a knock at my door, but when I look at the space beneath the door, I see no shadow, and the light that seeped through, slowly started to diminish till there was a last thread of a light that shot across the bedroom floor like a laser pointer, for a second, before it disappeared went completely dark.

I sit in the darkness aware I'm not alone. I hear the knob on my door turn, and the door slowly creaks open. I can't see anything, but I feel a cold breeze as the door opens.

Something is entering,

I can feel the cold breeze like a snake that slithers around me, and I hear it hissing.

I look around trying to follow its sound, but then it stops, and I feel the spot next to me on the bed weigh down as if someone just sat down next to me. I hear something breathing right next to me, it's breath echoing mine, slowly I turn my head to look next to me, to see a very faint figure in the darkness sitting next to me. It's so faint it's like the darkness itself in that spot has shaped into a human figure. It’s not looking at me, just straight forward. I can barely see it but when I squint my eyes to get a better look, it seems to resemble me. I hesitantly reach out to touch what I believe is its shoulder but as soon as I make contact with it, an immediate pain gets sent throughout my body and I drop to the floor. I can’t help but burst into a scream grabbing at my face and body, as the pain pulses and throbs throughout, getting increasingly worse. The figure begins to mimic my screaming as if it were mocking me and finding it humorous still not even looking at me. I feel my skin on different parts of my body start to rip open and my blood pour out. I crawl through the darkness to the bathroom to see what's happening to me. I get to the bathroom and grab a hold of the countertop to lift myself up , it takes everything in me to do so. I look at the mirror in the darkness, hesitating to turn on the light, afraid of what I might see, but I can never stop myself from finding out things I don't wanna know. I flip the switch on, and see something there, so horrifying I'm frozen in place. My bones, they're growing out of my body like spikes in all different directions, even my teeth they're growing into large sharp fangs. There's blood dripping off of every sharp bone that's grown out of me. As I'm still in shock staring at what I've become, I feel a throbbing pain in my right eye stemming all the way from the back of my head. I put my right hand on my eye in pain, and got that sick gut feeling that something is coming I don't want to come , like when you know you're about to vomit and you can't stop it. Faster than I could even realize, another sharp bone shoots out from my right eye turning my eyeball into complete mush, and going straight through the palm of my hand. Sticking my hand to my face. I can feel the juices and blood from the leftovers of my eyeball sliding down my palm onto my forearm, and down my face. I scream and cry and laugh all at once out of complete hysteria. There's too much to feel and process so my emotions run free. I hope that's the last of it , but it's not, as I'm wailing in pain, my top teeth start to grow bigger and sharper; so much that it's pushing into the bottom of my mouth and stretching my jaw wide open. They're stabbing into the bottom of my mouth making my gums squirt blood. My jaw can't open much wider , but they're still growing. There's loud cracking sounds and I feel my jaw breaking, then it partially snaps off, dangling off to one side of my face. If you look between the long sharp bloody fangs, you can see my tongue hanging out of my throat and blood pouring out like a waterfall. I see myself in the mirror and cringe at the monster I've become. In the blink of an eye, the thing that looked like me that was sitting next to me in the bed is now standing right behind me in the reflection of the mirror. In the light I can see that it is me, another me, and he's grinning ear to ear with delight. He starts to point at me in the reflection and laughs manically. As he's laughing his reflection slowly starts to shape shift, into another person. Into someone I love, someone I can't help but want to be wanted by. She's not laughing, just staring with disgust and resentment straight into my eyes. Tears start to fall from my left eye and I try to hide the other half of my face with my left hand, my right hand is already covering the other side.

She speaks

“Don't be sad now,

Don't try to hide what you are now,

Having shame doesn't make you less of a monster that you are,

Look at you crying after what you've become”.

“I'm sorry I don't know what's wrong with me”, I say.

“I knew you'd say that you always do,

So Horrid,

Stay away from me”,

She responds.

Then she slowly fades away

Till it's just me alone again

With my disaffection

My bones continue to grow in all directions.

Piercing into the floor, walls, and ceiling.

Bounding me

Forcing me

To stare at my reflection

Till there's nothing left of my living being

It will feel like an eternity.

This is the curse the devil has given me.