2019-08-07 - Self-Improvement

The storm was breaking by the time Alexander turned onto the end of Elm. He looked up as the lightning forked through the sky, blue-white fingers clawing the dark clouds open and letting loose a torrent of rain. He was instantly soaked. The rain was surprisingly cold; it felt good as it slid down his spine and his arms, although as he walked and his jeans soaked through, he thought, not for the first time, that an umbrella would be a good investment.

He glanced at the neighbor’s house, slowing for a moment. It didn’t look like anyone was there, either in the main house, or Itzhak’s rooms. It was quiet, and it was never quiet when the younger boy who lived there was home. He ducked his head, and continued on to his own door. The house inside was dark when he stepped inside; Isolde must be out. He whistled into the living room.

Silence. His heart skipped a beat. “Luigi?” He flicked the light switch. Nothing happened. Flicked it a couple more times, but the only light was the crack and flash of the lightning outside. The cage was locked, door closed. Nothing inside but a few feathers at the very bottom, dust gathering on the perches. Alexander swallowed hard against the sudden, terrified dryness of his throat. “Isolde. Isolde took him to the vet for something. It’s okay.”

He fumbled his phone out of his wet jeans, thumbed the password, pulled up his contacts. Or tried to. The list didn’t scroll because there was no list, just the generic starting numbers to check your bill and your data remaining. He pulled up the keypad to enter the number by hand. No bars.

There was fear, for certain – the clammy cold of it settled against his skin more completely than the rainwater – but there was also relief. A touch of relief. This isn’t real. Somewhere, Luigi was in his cage, and he was all right. Isolde was probably still working on her origami, and she was all right. In the real world, everyone was all right. He was the only one in danger.

And that was okay.

He shoved the phone back in his pocket, and began to prowl the house, head swinging from side to side. “What’s it going to be, this time? Hands in the walls? Killer plants? Rogue basketball players?” The kitchen looked normal. No heads in the fridge, no bloody knives. He peeked out the back window. No flowers; Isolde had said she’d planted her flowers outside, but there was no sign of them. The living room was empty, but clean. The hallway-- of course.

The door to his research room was open. The lock wasn’t broken, and the knob was the old knob. From before the Captain, before Isolde and Itzhak. Alexander didn’t bother looking at the bedroom; he knew a cue when he saw one. “Okay. Show me,” he murmured, one palm on the door, pushing it open in a firm motion.

His room. The only place in the house he felt completely himself. Maybe the only place in the world, with tragedy and mystery and obsession spiraling out from his fingertips, chaos turning – bit by painful bit – into order. The place where he made a sort of reality from all the horrible possibilities. The lights were on in here, because of course they were. He could see everything: every terrible picture, every victim, every cut throat and shattered skull. Alexander recognized every single one, and the single post-it note attached to each, his own handwriting saying: I DID IT. It would certainly explain why his phone contact list was empty.

“It’s not real.” His heart hammered in his chest, mouth dry. “None of it is real. I’m not going to engage with this. You can’t feed on me. Not with this fake shit.” He stepped out, slammed the door, pressed his back against the wall across from the room and tried not to cry. Breathe. Breathe.

There was a rustling on the other side of the door. A soft, papery sound like leaves in the breeze, or books flipping. Or photographs. “You can’t make me look at that again. I didn’t do those things,” Alexander told the door.

It opened, and Alexander stepped through to look at him, smiling slightly. “No. But I did.” Alexander stared at his doppleganger. This one wasn’t dead. Looked, in fact, tremendously vital. Dark-eyed, confident, powerful. Better clothing, better hair, bloodstained hands.

“You’re not me,” Alexander said.

“I should hope not,” Alexander replied, with a derisive look up and down at his shabby clothes and too-long hair. “I actually accomplished something.” A press of his lips, a coy look back over his shoulder at the room, the photographs. “Quite a lot, actually.”

“You’re just a figment. You didn’t accomplish anything.” Alexander starts edging down the hallway, back towards the entrance to the living room. “You’re just a fucking puppet, designed to hurt me. You’re nothing outside this fucking place. Nothing.”

Alexander followed, still smiling that faint, condescending smile, their eyes never breaking contact. “You’re right,” he said, softly. “Always the clever one. It’s about the only thing you’ve managed to get right. But,” he lifted a finger, playful, “incomplete. As usual. I am a figment.” They crossed the threshold into the living room and he took a step closer as Alexander took a step back. “I’m not real.” Another step. “But I want to be.” Another step. “And you’re not doing anything with your life, anyway.”

“That isn’t something that can happen,” Alexander snapped. But doubt twisted a tiny hook in his heart. Are you sure? The rules were changing. People could go from the real to the unreal. People were bringing things back. “I won’t let it.” That, at least, he was certain of.

Alexander grinned, and his teeth gleamed pearlescent in the flash of lightning from the storm outside. “You think you’re gonna stop me?”

His answer was a palm strike to the nose. Both Alexanders snarled – nearly identical but for the gurgly quality of the (better) other Alexander’s broken nose – and drove their fists at each other. It was an inelegant fight, with no fancy moves or rules, just rage-fueled survival instinct. At some point Alexander tackled his doppleganger into the table, shattering it. At some point, the other Alexander sank his teeth into Alexander’s wrist, and hung on like a pit bull until Alexander smashed his free fist into the other’s already broken nose with all of his strength. At some point, Alexander ended up on top, ended up with a broken table leg in his hands and a squirming creature who was not (better than) him trapped under his weight, and so he did what you do in that situation, and brought the makeshift club down again.

And again.

And again.

Until, at some point, there was nothing that could be recognized as Alexander Clayton in what was beneath him. Or, from the shoulders up, even as a human being. It wasn’t moving anymore, and Alexander crawled off of it and threw up on the carpet, which only added to the scene’s current Pollockesque charms. “You will never have what’s mine,” he whispered, hoarsely.

The bite on his hand burned. He looked down. It’d torn skin in several places, but it wasn’t bleeding. Instead, there was a blackened ring around the teeth marks. “What the fuck was in your mouth?” he muttered, and went to wipe it off. The black retreated from his fingertips, slithering like tiny worms into the wounds.

<<You’re never going to get rid of me, Alexander.>>

The veins of his wrist turned dark red, showing through the tanned skin, then black. “Oh, hell no.” Alexander scrambled to his feet, hand clamped hard above the spreading black stain. The voice (his voice) was a gleeful little chuckle at the back of his head, growing stronger by the moment. Stronger as the infection (the possession) crept upwards. “No, no no no.”

Alexander ran to the kitchen, hip careening off the edge of the counter, shoulder slamming into the fridge in his haste, he grabbed the butcher block. Alexander didn’t cook, but his knives were always sharp. The edge gleamed, waiting. “It’s venom,” he whispered, looking down at the spidery darkness invading him. “It’s just like snake venom. And you don’t get to win.”

The knife flashed in reflected lightning as he brought it down, screamed as it turned red under the two crisscrossing cuts. Alexander tossed it aside, lowered his mouth to the wound. Sucked. Rot and copper filled his mouth. He spit it into the sink. Again. Again. Sucking until his cheeks hurt, but he could only taste hot metal and not corpses and cold. The black squirmed against the stainless steel, making one last effort to reach its preferred host. He turned on the water with his good hand, grabbed the spigot to wash it away.

As the last of it gurgled, hissed, and protested its way down the drain, the world shifted around him. Just a little. Just enough that he wasn’t surprised when the overhead kitchen lights flickered to life, or that when he looked into the living room, there was no corpse, no shattered table. Just the paper-like sound of Luigi rustling his feathers as he settled in to sleep for the evening. A shudder ran through Alexander’s body. He was home.

And his arm was bleeding all the fuck over the kitchen floor.