Poison. It filled her dirty veins, coursing through her body like wildfire. Wherever it touched it burned and silently promised everlasting damage, and yet she was addicted. The pain was essential to the kick. She wanted to hurt, to bleed, to succumb to the blackness. Voices called out to her from the shadows, enticing, intoxicating. Curiosity provoked her to investigate, not temptation, that came later.
Flinging herself onto the bed her eyes rolled back in her head and she let out an empty gasp. It echoed in the space around her and she imagined she could see it’s cloud-like form floating away from her, as though a tiny part of her soul had broken away from itself. A cruel smile crept into the corners of her mouth. ‘Be free little me’, she thought in amusement. Heat flushed her skin, though there was an ice beneath, she assumed it must be her heart, if there was even one left. Frozen over if not dripping with thick black tar.
Ignoring the sting of the cold she tried to relax the muscles involuntarily tensing across her body, and she thought back to the first time. A night similar to the one she found herself in, dark, mysterious and full of adventure. But the first time had been shrouded in doubt, and uncertainty as well. A feeling she unexpectedly missed. Danger tiptoed across her stomach, digging it’s curved claws into her abdomen and threatening to never let go, she giggled.
Curiosity had gotten her to the choice, temptation had swayed the choice, looking down she knew there was no other choice. Ignoring the call would have only made it worse. The call would have returned disguised as something entirely different, but essentially the same. To ignore the call was to pass up an opportunity, to reject an option. To be open minded was to try everything, and though the road she walked was littered with warning signs, distant echo’s encouraging her to take a different path, despite the cuff around her ankle, there was chain. The end of which she could not see, had no knowledge of it’s true length, but every step she took ate away at links, soon there would be no chain left, and the tug would awaken the beast at the other end. At one time the beast had been something else, though she struggled to remember what exactly, the poison was to thank for her hazy mind. The road behind was clouded and dark, the way ahead promised light, colour, excitement and hope.
The first time, the beginning, she would remember above all others. The rush, the tingle, the skip in her heart that promised ill educated decisions were afoot. After only one taste she knew her body was a slave to the toxin. Immediately addictive, even to look upon it was enough to make the eyes grow wide and the lips part in wonder. And, oh, how she had wondered, and pondered, and thought of nothing else until she could no longer sleep for her mind was in a constant relay of imaginings. All of them more sweet than the previous.
The icy sting penetrated her core once more and she jerked forward, sitting straight and releasing a breath that felt as though it had never belonged in her lungs to begin with. A horrid little thing, burning her throat, but it was just shock, and soon the feeling bled out into such ecstasy she dreamt of death. Dying would feel similar, a pain, so quick, and sharp, and ultimately forgotten. Once the pain was over there was only freedom, escape from the restraints. Perhaps a heaven, whatever lay ahead, she knew it would feel the same as her poison. Her sin.
Of course there were still doubts now, but the addiction had taken hold, the answer to any unwelcome seed of thought was that she’d already made her choice, once is enough, and where’s the logic in discontinuing something once it’s started, she may as well see it through.
Alongside the doubt, pushing and shoving it’s way into her corrupt little mind was the greed. Dancing around her lips, her aching body, it engulfed her, trapped like a slave to the feeling. No matter how much she tasted she would always want more, of that she was sure. It was all she thought about from waking to the short moments before she fell into a dream filled sleep that played out all of her fantasies, but never lasted long enough to quench her thirst. For sleep was a collection of precious minutes she was free of responsibility and fear, and conscience. Without sleep she was a machine, without reprise she was tortured. Either way she was tortured, with or without her drug.
Loneliness played a large part in her discovery of such an addiction. Loneliness provoked boredom, boredom created curiosity and that curiosity entertained chaos. After peeking beneath the curtain there was no turning back, there was no way to un-see, nor forget. The only way was forward, through the relentless dark, through and through until one either found a way out or gave up and resolved to resonate within the shadows. Those shadows had been her home, they were her home, but being as she was, self assured in her decisions and distracted by the wonders within the dark, she failed to notice the oncoming light. Like a silent train, deadly and fast, the light was swift approaching, but the light was dim and she had turned so many times during her fumble in the gloom that her back was to the blinking spot. It was judgement.
Sitting bolt upright the cold sharp dig within her chest took hold as the light blinded her, waking her from her ecstasy filled dreams, almost shocking her sober. The hairs on her skin stood to attention and those tiny bits of her soul rasping free of her dying lungs stopped, remaining inside her and reminding her they were still a part of her, that no matter what she had given away there was pieces of her soul still left, stirring under the radiant glow. She loathed the remaining fragments, those that caused her to hold onto feelings that would have been easier forgotten than embraced.
“How could you?”
The words echoed in her mind, bouncing off the stark inner walls. So many answers could be provided, so many fit, but none of them were the right answer, for she believed there wasn’t one. None that would be understood by any, other than her, she, herself, one who found themselves in the exact same scenario. Perhaps no-one was capable of understanding, for no one person could possible endure the exact same string of fate, with the exact same responses and emotions included. But it were beyond understanding. Her situation called for empathy, forgiveness, perhaps more, perhaps less. Probably less.
“Betrayal.”
Any words before or after were missed. In her frozen shock her senses had clammed up, but some things got through. The blinding light casting shapes on shadows, the smell of sweat, and alcohol and home, the sound of raised voices, breathlessness, the feel of all warmth evaporating from the room, from her body and the taste of nothing on her tongue, a dry, barren emptiness begging for moisture.
Betrayal, the word stuck like glue. Tacking itself to her skin, searing and accusing. Of course it was betrayal, she had always known, but hearing it aloud, and from one who would know made it all the more real. The longer she looked into the light, the more the shadows shrank, and the more she realised where she was, with whom. The light cast rays on that which she had been toying with in the shadows.
Two. Two choices, two paths, two beasts. A monumental decision. How could she trust the light after so long in the dark? Would her addiction give her the same kick after this, would her surrounding demons allow it to consume her? Would she rule, could she conquer and win? Should she return to a beast she knew well, but had strayed from and forgotten?
Perhaps it was never her choice to make...
A Tale of Two Beasts, copyright of Lucy Holland. 24.01.2016
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