Assumption Ch 06

Chapter Six

After Ambree first explained to me the truth of what I am, I was of two minds.

The greater part of me didn't believe it. Experience is the best teacher and I had more than enough of it to convince me I was just an average, ordinary person. The rest of me, the part that couldn't immediately dismiss the idea, was scared that it was true. I just didn't know how to be anything other than human, and if I was going to be judged against a different set of expectations, it seemed like a sure bet I would come up short.

Both minds had now settled on the unmistakable truth. I would have preferred a label with less of a negative connotation to it, but being called a demon felt right. There was no other way to explain how willing I had been to take a life or what had happened to me once I did.

The Matron's deed had changed me. At first, I thought it was for the better. Inhaling a piece of whatever had poured from that young man had unlocked something. I felt stronger and more in control. Focus and concentration came easier. I even became more connected with the world around me.

As the day wore on, my outlook changed. The positive effects of that incredible rush began to fade, and as they did, I was no longer able to stop myself from fixating on the horrific act I had committed immediately before it. When I closed my eyes, I could see the pool boy staring in shocked horror as I ran the knife up his core.

Images turned to daydreams or whatever the nightmare equivalent of those is. They were vivid flights of imagination where I relived the event, sometimes as it happened and sometimes with added moments where he begged for his life or cursed me as a monster. All the while, the Matron watched with delight.

I thought of the mad ravings of psychopaths and serial killers, two states that I know are not mutually exclusive, and how they justify their cruel actions. It opens the mind, it settles the spirit, or maybe it allows one person to absorb the power of another. I believed them all to be irrational just that morning but those were exactly the effects I was experiencing when I returned that afternoon after murdering someone.

That night, I stumbled back and forth between desperately needing sleep and being too scared to be alone with my thoughts. I stayed on the couch and kept the company of the television. There, I could sleep, if possible, but if not, the drama of other people, both real and fictitious, was safer to think about.

Though I tried, it was hard to keep my attention on the moving pictures. The enhanced focus I had felt earlier in the day was gone or at the very least had shifted inwards. My sanity was on the brink of being destroyed. I asked myself if maybe that was what the Matron had wanted. Wouldn't a mad demon better suit her needs?

Somewhere fate flipped a coin. Insanity or cold detachment, those were my options. I didn't know which one would have been worse. No. That's not true. I yearned for apathy.

It was then I heard a voice.

At first, it was very faint and so quiet that I could barely make out that it was a voice at all, but as soon as I acknowledged it and turned down the volume on the television to make an effort to listen, it grew as loud as if there was another person in the room with me.

"Can you hear me?" it asked. It was a woman's voice.

Having been alone in my home, the sudden sound of someone else talking should have scared me, but after the events of that day, it was not unexpected. Killers heard voices, at least some of them, anyway. The coin had landed. "Yes," I answered.

"Find a mirror."

I made my way to the largest mirror in my home, a cloudy full-length piece mounted on the bathroom door. When I looked into it, all I saw was myself, worn-down and pale. It was the first time I had looked at myself since returning to the bathroom after being summoned. The picture had changed dramatically.

"Can you see me?" My reflection asked.

"I see me," I answered, unsure if I was agreeing with the voice or correcting it.

"Concentrate."

I looked closer at my reflection. The person I saw was me, and yet it wasn't me. When I raised my arm, his stayed at his side, and when I tilted my head, his stayed straight. He wasn't even standing like I was. His posture was perfect as if he didn't have the weight of some horrible misdeed pulling him down into a slump. "It's not me, but it's not, not me," I clarified.

"Of course, I am not you. I am me."

It was like one of those puzzles in a children's magazine. The more I looked in the mirror, the more differences I saw between the man pictured and myself. He was shorter, dressed differently, and not in my apartment. When I noticed his eyes, the truth started to come together. They were bright and green. I do not have green eyes. "Ambree?" I guessed.

"Yes."

The me in the mirror completed its transformation. The last woman to kiss me stood in place of my reflection.

"How are you talking to me?" I asked.

"When we embraced, we placed a seed in each other. This bond is weak, but enough for me to know when you are near, or when something significant has happened to you. I can feel you more strongly now than I could this morning."

My head was foggy from stress and a strong need for sleep, too much to follow along properly. I fixated on the word seed, imagining she had literally planted something in me, like a vine stretching out to tie us together. "Is it growing?"

"No. Our connection can only weaken unless we do something more to develop it. It is you who are stronger, much stronger than when we last met. What has happened?"

The full force of my feelings rushed back into me. Instantly, a stream of water fell from my eyes, hitting my hands like raindrops before I could bring them up to hide my shame. My breath escaped me, and I strained to keep enough air to breathe, let alone talk and answer her.

Suddenly, I was no longer standing in my bathroom. I was sitting in a dark room, across from Ambree. We were each centered in one of a pair of circles dyed into the carpet that looked nothing like the others I had seen so far. Instead of triangles, complex characters danced around the interior. Between us was a thick blue candle.

She stared at me while I struggled to compose myself. Even though I was a slobbering mess, I didn't see judgment or surprise. Her demeanor was the same as the first time we met.

When I was finally able to speak, I sought to find clarity instead of giving it. "Did you summon me?"

"No," she shook her head, "I am allowing you to see through my eyes."

I tried to blink some sense into what I was viewing. She was sitting in front of me, as clear as day. "Then why am I seeing you?"

"We are looking into a mirror."

It was then I noticed she had a frame around her.

"We are very far away, but earlier I began to sense you as if you were right next to me. The feeling has faded a bit since then. I wanted to attempt this before it weakened any further."

"Something happened today," I blurted out. "I was summoned to a different circle." The words cut out as I began to choke on my tears again.

"You took a life."

"Yes," I coughed.

She reached out toward the mirror. Seeing from her perspective, it looked like she was both reaching away and to me at the same time. It was a mixed gesture.

"I told you, the path you are on will be dark, but it is necessary."

I thought she would share my horror, but she was unphased. Her words shocked some sense back into me. "What do you mean, necessary?"

"For you to become what you are meant to be, you must learn to accept what it takes to grow stronger."

"I have to kill people?" I asked.

"Yes."

She had known this was going to happen. In that moment, I was certain she had lied to me somewhere and I wanted to throw back in her face exactly what she had said that turned out to be untrue, but when I pressed those memories there was no deception to be found. She had warned me that I would face things I couldn't imagine. Her only failing was not telling me what that meant, precisely.

If she had, it wouldn't have made much of a difference. Instead of becoming a wreck after the deed was done, I would have been a wreck every moment leading up to it as well. Despite the realization, I didn't want to forgive her.

My mind struggled for rationality. I tried compromise. "Can't I at least just kill bad people?"

"You must serve the ternion. They have a need for you to grow stronger, and this is how your Matron has chosen to help you meet that need."

My grief was still in the bargaining stage. "Then I'll do it without her. I can go out and find drug dealers and rapists and..." I trailed off when it occurred to me I didn't know how to find either of those.

"These women are cruel, but their cruelty will lead you to true power."

"What if I just want this to stop?"

Her face hardened. "There is no turning back. This was not yours to choose, but it is yours to claim."

She had a way of talking that almost disguised the hopelessness of my current and future situation as something noble, but I knew the game and was fast developing a resistance to it. "What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means you are a demon in captivity, and right now it is not you who decides what effect you have on this world. These women will tell you to murder for them, and so you will. They will make you spread suffering, and you will abide, not happily or unhappily, but in absolute service to those that hold your leash because you will not be given the option to disobey. You can accept that or let it destroy you. I would advise you to accept it."

It didn't feel like it was up to me. She was trying to steamroll me through the depression stage, but fireworks were still going off in my head and chest. I wasn't a demon in the ways that I needed to be to do what she was asking. "What if I can't?"

"You can. With each tear, let a piece of your humanity escape. You are not the creature you lived your life as to this point. The torture you feel is undeserved. Look forward to the goal and understand what will be done, must be done. Let it feed you."

There was a coldness there and not just in her eyes or her tone. It was in the meaning of her advice. Demons don't cry. The end justifies the means. I felt it then, that lack of emotion that I was supposed to feel. I could have let go and disconnected right there, as easily as flipping a switch. Ambree was inviting me to do it, making it sound not just like it would be okay but that it was the right thing to do. I hovered there for a moment, tempted.

"You have stopped crying," she pointed out.

I hadn't settled anything, but the tears had run their course. She had given me something to think about, though maybe not what she had meant to. There was a choice to be made. Choosing my humanity would cost me my sanity. Choosing the demon would cost me my soul. If I wanted to keep them both I would have to reconcile the two. That meant pain.

Right then, I chose pain. It was a foolish choice, but the human part of me had no problem making one last effort to prove me a fool.

I must have been lost in my head longer than I realized because when she spoke again, it startled me. "Is there anything you want me to do while you have my sight?" She asked.

It was an unexpected question, and I wasn't sure what else she could offer. "No," I answered. There was nothing else I needed from her. She had helped me, in a way.

"Tell no one of our meeting. Know that I remain your servant. If I could prove that to you now, I would. Soon, I promise I will. When you need me, call on me and I will come." She sounded sincere, but I knew, and I suspect she did as well, that I had no idea how to call on her.

The woman in the mirror faded away and I was again standing in my home.

I returned to the couch and spent the rest of the evening replaying the conversation in my head. Something stuck out. I had assumed Ambree was helping me because the Matron had asked her to. Her goal was to get me to accept my servitude so that I could be used to complete whatever tasks were required of me. She was the good cop.

That theory worked if I ignored the relationship that I knew these women had, or rather didn't have, and that was an easy thing to do. What I couldn't overlook was the way she referred to my masters and how she ended this talk and the last. She acted like she didn't want them to know we spoke, even though they themselves had brought her to me. What was she supposed to be doing with me in that room?

The craziest part, which had managed to fly over my head twice, was that she had referred to herself as a servant twice. How, exactly, was Ambree my servant? That was the question I needed to be answered.

"Ambree, are you still there?" I asked.

There was no response.