This is the truth: You didn’t kill Daniel. You didn’t pull that trigger. The shadow did that for you. And It made you watch before It took that memory from you. It killed Daniel and, I thought, ruined my plans to make myself good in God’s eyes again.
And, as subtly as I could, I begged you to tell me not to go back to my parents afterward. And to insist I leave with you that instant. And I would have promised myself to you forever, as I’m willing to do now. But I was afraid you wouldn’t understand, or accept, that level of commitment, being a young man with no concept of the many aeons your soul had already existed, and would continue to. I only offered to be yours, just yours, for as long as you would have me. And perhaps that was a mistake. I’ll never know. I just know I wanted so much to be with you. Seeing the shadow at your side, knowing Its purpose and sensing the dark road you’d be walking down, with the drugs I first introduced you to. Looking back at our ages, when I became your mother, and how I grew so heavily attached to you over the course of the next year, it’s plainly obvious to me now. I feel certain, on some level, I must have believed you were who I was meant to change. The only things I felt I didn’t understand were ‘what’ and ‘how’. And, like an irrational child, I ran away from you as fast as I could.
But, when we split ways, the shadow began with Its speeches. Its maniacal, meandering questions. You may not have had the pleasure to have heard them before. Or, if you have, you probably thought you were going insane. But It had been working on you for a while by then, so it’s probable you mistook Its psychotic rambling for your own. Being the ‘uncle’ in your head. That voice that forced you to contemplate concepts you didn’t understand. The darkness that only made you worse and got you deeper into trouble while It, so generously, kept you safe from harm.
...What? Yes, that was sarcasm. I asked you not to interrupt, shadow. I’m almost finished so, please, keep your trap shut...
And the shadow told me you were the one, David. But the shadow is a Daimon. Not a Demon. There’s a difference. The shadow’s as good as It is bad. It gets to sit on the fence and judge, which isn’t an issue between Its kind and our God. So long as It performs Its duties and guides. It can possess a human body, unlike me. For some reason, It prefers not to wear a monkey suit.
I felt conflicted, because I felt such desire for you, David. I’d let my anger go, and I thought I’d given up my pride, so I didn’t want to ruin anything, though my being human for so long made my heart ache when I thought of how you would feel when I never came back. When I left you for good, just as your mother had, and would. Remembering the look of peace in your eyes when I told you I would be returning to leave with you. Lying to your face, though it felt like doing so was draining my soul of everything pure.
The shadow insisted that the human lust I felt for you. The love and the sexual attraction. It insisted it was different than what our Father considered a sin. That it was natural. That the mother I represented to you was a deceit and didn’t matter. But I never trusted It because of what It was. It gave me twenty-four hours to make my decision and I now know I chose incorrectly.
And so I assumed another form. And Melody, as the story goes, ran off with her boyfriend. A poor unfortunate soul I know the shadow is still torturing for fun in the Underneath. Melody went away. Leaving behind despondent parents, friends and one lonely, heartbroken and confused young man. I knew I had hurt you, David. And that hurt me too.
And, although it may seem trivial, I need to say this because I know it perplexed you: I was the anonymous individual who reported you to the authorities as a missing person. I did so on purpose. It was no accident. As cruel as it might sound, I wanted you to be detained. So that you’d stop looking for me. Because I thought that would remove me from the guilt I felt. And, had you not avoided being caught, I believe now that what I intended, for myself, would never have worked. If you had been apprehended, it wouldn’t have wiped away my shame. And I apologise, truly, for causing you even more hardship as you sought me out. It didn’t just seem cruel. I can see now that it was, in a very real way, the most hurtful thing I could do to you at that point. And you didn’t deserve to suffer because you loved and cared for me. I punished you for doing everything you could to make sure I was safe. My thinking was flawed. And, since I’m telling you all, I felt I should include that in this accounting.
But, though Melody had left you, by the end of that summer, when you stopped looking for me and returned home... I found that I couldn’t leave you completely. I remained with you for three more years. As your distant and seldom-seen mother. And I watched you destroy yourself with drugs, despising and avoiding me. Rejecting me and my love for you as the shadow assisted you. As It, simultaneously, taunted me and goaded me, hoping to bring me around to Its way of thinking through Its cruelty. And it tore at my soul. Being so close to you, but never feeling able to let you know.
I purposefully ignored the guilt I felt in every new form I assumed when your mother had to go away. Changing over and over. Absorbing those lives as fully as possible. Until the pain became dulled.
And then, one day, your mother went away for good. I let her die, in the conventional sense, because I couldn’t stand to see you in pain any more. And I could no longer bear the damage I was causing my soul by remaining in the prison I’d fashioned for myself. My motives were selfish, and they were harmful, I fear. But, by that point, your relationship with your mother had deteriorated to such an extent... I remember watching you turn your head away, seeing you leave as doors slammed shut in my face, and hearing you curse my name—your words tearing into me and destroying me—more than anything else... You so hated who I was, that I convinced myself leaving you was the right thing to do. Perhaps it wasn’t. Although it hurt you deeply when your mother passed, and it made your life even more of a mess, had I not left, I felt I would only be doing you more injury.
And the shadow haunted and harassed me from that day on. Telling me how stupid I was. Telling me that all I had to do was find you again and I could go Home. And I fought with everything I had to drown out Its voice.
My first instinct was to assume Melody’s form once more. Not, I’m ashamed to say, to find you and bring you peace, but to find her parents and give them comfort. Yet I had sealed my fate, in that regard, when I left them. Whether or not anything is an accident is entirely a matter of opinion, but that’s how they had died while I watched over you. But I never blamed you for that. Not for one second. Although it saddened me to know that their souls had left this world not knowing if Their only child was alive or dead, I was happy to know that They had returned to the Above and that Their suffering was over. Mostly, I felt scared and, yes, sorry for myself.
Over the next seven years I assumed many more forms. All people—some male, which I hope you’re okay with, since, as you know, I’m not technically a human female—whose deaths went unnoticed. I wiped bodies and borrowed lives left and right, trying to find my way back to my Father. And each time I did, as strange as it sounds, I felt further removed. I thought, for sure, that giving comfort to families that might otherwise have been forced to grieve terribly would bring me into His good graces again. But I was wrong. I surely knew it even as I was doing it. Nothing good had come of my not allowing you to grieve properly and in perfect time for the death of your own mother. And the shadow kept reminding me of how foolishly I was behaving. And, ever since I changed from being your mother, the shadow would randomly take leave. Not for long, at first, but It spent more time with you the more your life spun out of control. Be careful, David. It might want you for Itself.
...No, you shut up. shadow, I’m still talking. And, to answer your question: While humans and monkeys may be similar, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with monkeys, there is at least one thing humans can do that monkey’s can’t. It’s what makes them worse, it’s what makes them equal and it’s what makes them better than the two-dimensional meat puppets you believe them to be. Yes, that’s your answer. A riddle to drive
you insane for once. Now, please, be quiet...
Cadence—the me you know now—was a plain, but uniquely beautiful, woman. I met her at a crowded bus depot, on her way to this town. She’d been raised in a strict religious environment and she had developed a bad drug habit, following a series of other poor life choices she’d made since she was forced from her family home after not agreeing to marry within her faith.
She suffered a massive heart attack that day, doing lines of cocaine off a toilet seat in the women’s bathroom. I only found her because she’d dropped a trinket from her purse on the ground and I wanted to return it to her. But when I found her, knowing what I knew, I did what I always did. I quickly wiped her body from this plane of existence and I assumed her form. Two women went into that bathroom stall, only one came out. No questions were asked by anyone. They rarely are. People spend so much time ignoring one another, it’s a wonder they ever notice anything.
And I ended up here. For the last seven years. It felt like the perfect place. Everyone here is heavy with sin. They slaughter and eat other humans. They pretend they’re decent and upstanding individuals while the women scorn one another, the men stab one another in the back to get a better seat at work and both sexes find more gratification in masturbating themselves to pornography than they do in making love with their human partners.
My impression of Cadence, I must admit, is weak. I made the transfer so rapidly, having done it in a heavily trafficked public area, that my outward appearance vacillates. No one sees me the same way, although everyone, aside from you, finds me not-at-all appealing.
And then, a month ago, the smell came back. Faintly. Your smell, David. And the shadow returned to torment me right along with it. Twenty-four hours of every day.
But when your smell grew heavier and you arrived here, the more I saw you, the more I became convinced that the shadow had been right all along. You were the shortest distance between seven points. And you were the one.
And, though I didn’t realise it, the whole time I’d spent with Brent. Trying to change him. And the whole time I spent with you. Trying to drive you away again. That whole time, I was still living in sin. Living with a pride so compelling and illusive I couldn’t even recall what I’d told you when we were younger: That the world would keep bringing us together until it was our time. Too consumed with myself to realise the world—or perhaps my Father or my Messenger—had done just that. It had brought us together again. And it was our time.
And now I fear my pride... My inability to endure the shame of telling you the truth may have done exactly what the shadow warned me of. That it may have cost me my last chance to go Home for aeons. That it may have blinded me to so many obvious truths. That there are no deadly sins that can be committed on this earth. Only in the depths of the soul. And that is why He welcomes every human back, regardless of their actions, so long as their soul remains pure. That nothing can be fixed. That only my unconditional love for you, and your return of that love along with your true forgiveness of me and my actions, can redeem me.
But I cannot force you to love me unconditionally. I cannot force you to forgive me. These are your decisions to make. And, no matter whether you choose to forgive me. No matter whether you choose to love me without condition. Nothing will ever change how I feel for you.
And now you know. Now you have your explanation.
I do so hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me for dismissing you and manipulating your life, without consideration, to satisfy my need to experience you. Using you and misleading you in some of the worst ways possible. I’ve said and done many hurtful things to you and I’ve treated you badly because I didn’t understand. Or, maybe, I just didn’t want to admit anything I ever did was wrong. But I never meant to hurt you or cause you pain of any kind. That could never be my intention for you. Not as your mother. Not as the young girl who felt so loved in your presence. Not as the woman I pray you love now. And not as the lost and fallen Angel I am.
I feel so very sorry. But no longer for myself. I don’t know how else to express it. I’m just sorry, and I wish I could take almost everything back.
And it’s crucial that you understand: I do not seek your forgiveness so that I might find redemption and be welcomed Home, though everything I am, or will ever be, desires it. I only seek your forgiveness because of what you have meant, and what you mean, to me. I only seek your forgiveness because...
Because I cannot revise the past in this plane of existence. I cannot undo the mistakes I’ve made in this reality. I can only promise you that I will never intentionally repeat them.
And because whenever I’ve said this, or thought it, I hope you still trust me enough to believe it has never been a lie:
I love you, David.
“Holy mother of dick,” Juno said, as the shadow made Itself small in the upper right corner of the kitchen. “What the hell was that all about, Cadence?” Cadence looked down in shame, weeping. “You forgot to explain the fifty billion teeth, space alien monster thing you’ve got happening, the incest bang you actually feel bad about missing out on, and the zombie detective you seem to know a little too well.” Cadence looked over at Juno with anger, barely keeping it in check. “I mean... I’m sorry. What the fuck? This is...”
David rubbed Cadence’s shoulder, and dried her tears, as Juno curled up in a ball. “It’s okay.” He ran his fingers through her hair. “And, as strange as that story was, it makes sense to me. Because this mother fucker...” David pointed at the shadow in the kitchen that shrunk and grew as It emanated something that felt like a strong desire to give him a smack. “It told me lots of things while I was alone. And though I didn’t know what the hell It was, It’s had my back for most of my life.” David patted Cadence on the top of the head. “You’ve just erased a whole lot of doubts I had about my relative sanity. At the very least, I’m glad to know someone else can see that prick.”
Cadence stood, shaking, and held David’s head in her hands. “Please, David. Don’t take this lightly. I meant what I said. Especially at the end. I am truly sorry for what I’ve done to you. But I want you to know that—”
The phone rang, causing Juno to startle and bash her head back into the kitchen cabinets as the sound of self-satisfied laughter came from out of the darkness that moved to the middle of the kitchen ceiling.
The phone rang again as Juno shivered and her eyes darted back and forth, fixing between the moving shadow and Cadence.
The phone rang again and David asked, “Are you going to answer the fuckin’ thing, Junie?” She looked back at him with disbelief and fear in her eyes. “It’s Ricky. Maybe we can get this whole ordeal with him and Paulie over with sooner if you snap out of it.”
The phone rang again.
Richard dialled the kill house’s phone from the phone in the van he was being driven out in. Him and twenty-six mean Guatemalans who, Paul assured him, knew to look for the tape and also knew to keep the prostitute alive and make sure the rat died slowly and painfully.
Juno picked up the phone on the fourth ring, her voice shaky and weak. “Hello?”
“Hey, baby, it’s Ricky. How’s everything going over there? I thought we’d drop by early. In case Davey got it in his head to run.”
“You have to,” she whispered. “You have to go back. Bring everyone. Bring more than that.”
“What the fuck are you going on about? You starting to believe Davey’s crazy talk about fixing us all up for a proper burial? Believe me, sugar tits, he’ll be as dead as he can get shortly after we arrive.”
“No. You don’t understand. This place. There’s a reason they use it for a kill house. The cops, I mean. There’s a monster here. Franky’s here, too, even though he’s dead. And the whole town is rallying. I’m talking, like, the entire town. Everyone. At least fifty-two, fifty-four people. Maybe hundreds.”
“Rallying for what? More farm subsidies?” Richard laughed and muffled the phone, saying something to the Guatemalans who giggle
d in response as he told them all to go get fucked and brought the receiver back to his mouth. “Franky, too? And a scary monster?” he asked, laughing. “Seriously, what’s the issue?”
“This town is the issue, Ricky. You’re threatening their food supply.”
“What?” Richard scowled. “Start talking sense, you crazy bitch.”
“They’re all cannibals. They eat people here. You’re on the fucking menu. That’s how Davey’s been doing it. He’s been getting his backbone from the townsfolk ...and outer space ...and beyond the grave. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve seen the remains of your muscle. Nothing but bones and scraps of skin. Blood everywhere. He’s been goading you and baiting you so you keep on sending them more food. Do you understand me?”
“I’ll call you right back.” Richard shook his head in frustration.
Richard hung up on Juno and dialled Paul.
“Yes,” Paul said. “Is this Ricky? You can’t possibly be there already. You’re twenty-six, twenty-seven minutes out unless you got lost. Tell me you didn’t get fuckin’ lost, Ricky.”
“No. Just relaying another message. So you can’t say I never said anything. I called Junie and she says the whole town is going fucking nuts. Storming the kill house.”
“No shit?” Paul asked with a chill in his voice.
“Yeah. Why?” Richard heard Paul’s breath growing laboured.
“It’s nothing. Bullshit the cops tell everyone to keep them away. That town is, supposedly, a meat eater’s paradise, if you know what I mean.”
“Lots of strip joints? Cat houses?”
“No, you fuckin’ idiot. The folks there. Supposedly, they eat people for breakfast. But not metaphorically, like you and I do... That would explain Franky’s largesse.”
“Look,” Richard said. “What I’m thinking is this: The cannibal thing is bullshit, though Junie says it definitely isn’t. She says she’s seen our guys’ bodies. Stripped to the bone. Fixed and planted. But, whatever the situation is, if we’ve got a town ready to take us on to protect little Davey. If we have to deal with numbers, we’re going to need reinforcements of our own.”
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