Page 135 of Devil Inside

“No!” There is anger slithering within her skin. I can feel it seethe.

Jenn’s spine curves in the opposite direction, away from the rest of her body, almost as if there are two conflicting forces inone body. Her legs bend back, sending the rest of herself toward the floor. Her shoulders nearly touch the ground. Her hands plant themselves behind her, halting her from falling. She’s suspended like that, on her hands and feet, facing the ceiling.

“You want to cast us out?”

Her pelvis lifts up, torso arching in a painful origami of limbs.

“You want us toleave?”

Lilith crawls away from me, faster than I’ve ever seen. She skitters down the hallway on her hands and feet, her head still tilted toward me. She’s not looking where she’s going.

Suddenly her hands press themselves against the wall and now she’s scaling them. Defying gravity by crawling across the wall as if she’s some kind of spider.

Jenn reaches the ceiling, her body crammed into the nook where the wall meets the plafond. She peers down, her body held up by her hands and feet pressing against the wall.

I run to her, reaching out.

She seethes, hissing at us. Rivulets of spit arc through the air and land at my feet.

“Lilith, stop—”

Lilith leaps from the wall and lands on her two feet. I skid to a halt before we collide into one another. She remains stock-still in Jenn’s body, chest level, no need to breathe.

“Don’t follow us.”

The door opens, and out she goes, slipping into the main hall outside my apartment. She slams the door behind her, leaving me where I’m standing.

Well, that didn’t go very well.

somebody watching over me

Lilith

Who am I?

I’ve drifted through so many vessels it’s easy to lose sight of myself. You can forget who you even are.

What’s my name? I still have one, don’t I?

Sorry, that’s the body talking...

I want to be in a vessel that nobody wants to look at. A port, besotted with blackberries and currants. Such cheap, fortified wine. People pass us by, paying us little mind. Occasionally a coin will clink in our cup, the rattle of spare change the only acknowledgment of our existence.

We simply sit here, on the street, in our moldering clothes, our decrepit skin, and watch the world drift. Time passes and we bear witness.

The itch is overwhelming but so be it.

We’re yearning to burn.

I’m hiding. I’m hurt. I’m angry. I’m all these things at once and it’s hard to make sense of them, consumed by these conflicting emotions.

What’s happened to me? What have I become? How could I let this happen? To me? Just when I thought the abyss was the lowest I could go, look at how far I’ve fallen here on earth.

Should I go back? To Jordan? No. It’s simpler to sink into a body no one will see.

No one is looking for me here.

Does water ever know what it is until it’s contained? Is an ocean an ocean without the surrounding land corralling it? Do the boundaries of existence dictate what we are?