1YOU CAN NEVER COME BACK FROM THIS
So, I’m standing there, trapped in one of my favorite nightmares, discussing gender euphoria with the demon who lives rent-free in my head.
“None of them know what to think when they look at me. They can’t decide if I’m their god or their monster.”
Well, maybe not everyone’s idea of gender euphoria, but certainly mine. Boy? Girl? Unspeakable horror.
I call this place the Garden of Death, a field of dry brown grass and wilted flowers, with massive trees scorched and twisted as if struck by lightning one by one. There’s a pond at the field’s center, its surface as black and still as spilled ink, interrupted only by the glow of the red moon overhead and the occasional scaled creature flicking its tail up from the water. The garden is beautiful and horrifying and I’m never afraid here, though I suspect I should be.
Maybe my unwarranted bravery is because I’m not only here. I can see the garden, the forest, the world I’ve dreamt for myself, but I can see my bedroom, too. The black sheets on my twin-size bed rucked around my knees. My clear plastic backpack tossed by the door, unzipped and overflowing with loose, half-torn papers. Hank, the decrepit dog I’ve had since kindergarten, sleeping next to me.
The garden is an illusion—a good one. But if I focus, I can see past the smoke screen. It isn’t real.
It never feels entirely unreal, though.
The demon’s profile is facing me, his head tilted up to consider the navy sky through the lifeless tree limbs. There’s nothing about him that immediately indicates anything demonic. In fact, I think he’s the most beautiful dream-man I’ve created. Mahogany curls frame the sharp angles of his face. Full, dark pink lips perpetually smirk beneath the straight bridge of his nose.
It’s only when he turns his head toward me that I’m struck by the abyss of his perfectly pitch eyes. No whites, no irises, just a cavernous black stretched across their surface, uncannily similar to the pond in his rotting garden.
And only when he speaks do I catch a hint of a forked tongue flicking against razor-sharp teeth.
“You enjoy making them uncomfortable.” This would be an accusation from anyone else, but the demon isn’t scolding. If anything, he’s amused. “We have that in common.”
“I enjoy making them uncomfortable,” I agree. The tips of my fingers brush dead stalks of grass as I move through them, making a wide circle around my demon. “But let’s not overstate our similarities. I’ve built my dominion on wonder and yearning. You are the king of cacoëthes. Your kingdom knows only bloodshed and damnation.”
I literally do not even know what cacoëthes is. Dream-me is so big-brained and sexy.
“Bloodshed and damnation. Such a macabre image.” Though I’m almost positive I meant to insult him, the demon looks unbothered. When he tilts his head at me, a curl falls across those fathomless eyes. “Are you implying I’m a sadist?”
“I am implying nothing.” I shrug. “I am merely pointing out that your people need never debate the monstrousness of their god.”
“And yet, here you are.” His smirk becomes as sharp as a blade.
From my safe distance on the other side of his garden, I curl my fingers into my palm, nails biting into tender flesh. “And yet, here I am.”
Of course, there really isn’t such a thing as a safe distance, not from my demon.
After all, entire realities divide us, real-me and this thing I stitched together in my nightmare world, and he still won’t leave me alone.
He moves to stand in front of me, grasping my chin between his knuckle and thumbclaw, gazing down at me with a look that says he would suck the marrow from my bones if given a flicker of opportunity.
“I could argue monstrosity is in my very design. I am naught without it.” His breath ghosts against my mouth.
Dream-me grits my teeth instead of parting my lips. Big-brained but so stupid.
The demon leans in closer. He smells like old paper and warped wood and still air; like dust and decay and things long forgotten that are better left that way. “But what might it say about you, creature, that you choose to crawl into a monster’s nest?”
I want to kiss him, even if it would bleed my mouth. I’ve done it before—maybe. In all the years since I started dreaming of the demon and this whole unreal world, I’ve never really managed to follow the plot. Scenes happen out of order. Characters die and reappear. Kisses are given and taken away.
But right now, he’s looking at me like he knows what it’s like to kiss me. And like he wants to do it again, too.
Instead of letting him, I jerk free from his grip to ask, “Did you invite me here to flirt? I was under the impression something important awaited.”
“Flirting with you is always important, Magician,” he chides with another laugh. “Unfortunately, it isn’t why I summoned you.” He curls two fingers toward his palm, gesturing away from the clearing. “Come.”
We leave the garden behind, disappearing together like two shadows past the tree line.
As we walk, I’m too aware I’m not walking at all. I feel my dream body as it moves through the woods, as vividly as I feel my real body, trapped in bed. And I can’t seem to control either. Dream-me is puppeteered by someone else’s whims. Real-me can never be woken until it’s time, and I never know when that is until it’s over.
I hate this feeling, always have.
I also hate knowing where the demon is leading me, because I’d rather not venture there. We’re moving in the direction of his … home? Palace? Evil lair? In any case, I’ve been many times before, chronologically or not. It’s creepier than the Garden of Death, and not nearly as enchanting.
The mouth of the cave is a hollow opening carved into rock, jagged teeth at the base and top that remind me of the demon’s own. It’s dark here. I snap my fingers, the nails on one hand clicking together and sparking a bright, white light in my palm. It illuminates a long, wet hallway stretching up into the underbelly of a mountain at the edge of the woods we’ve just left behind. I know, at the end of the hall, we’ll reach a rock slab of a door, and beyond that we’ll be deposited directly into the demon’s bedroom.
We don’t make it there, though. As we creep farther along, the darkness begins to dissipate. Another light emerges at the end of the tunnel, different from the light in my hand. This one is closer to golden, a subdued yellow glow pulsing in and out. With trepidation, I clench my fist to extinguish my own light when I realize this fluttering pulse matches the beat of my heart.
There is never light in the lair, not any other time he’s brought me here, and there never will be again.
“Are you redecorating?” I tease, even as unease makes my tongue thick. Something is wrong, and I know it.
He turns his head toward me and smiles. Every smile the demon has ever given me has been awful, but there is a hidden message in this one that is particularly vile.
Dream-me swallows. Real-me tries to focus on the pop punk poster behind his head, back in my bedroom in Georgia, barely visible through the illusion.
The light is a girl.
She’s beautiful, exceptionally so, and impossibly dainty. Her eyes take up an incredible amount of her face, the widest, bluest things I’ve ever seen. Her orange curls are as long as the rest of her body, bundles tucked back with intricate golden clips and strands of gemstones. If I tried, I think I could make out every fragile bone in her body past the paper-thin layer of her porcelain skin.
The light is coming from that skin. It radiates off her to illuminate the rock dust in the air around us.
Those beautiful eyes are swollen and red, with tear tracks hanging like lanterns from the corners. Her tears aren’t like any I’ve ever seen. These are made of gold, glittering lines trailing over her round cheeks.
She’s on the ground, her hands and feet bound in black ties, another between her lips. My demon’s captive.
I’ve never seen this girl in any nightmare before, but I have the sense dream-me knows exactly who she is.
As carefully as building a bomb, I bite out, “At last, you have gone too far. You must know you can never come back from this.”
“Is that true?” Even now, the demon seems mildly amused. He corners me until my back presses against the cave wall, uneven stones digging into the notches of my spine. His hand curls around my waist. Disgust and excitement both feel like nausea. “Do you believe the others ever worried they had gone too far? As they toiled for epochs trying to bury me?”
His mouth brushes against my ear. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I swear I can feel the whisper of fangs. “Do you think the Sun worried she’d gone too far as your scales tipped further and further out of balance?”
For a moment, the only sounds in the cave are our breathing—his too even, mine too frantic—and the mewling of the poor girl in the dirt at our feet and a dull echo replaying it all back to us.
At length, I raise my hand and press my nails to his chest, shoving him away from me. Five minuscule tears flare in the silken black of his shirt. The demon doesn’t stumble, only leans irritatingly against the opposite wall. I flick my gaze to the girl and back to him. “And what is your inspired plan, monster? To take the day for yourself?”
“The day, the night, the land and sea, and all things in between.” His smile has yet to soften. “But you think me far more selfish than I am. We will share dominion over this world, creature. Our empire will soon be beyond compare.”
The girl—the Sun?—gives a scream around the rope against her tongue.
I meet her eyes. Though she cannot speak, her golden tears say enough. Silently, she pleads with me to ease her fear. To sway her jailer. To save her.
“Why would I continue to aid you?” I demand of the demon, though I do not look away from the Sun. “Already I court the wrath of the others. I took pity on you when you came to me, whimpering like a kicked dog about their abuse, but why would I risk everything just to sate your hunger?”
“My hunger,” he seethes. “As if your black heart does not ache for every wicked gift our alliance has brought you. As if you do not hide behind my monstrousness so you might deny your own.”
The Sun’s eyes widen. I look away from her, facing him again. His smile has finally vanished, replaced entirely by teeth.
“The balance is my gift and my burden. I keep the scales. That is all I do. And this is not balance.”
“Neither is allowing them to keep me leashed!” His hand flies out, grabbing a fist of the Sun’s curls. He yanks her backward, dragging her across the dirt to press her against his legs, forcing her throat back. Over her muffled wails, he continues, “And I am not the only one they’ve kept on a chain, creature. They would suppress us for another eternity before bowing to the true magnitude of our power. But follow me down this path, and there is no force in this world that could stop us.”
Dream-me looks down at the Sun, considering the pitiful icon.
Real-me focuses on the slow-spinning ceiling fan overhead, the dirty, dog-fur-covered blades barely visible in the moonlight through my window. Real-me doesn’t want to look at the Sun. Real-me doesn’t want to be here anymore.
These dreams are rarely good. But this one is ratcheting into the worst of them.
Dream-me asks, “How will we do it?”
The demon laughs as the Sun screams.
“You know how.” He eyes me expectantly, but I say nothing. With a hint of irritation, he presses, “If we do this, we must abandon the secrets between us. Let us abandon pretext—I know of the blade.”
My heart loses its footing. “How?”
“You are not the only scheming creature to whisper in my ear, Magician. But that is a story for another night. We have little time to spare.” A spark of light ignites behind those black eyes. “Are you saying yes?”
I tilt my head to glance down the hall from where we came. Too far away to see this world’s moonlight through the cave’s opening. “The Moon will come for us.”
This time, when the Sun screams, the demon takes her jaw between his hands and twists until the bones shatter. She goes as limp and silent as a doll. “As I said—we have little time to spare. Do you have the knife?”
Dream-me looks at the Sun’s broken body.
Real-me wonders: If I throw up while I’m sleeping, will I choke to death?
From inside the soft lapel of my robe, I pull free a delicate dagger. It is perfectly weighted to the palm of my hand, fine silver with black gems along the handle. They catch the now-fading light from the Sun’s skin, glittering shadows erupting along the cave walls. Wrapped around the blade is the engraving of a snake, curled upon itself and swallowing its own tail.
The demon looks as if he might start to salivate. His forked tongue rolls against his perfect mouth. With effort, he drags his eyes from the dagger to meet my stare. “They wonder if you are their god or their monster. Let us show them you have always been both. It is time this world finally looked upon its reckoning.”
A terrible thrill curls up my belly.
With wicked magic and a sharp knife, I carve the power from the dying Sun’s body and offer it to my demonic god.
And real-me is forced to watch the whole thing, every laceration, all night long.
Copyright © 2023 by H.E. Edgmon
