The Nix

Loop

So, this story wasn't rejected or not submitted. It was a request. Someone asked for a theme, so I wrapped my mind/pen around one.

I remember looking into his eyes and wondering if they were what falling into hell felt like, a sweet and slow descent into destruction.

They were dark, seductive, dangerous, the gates to hell had often been described like that and so much more.

I felt my soul ebb away as my figure danced in the ebony membrane of his pupils, a ring of red wax melting in between the folds of the cloudless light.
He couldn't see me, no one could.

But there were times the small overlay of emotion playing in his orbs held my heart by its strings. I frowned as he smiled, a toothy lopsided one that made his striking features even more static.

Like a frozen person.

Jem appeared like a portrait most of the time. Calculated glances and hidden grins all reflected as he stood mesmerized, transfixed, watching the fried sun fall into the half-eaten sky.

"Yes, I should start now" he said more to himself than the tangled leaves dancing about his embroided ears, carrying tales of the wind.

I closed my eyes and willed my consciousness back to the small mustard coloured room.

"That was a close one" I whispered to myself, touching my index finger to the steaming veiled object, one of the many oddities in my mundane dwelling furnished to mirror the not so classic taste of an everyday clerk.

My limbs hurt as I watched the glowing heat sip in through my bones.

That was a strong enough dose to remember, never to forget. Any more mistakes and my identity would have been discovered.

What I was doing was already illegal in the most outlawed of places. 

Cold water splashed on my face from the overhead tap churning droplets of water similar to the thoughts raining over my emotions.

Sometimes I wondered if I still felt them, these supposed emotions, or if they were just birthed from my over exerted mind.

The zapping energy and the flowing lava underneath my skin seemed more like rage than the remnants of a withered spell come undone.

“Am I going insane?” I wrapped myself in a towel, cocooned in the soft embrace of a vanilla scented cloud.

It was the same.

Death.

She smiled at you beautifully, baiting you with her rotten smell of a carcassed rose dipped in honey and bathed with lavender essence.

“Are you okay Maria?” My mother’s voice announced, programmed to come after the tapping on the door.

“I’m fine” I bit my bottom lip more out of habit than the pain of my body falling apart.

It often drove Jem apart. He claimed the uncertainty plaguing my actions would be the death of him.

The moisture gathered in my eyes dried up faster than the Sahara.

“Can I come in?” her voice sounded hesitant “You haven’t come out of your room in days”

“I’ll come out on Tuesday, three more days please” I walked towards the door, securing the metal bolt on the sturdy wooden door.

Not like that would have kept my mother out if she was determined to enter, but it passed the message clear enough.

“The priest said he made it to the other side of the Nile” my mother stated, her voice resonating with Joy. 

I tried not to frighten her by telling her I knew the exact moment James had crossed over to the realm on the unknown and had never looked back.

That I had watched him as he walked the waters a new man.

We ought to be proud, we had all been trained for those moments our whole lives.

But it didn’t the feeling of being abandoned, the feeling of pain, the feeling of loss.

The feeling of being left alone. 

And that's it.