Page 120 of Demonic Cage
I float in Léthé’s water, where the mermaid rules. If she wanted to hurt me, I’d stand no chance. She could easily do it. Yet, I stare at her firmly, not allowing my gaze to falter with fear. I haven’t fainted from Léthé’s true demonic form only because monsters like her have haunted me since childhood.
“What are you waiting for?” she asks, arms spread wide. A poppy-red membrane stretches between her fingers. “Remember!”
Her words make my eyes close, and when I open them again, I see my brother before me.
Bengt rests on the hospital bed, while I stand in the doorway. I grimace at the medicinal smell lingering in the stale air and swallow hard. I can taste the chemicals burning in my throat. I know this is a memory, yet I whisper the same words I did when I visited him while he was ill.
“How are you?” I ask, and he looks at me. His gaze tightens my throat.
The weak Bengt isn’t lying in front of me now. My body sounds the alarm – I need to escape. I won’t be able to withstand his anger. Before I can push myself away from the wall, Bengt’s hand stretches like chewing gum and holds me in place. I gasp at the grip.
“Come closer!” he taunts. “Look at what you did to me!”
With that, he pulls me into the depths.
I’m trapped in a coffin. I know it because it’s slowly being lowered, and there’s just enough space in the black box for my body. I can’t breathe. Worms chew through the coffin’s sides, their hissing sound piercing my mind.
I cry and scream. I pound the coffin walls with my hands. The worms crawl over my body.
I scream like a madman, like when I was in the psychiatric ward, like when I thought I had to fight for my life.
“Let me out!”
Someone is throwing dirt on me and laughing.
“I’m already here. Because of you.”
“No!” I scream as the coffin is slowly covered with stale soil.
Only my sobbing and the worms’ rustling can be heard in the dark. That man…
“Let me out, Bengt!” I whisper, and he does. I fall out of the coffin and look back at the open box, my feet rooted to the ground.
I’m no longer lying in it, but a skeleton is.
Mist envelops it. As the yellowish neck twists and the skull’s empty gaze falls on me, it feels like a hammer is hitting my chest from the inside. I scream and start running.
These aren’t my memories. This is torture.
I don’t know where I’m running. I run away from my brother’s skeleton. I don’t want to think it’s there. I don’t want to think that he no longer exists.
I just run, as long as I can breathe. Bengt…
How can it be that my brother died? How can someone lose their sibling so young? How could I have played a role in this?
It’s all my fault. Bengt’s death. The collapse of my family. Why? Why did I have to be born abnormal?
Why me? Why do I have angel and demon blood in my veins? What does it mean?
If it weren’t for the dreams, I’d never have stolen so much attention from my parents that they wouldn’t notice Bengt’s fatigue. Maybe they would have seen it in time? I’ll never know.
Darya… His demons devoured me every night. It’s as if my soul found this hell every time I fell asleep. Maybe that’s why I feel so at home? Why I haven’t been scared to death yet? If they hadn’t suppressed my urges with medication – which didn’t work – Darya would have taken me at five or six years old. I would have become a demon.
Or the angels would have found me, and I’d be one of them now.
And maybe my brother would still be alive. My family would also be alive; they wouldn’t have died with my brother.
I hear a sliding sound behind me. I spin around and clap my hand over my mouth. The skeleton has followed me.
