Down With The Sickness

It’s happening again. I can feel him again. I’ve even started seeing him in the mirror again. I’m standing there in a steamy bathroom staring at my reflection. A flash of light revealing my face, twisted and deformed. It’s gone again before my eyes register the change. This is not the first time I’ve seen this. Before it was always in a dream. 

Now I am completely awake.

“What is wrong with you” I say to the mirror, half expecting the mirror me to answer. But he just looks back dumbfounded and weary.

Eventually I am able to pull myself away from the mirror and finish getting ready for work. But it feels like a shadow is following me still. The sickness is just there. On my shoulder but still out of reach.

“What the heck,” I muttered as I turned into the parking lot of the office building I worked at. The Dragon Factory. An indoor skate park, arcade, and bookstore. We also sell music, movies and all manner of role-playing games. 

John, the owner, has threatened to add gaming rooms to bring in local tabletop gamers, but since he has been saying that for the last four years, no one here believes him anymore.

I pull into my usual spot that thankfully hasn’t been blocked off by the police tape sectioning off a third of the parking lot and the front door. John and Cindy are standing just outside the tape. Cindy, the only other employee besides John and myself, was nervously chewing her nails.

John was scowling with his arms crossed as I approached.

“What’s going on” I asked him.

“Cindy found a dead woman,” he replied with the same emotion as if I had asked him what he had for lunch. 

“W-what” I stammered.

“Cindy unlocked the doors” John started with a nod in her direction. “Only to find a woman lying in a pool of her own blood.”

Cindy started crying.

“Are you ok?” I asked Cindy.

Cindy and I had dated briefly in high school so I had a bit of a soft spot for her anyways. 

She nodded slightly then shook her head no. Clearly unable to process whatever emotions she was going through.

“Why don’t you sit down for a bit” I coaxed as I gently guided her to a bench on the sidewalk that had thankfully not been included behind the police tape.

I walked back to John and left her there to process but kept a side eye on her while we spoke.

“Sorry” John said as I returned.

“I can’t imagine what she must be going through,” I told him.

John and I also were in high school together. We were best friends in the 9th grade and even though we drifted apart we were still close enough that I could get away with calling him out on his bullshit despite him being my boss.

“So what else do you know” I asked him.

“Nothing. Cops are in there now” he said tilting his head towards the Factory door. “They told me not to leave yet. So here I wait.”

He was speaking flatly but his expression was all over the place. He was clearly having a rough time with this also but didn’t want to show it.

I was searching for what to say next when the front door to the shop opened and suddenly I was fourteen again.

I was kneeling in my kitchen. One of my mother’s chef’s knives was on the floor next to me and my mother’s lifeless body in front of me. Her arms and legs were splayed at odd angles like a human swastika.

Everything was covered in blood. Her, the knife, the floor and cabinets. Me. I was sobbing still when the cops broke the door down. A neighbor had heard the screaming and called 911.

Later I was told that she never made a sound. It was me screaming the neighbor heard and though I was being abused. My mother was an alcoholic but never abusive. At least not physically. Verbally and mentally for sure but never physical.

The last thing a remember her saying to me was how sorry she was that she had me. And that I should have been aborted when she first found out. “But your ass-hole father wouldn’t allow that. Well, where is he now huh? Where the hell is he now!” 

She was screaming at me and I could smell the tequila on her breath. Droplets of spittle splashed against my face as she screamed closer and closer to me.

I used to have nightmares about a darkness enveloping me and controlling me as I murdered her several different ways. Each one more horrific than the last. I would wake up screaming in cold sweats. But by then she was passed out and never heard me.

I’d sit there in the dark terrified of myself. Terrified of what I might do. Hugging my knees and crying until I passed out myself from exhaustion. 

“Jake. Jake! Earth to Jake. C’mon man, you’re freaking me out.”

John’s voice slowly brought me out of my trance.

“Are you ok” he was asking.

“Yeah. I’m good” I lied. I was not good because whoever that woman was in the store, she was displayed the exact same way my mother had been.

“You don’t look so good” John said. 

“Yeah, maybe I need to get some more sleep. Safe to say we won’t be open today?

“Pretty safe bet yeah. Go get some rest” John said with a hand on my shoulder. He gave it a quick squeeze as I turned to head back to my car.

“Where are you going” came a deep voice before I took two steps.

I turned back to the detective who had just arrived on scene. He was intimidating to say the least. At least half a foot taller than me and built like a brick shit-house as my Dad would say. He wore a dark blue suit with his tie undone slightly. It was 9 am and he looked like he already had a long day. “Did I stutter” he said. 

“I’m going home” I told him.

“No one leaves yet. Who are you?”

John intervened before I could snap something sarcastic back at the detective. “This is Jake. He’s one of my employees and he just got here for his shift. He doesn’t need to be involved in this.”

“I’ll say who needs to be involved in this” the detective spat.

“Am I under arrest?”

“What” the detective was taken aback by my question.

“Am I under arrest” I repeated.

“No” he said slowly as if he was trying to hold it back. Apparently I was suspect numero uno right now for wanting to leave. Or this guy was on a power trip.

“Well until I am, I’m going home.”

I spun back around and started marching to my car.

“Call me if you need me,” I told Cindy as I passed her on the bench. 

“Wa-, I, we-“ the detective was sputtering. 

I left the detective fuming on the sidewalk and continued walking until I got to my car and drove home. I broke down as soon as I pulled into my driveway. I guess the stress of the murder scene, that woman’s body, so like my mother’s. Coupled with the jitters of trying not to show fear to a cop who reminded me so much of my high school bullies, that I finally couldn’t hold it in anymore.

I cried until there were no more tears. Then I dry sobbed until I nearly passed out because I wasn’t breathing enough. Once I had let it all out I was able to get out and make my way inside.

I went into the bathroom and splashed water on my face and stared at myself. My eyes looked sunken in slightly. My hair, although very short, still looked disheveled. And, wait. Are those… horns? Two slightly knobby protrusions were peeking out just above my ears on either side of my head. I reached up slowly to see if they were real. But when I blinked they were gone.

The phone rang around 1pm. It was John.

“Hello” I said when I picked it up.

“Hey” he said. He sounded drained. “Can you come down to the police station?

“Why” Why was John calling and not one of the cops who were there this morning? Why did they want me to come into the station?

“Cindy is a wreck. You seem to be able calm her down more than I can.”

Which was bullshit. Cindy was Cindy. She would calm down only when she was ready to calm down. Or when she finally got a chance to sneak away for joint.

“Why would I need to come the police station to calm Cindy down? Am I in trouble?”

“Well” John started. Either reluctant to say why I was being summoned. Or was afraid he would say something to upset me further. “The cops want to question all of us” He finally got out.

“Then they should be the ones calling me” I told him.

“They think it’s best if you came in voluntarily and thought I would be the person who could get you to do that.”

“Why would I need to come in voluntarily” I asked. That word, voluntarily, made it sound like I really was a suspect in this case.

John started whispering. “They found some of your DNA on the victim” he confessed. 

I jumped when a loud banging on my door brought me out of my stunned silence. John kept saying my name and asking if I was still there.

“I’m here. There’s someone at my door” I replied as I stood up to answer it.

I opened the door to the smug detective and two uniformed officers. Detective meat-head was holding a blue piece of paper out to me.

“Jake Griffin. We have a warrant for your arrest” He said it so proudly you would have thought I was his son and had just kicked the game winning field goal for the high school football team.

“John” I said into the phone. “ I’m going to have to call you back.”

I was brought into the station in handcuffs that were cutting off the circulation to my hands. They weren’t turning blue yet but they definitely weren’t their usual tanned skin color. They only released them once they had me in an interrogation room. I sat at a small metal table in an uncomfortable metal chair facing a matching chair on the opposite side.

I stared at the mirror in front of me. There was only the one light hanging above the table so most of the room was cast in shadow. I sat for hours (minutes) looking at those shadows in the mirror. My breath caught as I saw something behind me. I spun around but the room was empty. Just my imagination. I sighed. Probably my mind going cuckoo from sitting so long.

I stood up and walked around the table to stand in front of the mirror. I almost looked like a stranger to myself. My eyes looked sunken in a bit, almost skeletal. My hair was disheveled and I look like I hadn’t eaten in days. 

There it was again. The shadows moved in one of the corners behind me. Figuring it was just my mind playing tricks on me again I tried ignoring it. What happened next happened so fast I can’t be sure it was real. The shadow was suddenly at my shoulder. One second it was in the corner and the next it was reaching out to touch me. I shrank away and turned so fast that I slipped and fell to the floor covering my head and screamed. 

The door to the room banged open as it bounced off the wall from being thrown open. I screamed louder when detective meat-head grabbed my arm.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Calm down there, buddy.”

It took me a minute to realize the shadow figure wasn’t trying to attack me and that I now looked like an idiot screaming his head off in a police station.

The detective helped me back into the chair and started to ask me questions that I couldn’t hear. My mind kept replaying the shadow figure coming up behind me. I kept trying to remember what it looked like. It definitely had claws. I remember their yellowed nails as one of them reached out for me. And I thought it was wearing a robe but the hood was misshapen. It was sort of knobby on either side of the head. Were those, no they couldn’t be, horns?

The detective’s snapping fingers brought me back around . “Have you heard a word I’ve said” he asked me.

“I’m sorry. What?” I replied.

“Have you heard a word I’ve said.” He repeated. “Look” he said to my blank staring face. “You could be in a lot of trouble here if you don’t start listening and answering my questions.”

That brought me around. “Trouble? For what? Why am I here.” I was panicking. My heart thumped loudly against my ribs. It sounded like a kick drum to me.

“The way this woman was found is remarkably similar to another murder case about 15 or so years ago.” He paused hoping I would do the math and he wouldn’t have to say it. When I didn’t reply he continued. “Your mother.” He said it more like a question and less like an accusation but I knew what he was getting at,

Before I could answer I saw the shadowy figure in the mirror behind the detective. It’s hood was still pulled up but this time I could see two glowing yellow eyes. I stopped with my jaw wide open.

“What are you looking at?” The detective turned around but it was clear he did not see the figure I did. “There’s nothing there” he told me.

“I, uh. I, uh” I repeated as the figure reached up with his clawed and scaly hands. Were they dripping something? “Uh, uh, uh” The detective had to hear my heart trying to escape my body via ribcage like that chest-burster from a certain the Alien movies.

The figure grasped his hood and pulled it back carefully over curled horns on either side of his head. As he settled the hood down on his neck I got my first real good look at his face.

My face.

My face with horns and wild reddish hair. Glowing yellow eyes. Scaly skin. I looked at my reflection with panic and wonder. I looked like one of the filters all the social media apps promote around Halloween except this was real. Somehow I knew the reflection of me in demon form was real. And it had come for me. I had come for me.

By now I was hyperventilating and the detective was looking back and forth between me and the mirror but still not seeing what I saw. He started to come around the table As I was standing up and retreating to the wall behind me.

He made it to the corner of the table before the glass behind him shattered. The detective turned at the sound catching a lot of glass in the side of his face. As he turned back toward me I could see a particularly jagged piece had pierced his eye leaking ooze down his cheek.

My demon clawed hand reached around him and grabbed him by the throat. He was yanked hard over the shattered mirror leaving long gashes down his arms, back and legs. I could hear the breaking bones and tearing meat over my screams as the demon began tearing him limb from limb.

When he was done the demon with my face stepped though the now gaping hole in the interrogation room. He towered over me for a moment. I had finally stopped screaming. Well, my mouth was open but no sound was coming out anymore. Faster than my eye could follow his hand leaped forward and grabbed me by my chin and yanked me up to eye level.

My eyes wide, I heard him chuckling. He even sounded like me. As he stood there holding me aloft my vision began to darken and blur until the whole room was gone and it was just me in demon form holding me in human form and a blank empty void.

His left hand came up slowly until it was right next to my face. I tried shrinking away but his grip was too firm. He snapped his fingers and everything went black.

I came to with another detective standing over me. “Hey buddy. Wake up now. Are you hurt.”

“No.” I replied weakly as the new detective helped my to a sitting position. The first thing I noticed was the mirror my demon form had demolished was no longer broken. My slightly bloody but otherwise smooth face was the only face of mine I saw now.

Then I noticed the blood. Blood everywhere. On the floor, on the table, on my clothes and hands. Paramedics rolled a gurney in which is when I noticed the sheet on the floor across from me. I knew it was the detective. And I also knew he was dead, almost all of his limbs were broken in several places. I could still see the shape of him even under the sheet. Just like my Mom. Just like the woman in the store.

As I was helped to my feet I knew two things. I was going to jail for a very long time. And somehow I heard my demon voice laughing a low guttural laugh.