I feel watched, but not immediately threatened.
Slowly and carefully, I take inventory of myself, focusing first on my own spirit and my energy, looking for anything that doesn't belong. I find the marker again, but aside from that, there is nothing, only me. I turn my focus to the physical.
I feel the hard mat under my back, pillow of leaves under my head. The blanket is flat, pulled up to my throat, tucked up under my chin. I'm still half-sitting, half-supine, with my hands flat by my sides. The pain is gone. The numbness is gone, too. There is no discomfort.
In my right hand is a small object. Under the blanket, concealed by my resting form, I turn it over in my hand, testing it with my fingertips. What am I holding? It's cold... round, but not solid, thin on one side, becoming thicker as I feel around it, then thinner again; a ring. I focus attention on it, keeping just a little behind to keep my face expressionless, my breathing normal. I reach inside the smooth, cold metal, and the little stone set into it, to feel the ring's energy.
There is warmth here, familiarity. In my mind's eye, I can see it's form; cut amethyst set in a slender, delicate sliver circle. I remember this ring. A host of emotions slam through me as the memory eclipses everything.
"What's this for?" I ask, holding the ring in the palm of my hand. Instead of answering, she picks it up and draws my fingers apart, sliding the ring on next to my wedding band. It doesn't fit, falls right off, and she gives me the most melodramatic sad face. It tears my heart out, but at the suddenness of it, I have to stifle a giggle.
I pick it up, put it on my middle finger. "Is this ok?" I'm rewarded with a nod. I ask again, "But what is it for?" It's not a gift giving occasion. Is this the commitment she's been wavering on?
She smiles an affectionate, but half-troubled smile, and answers, "For now."
The moment, so sweet when it happened, is a hard blow to my heart now. Awash in a sea of conflicting impulses, I fight just to breathe at all. The craving that hits me brings with it stabbing pangs of regret and a deep, dragging concern. Why the hell did I bring this with me? As I struggle to maintain control, my mind touches on another scene, the moment when I realized that the monster had put on her form to trick me. My heart protests... you had no right. Who would be next? My friends? My Husband?
My son? As the thought crosses my mind, I know that he would. The monster will use anything to twist me into something he can use.
The present pain is joined by a conflagration of heady wrath, and I realize why I need this ring. I seize on the emotion, feeling it try to expand, blaze wild, and erupt. This is mine. My memories, my rage, my struggle. I have fought this battle. I know all of the steps. In a second, I'm holding within myself a hot ball of righteous indignation, not blind rage. The feeling is bright, white-hot, and pure, fueled not by my hatred and fear of him, but the almost territorial devotion I feel for my loved ones. And I still feel watched.
The monster is waiting.
I open my eyes to see him staring at me from across the room. I failed to control my face, my breathing. He isn't stepping forward.
Instead, I feel a blanket of dank, bleak energy rising across me, poking and prodding at my presence. Light pressure grazes above my forehead, lingers and pokes, then falls between my eyes and lingers there and prods, followed by my throat, right above the thyroid. I feel the touch fall to my heart, searching, as the monster's jaw sets, his eyes narrow, and his ears stand straight up. The energy rolls toward my belly, and that indignation rises, bringing with it the impulse to administer a hard slap. I push the impulse forward, feeling my will strike a blow, and the pressure stops.
I sit up, push the blanket off of me, turn to let my feet hit the floor, rest my elbows on my knees, watch, and wait. The more I look at him, the hotter that ball becomes, melting into a pool of liquid outrage, but a calm settles over my consciousness. I've been here before, not with him, not in this way, but I've been here. This is my charge.
We sit like that for several moments; I, relaxing on the edge of the bed, and he, studying me warily. He knows I've cleared myself of his poison, but I haven't expelled the marker. I know that he's trying to size me up, figure out what I'm doing and how capable I might actually be of doing it. He's probably also confused, because I haven't put up a shield.
Finally, I decide there's been enough waiting, and ask why he let me build my strength back up, "...and don't tell me you still 'want through,' because that's bullshit. You could have taken that while I was down. What are you really after?"
He sits down with a slightly surprised, suspicious look on his face. I feel that prodding at my belly again, and I shove it away with another slap. "Mitts off. It's not there. If you want it back, look behind me. Are you gonna answer my question, or not?"
This time, the surprise isn't so slight. He shoots forward, moving almost faster than I can see. One second, he's sitting on the floor a few yards away from me, and the next, he's to my right, reaching behind me, poking at the mat with his fingers. I resist the impulse to move away. I'll not give him any ground, and besides, it could be worse. At least he isn't groping my chakras any more.
Finding the residue of his attitude soaked into the mat, he falls back into that sitting position, bemused, muttering something I don't understand, then says something to me about not realizing I was that sentient.
Finally, he answers my question. He struggles to describe some of the concepts, but gets across to me that it's rare for him to encounter someone who carries his favorite flavor of torment, who isn't either insensitive to anything beyond physical consciousness, entirely self-destructive, or a one-time producer. Most are all three. He can use them for a while, but they get used up. They don't replenish, or they damage themselves to death, and then he can't find them any more.
The callousness of his description pisses me off, my heart going out to his previous victims, but I keep myself calm, tell myself not to lose sight of what I have to do. I have to know what kind of mindset I'm dealing with. I ask, "What has that got to do with me?"
He answers, "You're the rarity."
My stomach turns. I think I know where this is going. The molten pool inside me boils. I keep my face neutral and watch him.
He frowns. "But you're a stubborn (gibberish). I can dominate you enough to take what I need, but not enough to take what I want. Your friends are going to protect you to death again, and I'll have to look for you again." It's almost as if he's thinking out loud instead of talking to me.
He looks up with eyes as red as blood, leans forward, says my Name with striking gravity, and tells me, "This is the covenant I offer. I will see you protected from my kind, and any other. I will educate you beyond the knowledge of your peers, and provide you with material wealth. I will not dominate your will. In return, you agree to completely surrender your torment to me upon demand, and to admit my marker, that others know not to trespass, and you will remember to yield."
For one dimwitted moment, I feel horribly threatened by his posture and the glow in his eyes, especially combined with that gravelly, dragging voice. I want to crawl backward, hide on the other side of the bed from whatever this thing is, that is leaning into my face. Then, it dawns on me. He wants me to agree to be used as livestock, wear his mark of ownership, and periodically feed him the most tremendous challenge of my being, as if everything I've invested in refining myself were worthless. Oh, HELL NO. My control is tenuous at this point. It's ready, and it's going to blow if I don't make a move.
"What do I have to do?" I beat back the fear and disgust, focus on my outrage and my goal. I bring back the image of the moment when she gave me the ring, permit the pain of knowing where it is now to assail my heart, and draw tears. It has to look real. He has to think it's what I want.
"Be still."
The monster pretends to care. I can see through the charade, but he in his eagerness, he isn't even trying to look through mine. He pulls himself to his knees before me, facing me at eye level, arranges his face in a terrible mockery of compassion that could only fool someone who didn't want to know any better. Behind it is a ghastly, slavish voracity that I'm sure he doesn't know I can see. It takes every ounce of my will to maintain the facade when he takes my hands. My inner self cringes away, revolted, horrified, and enraged.
Keeping eye contact, he says, "You don't have to fight any more." What a pro... I am so disgusted. He doesn't know much about human women. I sniff, hiccup, and look as pitiful as I can, holding that eye contact.
"Do you have to use that... thing... on me?" I don't have to act for this part. That aversion is totally real.
"Not if you don't resist." One hand moves up to my face. I have to struggle to stifle the urge to vomit, or to fight, holding that blistering inner fire in check for the right moment. "Be still. I'm not going to hurt you." His face is a mask of false concern, the stark craving barely hidden behind contrived sympathy. The act is so practiced. How many people has he consumed? At that thought, the awareness of being in the grasp of a soulless predator threatens to freeze me. My blood is like ice, but I hold on.
Suddenly, I'm wrapped in a many-armed embrace. His face is beside mine, his body pressed against me. I didn't even see him move. I hear, "Hold on," and my reflex forces me to do just that, as the world falls out from under me. There's a pull on my mind, searching for a connection. Jagged claws and cold fingertips graze my cheek, and he closes the gap. At that moment, I release not the sick, impotent rage he's looking for, not my lifelong onus, but the blinding, searing light I've built up inside. It erupts from me with a deafening shriek. I give it a massive shove, feel it pouring out of me, striking home, expelling the marker and lighting up the monster's insides.
Shock registers in his eyes as he chokes on the barrage of righteous anger. He tries to pull out of the embrace, but I'm not giving up. I grab a hand full of his filthy, matted hair, and hold him up to the assault. My voice is joined by a howl of agony as my attack rages through his system, burning him from the inside out. The red in his eyes fades, replaced by brilliant light. He pounds my back with his fists, kicks and squirms, struggling to escape from my grip. The molten, bubbling anger continues to erupt, flowing through the connection he chose to make. I feel him shaking, and I push again. The howl rises from that low, guttural tone to an animalistic scream, and I can actually feel heat emitting from his chest.
His hands stop beating on me. His arms drop, hanging limply at his sides. I release the hand full of hair, and his head rocks back, exposing his throat. His eyes are totally expressionless. The last of my shriek dies down. The energy stops flowing. I can feel the mat beneath me, but it's soft now, as if it's not completely formed. I lower him to the floor, laying him on his back, meaning to examine him carefully.
Before I can, there's a loud crackling noise, and fissures begin to appear all over his skin. I flee to the doorway, fearing an explosion, but instead, the body collapses onto the floor. I go back for a closer look, but there's nothing recognizable left, just clumps of what appears to be gray dirt on the floor. Even the clothing is gone.
I look down at the dust, as cracks spread across the floor toward the walls, and the bed collapses in on itself. That's all he is now? That's the scary monster? That's nothing. I kick at the dirt on the floor.
"I told you not to touch me."
I turn around and walk out the door...
...and find myself waking.
Picked on as a child, dumped on as an adult, kicked aside, smacked around, a person can only take so much. I always let it go, suck it up, and drive on, until it gets to something that I can't tolerate. Before I learned control, this is where the meltdown would happen, with uncontrolled verbal storms raging indiscriminately out of the furthest place from my true heart, lashing out at whoever happened to be closest, cutting deep, leaving other people's fragile psyches burned, scarred, and broken. Even the people I love.
Especially the people I love.
Nothing in my life has ever hurt me more than looking at the damage I've done to others. I can't even pretend it's not my fault, because I have this clingy, telescopic memory that focuses on things like that, gets a grip on them, and holds them up to me long after my victims have worked past the incident and moved on. I call the effect my overactive guilt gland.
Years of hard work have gone into the battle with my disposition. It took me twenty years just to realize I couldn't get rid of my temper. It isn't going to go away; it's part of what I am. It's not that I'm charged with overcoming the existence of it; I'm responsible for refining and controlling it, so that it doesn't shape who I am. And it took another decade to get a shaky handle on that. It's been nearly a fourth decade since it clicked inside me, the ability to detach myself from the emotional experience, and act outside of it, separating my tone from my timbre, so to speak. Just because it's loud, doesn't mean I have to be obnoxious.
I've been practicing that control the whole time, and I still slip up on occasion, but I've mostly gotten to a level at which I can let the emotion be the motivational fuel that pushes me to solve a conflict, without letting it be the hand that shapes the method I choose to address that. Only a true fool would ask me to give up now.
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