I glanced at the radio alarm clock in the room. It was 3AM. I wasn’t surprised at all. The room was pitch black; even the light from the street wasn’t reaching through the curtains that hung there on the French doors like dead weight. All the furniture in the room sat there, hunched over like big black beasts, waiting for me to move, to say something.
The door to the bathroom slowly creaked open. I heard the shower curtain inside being moved along the bar, the metal rungs squeaking.
I sat up straighter and looked at the clock again. 3:01. Time was passing. I pinched the inside of my forearm to see if it hurt, to see if it was a dream or not. It did hurt. My heart hurt even more. The memories of the fight between Perry and I came flooding back. I did the thing I never thought I’d do—I hurt her on purpose. It didn’t matter that it was for her greater good or my greater good because there just couldn’t be any good in it. The pain was there, just below the threshold, threatening to bring me under. I pushed her away and I would continue to push her away until I knew she could be saved, until I knew she’d get the future she deserved, not the one that I couldn’t give her.
It was because I was so lost in my misery, in my chest-stabbing despair, that I knew I wasn’t dreaming. And I was so wrapped up in my own pain, my own horror, that the current one before me didn’t seem to matter that much.
That was until the bathroom door swung open fully and a giant motherfucking black python came slithering out of it, heading straight for my bed.
Fuck. That was a new one.
I held my breath, wondering if I should scream, wondering how much I was seeing was real and how much was magic. How much was my mind and how much was the beyond. The gigantic inky black snake disappeared under the bed and I tensed up, waiting, knowing it wouldn’t just go to sleep under there.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Li Grand Zombi,” a French-accented voice said from the bathroom. I looked up to see my mother climbing out of the mirror and balancing on the sink, before stepping awkwardly to the ground. She moved with unpredictable jerkiness, as if she wasn’t used to the body she was in. She was no longer in the mirror. She was free.
I wished I was wearing Depends.
The bed beneath me moved ever so slightly. I got into a crouch, ready to spring off it and run if I needed to.
“Li Grand Zombi,” my mother said again, stepping forward. In the blackness I could only make out the paleness of her taut face, the darkness of her hair and eyes. I couldn’t even be sure that she had eyes. “The Great Serpent.”
“What do you want from me?” I asked, but my words came out in a shaking whisper, the air from my breath freezing into a cloud.
“It travels between both worlds, from the Kalunga to here, through the layers, through the Veil, just like me,” she continued. Her voice had grown lower and lower with each word she spoke until it was something entirely inhuman. “Together, we will bring you back.”
From the corner of my eye I could see the shiny black head of the python appear over the edge of the mattress, its long forked tongue slithering in and out.
I dared to look the woman in the eye as she came closer still. I dared to eke out the words, “You are not my mother. I don’t know who you are.”
She smiled, black teeth. “I was your mother. Then she died. But I am a part of you.”
The mattress began to sink under the python’s weight as it undulated across the bed. Now if I were to make a run for it, I’d have to jump over its body.
“How long did you have possession of her?” I asked the creature that wasn’t my mother.
She shook her head. “I was always there. I am in you.” She took another jagged step until she was at the foot of the bed. I could have sworn the shape of her head was expanding, that protrusions were rising out of her temples, a growing monster in the dark. Every single cell in my body told me to look away, to get away while I could. This wasn’t my mother. This wasn’t any one thing. This was evil incarnate and it had come for me. She extended an arm out to me and instead of pale, wrinkled skin, I could see short, dense fur. Her fingernails were now talons. “Come with us. Come to where you belong.”
This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening. This all had to be in my head, in my sick fucking head full of my sick fucking problems. I wasn’t on medication. I didn’t have that wall between reality and the world beyond. Nothing was being kept out anymore.
I shut my eyes, closing them so tight I saw red stars and dots behind them, and though about what Maryse had told me. The energies shared and exchanged can cause ripples, holes in the fabric of the Veil, and where there are holes, bad things can get out.
There were two bad things in the room with me, two bad things that had gotten out. Me and Perry together had produced so much pleasure and love and comfort and bliss, and all the while our radiance was letting the bad things in. The universe had to balance things, didn’t it? How dare it just let two long-suffering people be happy for once.
I kept my eyes shut and chanted to myself, “You aren’t real, you’re in my head, you’re not real, you’re in my head,” but the truth was I didn’t know if I believed that anymore. For all I knew, everything could be real from here on out.
Even so, it was like my chanting, my concentration, had caused the energy in the room to shift. It felt like the room had grown still. It felt like the weight on the mattress had lifted. I couldn’t hear the snake’s tongue or breathing. I couldn’t hear the rustle of my mother’s nightgown. I heard only my heart, threatening to explode, my lungs wheezing from exertion.
I sucked in my breath for strength and prepared to open my eyes, hoping I’d see an empty room as it was before. I willed for the nightmare to be over, to be alone, to be safe, to see nothing at all.
I opened my eyes.