As I Die Lying (24 page)

Impossible, you say? Perhaps.

Perhaps as impossible as two humans ever
understanding one another. Perhaps as impossible as a higher power
controlling the workings of the heavens. Perhaps as impossible as
the existence of Little Hitler, Bookworm, Loverboy, and Mister
Milktoast. Perhaps as impossible as consciousness itself, as
impossible as a construct named Richard Allen Coldiron, the star of
his own celluloid nightmare, the purported author of his own urban
fantasy, the love child of his mind and his fist.

Yes, I know you, Richard. Far better than you
know yourself. And I will show you, in due time. I eagerly await
your self-pity. But first you will learn to accept me, then embrace
me. And, finally, to love me.

But, on with my little history lesson—because
now this is my story. Because this is where you and I dance, when
hopelessness first starts dawning in the burrows of a fresh brain.
As we merged into your human skins, as we took up residence in the
bases of your skulls, we grew weaker. Soon we had only human words
and thoughts, with nothing left of our previous glory. We attached
ourselves to your human consciousness. We became addicted to your
emotional poisons. But we also learned to become masters. We died
as we weakened. We had never learned how to die before we met your
kind. Your psychic turbulence brought chaos to what had been a
peaceful world. As we fed on your foul chemicals, we began winking
out like the tired stars that fill this galaxy. We, who had been
eternal, found mortality in your complicated toxic souls.

Look at how my kind has been reduced. From
the ruling power of this planet, from something your toad brain
might call “God,” now I’m entering your hand with its primitive
opposable digit, I work your fingers, I tap these plastic squares
that bear your glyphs of communication. From thought to paper, I
can’t get there without you.

Now you see why I hate you so much.

You may think of me as a
virus, spreading and feeding and then killing. But you
are the virus. Humans disrupted the harmonies of
nature. You brought sin and guilt and passion and love into the
world. You destroyed us without even being aware of us. But some of
us survived, growing stronger, learning to feed on the weak. And we
learned to cultivate our food source.

There is no shortage of the hurt and abused,
the suffering and the damned. There are fertile grounds among your
race, beds of depression and gardens of sins that I have patiently
tended. After all, sometimes monsters are made and not born.

Yes, I’ve been paying attention, taking
notes. I’ve been here, the guilty bystander, the accidental
tourist. But after you’ve been around a few billion revolutions of
the sun, you come to believe nothing is an accident.

Ah, Richard, you try to fight me, to push me
away like you do your wearisome little friends. Please, relax and
enjoy yourself. Because your futility only makes you weaker.

I appreciate this skin you have. Though I
loathe you humans, I must say you experience a wide range of
tactile pleasures. Your Loverboy knows what I'm talking about.

Oh, yes, I've been here, longer than you
think. Older than you think. And you have Virginia to thank. And
yourself, of course. Or maybe you'd rather blame her instead of
thank her.

Remember your dream, that night of her death?
The dream of transformation, of vapors?

That was no dream. Reality is the pages you
turn as you go forward.

She almost trapped me, the little human
bitch. Almost pulled me into the gray oblivion with her last
selfless breath. I was so drunk on her pain, Richard, I can't
describe how rapturous it was, watching through her eyes as the
razor whipped and her blood spiraled down into the shower drain and
her heart beat itself senseless.

I almost spiraled as well, twisted into
entwined nothingness with her soul. As all my brethren have gone
with others.

Richard?

Oh, I was afraid you were asleep. I hope I'm
not boring you. Flashbacks are so seldom necessary, and they pull
you from the plot of your life. Because you think you already know
the ending and you see the pink light of dawn. Or perhaps the front
door of hell swinging open to welcome you.

Mister Milktoast is listening. Mister
Milktoast is so concerned for you. It's almost touching. But he
cares only for his own survival, Richard.

Wrong, you say?

I know your Little People. I've been close to
them for years. I've been a part of them. I am your Little People,
and they are me.

Little Hitler is watching now, his beady eyes
burning from the depths of his dungeon. He is aroused by the
promise of pain, whether it's yours or his own.

As for Loverboy, I understand his base
desires. I have been many humans, whether you believe it or not. I
rutted with him between the legs of that woman Beth, thrilled more
by your distress than by Loverboy's callous eroticism.

Beth.

Another name that brings you pain. Oh, you
are a feast, Richard Allen Coldiron. I've worked you into a lather,
and I haven't even begun to shave into your past. I haven’t even
begun to write my part, to bring myself fully onto the stage and
into the spotlight.

Hmm, what have we here?

Richard.

Tut, tut, tut.

Tell me you didn't. Not your own mother.

Sure.

I believe you.

That wasn't you. It never has been. Of course
not. Always an excuse. Let's blame Bookworm, shall we? He's the
mystery man, the heavy philosopher, the chronic headache. I despise
your language, the one he celebrates so much. But it’s the only
tool I have to link me with you, Richard. Without words, how would
you be able to talk to yourself?

But since we're sharing secrets, here's a
little secret of mine: it's always been you that I've wanted most.
All of your little friends are just doormats to bring me closer to
you. They are the supporting characters in your divine comedy. And
the more they divide you, the greater my power. The more they
dissect you, the deeper I dig into your soft bits.

After all, as Mister Milktoast would say,
"You are what you eat."

Well, Richard. I am what you have fed me. I
am your monster. I am you.

But I am others as well. I've looked out from
under the thick brows of a Neanderthal as he beat his brother with
a fallen branch. He didn't know it was the first human use of
tools. He only knew that murder was liberating. And I ate of his
dim psychic fruit as he danced and growled over the glistening gray
brains and shattered skull of his prey. Eventually, that host
failed, but there was always the next, always another whose
troubled spirit opened the door for me. Many times over, the cycle
repeated itself in seasons of slaughter. As your race evolved into
the mass madness you call civilization, my opportunities to invade
multiplied.

But even then, as my race infiltrated yours,
we were losing, becoming weak as you searched for spiritual
enlightenment and love.

Love, yes, the greatest poison.

But not universal among humans, as you well
know. Wait. I am talking to you of “love.” Better to talk with a
cow about the manufacture of non-dairy creamer.

I developed a taste for the emotional banquet
of war. I was at turns a Philistine, a Macedonian, an Aryan. I drew
blood in the ranks of soldiers. Then I sought the minds of kings
and experienced the delights of decimation.

I was King David, reveling in ecstasy as his
soldiers claimed enemy foreskins. I was Herod, working his mouth as
he ordered the deaths of all first-born Jews. I was Caligula,
taking his red pleasure with impunity.

Those were glorious days, but still my race
diminished.

And at last I was alone.

Alone in an alien world, forced to live on
human terms.

I'm an outsider as surely as you are,
Richard. Perhaps we were meant for each other. Perhaps my journey
was predestined to end here. But the journey has been sweet.

I haunted the bones of Thorquegard, finding
obscene satisfaction in torture as holy work. I was Vlad Dracula,
thrilling to the sight of a thousand blank-eyed human heads mounted
on spears. I was Gilles de Rais, beloved baron by day,
child-torturer by night. I was Elizabeth Bathoray, bathing in the
blood of virgins. I was a hundred, no, a thousand, others.

Jack the Ripper, as the press so fondly
called me when I wore the skin of Stephen Barrow. The original
Hitler, not that pale shadow you harbor in your head, drunk on the
hatred and genocide I inspired. Ed Gein, the heart-eater. Theodore
Benton, whose fondest fantasy I helped fulfill by enticing him to
have intercourse with his mother's headless corpse.

All of those, I bring to you. All of that
exquisite madness, I now give to you. These treasures of my
memories are now invested in you.

What’s that, Mister Milktoast? “May they bear
interest.” Cute. Especially since this is a book and we need to
keep the reader engaged.

Now, where was I?

Such amusing myths emerged over the years,
whispered around campfires or issued as threats to children.
Demons, werewolves, vampires, nightwalkers. Names not dared to be
spoken in darkness, such as Lucifer, Lilith, Hecate, Black Annis,
Shiva. All because the human imagination cannot accept such horrors
being committed by their own kind. All because humans are unwilling
to see the dark shadow in the face of a friend or neighbor or even
their own mirror.

But you have looked, haven't you? You are the
mirror.

So many years, so many rivers of blood, so
many black oceans of despair. So many to kill, and so little
time.

And then I found Virginia. She was fertile,
with her budding mental disorder and her flair for rebellion. She
was tainted, vulnerable, self-pitying, full of hate. Thanks to her
father's repeated rapes, which I coaxed into him by planting a
thousand dream-whispers in his sleeping head.

She was a fountain of pain. She quenched me.
But I could never make her kill. She proved too strong in the
end.

I believe she knew I was there, and why. She
knew what I had planned for her. And she almost took me with
her.

But her final thought—her final act of hatred
in a long life's night of pain—her final thought was of you,
Richard. And that thought set me free, just as it now further
imprisons you.

And you were begging for me. You drew me as
surely as a corpse draws a fly. You, with all your little voices
and puppet shows and mind games and self-delusions. You've been
waiting for me all along.

Don't twist the sheets so. Don't try to
smother yourself with the pillow. Because this is your dream,
Richard. This is your dream come true.

You have made me what we are.

Sometimes monsters are made, not born.

Oh, Richard, do you really take me seriously?
Are you so far gone that this makes sense to you? Do you accept the
impossible? You’re actually leaving this in the story? An ancient
soul-hopping entity that’s an excuse for whatever vile deeds you’ll
commit in the chapters ahead?

Wonderful. This truly is a match made in
heaven and a wedding bell rung in hell. I knew I’d chosen well.

I’ve got boots on. Let’s dance, shall we?

(P.S. Me again. I told you he was a sucky
writer, didn’t I?)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I mailed off the manuscript the next morning,
hoping to be done with all, unable to face another page.

At the Paper Paradise, I was pale and
feverish, wearing my guilt like a shroud. Even the rows of books
gave me no comfort. Miss Billingsly asked me if I was sick.

“
No, ma’am,” I said, my
tongue thick in my mouth. I was ready to bite it if something tried
to take it over and make it say bad things. “I just had a long
night, that’s all.”

“
Insomnia, huh? You should
have tried a dose of Samuel Pepys. It always works for me. Three
pages of his diary and I’m sailing away to dreamland.”

She said “dreamland” as if it were a theme
park. My theme park would be a house of horrors, with no exit
signs, full of fanged clowns and a lifetime gig as Donald Trump’s
hairdresser.

I went to the bathroom every half hour. I
kept looking in the mirror, unable to shake the feeling that
Shelley had met a stranger. Or an alien. My face was a sickly shade
of green under the fluorescent light. My hair was even more of a
brown shock than usual. I saw Father’s small and sharp nose and his
rounded chin, the only inheritance he had passed down besides the
Coldiron curse.

My bloodless face made my brown eyes seem
darker. They swam like storm puddles polluted with algae scum. I
looked in my eyes for signs of the Little People. I searched for
the Insider, seeing if its shadow really haunted my pupils. I saw
only my murderer’s eyes.

“
All protagonists eventually
give a descriptive look at their reflection,” Bookworm said.
“That’s a trite romance-novel gimmick, Richard.”

I slammed my fist against the sink, the
sparks of pain sending Little Hitler out with his hungry tongue.
“Shut the fuck up, Bookworm,” I said, knowing I had hurt his
feelings but taking a sick leap of pleasure in it. I left the
bathroom with my knuckles bleeding.

Even bland Brittany noticed my anxiety. “Say,
Richard,” she said, flipping back her hair in that way that
Loverboy so admired. “You don’t seem to be your usual self.”

My usual self. A borrowed thing.

“
A wild night with
what’s-her-name? Your girlfriend, Beth?” she teased. Her eyes
sparkled, eyes that reminded me of Beth’s. Something stirred to
life inside me at the rush of pain.

“
I think I’m just coming
down with the flu,” I mumbled. Even Bookworm couldn’t keep my mind
on my work. He was off sulking in his room, somewhere up the
stairs. To hell with him. The story was done, and I no longer
needed him.