Satellite Heart

It was the whispered words of a person only seen through my eyes that made me realize that my Angel was changing. A shadow stared at me through vibrant eyes, swallowed by darkness save for a murky smile which was as wide as the Cheshire Cat’s. Cuts and blood tainted its flesh, and for a minute I allowed myself to dream that it was my mother and that she was here to take me away.

But then it spoke, and I realized that it was another figment of my insanity.

“She’s changing.” Two words, and it was like my whole world had been sucked into the treacherous black hole that had been sucking at my happiness for the past few years. My heart was beating despite my will for it to stop its functioning, and my head was spinning like a yoyo guided by the strings of every monster that had obscured my vision. I could hear the ticking of a clock in the background, threatening me with the life of a person that I couldn’t bear to envision.

I felt something brush against my hands and I looked down, fear encircling my body at the sight of my bloodied fingers. And in between two of my scarlet-stained fingers was a curl of a white-blonde strand of hair that made my heart stop its beating.

A sob left my lips as I fell to the floor, my fall almost silent compared to the ticking of the clock and the laughter of the shadow. I buried my head in my bloodied hands, crying like a newborn baby and longing to be held again by someone that was like me and could understand what I was going through. But there was no one there, because the bullet of a gun had stolen the only being that would ever quench my loneliness of being me.

“She’s becoming you,” it whispered, and the clock stopped ticking. “She’s becoming a monster.”

“No!” I was shouting now, my chest heaving as I pushed myself away from the shadow and clenched my eyes shut. She couldn’t be becoming me. I wouldn’t let her; I would never let her be that way.

“You’ll have to kill her.” The shadow was the Devil, snarling its words at me through cracked and bloodied lips and clawed hands that itched to steal my happiness. “Kill her,” it whispered, as though the words were saving my life. As though they would be my retribution.

But I would never kill her, because Hell wasn’t scary when you had been destined for it from birth, and Earth was even less scary when it contained my dear Angelique. Maybe in Hell I would finally be held in the arms of my Mother once more. Maybe, maybe by dying I would finally find my belonging.

“Tyler!” I fell to the floor; my eyes clenched shut as the ticking began to sound out around me like an unavoidable ticket to the end. My chest was heaving as I curled myself into a ball, and as a hand touched my arm I slowly felt reality starting to pull me back into its grasps.

The touch was soft, and I knew straight away that it was her. She pulled me into her arms and laid my shaking head against her chest, running her fingers through my hair with the touch of the Heavens. “Tyler, it’s okay,” she whispered, placing kisses against my tear-stained cheeks and rubbing her ivory fingers across my chin. “You’re okay, Tyler. No one’s here but me.”

I opened my eyes, immediately seeking out my hands. There was no blood and no hair, and though the ticking of the clock still consumed me and the shadow was still whispering I could see her and I could feel her touch. And I realized that with a heart of blackened stone it was the closest to Heaven that I would ever reach.

She gathered my face in her hands, pulling my eyes up so that they reached hers. With threads of desperateness I searched for her soul, and any sign that she had been poisoned by my insanity. I searched for flecks of blackness in her golden heart, but all that stared back at me were the swirls of her sky-blue eyes that I had become so enamoured with.

She placed her lips against mine, caressing my nose with her own. “I love you, Tyler,” she murmured, kissing me lovingly with a mouth like the sweetest nectar.

But what sort of love was it? Was it the love of a person and its lover? Was it the love of a mother and a son? Was it the love of a friend, a mentor or a guide? Did she love me like an Angel loved its conquest; like a savior loved its object?

Or did she love me like a falling person loved a monster that was there to catch them?

Kill her. The words were still there, hanging onto my mind and ringing in my ears. You’ll have to kill her.

I clenched my eyes shut. I didn’t have to, but in the end I would. Because I loved her like a monster loved its savior, and that would always be my biggest mistake.