Anna

Inanna could feel the essence of the vessel’s owner moving within her, like a flash of charged silver light arcing across her senses as she struggled to regain control of the flesh. Tipping her head back, she raged, infuriated and frustrated and unable to quell the other within her. The other was still so surprisingly strong and Inanna still felt too weak to sustain her own control over the flesh, the accursed marks of corruption on the vessel’s flesh limited her and held much of her power at bay and prevented her from simply consuming the other. Sensing she wasn’t strong enough to stave off the other, Inanna gathered herself and receded back into the depths of the girl, relinquishing control of the vessel, for now.

Once more Anna was herself, down on her hands and knees, waves of nausea rolling through her, an oily aftertaste lingering on the taste buds of her tongue. She was vaguely aware of what had happened to Caleb and Jerry. The blackness within her pooling, swirling there, lurking and waiting to rise again. The inky sensation stronger than ever before. Getting up to her feet, she ran to the bathroom and turned on the taps over the sink, staring at herself in the mirror. The sensation was troubling because the reflection staring back was her and it wasn’t. Curling her right hand into a fist, she shrieked and struck the mirror with the heel of her hand crackling the reflective surface into a spider web of directions radiating outward from the point of impact.

What’s happening to me? But she already knew the answer, there was something else inside of her, something ancient and foreboding trying to take over her body and it was getting progressively stronger. The ritual of purification Jerry spoke about was to essentially render her powerless and allow the thing in her to remove everything that was Anna from the body in order to provide a living vessel for the darkness. She knew if the ritual happened, she would be no more, irrevocably gone, body and soul.

She reached down to her stomach and traced her fingers over the raised scars she felt beneath the fabric of her thin t-shirt, this is what her father had done to help her, to prepare her for the fight coming. He had known what was coming. Dropping to her knees, she put her face into her hands, wanting desperately to cry. She shook her head and softly chuckled. Lifting her face from her hands, she took a deep breath, refusing to allow herself to be the victim. Her father taught her about pain, how to endure and overcome adversity. Using the sink to help, she pulled herself back up onto her feet.

Walking back into the den, she saw the wine glass wine with Jerry corpse discarded in it. She shook her head, a wry chuckle escaping her lips. He had come in here to have sex with her and wound up inadvertently unleashing the goddess. A smile touched the side of her mouth at the morbid irony of the situation knowing he had died a prisoner inside the very vagina he had hoped to penetrate. Picking up the glass, she walked back into the kitchen. Plucking the limp carcass out of the glass between a thumb and forefinger, she held it up and examined it before tossing it into the garbage can under the sink. Next, she put the glass in the sink and turned on the hot water tap to rinse it out.

Where are Elijah and Rachel? Turning off the faucet, she made her way back to her room, her tummy grumbled a little bit. She frowned wondering if that was her body breaking Caleb down into a slurry of digestible nutrients.

Sitting on her bed, she surmised severe emotional turmoil or turbulence might be how the darkness inside of her was gaining momentum and allowing it to threaten and usurp control of her body. She needed to keep herself calm to prevent a resurgence of the darkness, if she lost control now, she suspected she might never get it back and be trapped a prisoner in her own body while the other presence inside of her did who knows what. The presence removed Jerry and Caleb, but would it be able to or even want to differentiate between friend or foe? Would it kill Elijah because he was a shit like Caleb, or would it just kill indiscriminately, friends Veronica or Valen?

What about mother, Jerry had said she was the one pushing for the ritual of purification? Would the entity inside her restrain Anna while mother did the ritual? So many questions, so much confusion.

She looked down at her cell phone, should she call Veronica? Tell her that she just killed. Or that the dark entity inside of her just killed Caleb and Jerry? She slowly shook her head. Veronica wouldn’t believe her and even if she did, did Anna want to expose her to the possibility the thing inside of her might lash out and kill her friend?

It was still there, she could feel it. It wasn’t going away this time. Part of her was horrified at what had happened to Jerry and Caleb at her hands, but another part of her wasn’t and she was no longer sure if that part was the other, or if it was her true feelings. Influenced by the dark presence, was she herself changing? Was she losing touch with her humanity?