Jerry

Anna awoke with a sudden start, momentarily discombobulated but keenly aware of another person’s hand wedged in between her thighs near her crotch, a finger touching her through her underpants.

Turning her head, Jerry was there, smiling, the smell of wine seeping from his pores. “What the hell?” she yelled, trying to push herself back deeper into the couch and away from him.

“Relax,” he said, thumb flicking over a scarred symbols on her thigh, bringing up the wine glass in his free hand and emptying it.

“What the fuck are you doing Jerry?’ she said, now trying to push to his hand out from between her legs while clamping her knees together to keep him from getting his hand any closer.

“It’s time,” he said, chuckle in the tone for voice.

“Time for you to get your hand away from me,” she barked.

“Your mother wants to do the ritual of purification now, but I told her I think we need to wait for the solstice, otherwise we risk losing everything, but she said your father will find us and we needed to act quickly,” he slurred. She didn’t know what that was, the ritual of purification, but it must have been what they were arguing about earlier.

“Jerry you’re drunk!” she said angrily.

“Ah poor Anna, poor little damaged Anna, no clue what glorious things you are destined for, well not you per se, your body,” he said, pushing his hand more forcefully between her thighs.

“What the hell are you talking about?” she hollered, unable to dislodge his hand as he squeezed the flesh of her thigh. “I swear to god Jerry,” she said, the blackness polling inside of her.

“Swear all you want, it won’t make any difference in the end,” he said, smirking. “I just thought you might like to feel a little something between your legs before you go,” he added, licking the corner of his mouth with his tongue.

“GET OFF!” she yelled, the darkness welling up faster than ever before, engulfing her, she felt like she was suffocating, drowning under a tidal wave of blackness. Jerry seemed so far away, his voice indistinct in the emptiness. She was aware of something else in the darkness within her, another presence, someone else, another sentience rising to the surface as she herself was pulled down into the abyss.

At once Anna, who was no longer Anna opened her eyes, luminous, iridescent green mingled with flecks of molten gold. Examining hands that were hers but not, white lined scars in the palms of each. She noticed the man seated next to her with his hand clutched between her thighs, touching her without permission. She frowned, studying him. “You would dare?” she challenged, Anna’s voice but at the same time not, like layers of many different voices all speaking in unison.

Jerry jerked his hand back, hastily getting off the couch and staggering backward. “What the?” he asked, his calves bumping into the chair. Reaching behind him, he steadied himself and set the wine glass on the table to the left of the chair.

She could sense the other, buried deep within, memories not hers inveigling her mind. She frowned. “This vessel is corrupted!” she snarled, eyes locking onto Jerry.

“Wait,” he protested, raising his hand defensively in front of him, “Anna,” he added, eyes round with fear.

Holding her palm out toward him, he was suddenly driven by an invisible force backward and over the right arm of the chair, letting out a grunt as he struck the wall behind and toppled to the floor.

Rising, she circled around the coffee table and moved toward where Jerry had landed while he was struggling to right himself.

Wild, panicked eyes as he began to shrink away, “Anna!?” he exclaimed. She watched, amused at his expressions as he tried to interpret what was transpiring.

“Dad!” called out another male voice from elsewhere in the house. “I’m home!”

She turned to Jerry, passing her hand like a slow wave in his direction. Pain wracked through every fiber of his being as he cells seemed to collapse in on themselves. Eyes screwed shut, he screamed, not realizing his world was expanding outward as his body was reduced.

Moving forward, she bent at the waist, and seized the little man by his right leg, lifting him in front of her face, angling her head to the side to evaluate him.

Caleb walked into the room, “What’s going on in here?“ he demanded, tone forceful, pausing, seeing something tiny and moving suspended between her fingers for the first time.

She didn’t answer, regarding the interloper who was at once familiar and a stranger at the same time with eyes that seemed to glow somewhere between green and yellow. Somewhere deep within her body, she felt anger surge, raw hostility.

“What the fuck?” he asked, taking a step closer as he tried to understand what he was looking at.

She held her free hand out toward him, the force strong enough to knock him backward and propel him off his feet. Looking down at the table, she dropped the tiny little man still in her fingers into the wine glass.

“Anna! What the fuck?” breathed Caleb, eyes angry. She smiled, already he was beginning to diminish. Despite him getting smaller it seemed as if his eyes were growing wider by the second as she reached down.

Moving forward, she snatched the little thing up from the floor. Looking back toward the chair, she crossed the room and sat. The tiny figure in the glass climbing to its feet.