I don’t know what’s going on, and I can’t just dismiss things as fake anymore.
Had this been a week ago, I would’ve flipped off the sister-claiming delusion and sat in the corner waiting for her to flicker away. But as I stare at her face, her light purple hair, her wings, her eerily similar gray eyes, I decide there’s no point in rejecting what she’s saying just because I can’t make much sense of it.
Her eyes are beseeching as they stay fixed on mine, and she gives me time to adjust to the bomb she just asked me to hold like it was no big deal.
“How?” I ask quietly, my voice surprisingly calm, even though my insides are roiling with so many emotions I don’t know which will surface and take over.
Shock, puzzlement, dismissal, validation, anger, outrage, everything is fighting to the forefront of who I am, and I don’t even know where to begin dealing with any of them.
She gives a little shake of her head. “I just recently found out myself when I met our other sister, Delta. But our mother, Nefta, left us with families in the Mortal Realm to help protect us.”
My head spins even more at the revelations that apparently, I have not one, but two sisters.
“Mortal Realm,” I repeat. “What does that mean? Where are we now?” I ask, my mind reeling like I’m in a Tilt-A-Whirl.
Medley looks hesitant, as though she’s not sure how to explain things. I watch as she debates for a moment, and then her resolve seems to harden, and I have no idea what to expect next.
“You’re in Hell, Sable. Or at least, I think so. It smells the same as it did around the Gate, but I’ve never been down here before. Delta could probably tell us for sure, but thankfully, she’s not here. He didn’t get her,” she rambles, and I find myself stepping back until my wings are pressed against the bars.
“We’re in Hell,” I say numbly, and Medley nods. “So everyone I see…”
“Demons,” she tells me in a quiet voice.
Demons. Not monsters, demons.
I slide down until I reach the cold stone floor and then pull my knees in as I try to understand what she’s saying. The swirling emotions inside of me set me off-kilter, and I cross my arms in front of me, tapping my finger against the inside of my elbow like a comforting tic. I glance at Medley’s scythe on the ground, hearing Morax or Ophidian or whatever his name is, screaming at me to call to one, and slowly, things start to connect.
“What am I?” I ask, fitting the next logical piece into the puzzle to the information she’s giving me.
“You’re somethin’ very special, and we need to get outta here so that Morax can’t use it against anyone.”
Her statement is tender, and her eyes are soft. Her hands twitch around the bars she’s tightly gripping, like she’s tempted to reach out to me but doesn’t follow through with the instinct. It’s probably for the best. I don’t know if I could handle that right now. Not with what’s warring inside of me.
I thought sadness might win out in the end against my other turbulent emotions, but I was wrong. Another emotion bitch-slaps the rest and comes stomping forward, demanding to be acknowledged.
Anger.
Years of being told what was wrong with me, all of the diagnoses and medicine and treatments, the monsters...I didn’t make them up. I didn’t hallucinate things at all.
I was just seeing what no one else could.
My heart races, and I wish I was a fire-breathing dragon that could open my maw and melt down all the years of my life when I listened to others tell me I was broken. I let them take from me the things I knew were real, and warp them and me into something shattered and unrecognizable.
When I was little, I always thought I had sisters. I remember telling doctors that I could feel them. They gave me pitying looks or sighs of irritation. Just another delusion added to my file.
But I was right.
I was right about all of it.
Rage bubbles up in my throat like thick acid, as though my body is doing its best to answer my call to breathe fire and raze my life and everything I know to the ground.
“Before, they used to flicker from human looking to monsters, why?” I ask. “Why doesn’t it happen down here?”
“Demons ward themselves in the Mortal Realm. The flickerin’ you experienced was