Into the Dark

by Dana Isaly

I can feel my demon purr inside me. It radiates through my chest, skirts down my spine, and makes my legs tense.

I don’t want her to get drunk and stumble home. Doesn’t she know there are psychopaths and rapists out there? Doesn’t she know anyone could just walk up and take advantage of her? She is mine. Ours, my demon reminds me.

What I do isn’t rocket science. I find women that look like my mother, or act like my mother, and I kill them. I do it slowly, and painfully. Their screams send gooseflesh across my flesh and make my heart race.

I’m the girl you see bringing a book with her to social events because I would rather be reading, and because I need something to distract myself from my social anxiety.

“You cling onto people like a lifeline when you feel like they might have the slightest interest in you, whether that be for friendship or for more.

“It’s probably because I have zero self-worth and because my parents were divorced when I was five. I’m ugly, I stumble over my words, I’m too scared to go anywhere new because of my crippling anxiety, and I don’t understand why anyone would want to associate themselves with me. And it’s so, so easy to leave. So when someone shows any interest in me, I cling to it like a life preserver. Their attention keeps me afloat. It keeps me out of the darkest corners of my mind where I love to retreat when everything gets too hard.”

“Because if you’re going to love me, I need you to love me with every single fiber of your being,” My head swivels and looks back on her. “I want someone’s full and unyielding attention. I want someone to look at me and only me. That way I know that person will never leave me.”

“That’s not love, Lyra. That’s an obsession. Love is forgiving and always evolving. There’s room to grow and change where there’s love. But with obsession, it can only go one way. Obsession will consume you in a way that you can’t come back from.” “Then I want obsession.”

This is another thing I’ve never understood: getting lost in someone else’s words. It seems like such a waste of time. It would just make my own life seem more miserable. I don’t need a reminder that I’m fucked in the head either. I’m always the villain. And rightly so. But I still don’t want to see that written out on paper, plain as day.

If I was a guy who was able to partake in sexual-related things, I think I would like her ass. It’s rounded and quite a bit larger than that part of her waist that cinches in.

I didn’t realize before, but her heels the night before had really made her a normal height. Today, in her flat knee-high boots, she is stupidly short. How does anyone function at such a short height?

He’s looking down at the little red thing like it means something to him. This is the part that I love, watching people connect with a book.

His knuckles are knobby, and I want to run the pads of my fingers across them. Those hands would look so nice around my throat, I think before I can stop that train of thought. I feel the blush come back with a vengeance, lighting my entire body on fire.

“Your obsessive personality makes you blind to anything but what’s in front of you, Lyra. You grasp onto that one person like they’re your beginning and your end. Like they’re the answer to everything you could ever ask of them.”

“I just need to find someone that will obsess over me the way I obsess over them.”

I would crawl inside of him if I could. I would drape his skin around me like a blanket, bathe in his sweat, and wear his scent like perfume. I am utterly and wholly his.

Her eyes are teasing, and so I give her one of the smiles she likes. As it spreads across my face, so does hers. I like it. I decide I will do it more often. I will give her whatever she wants. If she loves my monster, I can love her angel.

I’ve just adopted a girlfriend. My demon and I went from solitary serial killer to sexually active boyfriend in the span of a week.