Challenge Submission The Difference is in Degree, Not in Kind

[Atomic Soul]

"We all have a monster within; the difference is in degree, not in kind."
― Douglas Preston​

A monster stares at me, black-hole eyes boring into my face.

Its face is broken, an alien, fractured conglomeration of features in all the wrong places: a smashed nose, and three and a half eyes, and crooked mouths twisted into deep frowns, and mismatched cheekbones, missing pieces and duplicated features. It's a disturbingly familiar visage, the colors, the shapes, if they weren't jammed together like puzzle pieces that don't quite fit. My eyes flick across the glittering mess, light refracting inconsistently across the asymmetrical collage, until I meet its eyes. A shiver races up my spine.

You shouldn't make eye contact with a predator—it encourages violence.

I tear my gaze from the thing, the one that found me behind a thin, fragile pane of glass. My eyes find my hands instead, braced against the cold ceramic of a dirty pedestal sink. The knuckles on my right hand are lacerated, weeping red; blood drips, hot and slick, in thick droplets onto glass-scattered tile. But the sting of sliced skin is inconsequential, numbed as a cascade of warm agonistic chemical reactions bloom to life inside my head. My hand has become nothing more than a weapon, less a part of my body and more an extension of the rage that twists inside my chest, fading like a fire slowly being deprived of oxygen. It was the same hand that gripped that thin little tube of plastic, the one with the glinting silver needle and the fully-depressed plunger and the empty cylinder. Trembling fingers, muscle memory, a little prick, a shuddered sigh of relief. I'd been shaken by an earthquake of anxiety and swept away on a sudden tsunami of rage—but help is on the way, rescue in the form of so many milliliters of liquid diamorphine. I take a deep breath, fingers relaxing their death-grip on the sink edge, and find the courage to bring my gaze upward again and find the rapidly-shrinking pupils of the monster in the mirror.

"Why ya looking at me like that?" He hisses the words, malice shining in his night-black irises. The buzzing of a harsh fluorescent light flickers overhead, reflecting off of dirty teal blue bathroom tile and bathing the space in a sickly-green hue. His words bounce off the walls, the low ceiling. The drone of insect wings, the viscous plip, plop of blood, two pairs of lungs breathing in unison.

My breath hitches in my throat, brows furrowing, tear-swollen eyes narrowing as I lean my face closer to the shattered glass. Disbelief colors my expression, morphing from grief to confusion. I…saw them, his lips move independently of mine, onyx eyes staring out and into me from behind the fragmented crystal.

"Yeah, Max. I'm talking to you."

"...Me?"

"Who else is there? You know what you did, monster. Monster, Max. Monster monster monster monster—"

Monster. Buzz. Plop. Inhale. I shattered him under my fists, smashed the life out of that little boy with pale, tear-stained cheeks and hopeful eyes—there was no place for him, his tender heart and ridiculous, wishful dreams. And when I realized what I'd done, I frantically tried to fix him, sticking pieces together and trying to make up for the shards that were lost. I glued him back together with desperate, ill-fated relationships, chemical dependencies, and violent outbursts masquerading as confidence and pride and strength. The result was a sharp, fragile mass that cuts anyone who gets too close, reflecting aggressive sarcasm and suffocating apathy; pieces of him fall off routinely, stuck back on with adhesive comprised of any number of vices. It suits him, broken pieces mashed together to make something ugly and serrated and wrong. It's easier to swallow. Tracing the contours of my own face, the sharp cut of my jaw and jutting peaks of my cheekbones, the crooked edge of my nose, and two dark, empty eyes...it could only lead me to one conclusion: the monster I'd made doesn't just lurk inside reflective surfaces, easily dodged or shattered when his presence becomes too overwhelming. I wear him on my face, on my body, in my words and in my bad habits, a blatant self-portrait of the disgust and regret and deep, aching loneliness I carry inside of myself.

"What do you want from me?"

Monster, hum, plip, exhale.

He snickers, all those lips drawing up into a sneer that reveals a million teeth, each eye narrowing, and hands—so many hands—reaching out towards me. The mirror surface ripples, shears, pieces of jagged glass trembling in a refracting mess as they tumble, glimmering and tinkling, into the sink. The room quakes, or is it my mind, shaking and shuddering with aftershocks of guilt?

"I want what you took from me. I want you."

A vision of fingers, grasping, grabbing, nails biting and clawing as I drag myself out of the mirror. Irises, canines, fingernails, a jaw wrenched wider and wider—

Monster, wings, plop, wheeze.

I sink to the floor, out of view of the broken boy in the mirror, and shatter.

MONSTER. Monster.

monster.​

wasps.​

flow. (monster.) shudder.

silence.​