Mechanics of a Cataclysm

“I tire of these... incidents, Chris. It hurts me to see you like this.”

The voice that spoke those words was like a chorus of my own. I vomited again, sending chunks of breakfast and droplets of blood splashing into the cracking, yellowed porcelain. I panted some, wiping my mouth with the back of my sleeve.

“...ankly, I don’t know w-w-hy you REFUSE my help time and again. After all, I’m only l-l-looking out for your best interests...”

The voice, that shadow of myself, was rambling on. Sometimes -I don’t know why- it stuttered. Honest to God it stuttered, making the entire self-choir even more incredibly bizarre. At any rate, I heaved myself up, knees buckling. I felt a wave of nausea and vertigo wash over me, but I leaned against the dented steel wall of the stall, and it passed. I stumbled out, boots clattering against the tile. Looking in the mirror, I saw myself for the first time. Blood trickled down the side of my face from an egg-shaped lump on my forehead, a gift from Dave- just another punk-ass at this school. My shirt - covered in pictures of eyes, ears, mouths- was wrinkled and had the beginning of several bloodstains on it. Everything else I wore was black, so I figured I was okay. Blasting the cold water, I shoved both my bruised knuckles under the water, feeling the water take away some of the pain. In their own way, even inanimate objects hit back, even stall doors.

“Do they even know why they do this to you, to us?”

“No, of COURSE not. Please, enlighten me,” I responded to myself as I splashed the water up onto my face. The water was starting to run red from the blood dripping from my head. This wasn’t the first time this had happened -the conversations with myself or another bloody day where any asshole who thought he could push me around did so. When I looked up, my reflection was staring at me mockingly, arms crossed. His lips moved in synch with the chorus inside my head.

“You want to know why, Chris? It’s because you’re WEAK.”

I gritted my teeth against the accusation. The Shadow’s reflection -not mine anymore- jaunted his head at me, taunting. The only other sound in the room was the sound of sanguine water dripping off of my hair and face into the sink.

“Look at you! You’re a freak. No one likes you, especially not her. The hair. The shirt. Do you really think you ever really stood a chance?”

My fists curled into balls.

“Especially not with J-j-jess. Those dreams of her touching you gently? Loving you for the ‘beauty of your mind’? She’d rather suck off her boyfriend than even...”

Now THAT tore it. Before I knew what was happening my scrawny, bony fist was pummelling at the mirror as I yelled something unintelligible. I stopped myself after a few seconds. The mirror was dotted with impacts, like multiple spider webs splashed crimson. Blood flowed between the cracks in the glass. That’s how I was, just like the mirror- cracked and broken beyond repair.

My reflection was warped and distorted now, but through it all, I looked like a beaten and caged animal. Pathetic. I shook uncontrollably in a mixture of shame and anger known to almost every male on the planet. A dull throbbing reached through the haze, starting at my hand and working its way up my arm. Looking down, I could see the glass mingling with my flesh.

“Why are you letting this happen? Together, we can make them pay.”

Damn it, I don’t know why I didn’t just let the Shadow out some days. They deserve worse for what they had done to me. I looked down at my swelling knuckles, and began to fish out the bits of glass from my hand. A few longer shards were jammed right in there. After a few minutes, I began to stare more intently at my hand. I could see my finger bones through the longer cuts, yellow and straight. The joint was laid open, cartilage gleaming wetly for all to see. My flesh pulsed streams of ruby glory down each digit while the two largest mirror pieces amplified the sight into a work of art stretching into eternity. There, my flesh and bone and blood held tiny stars of glass, a universe within me. I paused for a second. It was almost beautiful, perfect. The musical rhythm of blood splattering the sink helped a sense of...inexplicable magnificence. Order. Perfection.

“Behold the Glory of the Flesh. Our Flesh. Why should others defile it so?”

They shouldn’t, I told myself. They had NO right! Looking back down at my hand, I practically slapped myself. What the fuck are you doing? I started to pull and wiggle the glass from my hand, wincing at suddenly raw nerve endings. Gasping, I pulled as much as I could out, then ripped a strip from a towel I found in the locker room next door and bound it as best I could. Part of me did it to help stop the bloodflow, the other did it to hide the Glory. My head was pounding. I stumbled from the washroom, disoriented. A few people saw me, and snickered. Bastards.

Then I saw them. Dave, the brute who had been beating on us for years had his arm around precious Jessica. We never knew what she saw in him. She was practically burrowing into him. Her long, golden hair brushed against his arm. It should be US! WE were her childhood friend. WE helped her, nurtured her, loved her. He came along and ruined it all with his gang...his attitude...his-

“Kill him. He deserves no less after warping Jess. He turned her into a drunken slutty criminal!”

“He corrupted her.”

“Now. We can do this. Can you trust anyone else to help you?”

“Can I trust you?”

“Yes. I’m a part of you. I’m your friend. I’ve helped you before, and I’ll do it now. Just imagine...”

He flooded my mind with the horrors he would subject Dave to. The first image was Dave’s head imploding under a rain of hammer blows, denting at first then coming apart, bits of skull and brain flying. The second was a plethora of needles and glass jammed into Dave’s face. mouth, hands, neck, eyes... barely able to scream in agony...

“Think. Feel. We ARE the same, you and I.”

Part of me wanted those things to happen to Dave. We glared and grinned at him as we passed, neck limp, eyes wide and giving him a horrible grimace of a smile. I saw his eyes bulge. He had probably overhead my conversation with myself. We could see the fear in his eyes. The Shadow continued to talk to me. The halls around us warped and twisted with our passing. I don’t remember how long we walked, wandering. The world was torn and sundered to our whim, in our eyes. Suddenly, we were in a very unexpected alley lit only by the sputtering amber of a streetlight behind us.

“Hey Chris. Welcome to the last night of your miserable life,” beautiful, sweet Jess called out to us. We could see the bags under her green eyes, the track marks along her alabaster arms. We saw her small breasts heave under her shirt, her long legs tense under her old, tight, torn pants. More importantly, we saw the Louisville Slugger that her arms were slung over. Behind her, formless shadows with teeth hovered, anxious for the bloodbath to come.

“Let me help please, Chris! I swear I will leave her unharmed.”

“No.”

It was an objection to both Jess’s statement and the Shadow’s.

“THEY engineered your personal cataclysm, put the mechanics into motion. They did the same to her. Are you a whipped dog?”my own voice in chorus goaded me.

“NO!” I howled, and finally let the Shadow out to prove him wrong. To regain my dignity. To get vengeance. It was like fire in my veins. I felt stronger, faster. Information, memories flooded my mind. My father shocking me with two bits of electrical cord for breaking a vase. Martial arts techniques taken years ago. Playing with Jess when we were seven, her long hair flowing as we pushed on her on a swing. Half of a Shakespeare novel flashed through our head, garbled. The final bit in the torrent was ‘One death is a tragedy. One million is a statistic.’

In an instant, I realized my mistake. Now, he was in power. I was trapped, and could only watch the horror. He pointed to the largest shadow, and started forwards at a quick walk. Jess came at him with the bat, swinging for the ribcage with a wild, feral look on her sweet face. We dodged left and elbowed her in the temple as she followed through on her swing, watching her collapse with a sigh of pity. She would be unconscious for awhile.

The rest of her companions weren’t so lucky. My Shadow literally tore them to shreds. The first person to step forwards was a young man on the football team, cigarette clenched in his teeth as he charged forwards to tackle us. The Shadow merely extended two fingers, letting the shorter opponent blind himself. I felt the jarring sensation, and then the feeling of flesh up to my knuckles as our opponent screeched in agony. I began to feel sick, the Shadow leering as he bent the fingers imbedded in the poor soul. Still screaming, the Shadow put his free hand up against the temple of his victim, heaving his head and dragging it along as he slammed it into the brick wall to our left with a sickening crunch. The man’s screaming died in his throat.

I felt ill. The shadow continued his rampage, eviscerating one of our tormentors with a captured switchblade, watching with a measure of glee as he fell backwards, trying to clutch his guts inside of him. The Shadow’s victim failed. Crushing the windpipe of the last of Dave’s cronies, he turned to Dave himself. His screams echoed in our mind endlessly, beautifully.

When Jess awoke, we were there. She saw us, covered in blood, staring down at her next to Dave’s mutilated corpse. Our hand slid over her face, brushing her cheek. Then, it was clamped tightly over her mouth. I heard my own voice, the stuttering chorus speak:

“Y-y-you and I Jessica, we’re going to dis-cov-cov-cover the mechanics of our cataclysm...”