THE DIFFERENT PERSONAS OF X

CHAPTER I: THE FLESH-EATER

CHAPTER II: THE HEART-EATER

CHAPTER III: THE MAN-EATER

CHAPTER IV: THE SOUL-EATER

CHAPTER V: ORGASM

May 23, 2006

19:48

Dear journal,

Today, I have discovered a portal to somewhere else.

I met a beautiful creature with oil-slick eyes and long spiral horns that appeared to have been meticulously chiseled from the finest ebony emerging amongst a head of thick carmine locks. I would not say the eyes had initially frightened me; perhaps ‘caught off guard’ would be the best modern expression to understand the feeling instilled in the pit of my belly. I stared at this creature often, for I felt as though warm metal twine had been fastidiously wrapped ‘round my gullet and if I were to deprive this divine creature of my attentions, my innards would be severed.

And his arms! - they withheld the basic shape of a human male’s arms, but his were covered in a coarse black fur and culminated at the tips with several pointed claws. When we had first met, he casually offered me a - paw, I would estimate - and I shook it while casually looking at the sky and attempting to pretend our interaction was completely mundane; predictable, even. When I had withdrawn my hand, I had a long scratch extending the length of my index finger that had already began to bead with blood.

I had wiped my hand on my trousers, unwilling to say anything along the lines of ‘your meaty claws just drew a line in my flesh,’ and stared at him quietly. His eyes were inhumanly black (even the whites,) and while this should have made my heart rise to my throat and beat white wings in a feeble attempt to escape through my maw, I found myself captivated. He had a shy smile gracing his lips during our entire interaction, and several times I wondered if he was aware of the sedating effect he had on my troubles.

I had followed him to the forest and watched him eat berries. His canines were large and emerged over boyish pink lips, which made me think they were made, perhaps, for pleasures more feral than berries. I watched him tear fruit from the bountiful womb of a veined berry-bush, a number I would certainly be unable to find in America. The fruit grew in an underground passage that emanated a relaxing sort of green light. It reminded me of a massage-chair demo I had received in Brookstone last Tuesday.

Reference: May 15, 2006

15:32

I sampled a light-therapy massage-chair in Brookstone today. The green colour was my favourite. It was great!

You see?

He had offered me a berry, but I refused it, as I felt it would be too tangible - too real - of an experience to endure in this enchanted-sort-of place. Pain was an illusion oft available in dreams, but taste was not, and I did not want to break the fragile spell of the atmosphere with any disillusions.

“You find me strange,” he had questioned, red berry juice dribbling down his chin as he precariously balanced another on one solid row of straight white teeth.

“No,” I had answered honestly, and I felt the reply both pleased and incensed him in ways better left unstated. “Although, I have never seen anyone like you before.”

“Do you fancy me?” he did not skip a beat.

“Well, that is a complex sort of question,” I replied, and watched him continue to eat berries. Things were silent for a great amount of time, and with each single-berry harvest I noticed the womb becoming increasingly hostile. It seemed to have acquired a pulse, and each berry appeared to require an infinitesimally smaller amount of pressure to reap during every trip of my companion’s unforgiving claw.

“How do you feel about questions?” he had asked, rolling a fruity delicacy between foreclaw and thumbclaw.

“They’re useful in discovering things one would like to know.”

“Do you think we ought to discover everything we would like to know? Is it a right, not a privilege, to possess infinite knowledge.”

“I understand your position on questions. You are quite fond of them.”

X - he asked for me to call him X later in our visit, but I shall call him that for now due to literary convenience - smiled at me, a crooked and toothy sort of smile that appeared all wrong for his face. His eyes were quiet, glassy, contemplative. Without definitive irises and pupils, it was difficult to understand what, precisely, he was looking at during any given point of time - but here I was sure his focal point was something other than myself.

“I like them, in moderation. I think they are useful for understanding people, but not ideas. Things.”

I wet my lips with my tongue. He continued.

“Do you have any idea where you are right now?”

“No,” I answered without hesitation, surprising myself. A pause, and then I added: “don’t tell me.”

Now I was sure X’s eyes were upon me. He smiled, and it was a far more genuine affair, and when he spoke his timbre was reminiscent of lovesong spilling from his mouth. “You may refer to me as ‘X’. I will see you four more times, and then you can decide if you will have me forever or never at all.”

“But,” I protested, “if I have you in my memories, I can never never have you.”

“Never, never, never,” he mocked, although his intent was kind. “Never, never, never. I like you, because you don’t like questions. Humans feel entitled to understand everything, when it is not entirely our right. When new things - phenomena - are encountered upon earth, a tangible sort of excitement is felt. You can feel it rippling through the air; you can cut it with a knife. Humans always want something more, and I think they confuse this emotion with curiousity. Once we understand something, it is boring. That excitement is gone. Your kind tends to believe there is a certain sort of satisfaction in explaining nature’s mysteries, but that in itself is pompous and pretentious. The aurora borealis. It is beautiful, is it not?”

I had become so enraptured by his monologue that I was unaware he was expecting a response until his pretty face screwed up with an expectant kind of anger, red brows furiously knit atop obsidian eyes. Beside myself, I stuttered, “ah, yes. Beautiful.”

X was appeased.

“What is more exciting: understanding the aurora borealis is composed of energetic particles, or thinking of it as some alien form of communication? There’s a certain yearning behind it that is too deliciously exciting to ignore. Since science has already answered all of our questions, it would be foolish to believe otherwise. I, for one -“ he popped a berry between his lips, “- would prefer to believe the aurora borealis is a product of the dead.”

“The dead?” I asked, reaching for a berry. I had surrendered to this bizarre world, and I certainly needed a suitable popcorn replacement. The womb squirmed beneath my exploratory fingers, but the retaliation died down with a final pluck.

Its taste resembled a crossover of a strawberry and a peach. I ate four more.

“The dead,” X confirmed. “There is no evidence, but it’s fun to think about, is it not? I mean, once someone dies I highly doubt they can just grab pen and paper and ink a nice letter to past loves. Maybe they can only communicate with light, and maybe this fragile, esoteric light is only visible during certain hours of the day in which the earth’s shroud - protecting us from things that we, the living, should not be able to see - weakens. Is that not more interesting than particles?”

The way X had sneered ‘particles’ made it seem as though they were the most trivial and disgusting things in the world.

“Yes,” I replied, although my voice sounded a bit stuffy due to copious amounts of berry juices slicking my teeth. X looked contented, lying on his back and scratching a half-moon of porcelain bellyflesh.

“Now I will always find the aurora borealis awfully boring, I suppose,” I thought out loud. X did not seem to mind, for he merely searched for a more comfortable patch of grass with his squirming body.

His voice was melodic, and he had an interesting way of speaking. I wanted him to speak to me all day with that saccharine tune, spilling the contents of his interesting half-animal brain and then winding every last thought around the shell of my ears for later revisitation. He had a beautiful body and a charmingly fresh, young face, and as he rested the back of his heavy head on one furry paw I found myself attracted to him. I ate six berries, suddenly very uncomfortable in my own flesh.

“I think I do fancy you,” I told him, but he did not look at me. For a few moments my skin prickled with anxiety, but soon his complete causality assuaged my nascent sense of social awkwardness. He swat a knat at his neck, yawned once or twice, flit his soft pink tongue at a canine retaining a drop of red berry juice. He did not seem to care one way or another about my statement, and for a moment I could not help but wonder if he had even heard me.

“Well,” he had said, sitting up in one fluid movement and ensnaring my gaze with eyes so dark and glassy one could mistake them for marbles. Any tension I might have felt only moments earlier was completely released. “Then we will have to test this theory of yours. How do you feel about monsters?”

“I believed one lived under my bed for six years as a toddler.” It was all I could think of saying.

“Could you fancy a monster?”

“It’s feasible, if the monster I fancied did not try to harm me. But, that criteria is not exclusive to monsters. I would not want anyone I fancied to do anything along those lines.”

“So,” he asked, stroking his chin with his knifelike projections that never seemed to sever his own flesh. “You have no special requirements for a monster you fancy?”

“I don’t think so,” I answered, and as soon as the words escaped my lips, I realised our conversation perplexed me.

“What if this monster feeds off of humans?”

“Then I understand, because everyone wants to live. But, I could never fancy a monster who ate me.”

“Of course not,” X murmured, as though musing to himself; “you would be dead.”

“Yes, I believe so. I tend to die when I am killed.”

“You know this from experience?” X had suddenly become incredibly fascinated with me, appraising my person with black-marble doe eyes.

“No, I don’t. I’m alive, aren’t I?”

“Yes, I suppose you are.” X was visibly disappointed. “Well, I may meet your stringent romantical demands.”

“Romantical is not a word.”

“Aurora borealis.”

“Oh,” I replied.

X grabbed my hand and lead me through a thicker part of the woods, and although the trees were thinly spaced I felt nary a leaf against my skin. I felt no pain, although when he released me I was slightly displeased to see an additional three cuts tracing down my palm like lifelines.

Maybe they were lifelines. Scientific explanations are boring.

In the centre of the clearing was a naked man tied to a simple wooden chair. There was a bowl before him, and I instinctually understood its purpose was urine collection. He was blindfolded, and his wrists were bound with a soft, forgiving soft of material; I think it may have been something as needlessly extravagant as silk. He had a gold band around his finger, and a frazzled nature that accompanied fatherhood. I felt profoundly bad for him, as I was under the inexplicable impression that he was prey of some kind, an offering to an ungodly and flesh-eating monstrosity.

“Okay,” X called, approaching the man and smiling at me with his eyes. “After this, tell me if you fancy me.”

Although the affair was complicated, it was also a mercilessly quick one. Several things regarding X’s physical state began to change; his nose extended to long black snout, ensconced in the same rough fur adorning his arms; his teeth multiplied several times in size, and began to resemble katanas bleeding thick ropes of saliva rather than human dentition; his ears tapered and flattened against his head like a boar’s. He bit the hapless father in half, chewed for a moment, swallowed; he ate the other half.

Then, as quickly as things had become abnormal, they became normal once more.

X stalked toward me and pressed his lips to mine, and only when I was actually in contact with his pulsating flesh did I realise he had human entrails dangling from his canines. As I involuntarily drank several droplets of human blood, I felt something permanently changing inside of me, a sort of burn in my temple that grew into several different entities: scaly fish with silver wings swimming comfortably in my cerebral fluid. The changes to my being were profound, but not unsettling. I am positive that in that very moment, I had begun the transformation into a different me.

“Do you still fancy me?”

I realised that I did, and then I woke up sprawled on my couch with a frozen pizza burning in the oven.

I wonder when I will see X again.

to be continued