#spinels diary

He stood at the edge of a pool. A pool of what, he had asked himself, but there was never a satisfying answer. It was dark, and didn’t seem to move, save for the warbled reflection that spoke of the pool’s movements. It spoke in a voice that wasn’t really a voice, just a feeling.

A vibe.

It made his stomach twist. Twist and turn and scream and shout, threatening to upend itself and whatever contents were left over from the prior nights of delirious sobbing and ranting.

Today—or rather, tonight? He couldn’t quite remember—it was coffee.

The pool drank the contents with ease, the bilious mixture fading into the darkness like everything else. It returned the gift with its own: the same warbled reflection.

Notably, as he expected, it looked like shit. It looked like it hadn’t slept in days, like it hadn’t eaten for the same amount of time, like it barely drank liquid—and most certainly few things beyond coffee. It smiled, and he frowned.

Truthfully, he wanted nothing more than to reach down and tear the reflection’s throat out, to reach deep into its chest and rip its heart free from its cage. He wanted to consume it the way that his was consumed, aching in the emptiness that remained. He wanted to paint his lips red, full and blossoming with the ichor that feigned the things he desired most. He wanted to caress the vile heart, his fingers tracing its countless sinewy curves to sooth it to silence, its pulse growing faint between his clawed fingers.

And yet the reflection continued to smile.

It smiled because it knew her. She was always just out of view, but it knew. It knew the way she crept into the corners of his vision, the ways she drew strands of hair loose before vanishing as he turned. It knew because her reflection was there too, the pair’s hands reaching out the drag him under.

Torturous, he thought.

Torturous that a reflection goaded him this way. Torturous that the reflection could do nothing, it would never fulfill its desires the way that he knew it desperately wanted. Torturous that, even if he could, the nerves in his body would simply jerk him free of the pool, and he would breath, his lungs would burn, he’d cough up the water, and then go back to bed like nothing had happened.

Still, he plunged his head into the pool.

The fluid filled his lungs like air, and for a moment—for a brief second—he felt as if he could breathe. Truly breathe. His lungs yearned for more, for the liquid joy that flushed her very sense of being, for the flickering relief from fear that relaxed his body.

Oh, right. Fear.

He reeled back, falling against the indescribable ground beneath him.

He gasped, his hand reaching up to feel the thundering in her chest. His grip tightened, the nails of his fingers digging between his ribs to quell the ravenous quake.

She watched, as always, with metered glances and drawn out movements, circling her subject like a wolf to prey. She didn’t know him, he didn’t know her—it was comfortably mutual, their arrangement. Preferably, they’d have kept it that way. Preferably.

But she was greedy.

And he was anxious.

And so they danced against one another. Not physically—no. It was a distant dance of hide and seek, of tag, of cat and mouse.

Of murder.

His was the weapon of self-denial, hers of self-actualization. He wanted to stop existing, she wanted to exist. A perfect play of hatred for the other, in any case. Their fur stood on end, their skin crawled, their tails whipped and lashed, their ears folded back against their skulls.

She circled closer, just out of sight, and yet full and center. She knew he saw her—their unspoken rules broken as her finger drew the shapes of his body. Her claws parted fur and drug along skin, skipping as it bunched against the nonexistent pressure of his delusional existence.

He shivered, a quiet sob erupting from the depths of his own reality. Her lips brushed against his ear, and his voice whispered to her ears. Neither knew the words the other spoke, and yet the two knew.

They knew.

A tear fell from her eye, welling in warbled reflections of his as she sat atop his body, legs straddling either side of his hips as her hands reached to his throat.

Another tear fell, as he leaned back, his head resting against the emptiness above the pool. He could feel the cold essence drench his hair, although it didn’t move past his scalp.

He was incredibly still as she rocked above him, the two emotionless in their coupling, in their understanding of their existence. Even as she tightened her hold on his throat, he laid still. Even as their bodies writhed beneath their skin against one another, she was still.

Even as she forced his head under the pool, as tears fell from her eyes and salted the withered space of his heart, he smiled.

Neither were satisfied, truly. That was a luxury that neither of them could afford. It was something that was expected of him, and something that was stricken from her.

Of course, if only the reverse were true.

What pride was their in killing him, she wondered. In what world was this truly the meaning of her existence, that as she sat alone with her reflection she was to be happy.

And in what existence was it that he was meant to simply die, he wondered. How was this a solution that could be drawn from the warbled reflections he saw every day.

They never did understand these things, and as he awoke once more, he sighed as the coffee brewed, steam dancing in the air left between him and the rest of the world.