ME & THE MONSTER

so evil

"A storm's coming," said Kal.

I shifted on the plastic seat of the bus stop. "Yes," I said. "I think we can rule the stroll out."

Two days ago, a ring of my phone, Kal's voice. Hey, we can meet up tomorrow, if you like. Start over.

Start over? We couldn't go back, not now. Everything was set into motion such a long time ago. Everything had changed.

Okay, I merely said. And I didn't stop smiling for the rest of the day.

"Coward," Kal said. "It's just a bit of water."

The sky was dark. The paper timetables on the bus stop flickered in the wind.

"We could go to one of those coffee shops. There are a couple of them around here, I think," I said, and Kal nodded. "We should get going if we don't want to get drenched, then."

"Oops," he said, as rain started to fall. "Guess we're staying here after all."

"Wasn't it just a bit of water?"

In mock outrage: "Oi, young lady. We're getting lippy, are we?"

"I am. You going to kill me for it?" I said. I was joking, or at least I thought I was.

A sideways glance. "Not anymore, darling," Kal said, and he wasn't even joking. "Anyway, what are you doing for your birthday, then?"

"I guess I'll have a drink with my friends at the weekend," I said. "And my parents want us to go for dinner or something." I made a face.

"Why so gloomy? Don't you enjoy it?"

Bitterness in his tone. I wondered what he was thinking. I thought I knew what it was. I felt a pang of guilt.

"It's not that," I muttered. "Don't take me wrong, I love them to bits."

Then I said what had been flooding up inside me for years, drip by drip, pain after pain, until it brimmed over and spilt.

"But they don't love me. Who I really am."

Little Rae, with gentleness in her hands, full of stitches, full of hope.

"They love the version they pretend has been sitting under my skin all along."

Little Rae, with murder in her heart and a cold dagger in her hands. Little Rae, writhing with revenge, standing in a dark room in the middle of a pentagram, buying souls at markets that only half exist.

"And I – don't like that version. I don't want to be that version."

He said: "You don't want to be – bad."

I looked at him properly, as if I'd never seen him before.

"Yes," I said, and my voice was so small for a declaration so big. I felt it swelling out of me. "I've had bad to last me for a lifetime." I pointed at the scar on my cheek, and managed not to recoil, and neither did he, just looked at it evenly. "You see this? This – was bad. Before. And after."

Kal said, and there was no smile in his voice, "Tell me everything."

And I told him. I told him about little Rae, with her bright hair and her bones so small, so easy to love, so easy to hurt.

I told him what it felt like, always being scared.

I told him about the shame and the great gaping loneliness that wanted to devour me alive and then pick my bones clean.

I told him about angelic vultures.

About human demons, and demons who laugh and cradle you in their arms just like humans do.