Possessed

I would not have believed it was possible. I have been a clot of darkness, a maw for the souls of the perished for eons beyond counting. He was an old man, wasted away from long illness and dementia. Indeed, if I had any concern, it was that his essence was so incoherent it would not survive being severed from his body for more than a few moments. Thus, as I waited by his head, I was poised to swoop in instantly, to devour his spirit before it dissipated. I did not want to be deprived of my repast.

The old woman sitting by his bed holding his hand and the two others standing to one side were inconsequential: I was as insubstantial to them as the interstices between their thoughts. The moment was coming. I could sense his breath faltering, his heart fluttering. I stooped down and imbibed the first few whiffs drifting out of him…

His body gave in with a sigh and slowly exuded his immaterial being, as garbled and dissociated as I’d feared and already losing cohesion. I enlarged myself to envelope it, flowing around the woman as she moved in to kiss his cheek…

And from the wreckage of his foundering mind a final memory – vivid, fully formed, fully realized – broke free and took life outside his body – and I swallowed it with the rest of his disintegrating soul.

I was aghast. The other scraps and pieces – the remnants of his memories, desires, impulses, fears, longings, dreams – these I consumed. They dissolved at once into my being, giving me sustenance. But that memory, a full-blown secondary creation existing of itself – that I absorbed into my mind. It grafted itself into, became part of, my own suite of memories, my own soul.

I fled that room with the lifeless husk and the woman weeping over it, shaken to the core. I stole into the woods and hid in a cave, to still my horror, to gather myself, to assess the damage done to me.

Such a thing could not be conceived. A few of my kind have spoken of fragments of mortal spirits that somehow kept their form past death and roam the earth still – always with the admonition that they were not to be touched. I did not need the warning. What you possess possesses you; that is basic knowledge. I did not need to be reminded of it. But neither did I believe the stories. Mortals at the point of death were shaken embers throwing off a few final sparks before fading quickly into darkness. In the eternity that I have existed, perhaps once or twice have I seen a soul hover in the air for more than a minute before dispelling. I had always believed that to be the extent of their existence – until the old man.

Such a thing could not be concealed. I could already sense in the distance the unease among my kind. They would soon seek out the source of their perturbation and converge upon me. They would hold me down and tear me apart to remove the corruption; and they would do it out of kindness. It would be pure, interminable agony, but as I am undying, I would in the end be recomposed, healed of my affliction.

And yet as I sat in the cave, I could not bear the thought of being restored to my former state. The memory that had embedded itself in my mind was so real it could not be teased out of my own lived experience. I saw a young woman wearing a straw hat and a light purple summer dress sitting on a blanket between tufts of sea grass on a dune. The image was so clear and deep that it embodied layer upon layer of other memories and associations. The sand was warm when I sat upon it. The breeze from the ocean played with wisps of her brown hair. Her smile rendered me silent with wonder. Her laughter rang in my being. I could not look into my past and not see her. I longed for a life with her.

As I sat there in torment, I knew that I should welcome my brethren when they came; indeed, I should go to them at once, so they could begin excising the glow that contaminated my darkness. But instead I wanted to take flight, to hide in the wilderness, to keep that light within me. It was a part of me now, and depraved as it may sound, the thought of having it taken from me was unfathomable. I imagined it would be like what mortals experience when they die.

(November 2011)