A half second was a dozen years when I was possessed by the Devil. When you called me my dead name, called me “she,” and puckered your face into a scowl like skin around an asshole, I wanted you dead.
It scared me, that moment when the Devil replaced its soul with mine. I could feel flames leaping out of my irides, leaping toward you, trying to grip you around the neck.
I pulled them back, pushed him down, like I swallow down the guilt when I reflect on it later. I wanted you dead. And that scared me. That I wanted you dead.
It was less than half a second, but it felt like a dozen years. How the time seems to slow when your body is no longer your own, it frightens me. I remember the feel of my forehead crinkling, I remember the pressure at the top of my nose, as my face contorted into something that was, at once, more and less than human.
You have always been younger than me, but I often don’t treat you like your age. I usually treat you like the equal that you are. But in that moment, the moment after the half-second, when you saw my face—that demon behind my eyes—you were scared, your eyes were huge. Like saucers of milk. Like glossy globes set in place, a little continent shivering in the great white ocean. You looked scared. And that scared me.
I know I cried about it after, that the Devil I don’t believe in possessed my soul. It was the lack of self control that had gotten to me.
I have always cradled my self control, that’s why I don’t drink or smoke—I need to know that I’m in control, despite the mood- and brain- altering medications I take on a daily basis.
So when that Demon took control, gripped the braided ranes tied around my throat, I was not in control, and that really scared me. Just a half-second, no, less than a half second, I was not me nor I, nor my name nor my soul—that body had contorted into a monster’s. And that scared me, that I wanted you dead, that I wanted to kill you. It scared me that the body I inhabit could think a thing like that.
The look in your eyes might be fabricated or real, but I remember it like it’s still happening—I remember it because it reflected myself right after. That possession—what did that face look like during it? What did you see when I wanted you dead?
Could you smell the smoke, feel the flames, that burned inside me when you called me my dead name? Did you feel how instead of a broken heart, there were simply lit flames?
Did my face scare you? Or did the monster do it instead? Please, I need to know if it was me and I, my name and my soul, that made you look at me like that.
I stopped that demon from hurting you, though it feels less a victory than defeat is. I’m scared that you remember what hell looks like through my eyes.
I know I cried right after. I vaguely remember telling someone about it—the violence in that body that had smelted my hands into fists. I don’t remember if my arms twitched, my face twitched, but I want to believe when the half-second was over that I had steadied those arms like a protection charm.
I love you, I care about you, I treat you like an equal. Yet I’ll admit to slipping up in that lately since you’ve been in your “bratty tween years.”
But I never want you hurt, injured or emotionally damaged. I don’t want you dead, though I know the bluntness of that statement might scare you too. I want you to forget that look I gave you, but I want you to remember it too. If that look comes across me, that’s not me nor I, nor my name nor my soul. I want you to know to protect yourself from that demon I’m clearly too weak to protect you from.
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