I Remember You

I remember you. Like a friend from the past that I had met long ago. Your image slowly erased by the inevitable march of time, you had slipped my mind. Somewhere along the way, I had forgotten you. Now you stand on the other side of a thin pane of glass, your curled fists pounding on the fragile barrier with feral rage in your wild blue eyes as you stare, endlessly stare, at me. Your howled words screaming from a mouth empty of teeth and tongue are unintelligible and the uncertain crowd gathering around me in this dingy diner don’t understand that we know each other.

My eyes focus on my pale reflection in the window and, with a jolt, I realize I know you, but not myself. The girl standing, half-shrinking in panic with her spine pressed anxiously against the table behind her, her trembling hands tightened with fevered claws around her pocketbook, is a stranger. Her loose brunette hair falls cloud-soft around her oh-so innocent face. Her green eyes are wide and cavernous in the ivory flesh of her pallid expression. The buttery cardigan over comfortable jeans she’s wearing are casual, more casual than the relationship I have with my own body. Isn’t it funny, that between us, I am the stranger here, and not you? I am an ancient, breathing horror hiding behind the thin veneer of an angelic painting, one who seems to have forgotten I’m here, tempted into slumber by the careful compulsion of a loving family and lazy Sundays free of fear and blood.

But you didn’t, did you?

Memory is a funny thing. The past means everything and nothing at all. The future is an ever-changing, swirling cloud of possibility. This present, though, is so deliciously satisfying because, at last, I am awake again, torn from my sleep by the mere image of your face.

Ten years ago, we met for the first time and you realized the error of your ways. Ten years ago, you were successful, dressed in expensive tailored suits and not the haggard rags of homelessness you wear now. Your hair was neat and shiny gold, your charming face so sweet when you flashed every inch of pearly white your money had bought.

Wait. Was that you?

Or were you the handsome college professor handing out A’s with a wolfish grin and the promise that “it’ll only hurt for a moment”? Or the man stalking unsuspecting prey from the shadowed alleys, unaware that you were being stalked in return?

I could laugh. Is this girl even aware of how much blood has stained her hands over the years? Are you aware?

Your hands slapping on the glass draw me from my thoughts and my eyes alight with vicious glee upon the stump where your little finger used to be. That I do remember. The visceral snap of my teeth around the sweat-slickened skin of your finger is utterly and eternally unforgettable. I wonder if you look down at that stump and think of me, your mind sucked into a black abyss with just the single glimpse. I hope it torments you, like you tormented so many people before I sunk my talons into you, before I tore those teeth from your mouth and cut loose your lying tongue like de-fanging a viper. No tongue to writhe and tattle. You wouldn’t dare, not with the promise that, should you speak of me, I would return to devour your other tender extremities. Do you feel blessed or cursed I let you live? You were my first, and, my god, was that delectable. Fallen from so high into the twisted creature I made you into! My own broken creation made from sins that had been washed away in your own blood. It’s beautiful! I can still remember the way those ruby red gems painted your shuddering skin where they fell from my hungry lips. I can still taste the phantom essence of your blood in my mouth like a finely-aged wine, lingering behind my molars, begging for just another taste.

How I missed you.

You must have missed me, too, because why else would you have sought me out? Just the thought tears through me like lightning and the thin mask I’ve worn for ten years shatters like the glass between us. I straighten even as I melt, and the smile I can see reflected back at me is mine, not the empty, vapid smile of the woman in the family photos hanging on the walls of my gray-painted home. The man beside me stiffens as he stares at me, suddenly aware that the mother of his three children has been an idea all along. I turn away from him, feeling alive at last, feeling eager and hungry, because I remember you, and I remember me.