Into the darkness of my mind, I descend, and you are there, writhing in the black chains I’ve forged from nightmares. You are part of me, and nothing more, the part of me that resists, Poe’s perverse imp. Were I some villain, would you struggle with just the same fervor to undo my schemes? Yet, here I am, trying to save the world, and you reflect the monsters that would devour her. Here you are; what can you know of these aliens? Are you a mockery, or something more? I shudder at your terrible hint, your knowing glare. Am I not so human after all? After all, I’ve always been a little different. Suddenly, the image, a horrible reversal, presents itself: the real me, unknowable, devouring the brains of some two legged creatures that have wandered too far into space. As the fatty masses dissolve, so to their pattern, their information, is added to the collection. A new shape will be prepared, a new hunting ground opened to our kind. Yet, something came with the pattern. Slowly, as the metamorphosis progressed, this ghost began capturing different parts, a muscle here, a nerve there, until finally, the thing I ate controlled my eyes, and I fell back into an endless darkness, an eternal descent. I feel it prodding me, taking information from me about my others, those like me, using that knowledge for some strange purpose. This thing I ate, it holds such hatred, such burning madness. It does not eat us; only destroys. I cannot escape; I must escape. I flee further into the darkness as it cuts out another part of me to use in its ceaseless war.
A Ghost in the Mirror
Tale Told 