As restlessness overtook him, he tossed and turned, muttering curses under his breath as the hours ticked by, growing weary of the beast sitting underneath his bed.
“I know you’re there… Watching me.. Like always.” He spoke to the silence in a raspy voice.
“How can you be so sure I’m not just in the back of your mind’s eye?” The beast answered in an equally raspy voice.
“You’re answering me now, huh? Is that it? It only took you seven years to speak..”
“Who’s there to say it’s me, and not yourself, answering back?”
The man eventually sat up, he peered into the eerie twilight filling his bedroom from the window, only to see a dark mass move with his eyes, like a blotch on the world, trailing his vision.
“Now I know it isn’t just me losing my mind.. You’re right there.. Right in front of me.”
He said, pointing at the dark mass in front of him.
That same dark mass shifted form, into that of a perfect mirror image of the man, even recreating the bed he was sitting on.
“Again, I ask.. Who said it’s me.. And not yourself?”
“Yet you’re right here.. Right in front of me. I’m staring at you.” With his hands now resting in his lap, all he found himself able to do was stare at it. Stare at it in all its dark and bubbly glory.
The dark mass suddenly sprawled out, across the room surrounding him, wrapping around him and constricting. A vague face appeared in the now molten inky blackness, staring the man in his. “Am I…?” It paused, for a brief moment, “or am I simply your imagination… playing dirty little tricks on you? Am I your hallucination? Or.. am I worse..? Am I you?”
“You aren’t me.. I’m me…. Right…?”
It answered him with a nice squeezing tone, as if struggling “No, I’m you. I’ve been saying it all along.. Haven’t I?”
He began to sweat, despite being gripped by the inky blackness surrounding him so tightly he couldn’t move, let alone breathe. He tried to force his way out of its grip, he tried, and tried again, but it didn’t want to let him go, and it made him well aware of that fact.
Once he stopped struggling.. It spoke again, “You can struggle all you want, but you’re only fighting yourself.”
He answered in a strained voice this time, “What the hell are you anyway?”
“Like I said, I’m you.”
The beast at this point simply moved away from him, letting him go, and it took his exact form, standing in the middle of the room, staring at the man with a shiny grin.
“Can’t you see the obvious?” it started pacing in slow circles as it spoke.
“I’m you, and you’re me. We don’t have to fight anymore, it’s every morning, every evening.. Just accept me..”
He responded, “Never. You aren’t me.. You’ll never be me.”
With this exclamation, the man stood up from his bed, and stepped over, grabbing the beast by its throat, and holding it to the wall with all the force he could muster.
“But.. I am you.. I’m the you that could’ve been better than this. I’m the you.. That you used to be…”
“I don’t want to hear it outta you anymore, you piece of shit, yea.. You piece of shit you..”
He pulled it to his face, staring into its beady black eyes, “You used to be me.. I used to be you..” and with that, he slammed it against the wall, harder and harder, and as it was begging..
It tried to speak one last time, nothing but a whisper “I… I.. Tried… f.. for.. Them..”
The man held its corpse by the throat still, and he drug it out of the room, downstairs.. All the way to the basement… and he tossed it in with all the rest.
As he walked back up the stairs, he passed by a window, and stared into the sunlight for just a moment.. Whispering to himself “I’m sorry my sweet sunshine.. I did the best I could..”
Suddenly, he fell to the floor, and the glass fell to the floor, shattered from the bullet that punctured his skull.