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The image is faint. Hazy.
It shifts and blurs, ebbs and flows. Ever-changing yet static. It is at once cotton candy dream, at once blood-curdling nightmare. Equal parts love and rage.
The creature stood before her is one from the bowels of her memory. It towers over her, its very presence commanding fear, respect, admiration, and hatred, all in equal measure. Four arms jut out from its wretched black torso, each one tail-ended with massive slabs of metal, rows of jagged steel fangs buzzing and whirring upon their perimeter. A fifth can be found plastered upon its head, stuck dead center on its cold, eyeless, bestial face.
Indeed, any denizen of hell would recognize the monstrosity the moment they laid eyes upon it—or perhaps even before, as they hear the deafening rumble of its engine heart from miles away.
And then, within an instant, the image changes. Her mind wrestles with itself, as if its two halves tug and pull upon a blanket that determines which side’s thoughts are given shape. It is a boy now, still taller than her yet hardly reaching the point of towering. His face is hard to make out, but she can somehow understand the emotions written upon it. She can sense the stupidity of his grin, feel the warmth of his eyes, and resonate with the sadness buried somewhere deep in his chest.
She reaches out towards him, arms stretched out as if blindly venturing into darkness, but every step she takes only pushes him further away. She runs now. Faster and ever faster do her legs take her, her toes straining upon the misty nothingness that outlines this fleeting dream. At last, she is but inches away from him, fingers extending and creeping closer and closer until—ah! She trips. It comes as no surprise to her, resigning herself to the oh-so familiar pain that greets her as her face makes contact with the ground.
Seconds later she looks up, her eyes scanning her surroundings to locate the boy who is nowhere to be seen. In his place stands the monster from earlier, who looks down on her—as much as it can, without eyes—with a face impossible to read. It tilts its head to the side, as if wonder and curiosity are what it feels at this very moment.
She knows not why, but her blood begins to boil. The emotions she felt towards the boy are replaced—no, overlaid with fury of a devastating scale, every ounce of it directed towards the beast with the chainsaws. She can feel scars burn upon her cheek as her hands curl into fists, fingers digging deeply enough to draw blood.
And then she screams.
Her battlecry is laced with boundless rage, roaring the name of her adversary and charging towards the object of her hatred. With no weapon in sight, she slams her fist into its chest. The impact is resounding, but the damage inflicted is entirely upon herself. She looks at her now shattered hand; the bones inside reduced to a fractured mess. And yet, this does little to dampen her resolve.
Again she punches, and again she only succeeds in injuring herself. Two broken hands are what grace her arms, the other half of her mind begging her to stop because it hurts, it hurts, it hurts!
But stop she does not. More, more, and more do her fists slam upon the beast’s chest, each strike weaker, angrier, and more painful than the last. Eventually, even her wrists are destroyed, and she is unable to even muster the strength to form a fist, her punches now little more than hate-filled flailing.
She backs away, eyes remaining locked upon the form of the beast she had been pummelling, whose body appears no more damaged than when she began. The word hatred would not suffice to describe her emotions at this point, which threaten to burst out of her with a force that would shake the very foundations of the earth. Her breathing is staggered. Sweat drips from her head. Her heart pounds in her—ah. Her heart. That’s it, she thinks.
She uses what little strength remains in her to bury her hand into her chest, digging and clawing through the flesh and blood that hold her heart in place, before tearing it out of her body. Vaguely, she can hear the agonizing screams of pain of her other self somewhere within the recesses of her mind, but it matters little to her. Approaching death’s door, she holds her still-beating heart in her hand, coating her fingers with even more blood and dripping onto the floor.
She should feel pain, and perhaps she does, but it is of little consequence compared to the anger she feels towards her age-old foe. With immense difficulty, she breaths out the words “Heart Grenade,” and the organ held in her hand begins to shift and morph. Ridged lines appear around its surface, and its pipes mold into the shape of a pin. She grabs hold of it and rips it out, before once again charging towards the beast. Into the air she leaps, landing on its shoulders and burying her makeshift explosive into its mouth. In a few seconds will it explode, and perhaps the suffering it inflicts will suffice to appease her.
And then something happens. The image changes yet again. It shifts. It blurs. Rage into love and nightmare into dream. In the beast’s place stands the boy, his amber eyes staring up at her as his teeth remain embedded into the bomb placed in his mouth.
A similar change happens in the girl, her scars vanishing from her face and giving way to tears that now fall from her eyes. Gone is the hatred and the fury, replaced now with something much harder to define yet much easier to feel. It might be love, it could be love, and perhaps it is love. Perhaps also it is something less, and equally could it be something more. Whatever it is, it is a comforting feeling, and one that she wishes she could keep with her for as long as possible.
But that would not be.
KA-BOOM!
The girl awakes. She feels the thumping drum of her heartbeat in her chest. She looks down at her hands, free of blood and shattered bones. The silence of the night is broken by her ragged breaths as she looks to her side, seeing her other self asleep next to her, brow furrowed in frustration and scars appearing deeper than they’ve ever been before.
She lies back and stares up at the ceiling, finding it impossible to return to sleep. No more dreams, nightmares, love, or rage. Nothing more than a quiet and restless night, like so many before it.