The tightness on her stomach receded like waves at low tide, slowly pulsing, back and forth, loosening and tightening, a little less every time until it assuaged completely and Jayne was left reeling from what had happened and what she saw. She got up and looked around. No one was there, no one was outside her door snickering, she was entirely alone in the mid-morning light. She realized all the sudden that she didn’t know exactly what time it was. She went to look at her clock and it was blank except for the colon flashing back at her. No numbers. Jayne didn’t remember the power going out anytime recently. As she took the clock in hand she started to try to adjust the time but nothing showed up. She heard its diminutive beep as she cycled through the hours but saw no figures appear. The beep itself began to fade away as she pressed them. Every press of the button got quieter and quieter until, as if she were slowly going deaf. She pressed the button repeatedly now, attempting to hear or see something but nothing was showing up. She slammed the clock down in frustration. As she did, her eye fixed upon a text book on the desk. Its graphics were gone, it’s typography was white and seemed to be growing formless. It was. The outlining of the letter across the front were fading before her very eyes as she. She snatched it to her face for an extremely close look, and the black ink seemed to be turning into dust and floating away. She followed the almost imperceptible trail which was now like thin black smoke that floated up into the light. Now everything was doing it. The colors of her bedspread were peeling up as if being burnt and sucked into the light, almost as if they were directed there like streams. Streams of black smoke rose from every color on everything in her room and clouded the light until the room grew dimmer and dimmer, the only thing unable to be snuffed out being the light streaming in from the window, but now everything, was entirely black. The sun cast no light but on the floor and back wall of her room but was surrounded, framed, by darkest black where nothing could be seen. It was as if the exposure and the contrast on Jayne’s very eyes had been set too levels too high for normal human sight, and everything but the thin ray of light was light. All else was blackness. Into the light from the darkness on the opposite side of the ray of light which split the room in half, two dark half blocks, stepped a figure equally as black, like a silhouette of a person with decidedly feminine hips, long skinny legs and arms, and long hair. It seemed formless, only gaining any form against the light form the window, otherwise blending in perfectly with the deep darkness around her.

“You,” the figure said in words that sounded as if they were whispered into a cave and were echoing against multifarious cracks and crevices.

“You’re ruining it. You stepped beyond yourself just then, with Tina. You shed you’re otherwise wonderfully, luxoriously self-absorbed frame and put on a filthy rag. You don’t look like yourself, Jayne. You look scared, sweetheart. What’s the matter? Don’t you know me? I know you. I’ve been following you for a long time now. Since the first little admirers, the first transfixed stare into the mirror, the first tantrum gone right, the first application of lipstick, the first wearing of a bathing suit, the first kiss, the first position held, the first picture in the paper, the first bit of a teacher’s praise. All wonderful milestones my sweet. My very favorite parts of your illustrious career. You still look so shocked, as if you didn’t look at one nearer to you then your very sister or brother. The figure stepped through the light completely into the side of the room Jayne was in. As she wafted through the ends of her hair left tiny trails of vapor that hissed like snakes and disappeared in the sun light. She crossed threshold of light into the darkness once again and now was formless, no where to be seen. The voice picked up again.

“Oh, Jayne, honey, I do love you so. I’ve heard all your most precious thoughts, they’ve nourished me in my more magnanimous hours, in moments when I forgot myself and needed some encouragement to cast an appreciative and flattering eye inward. You sustained me with your musings on photos in the newspaper and walking across the stage summa cum laude, with knowing that all the boys wanted you, and wanted you all the worse when you had a boyfriend on your arm.” Here, the specter let out a long, wistful sigh, as though reminiscing.

“That’s why this silly stepping aside of yourself isn’t quite as innocent as it feels, dearest. It may feel quite nice now but it’s a lie, Jayne. Please, for my sake, quit this other-ness. It’s killing me, darling. I can’t do what I need to do with you stepping in and mucking things up.” Her tone changed and now her voice seemed like several more voices layered over her own, all getting deeper and more intense as she continued.

“You’ve been feeding me and feeding me all these years, and now that I have a chance to come into your life, to step in and be what you made me to be, you want to go and flip the script like this? Isn’t this what you wanted, Jayne? You always wanted their eyes. You always wanted their appreciation. You didn’t just want that though, did you my love? You wanted their praise; their worship. Oh no no, I know you didn’t think that clearly, you never aimed for it, but you were. I’ve been much closer to you than you could ever have imagined little one. And you nursed me while nursing, albeit so fleetingly and so tantalizingly at first, those thoughts of grandeur and the supremacy of your beauty, I began to be formed in the womb, as it were. You had that silly strength of conscience then, earlier in life, that you shouldn’t have thoughts like those that I grew up on. But grow on them I did, as self-aggrandizement and fixation has only grown more and more pronounced and accepted. But as for why I’m here it’s really very simple. I now, and henceforth will, enjoy with my body, with my presence, what you always enjoyed in your mind. And now that I’ve had to crawl through into your world by the black moon, I’ll live outside and then you’ll be inside me, Jayne. But be a good little pet and remember that, from now on, it’s to be the way that it has been. It’s all about you Jayne, it must be all about you. It’s all about me, Jayne. It’s all about us, Jayne. Everything, everyone: Only.About.Us! Stop being a little prudish twit and let me be what you’ve always wanted, Jayne!”

The silhouettes voice grew louder and louder, but only as though the chorus of voices that made up the “voice” were multiplying and lowering by so many octaves. The anger was now mixed with a commanding intensity. Jayne had been, and was still, entirely dumbstruck. She was pressed now against the wall. Unsure of whether or not that being was still there, whether or not that being was real at all, or whether or not its voice was simply in her head or if that cacophony was indeed somewhere in space, Jayne had an overwhelmingly strong inclination, almost an insatiable urge, to battle that. Something about what she said both destroyed and emblazoned her. She saw now what this thing really was. Where it really struck from. The shame and offense of her words was searing in her, but she knew better now.

“No.”

Silence. And then, with an undeniable sound of disbelief and disgust, Jayne heard once more

“What?”

The word chilled her to her core and she could feel the adrenaline, as if it were displacing blood in her veins and pressuring her tense muscles and tendons against her skin. She felt as if she were caught in a fault and digging in her toes all at the same time. The blood was hot as it rushed into her face and she repeated, with more determination

“No. I made you. I fed you with myself and building this mask out of all those moments and having all the lights on all my best parts, but I’m tired. I relent. And you don’t get anymore of me. You don’t get to be me. You aren’t me.” Jayne was yelling back now, and the myriad of voices that made up that specter’s one voice was screaming in her ears, telling her to stop and to die and to stop, again, and devolving into utter madness and senseless gibber and noise. The noise put Jayne to gritting her teeth and writhing on the ground again, but knew that she had to stick to her course, to keep up her defiance. The color seemed to slowly be spilling back into everything, as the darkness around the sunlight coming through her window seemed to be growing less and less pronounced, as if her eyes were adjusting to a more usual darkness. But this darkness was itself leaving. Its effects were beginning to reverse. Color seemed to swirl back onto the drab yellow tiles of the floor beneath her and light seemed to fill the dome light above her room as if streams of translucent water flowed up into it. But the light from the sun was nonetheless a great deal brighter, and it shone through her fingers and all over her as she laid in it and remained there for some time, looking at her hands. She knew it would be over from now on. That she could see the trail she had slid down. She didn’t see the path ahead, however, but she knew it was away from herself, away from everything she had been and had built herself upon. But there was a freedom there. A freedom in that it wasn’t on her anymore. All she had to do was run. Run from herself. And run she would.