Someone falls down the stairs, vomiting. I step back and watch the fall of a naked, plump blue. Plump is an understatement; it’s self-endangerment to stuff one’s body with so much fat. He lands face-first in his own orange-green vomit, then at the feet of a prostitute. He reaches for her. Her buyer steps aside. The fat man sticks out his tongue, trying to reach her bluish toes. I move on. Disgusting, but there are worse things. I take another large step over another puddle of vomit, seeing the silent crowd three to five meters below. Again, they look at me, then avert their gaze. You’re lucky I’m who I am. I know people who would rip out your blue tongue for a second glance and eat it. I think of Alex—a creepy fellow. Wilson would wait until the third glance before cutting out the tongue, but he wouldn’t eat it. I daydream out of boredom until I finally stand before one of the rooms. I choose the first door. Conveniently, the wenge wooden door is slightly ajar. My flesh-and-blood hand pushes it open further, and blue light streams in through the open window. The wind carries an unpleasant stench—death-like, but not death. A naked man stands before a simple, soiled mattress. I see the dark hair on his plump backside, and beneath him, a child. A girl. I step closer, my brows furrowing. There are worse fetishes... The fat man turns around, and I see the small, delicate girl, also naked. Her eyes are closed. He has his thumb, resembling a sausage, in her mouth. I prepare to extend my claw to draw blood, but I stop. My vision blurs. My knees tremble. The girl. Orange hair. Like hers.
In the color of burnt sienna.
My hands begin to sweat, and blood floods my eyes. My breath grows shallow, ragged. I see him again—the bald, fat man walking away from Casandra. His thumb slips from her small mouth. My daughter. I see her. I see her in orange and green. Blood. Eyes cupped in my palms. Gouged out. Those ghastly silhouettes. That wide grin. The fat man becomes that silhouette. I stagger back, clutching my head. I’m shaking. Voices echo in my skull.
“I–I bought her! I–I don’t share!”
That black silhouette in the dead of night, walking from the fire—the fire.
“There’s no sharing. Get your own red one.”
The voice distorts, reverberating through my mind like a curse. I dig my nails into my scalp, desperate to make it stop. But even the silhouette recoils.
“Shit... are you shifting?”
It sways as I sway, vomiting memories. Past and present blur into one. I can’t. I won’t.
“Casandra,” I murmur.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper as I hold her—her body half the size of mine—in my arms. I stare at her mauled face, her battered body lying beside me, and feel the blood running down my arm. But everything fades. I see Casandra again. Her hair the color of burnt sienna.
I see her from the corner of my eye.
“Casandra!” I scream.
My legs move on their own, unsteady but determined. I’m still shaking. I see the silhouette in the periphery and hunch low as I run, afraid but moving forward. Toward Casandra. What I couldn’t do back then, I do now.
“Casandra!” I cry, tears pouring from my emerald eyes, tinged with hints of amber. My voice cracks—half-sob, half-laugh—but it’s only grief. Real, raw grief. My voice quivers.
“Casandra...” I breathe her name in and out, thick mucus burning across my upper lip.
I’m above the mattress now. Standing over the delicate, naked girl. Over Casandra. My daughter.
My hands tremble as I touch her bony shoulders. I could crush her if I squeeze. I let go.
I rip the filthy shirt from my back and lay it gently over her scarred body. It’s enough to cover her from neck to knees. My eyes flicker as I watch her blood recede.
There—the grinning silhouette.
But in the next breath, it’s just the fat man.
I don’t even bother to open a wound. In a single motion, I leap forward and strike his face—once, twice—until his brain, his eyes, his blood, all spray through the open window.
The wall behind him turns blue, soaked in gore.
Three more hits—chest, stomach, groin. Until there’s nothing left of him but legs dangling below the knees. The room reeks of blue viscera, drenched in the grotesque remains of what was once a man.
I turn again. Slowly.
My green eyes, now flecked with orange, rest on the small girl beneath my shredded shirt.
I run my blood-soaked hand through my coarse beard, dragging the monster’s essence across my face.
Then, I slide down the wall. My back against the blood-painted wood.
Amber eyes. The same amber I lost inside me long ago.
“Casandra... my little one...” I whisper, one last time.
And then I slip into the quiet, repeating grief that has become my curse.