Phariha Rahman
The Exception
It was in 1952 when Natasha was twenty-four. Her hair had thinned, the color had dulled, and then in depressed clumps it fell out. The first time this happened she had been assessing her reflection in the bathroom mirror, as people do, and as she ran her fingers across her scalp, the hair seemed to weaken in her hand and giving up on life, fell into it. She’d been perturbed at first, but managed to convince herself that it was a normal sort of thing to happen, especially during menstruation, and so she calmly tossed the clump of hair into the trash. But then as this continued, her scalp became revealed and almost entirely nude. The morning that it had suddenly struck her how she had aged, she sat on the floor and wept into to her hands, quietly so that she could not be heard.
The doctor she visited-a man that went by the name of Richardson- was as puzzled as Natasha. He stood next to her and checked her scalp, then squinted at her face as if searching for an answer there.
“Are you under a lot of stress?” he inquired.
She answered, “Maybe a little, but not so much that I should be going bald!”
“It might be genetics.” He said this trying to conceal his thoughts which was that it was a hopeless case and no matter what steps were taken there would be no improvement. “Do you know of any relatives that began to gray or have hair loss at an early age?”
She didn’t. The last time she’d ever seen anyone of her same blood was when she was ten years old at her Uncle’s house in Belarus. Two years before that final night, she and her father slept there; he went to bed with a bad cough and in the morning didn’t make a sound. There was nowhere to bury him except in the woods behind the house, and in the years Natasha lived with her uncle, she’d often perched herself up on the bureau and sat high on her knees so she saw where her father was laid.
The last time she did this, she fell and cut herself; blood stained the blue rug and she attempted to mop it up with her dress, but it was no good. She swore at her uncle in Russian. “He’s such a vain and greedy man! When he sees this he’ll hit me with his broom and say to himself, ‘My rug! My precious rug! You bitch of a niece, you ruined my rug!’”
He never said any of that. While in the orphanage she would remember how he had been spread on the cot; his face was blank and there seemed to be a feeling of relief in the way his arms lazed above his head, as if he was stretching and any moment a sigh would escape from his parted lips. Natasha wondered if he had known about the rug. It had been the only nice thing in the house and she’d ruined it with her own blood. Would he have looked so at peace if he’d known?
Richardson prescribed her pills.
“I pray these help,” he said.
Natasha would pray too.
“You’re from the Soviet, right?” he asked in a conversational, perhaps superior tone.
“Yes.”
“You miss it?”
“I don’t remember much of it. I didn’t go to school and left the house only a handful of times, including when my father and I were leaving. We left so quickly I didn’t even have time to take my stuffed bear, Lucifer.”
Richardson looked at her with an alarmed expression. “You had a stuffed bear named Lucifer?” Natasha nodded.
The pills she was prescribed were taken daily and religiously, never a minute too late or early, but her condition only seemed to worsen despite her efforts, and it wasn’t long before a crow angrily clawed the corners of both eyes, which had lost any sort of glimmer, and her lips, dry and cracked, fell into a permanent frown of deep sadness.
As her doctor had suspected, Natasha was stressed. She had not been before the terrible process had begun but once it had she was so very stressed, and then her stress made her stress more. She grew erratic but languorous. To make matters worse her friends, her dear friends, seemed to give her nothing but judgment disguised as a helpful suggestion. It oozed from their eyes and voices, splattered all over her. She at first tried to ignore it, but then it was everywhere.
Her husband was having an affair; he had been for nearly two years, but now promulgated it, speaking to the girl animatedly on the phone right in front of Natasha’s eyes. Her life was like a wine bottle rolling down a hill; it kept moving despite the many cracks and dents appearing in its surface, and would continue to do so until it reached the bottom of the hill and moved no more.
Or would it explode?
She could not say. All she could think about was the loneliness tugging at her heart. “Will you leave me all alone like this?” her heart asked one day.
Natasha answered to it, “I’m so terribly sorry but we have no one but each other now. Not one of my colleagues or friends likes me anymore. My husband is out with his girlfriend. My work is suffering; I suspect I’ll be fired within a year if I do not recover.”
“Mind over matter,” her heart reminded her.
“Yes, I’m sure this is true, but I feel I’m losing my mind! How long can a person go with only herself? If only my husband-no I shall not call him that any longer.”
Her heart agreed enthusiastically.
“If only someone loved me. If even one person was still able to enjoy my presence I think I wouldn’t mind getting so old and ugly.”
“Why, you’re not ugly at all!”
Natasha smiled. “Thank you, you are very kind.”
In the following days, Natasha was prompted quite a bit to leave. She resisted at first but began to wonder if perhaps the age-old saying was wrong and she could run away from her problems.
For the last five years, Natasha had worked as a high school Chemistry teacher; and then one day she quit. It was a spontaneous decision made by an illogical and tired mind. After it had been done she drove home, and halfway through the door she began to laugh. It was a violent fit of laughter that picked her up and rode her on its back, and so overcome by it she collapsed to the floor.
“Oh what a loony I am, what a loony!” And then louder she called, “Oh my dearest husband where are you?”
There was no answer and she laughed once more. “I see, you’re out with your girlfriend again you useless bastard!”
Her face fell suddenly, and her chuckles dissolved to tears. She placed one hand over her sleep-deprived eyes.
“I hate myself,” she called, as if speaking to him. “Do you hear me? You’ve made me hate myself!”
Her heart, which had been her only companion for the last few days, exulted suddenly. It urged her to go forward. She did; she got up with much difficulty and walked to the kitchen and opened the fridge.
It was there. Next to the ketchup stood a large bottle of tequila. At that very moment he was at work, but as soon as his shift was over he’d go straight to her- wherever she was. They would party, and drink, and kiss, until he had drank so much she wouldn’t kiss him anymore. They would fight then; it would end with her demanding him to take her home, but because he’d be so tight and useless she would take him home instead. They’d kiss right before he went inside and the fight would be over, and with this relief he’d celebrate with yet another drink; but the tequila would be gone.
My wife that damned bitch, he’d think to himself and would then holler her name until she came down, her whole body quivering with fear and her eyes round like a deer.
“You drank all the tequila!” her husband would cry, slapping her. “That was my tequila!”
With a few harsh words and the violent swing of his arms, he’d annihilate her; she’d grow smaller underneath him until she was nearly a child. At his feet she’d sob.
“Forgive me, please. I love you, I love you so much!”
Outraged, he’d throw her against the wall. Her back would feel as if it had been cracked into two and her entire being throbbed but she insisted her, “I love you” and “Forgive me.”
“I don’t need your love!” he’d cry. “I don’t need you!”
Behind him would appear a daemon. The sight of it would surprise her so much she’d fall, and he would slap her once more before finally shoving her skull to ground. She’d scream and beg for mercy, mercy that would not be given for even when he left the daemon would remain and it would stand over her, and watch her, and drain her of life very slowly, only a small whimper escaping from her lips every few minutes. And then she’d be dead.
He wouldn’t know, her husband, not at first. Not until the stench of the rotting carcass became so putrid he couldn’t help but smell it, and when he’d found the source of the stench he’d snarl, “Even dead she makes a mess.”
With a violent swing of the executioner’s hand, the bottle of tequila was brought down on the table and shattered in a rain of glass. A piece hit her in the face, causing a line of blood to move down from her forehead. She only noticed when a drop hit her eyelashes and then wiped it with the back of her hand, not realizing when another line formed.
Both the house and her heart were shocked into silence. Natasha murmured: “What a mess.”
She chuckled at herself and knelt down, drawing circles in the spilt alcohol. “Absolutely loony!”
For two days, her former husband remained under the illusion she was in her bedroom when he came home. It was the one altruistic thing he had done for her; he slept on the couch which would rumble and groan underneath his weight and cry for mercy several times throughout the night.
He had once been a handsome man and kind as well, but life had taken him in its hand and asked itself: “What is the most amusing way to destroy a person?” And then it poked and scratched and pushed him around until he could take no more and became severely bitter. When morning came he’d remember these sessions of harassment and the ache of his back, and seeing his wife he’d have the urge to lunge at her. It was only on a few occasions that he actually did.
One day, he woke from his sleep, crankier than usual and decided that when she came down he’s slap her for being so ugly.
She never came of course.
The room was empty, he discovered when he’d gone up there. The bureau was clear of perfumes and lotions, the shelves were empty of books. The only things left was a wedding photo, which had once been hanging on the walls but was now lying abandoned on the floor.
He’d lived somewhere else then; he’d forgotten about that place.
Natasha’s former husband took the photo in his hands and sat on the empty bed. Empty. At one point in its life, it had been adorned with sheets and blankets and pillows. Now it sat longing for its jewelry and the person who had lovingly given it.
He had driven her away.
He cried very quietly; small tears that leaked down his face and splattered on the glass frame until neither face could be seen, and the entire event was blurred into oblivion.
In the kitchen, a few minutes later, he discovered the tequila, laying around in bits and pools; he touched his finger to it and stuck it into his mouth, soaking it up with his tongue, and then coughed. He tried his best to be angry, for rage to power through his veins but he could not. When he spoke on the phone to various coworkers and friends of Natasha he spoke in a calm, easy manner.
Poor guy, they thought to themselves, he must be in shock.
People rarely deserve the pity that they receive.
No one knew where she was, but eventually the police found her in a motel two and a half hours away. They spoke briefly on the phone in an awkward conversation. He said to her: “You could’ve left a note… or something.”
“I’m sorry.” He bit back his temper.
“I was worried,” he insisted tiredly.
“You never seemed that way.” Bitter fruit was being spit back and forth between the two. He swallowed.
“I just hope you’ll be alright.” There was a long pause before his former wife answered, “Thank you.” It was an automatic, default sort of response, but her voice seemed just the smallest bit saddened.
She didn’t say that she hoped he’d be alright as well. He was grateful for that.
Years later, when he was in his late sixties, he coughed and gasped into the night air and realized he was going to die. He hadn’t seen or heard of Natasha since the day their divorce was finalized; he didn’t even know if she was alive, but looked up anyway and said to the blurry images that he saw, “Do protect her.”
Then he was gone.
Initially, Natasha had had no plan of where to go or what she was doing, but drove down the highway aimlessly until she became very tired, and attracted by the motel’s bright lights, stopped there to rest.
The town that she’d stayed in had a name that started with the letter D and though there were more that followed, in a few years they would be forgotten and so those letters seem insignificant. Natasha would, however, one day recall saying it aloud to herself during a time when such things remained in her mind, and laughing for it was such an odd name. If only she remembered what it was.
She spent the next day playing mini golf at the course across the street and deciding what step to take next in her life-but mostly mini golf. At the end of the day, when she returned her club and said good-bye to the woman working on her shift at the time, she realized she was utterly blind to what her future held.
“What if there is no future?” she remarked, skipping across the street. “What if I die in my sleep tonight and no decision needs to be made?”
Sadly, she awoke the next morning.
She never quite decided if she wanted to return to teaching, but made a few calls around town anyway. Sometimes she was told directly there was no opening, others instructed her to wait a few days before someone else would call her. In the mean time she golfed.
With time the course’s inhabitants became familiar to her. There was Martha who manned the ticket booth in the morning and Larry who took over in the afternoon. Larry was always a little tired and careless, once giving Natasha three more dollars in change than he was supposed to. One of the courses, the golden gate bridge, always had a man standing next to it. He was a slightly over-weight man in his forties who seemed to be perpetually idle. The only way one would have gathered that he was an employee was from the blue, stained polo shirt he wore.
She never taught in a classroom again. Just as well, she did the only logical thing one could do in such a situation. She worked at the mini golf course.
The job required minimal effort, although occasionally she would be required to catch a runaway ball. She took advantage of her occupation and finished each course at least twice before becoming bored with them and resolved to stand with Ben by the umbrageous Golden Gate Bridge. Garrulous is not a word used to describe either one of them and from the few times they spoke she learned he had a daughter who was an engineer in San Francisco. He kept a picture of her in his wallet which he showed Natasha proudly. She told him that she was once a teacher and not much else.
To some, it may seem like Natasha lived a miserable existence, but she was content with her new life for she lived unjudged. Her lips which were previously a mirror of her unhappiness suddenly began to turn up in the corners. Her flaws however- the wrinkles that stood around her eyes and then snaked up onto her forehead, the spots that dappled themselves against her skin-deepened. She was in her late twenties but claimed to be seventy-nine and Martha at the ticket booth would say: “Shut up! You look ten years younger.”
She’d always been an ace at pretend. Eventually Natasha’s lies became so frequent that she herself began to believe them and no longer made it a business of hers to play with anti-aging remedies. They remained in a box until one of those rare moments came when she would glance at her reflection, and suddenly remembering a time when her hair had been like black silk and her skin bright, would cry, “My face! My pretty face! Oh what happened to my pretty face?” Then those old forgotten bottles laying around would suddenly see light as she smeared their contents across her features or swallowed them and was once again submerged into darkness. When she found no change in her reflection she’d cry to herself for such an extended period of time that she eventually forgot why she was crying.
“Why are you crying?” she asked the mirror, for a second maybe she saw the flicker of a white face and then… nothing. More vainly, she continued: “I look well for a woman in her seventies.”
So went the cycle; as time passed her periods of denial became longer and longer and her epiphanies shorter and shorter and less frequent, almost to the point where it appeared she was done having them.
Then in the spring of ’69 she moved out of the motel, which had kindly harbored her for many months, and relocated to a green house that was a five minutes’ walk away from her place of occupation. It was a one-bedroom and much smaller than the one she’d shared with her ex-husband, but she thought to herself on the first day, after lugging all her things inside, that she liked it a lot better.
Ben, Martha, and Larry came over to help her unpack and then all four of them ate coffee cake outside. It was quite dry, and no one cared to take more than a bit or two of their slices. Natasha found that in the end it all ended up in the garbage, and after cigarettes the party left, and she fell asleep with smoke in her nose.
She dreamed of the house she had escaped. Her former husband was absent, and the house seemed delightfully abstracted. There was no ceiling, only the silver sky which Natasha watched from the living room floor. It spread over her like a blanket; a cloud would occasionally pass and race out of her sight before another came. Each one had a shadow of white that would hide her inside like a beam sent from aliens, but then slowly, a body part would be revealed: her fingers, or a strand of hair. Sometimes amongst the whiteness only her eyes could be seen, creating a ghastly sight.
Then there was a crash. Natasha looked over to see that a glass cabinet had fallen and broken, and from the remnants emerged the stuffed bear that she had abandoned years ago:
Lucifer. Her teddy bear walked with a slow and weak step-understandable as he was made of cotton. His fur matched the color of the sky above-she thought he was beautiful.
“Lucifer!” she cried, excitement reaching out from her voice. “Oh Lucifer! Come so I can hold you in my arms once more”-she opened her arms-“Oh my bear, it’s been much too long; I’ve missed you so!”
Lucifer came into her arms and Natasha held his fuzzy body.
“We shall never again be separated my bear!”
“Natasha,” said a voice, accusingly.
Natasha exclaimed, “Oh Papa, isn’t this great? My teddy bear Lucifer and I have been reunited!”
Natasha’s father looked at her sternly. “Look again, Natasha. The eye is so easily deceived.”
She looked at her bear once more, and found that while his body remained, his head was replaced with one of a boy with wild and mad eyes; he reached for her neck and she screamed.
“Lucifer!”
Natasha sat up quickly in bed, breathing heavily into the darkness. All around her were boxes and in her sleepiness, one seemed to call her name.
She realized suddenly the box did not speak, and after a moment her eyes discovered in the back corner of her room, the silhouette of a person.
It called her name again.
“Natasha…Natasha…”
She let out a gasp and shrunk into the mattress, hoping it would swallow and hide her amongst its springs and foam. The figure came closer and as it did, no human features emerged; it remained a shadow cloaked in darkness with only a chilling voice.
She begged to it, “Please…”
The shadow chuckled, a low rumble.
“Guilt has aged you.”
Natasha did not speak.
“Who am I?”
She stuttered, “You’re…you’re…”
Lucifer…
“You’re the devil.
From the human shadow, a clawed hand struck out, ripping through the blanket, and her leg. She leered back and screamed as a chunk of her muscle was cut out and her veins popped like bubbles.
One… Two…Three…
By her wounded, sanguinary leg Natasha was dragged out of bed; the blanket and sheets came with her but fell to the ground as the daemon creature lifted her up and dangled her upside down.
“Who am I?” repeated the daemon.
Natasha cried and spit blood. “I don’t know.”
The mirror cracked and broke as she was flung into it; shards lodged itself in her cheek. For a moment, the pain that seared up her bones seemed to make up the darkness that shaded her eyes and she floated amongst its emptiness.
When she fell to the ground; it was not hurt that she felt, but a shock. In her ear the daemon hissed:
“Guilt has aged you. Guilt has killed you.”
The breath was cold; she closed her eyes and whimpered.
It asked again, “Who am I?”
When she didn’t answer, it grabbed her by the throat. She gasped and opened her eyes. For a second she saw a flicker of a face: two eyes, the color of silver coins.
Realization hit. She never had a teddy bear named Lucifer.
Before her eyes, Russia formed; the house she had spent the first eight years of life in.
“My God,” she began to whisper, but was so shocked her voice faltered. She touched her cheek and found that the wounds there and on the rest of her body remained, but the pain was gone.
Or perhaps she had become numb from the shock; she didn’t know.
From where she sat, she saw that in the past few years her mind had taken the house and morphed it ever so slightly: removing a detail here and there and changing some of the lot that remained. She supposed this was a normal sort of occurrence, but nevertheless she was stunned. The walls were still white, but there were cracks that climbed up and down them, and one of the doors was missing a knob. All her childhood furniture remained.
Expecting any minute for an avalanche to occur or for the daemon to return and finish what it had begun, she stood, and as soon as she did so she sat back down.
For from the door- the door with no knob- young Natasha came, paying no attention to her older self. Her face was grimy and her hair was greasy and unkempt, but she skipped with a child-like lightness. A boy of her same age if not a year or two older followed close behind; when he spoke, his Russian was accented. He gave Natasha the most vivid sensation of déjà vu. She could not recall having ever seen him before that moment, but she stared at him intently until, as if someone had come and bonked her on the head, she realized that his accent was a mix of English and German and his parents had died a few weeks earlier. He was also her cousin.
His face glowed as he watched the girl. Dramatically, she cried: “And this is the magic garden where the bunny lives!” She held her hands in O’s around her eyes, as if searching for the bunny. He joined her until they found it in the corner, picking it up with cupped hands and cooed at the pretty face and ears.
Natasha watched them like a movie she had already seen before, only to find that it was completely different from how it was remembered. The smallest detail seemed to pop out as if colored with highlighter: the gray, omniscient shadows of the day, the boy’s quick but frequent glances at his cousin; his nervous smiles. The younger Natasha was so submerged in the world she had created for herself that if her cousin had left at that moment it seemed she wouldn’t have noticed. He struggled for his part in the game, acting overly enthusiastic and asking questions if only to remind her of his presence. The girl Natasha would always blink, as if waking from a dream and answer him with a smile. Then he would not be able to help but smile as well, and finding this encouraging would ask more questions as she flitted across the room. She never seemed bothered by him; perhaps she even felt superior, as if it was she that solely tethered him to this world.
Watching them, Natasha became touched by their innocence and had an overwhelming sensation of nostalgia. She reached out, wondering if they’d be able to feel her even if they could not see her, but drew her hand back.
There was a loud bang as a man entered the room in a flurry. His coat flapped behind him, and the muffs of his hat were carelessly pulled behind his ears. He waved his gloved hands as he ran to one of the bedrooms. “Hurry! Put on your coats but hurry!”
Not two seconds later, as the children stood, he shouted, “They’re coming! Oh, God have mercy on the day, they’re coming!”
There was a change in the boy’s face that Natasha could see from the corner she was slumped in. A hardness had overcome his features and his silver eyes lost their childish light. Inside of him had settled a form of understanding that was much too aged, and yet there it was.
Natasha suddenly felt very hot and sick, and blood fell from her wounds once more; it pooled all around her and she wondered how it was no one could see it.
“I won’t leave without Mother!” the girl hollered.
“Your mother is dead, you fool!” cried her father. He stripped the bed of its mattress and began to collect the letters that laid underneath.
“Lucifer!”
The boy, Lucifer did not answer. He was distracted by a sudden noise that came from the room with the door with no knob. Inside, when he entered, he saw his younger cousin Natasha throw things at the glass cabinet that sat in the corner. He did not see what things they were, for she threw them so fast they were a blur, and the second they paused all interest in them was lost. He grabbed her hands and tears burst from her eyes.
“I won’t leave without her!” she pointed, and he saw on the top shelf was a photo of the late Mrs. Petrov.
“You fool, you couldn’t use the key to open it?” he barked.
“Oh I would’ve but the key is lost; it’s been lost for weeks!”
He told her to step back and she did. Then he took a heavy book and smashed the glass with it. The cabinet rocked back and forth a few times but they steadied it, and very gingerly he placed his foot on the first shelf. He was stabbed some place along the leg and winced, but continued up. When he was on the forth shelf, he reached upward and found the photo, and the moment it was in his hand, the cabinet rocked once more, and then tipped over onto its face.
Her father came in quite a temperament, and pushed the cabinet off Lucifer. He let out a pained groan. His body was extremely bloody. He looked like death.
“Oh, Papa, what do we do?” Natasha asked, holding Lucifer’s hand.
The answer did not come from his mouth but his expression. It was the first thing she’d understood that day.
He took her hand and she protested.
“You fool, you’ll die!” he said to her. “We’ll both die if we stay here!”
She sobbed as he led her away.
“Oh Lucifer, forgive me! Forgive me!”
Before she left, she saw the photo of her mother lying beside Lucifer’s bloodied head. It was in a very ugly frame with a silver bear in the corner.
She did not reach for it.
The middle finger of Natasha’s right hand was lying somewhere unknown; unknown because it was not attached to her hand where she usually saw it. Instead, there was a small stump where a bone poked through, and it was so pink from her blood it made her sick; and then she did it and got sick all over the floor.
Lucifer laughed. He no longer hid himself in the shadows, and she could faintly see him resting against the bureau. He’d grown. Wherever he’d gone, he’d grown older into a cadaverous, young man.
Natasha murmured, “I’m…sorry,” and then got sick again.
To himself, Lucifer reiterated Natasha’s words, and then stood with a dramatic swish of his arm.
“Sorry!” He bent over her. His eyes had no pupils.
“Kill me,” she begged. “Oh, I can’t stand the pain.”
“Kill you,” he said, as if taken-aback. “Death was the greatest gift bestowed on humanity. I want you to live.”
There was something in the back of her head that began to move and slither through her. A parasite of some sort. Natasha’s vision thrummed and pulsed and her chest closed; then she saw the face of such parasite, with two wild eyes and a hungry mouth.
She cried when it attacked her and Lucifer laughed.
In the following years, Natasha’s memory would abandon her, like the crumbs of a cookie, until she was completely dependent on the faculty of the nursing home she presided in, somewhere in Upstate New York.
It began on the day she met Lucifer. The following morning Martha arrived found her nearly dead, though unbeknownst to her that was the farthest she would move down the spectrum.
The event went on to be broadcasted across the nation. Who attacked the poor, ugly woman? No one knew. Natasha, on her healthiest days would say a sentence or two and then no more.
Ben, Martha, and Larry visited her frequently until there came a day when all three were dead. The first had been Martha who had a stroke, then Ben had driven while intoxicated, and lastly Larry was shot by a white supremacist. Each time a nurse had come up to Natasha’s room and held her hands as the news was repeated. Natasha showed a minimal amount of emotion. Maybe a twitch and then a tear, but by the next day the departed was forgotten. The only person she ever remembered was Lucifer.
“Lucifer, oh Lucifer,” she would say.
Who is Lucifer, they would always wonder.
Maybe she’s a Satanist.
There was nervous laughter then, until someone thought of her eyes which were cold and empty.
The years passed slowly and uncomfortably. She turned one hundred and two, so old and wrinkled her face appeared to sag as if at any given moment it would melt and fall. The old woman was always disoriented. She lost control of her hands and legs completely until they were unable to do the slightest bit of exercise. It seemed to frustrate her, and she would cry out and scream frequently.
Yet she lived. No one could understand how it was an old woman, so demented, lived with such a vital heart. Why did she never catch the flu or pneumonia? How did her memory and strength manage to abandon her, but not her breath?
There were frequent apparitions from Lucifer, who would watch hungrily as the old woman struggled. Occasionally, she would notice him and beg for mercy with her hands. He never answered. Until one day he did.
“My dear,” he said. “What is your name?”
“Lucifer.”
Lucifer laughed coolly. “Natasha,” he answered.
She said nothing.
“Repeat after me: Natasha.”
She let out a string of sounds that, if the imagination was stretched, could’ve been taken as such.
“I was Lucas until your father made me Lucifer,” he confided in her.
She let out another tumble of confused gurgles.
He decrypted her words with a smug smile: “How is your father? Well, I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.”
More pained gasps came from her mouth.
“Kill you?”
She nodded.
For a second, a look of uncertainty crossed his face, though Natasha never noticed. When he spoke he said: “I suppose I could. I need my anodyne. Will you speak for me?”
She murmured that she was tired in a weak voice.
“Good. Good girl.”
He patted her head. “I’m bored. Entertain me. I have an idea-die.” He laughed. “Doesn’t that seem like fun?”
What more could Natasha do but nod her head desperately? So that is what she did.
“I think we’ll have fun. Do as I say. We will have fun.”
The strangeness never quite wore off. Seeing Russia as it had been during her child days through Lucifer’s eyes. And then she looked into her own eyes, and they were Lucifer’s.
Her father entered, yelling at them to put on their coats, and Natasha attacked the cabinet in an attempt to rescue her mother, and through Natasha’s eyes Lucifer gleaned as he watched her frightened expression on his own face.
Before they left Natasha leaned over and whispered in Lucifer’s ears, “You’d not resent me at all if you knew of the happiness your misery brings me.”
Then they left. Natasha laid inside of Lucifer’s body, underneath the glass cabinet, wheezing and gasping. She would take the pain though. It had been many years since she’d felt pain; she almost preferred it.
There was a low rumble, and then a halt before the sound of boots reiterated through the house. There was a little eight year-old girl, lying underneath the glass cabinet. Then there was Natasha, amongst the hatted heads. The sound of voices hummed in her ears. They all wondered what to do with her.
“Kill her. Kill her. Show no mercy,” a voice urged.
“She’s me,” Natasha said. “I’ll kill myself.”
“Yes, but rather than live as you did before, isn’t it better to not live at all?”
Natasha looked up and saw Lucifer standing in the corner of the room. He mouthed: do it. Die.
Natasha looked down at the gun in the police man’s hand. She looked up at Lucifer. “This isn’t real,” she said. “You are not my God.”
Then she shot at him, though her attempt was futile.
The doctor she visited-a man that went by the name of Richardson- was as puzzled as Natasha. He stood next to her and checked her scalp, then squinted at her face as if searching for an answer there.
“Are you under a lot of stress?” he inquired.
She answered, “Maybe a little, but not so much that I should be going bald!”
“It might be genetics.” He said this trying to conceal his thoughts which was that it was a hopeless case and no matter what steps were taken there would be no improvement. “Do you know of any relatives that began to gray or have hair loss at an early age?”
She didn’t. The last time she’d ever seen anyone of her same blood was when she was ten years old at her Uncle’s house in Belarus. Two years before that final night, she and her father slept there; he went to bed with a bad cough and in the morning didn’t make a sound. There was nowhere to bury him except in the woods behind the house, and in the years Natasha lived with her uncle, she’d often perched herself up on the bureau and sat high on her knees so she saw where her father was laid.
The last time she did this, she fell and cut herself; blood stained the blue rug and she attempted to mop it up with her dress, but it was no good. She swore at her uncle in Russian. “He’s such a vain and greedy man! When he sees this he’ll hit me with his broom and say to himself, ‘My rug! My precious rug! You bitch of a niece, you ruined my rug!’”
He never said any of that. While in the orphanage she would remember how he had been spread on the cot; his face was blank and there seemed to be a feeling of relief in the way his arms lazed above his head, as if he was stretching and any moment a sigh would escape from his parted lips. Natasha wondered if he had known about the rug. It had been the only nice thing in the house and she’d ruined it with her own blood. Would he have looked so at peace if he’d known?
Richardson prescribed her pills.
“I pray these help,” he said.
Natasha would pray too.
“You’re from the Soviet, right?” he asked in a conversational, perhaps superior tone.
“Yes.”
“You miss it?”
“I don’t remember much of it. I didn’t go to school and left the house only a handful of times, including when my father and I were leaving. We left so quickly I didn’t even have time to take my stuffed bear, Lucifer.”
Richardson looked at her with an alarmed expression. “You had a stuffed bear named Lucifer?” Natasha nodded.
The pills she was prescribed were taken daily and religiously, never a minute too late or early, but her condition only seemed to worsen despite her efforts, and it wasn’t long before a crow angrily clawed the corners of both eyes, which had lost any sort of glimmer, and her lips, dry and cracked, fell into a permanent frown of deep sadness.
As her doctor had suspected, Natasha was stressed. She had not been before the terrible process had begun but once it had she was so very stressed, and then her stress made her stress more. She grew erratic but languorous. To make matters worse her friends, her dear friends, seemed to give her nothing but judgment disguised as a helpful suggestion. It oozed from their eyes and voices, splattered all over her. She at first tried to ignore it, but then it was everywhere.
Her husband was having an affair; he had been for nearly two years, but now promulgated it, speaking to the girl animatedly on the phone right in front of Natasha’s eyes. Her life was like a wine bottle rolling down a hill; it kept moving despite the many cracks and dents appearing in its surface, and would continue to do so until it reached the bottom of the hill and moved no more.
Or would it explode?
She could not say. All she could think about was the loneliness tugging at her heart. “Will you leave me all alone like this?” her heart asked one day.
Natasha answered to it, “I’m so terribly sorry but we have no one but each other now. Not one of my colleagues or friends likes me anymore. My husband is out with his girlfriend. My work is suffering; I suspect I’ll be fired within a year if I do not recover.”
“Mind over matter,” her heart reminded her.
“Yes, I’m sure this is true, but I feel I’m losing my mind! How long can a person go with only herself? If only my husband-no I shall not call him that any longer.”
Her heart agreed enthusiastically.
“If only someone loved me. If even one person was still able to enjoy my presence I think I wouldn’t mind getting so old and ugly.”
“Why, you’re not ugly at all!”
Natasha smiled. “Thank you, you are very kind.”
In the following days, Natasha was prompted quite a bit to leave. She resisted at first but began to wonder if perhaps the age-old saying was wrong and she could run away from her problems.
For the last five years, Natasha had worked as a high school Chemistry teacher; and then one day she quit. It was a spontaneous decision made by an illogical and tired mind. After it had been done she drove home, and halfway through the door she began to laugh. It was a violent fit of laughter that picked her up and rode her on its back, and so overcome by it she collapsed to the floor.
“Oh what a loony I am, what a loony!” And then louder she called, “Oh my dearest husband where are you?”
There was no answer and she laughed once more. “I see, you’re out with your girlfriend again you useless bastard!”
Her face fell suddenly, and her chuckles dissolved to tears. She placed one hand over her sleep-deprived eyes.
“I hate myself,” she called, as if speaking to him. “Do you hear me? You’ve made me hate myself!”
Her heart, which had been her only companion for the last few days, exulted suddenly. It urged her to go forward. She did; she got up with much difficulty and walked to the kitchen and opened the fridge.
It was there. Next to the ketchup stood a large bottle of tequila. At that very moment he was at work, but as soon as his shift was over he’d go straight to her- wherever she was. They would party, and drink, and kiss, until he had drank so much she wouldn’t kiss him anymore. They would fight then; it would end with her demanding him to take her home, but because he’d be so tight and useless she would take him home instead. They’d kiss right before he went inside and the fight would be over, and with this relief he’d celebrate with yet another drink; but the tequila would be gone.
My wife that damned bitch, he’d think to himself and would then holler her name until she came down, her whole body quivering with fear and her eyes round like a deer.
“You drank all the tequila!” her husband would cry, slapping her. “That was my tequila!”
With a few harsh words and the violent swing of his arms, he’d annihilate her; she’d grow smaller underneath him until she was nearly a child. At his feet she’d sob.
“Forgive me, please. I love you, I love you so much!”
Outraged, he’d throw her against the wall. Her back would feel as if it had been cracked into two and her entire being throbbed but she insisted her, “I love you” and “Forgive me.”
“I don’t need your love!” he’d cry. “I don’t need you!”
Behind him would appear a daemon. The sight of it would surprise her so much she’d fall, and he would slap her once more before finally shoving her skull to ground. She’d scream and beg for mercy, mercy that would not be given for even when he left the daemon would remain and it would stand over her, and watch her, and drain her of life very slowly, only a small whimper escaping from her lips every few minutes. And then she’d be dead.
He wouldn’t know, her husband, not at first. Not until the stench of the rotting carcass became so putrid he couldn’t help but smell it, and when he’d found the source of the stench he’d snarl, “Even dead she makes a mess.”
With a violent swing of the executioner’s hand, the bottle of tequila was brought down on the table and shattered in a rain of glass. A piece hit her in the face, causing a line of blood to move down from her forehead. She only noticed when a drop hit her eyelashes and then wiped it with the back of her hand, not realizing when another line formed.
Both the house and her heart were shocked into silence. Natasha murmured: “What a mess.”
She chuckled at herself and knelt down, drawing circles in the spilt alcohol. “Absolutely loony!”
For two days, her former husband remained under the illusion she was in her bedroom when he came home. It was the one altruistic thing he had done for her; he slept on the couch which would rumble and groan underneath his weight and cry for mercy several times throughout the night.
He had once been a handsome man and kind as well, but life had taken him in its hand and asked itself: “What is the most amusing way to destroy a person?” And then it poked and scratched and pushed him around until he could take no more and became severely bitter. When morning came he’d remember these sessions of harassment and the ache of his back, and seeing his wife he’d have the urge to lunge at her. It was only on a few occasions that he actually did.
One day, he woke from his sleep, crankier than usual and decided that when she came down he’s slap her for being so ugly.
She never came of course.
The room was empty, he discovered when he’d gone up there. The bureau was clear of perfumes and lotions, the shelves were empty of books. The only things left was a wedding photo, which had once been hanging on the walls but was now lying abandoned on the floor.
He’d lived somewhere else then; he’d forgotten about that place.
Natasha’s former husband took the photo in his hands and sat on the empty bed. Empty. At one point in its life, it had been adorned with sheets and blankets and pillows. Now it sat longing for its jewelry and the person who had lovingly given it.
He had driven her away.
He cried very quietly; small tears that leaked down his face and splattered on the glass frame until neither face could be seen, and the entire event was blurred into oblivion.
In the kitchen, a few minutes later, he discovered the tequila, laying around in bits and pools; he touched his finger to it and stuck it into his mouth, soaking it up with his tongue, and then coughed. He tried his best to be angry, for rage to power through his veins but he could not. When he spoke on the phone to various coworkers and friends of Natasha he spoke in a calm, easy manner.
Poor guy, they thought to themselves, he must be in shock.
People rarely deserve the pity that they receive.
No one knew where she was, but eventually the police found her in a motel two and a half hours away. They spoke briefly on the phone in an awkward conversation. He said to her: “You could’ve left a note… or something.”
“I’m sorry.” He bit back his temper.
“I was worried,” he insisted tiredly.
“You never seemed that way.” Bitter fruit was being spit back and forth between the two. He swallowed.
“I just hope you’ll be alright.” There was a long pause before his former wife answered, “Thank you.” It was an automatic, default sort of response, but her voice seemed just the smallest bit saddened.
She didn’t say that she hoped he’d be alright as well. He was grateful for that.
Years later, when he was in his late sixties, he coughed and gasped into the night air and realized he was going to die. He hadn’t seen or heard of Natasha since the day their divorce was finalized; he didn’t even know if she was alive, but looked up anyway and said to the blurry images that he saw, “Do protect her.”
Then he was gone.
Initially, Natasha had had no plan of where to go or what she was doing, but drove down the highway aimlessly until she became very tired, and attracted by the motel’s bright lights, stopped there to rest.
The town that she’d stayed in had a name that started with the letter D and though there were more that followed, in a few years they would be forgotten and so those letters seem insignificant. Natasha would, however, one day recall saying it aloud to herself during a time when such things remained in her mind, and laughing for it was such an odd name. If only she remembered what it was.
She spent the next day playing mini golf at the course across the street and deciding what step to take next in her life-but mostly mini golf. At the end of the day, when she returned her club and said good-bye to the woman working on her shift at the time, she realized she was utterly blind to what her future held.
“What if there is no future?” she remarked, skipping across the street. “What if I die in my sleep tonight and no decision needs to be made?”
Sadly, she awoke the next morning.
She never quite decided if she wanted to return to teaching, but made a few calls around town anyway. Sometimes she was told directly there was no opening, others instructed her to wait a few days before someone else would call her. In the mean time she golfed.
With time the course’s inhabitants became familiar to her. There was Martha who manned the ticket booth in the morning and Larry who took over in the afternoon. Larry was always a little tired and careless, once giving Natasha three more dollars in change than he was supposed to. One of the courses, the golden gate bridge, always had a man standing next to it. He was a slightly over-weight man in his forties who seemed to be perpetually idle. The only way one would have gathered that he was an employee was from the blue, stained polo shirt he wore.
She never taught in a classroom again. Just as well, she did the only logical thing one could do in such a situation. She worked at the mini golf course.
The job required minimal effort, although occasionally she would be required to catch a runaway ball. She took advantage of her occupation and finished each course at least twice before becoming bored with them and resolved to stand with Ben by the umbrageous Golden Gate Bridge. Garrulous is not a word used to describe either one of them and from the few times they spoke she learned he had a daughter who was an engineer in San Francisco. He kept a picture of her in his wallet which he showed Natasha proudly. She told him that she was once a teacher and not much else.
To some, it may seem like Natasha lived a miserable existence, but she was content with her new life for she lived unjudged. Her lips which were previously a mirror of her unhappiness suddenly began to turn up in the corners. Her flaws however- the wrinkles that stood around her eyes and then snaked up onto her forehead, the spots that dappled themselves against her skin-deepened. She was in her late twenties but claimed to be seventy-nine and Martha at the ticket booth would say: “Shut up! You look ten years younger.”
She’d always been an ace at pretend. Eventually Natasha’s lies became so frequent that she herself began to believe them and no longer made it a business of hers to play with anti-aging remedies. They remained in a box until one of those rare moments came when she would glance at her reflection, and suddenly remembering a time when her hair had been like black silk and her skin bright, would cry, “My face! My pretty face! Oh what happened to my pretty face?” Then those old forgotten bottles laying around would suddenly see light as she smeared their contents across her features or swallowed them and was once again submerged into darkness. When she found no change in her reflection she’d cry to herself for such an extended period of time that she eventually forgot why she was crying.
“Why are you crying?” she asked the mirror, for a second maybe she saw the flicker of a white face and then… nothing. More vainly, she continued: “I look well for a woman in her seventies.”
So went the cycle; as time passed her periods of denial became longer and longer and her epiphanies shorter and shorter and less frequent, almost to the point where it appeared she was done having them.
Then in the spring of ’69 she moved out of the motel, which had kindly harbored her for many months, and relocated to a green house that was a five minutes’ walk away from her place of occupation. It was a one-bedroom and much smaller than the one she’d shared with her ex-husband, but she thought to herself on the first day, after lugging all her things inside, that she liked it a lot better.
Ben, Martha, and Larry came over to help her unpack and then all four of them ate coffee cake outside. It was quite dry, and no one cared to take more than a bit or two of their slices. Natasha found that in the end it all ended up in the garbage, and after cigarettes the party left, and she fell asleep with smoke in her nose.
She dreamed of the house she had escaped. Her former husband was absent, and the house seemed delightfully abstracted. There was no ceiling, only the silver sky which Natasha watched from the living room floor. It spread over her like a blanket; a cloud would occasionally pass and race out of her sight before another came. Each one had a shadow of white that would hide her inside like a beam sent from aliens, but then slowly, a body part would be revealed: her fingers, or a strand of hair. Sometimes amongst the whiteness only her eyes could be seen, creating a ghastly sight.
Then there was a crash. Natasha looked over to see that a glass cabinet had fallen and broken, and from the remnants emerged the stuffed bear that she had abandoned years ago:
Lucifer. Her teddy bear walked with a slow and weak step-understandable as he was made of cotton. His fur matched the color of the sky above-she thought he was beautiful.
“Lucifer!” she cried, excitement reaching out from her voice. “Oh Lucifer! Come so I can hold you in my arms once more”-she opened her arms-“Oh my bear, it’s been much too long; I’ve missed you so!”
Lucifer came into her arms and Natasha held his fuzzy body.
“We shall never again be separated my bear!”
“Natasha,” said a voice, accusingly.
Natasha exclaimed, “Oh Papa, isn’t this great? My teddy bear Lucifer and I have been reunited!”
Natasha’s father looked at her sternly. “Look again, Natasha. The eye is so easily deceived.”
She looked at her bear once more, and found that while his body remained, his head was replaced with one of a boy with wild and mad eyes; he reached for her neck and she screamed.
“Lucifer!”
Natasha sat up quickly in bed, breathing heavily into the darkness. All around her were boxes and in her sleepiness, one seemed to call her name.
She realized suddenly the box did not speak, and after a moment her eyes discovered in the back corner of her room, the silhouette of a person.
It called her name again.
“Natasha…Natasha…”
She let out a gasp and shrunk into the mattress, hoping it would swallow and hide her amongst its springs and foam. The figure came closer and as it did, no human features emerged; it remained a shadow cloaked in darkness with only a chilling voice.
She begged to it, “Please…”
The shadow chuckled, a low rumble.
“Guilt has aged you.”
Natasha did not speak.
“Who am I?”
She stuttered, “You’re…you’re…”
Lucifer…
“You’re the devil.
From the human shadow, a clawed hand struck out, ripping through the blanket, and her leg. She leered back and screamed as a chunk of her muscle was cut out and her veins popped like bubbles.
One… Two…Three…
By her wounded, sanguinary leg Natasha was dragged out of bed; the blanket and sheets came with her but fell to the ground as the daemon creature lifted her up and dangled her upside down.
“Who am I?” repeated the daemon.
Natasha cried and spit blood. “I don’t know.”
The mirror cracked and broke as she was flung into it; shards lodged itself in her cheek. For a moment, the pain that seared up her bones seemed to make up the darkness that shaded her eyes and she floated amongst its emptiness.
When she fell to the ground; it was not hurt that she felt, but a shock. In her ear the daemon hissed:
“Guilt has aged you. Guilt has killed you.”
The breath was cold; she closed her eyes and whimpered.
It asked again, “Who am I?”
When she didn’t answer, it grabbed her by the throat. She gasped and opened her eyes. For a second she saw a flicker of a face: two eyes, the color of silver coins.
Realization hit. She never had a teddy bear named Lucifer.
Before her eyes, Russia formed; the house she had spent the first eight years of life in.
“My God,” she began to whisper, but was so shocked her voice faltered. She touched her cheek and found that the wounds there and on the rest of her body remained, but the pain was gone.
Or perhaps she had become numb from the shock; she didn’t know.
From where she sat, she saw that in the past few years her mind had taken the house and morphed it ever so slightly: removing a detail here and there and changing some of the lot that remained. She supposed this was a normal sort of occurrence, but nevertheless she was stunned. The walls were still white, but there were cracks that climbed up and down them, and one of the doors was missing a knob. All her childhood furniture remained.
Expecting any minute for an avalanche to occur or for the daemon to return and finish what it had begun, she stood, and as soon as she did so she sat back down.
For from the door- the door with no knob- young Natasha came, paying no attention to her older self. Her face was grimy and her hair was greasy and unkempt, but she skipped with a child-like lightness. A boy of her same age if not a year or two older followed close behind; when he spoke, his Russian was accented. He gave Natasha the most vivid sensation of déjà vu. She could not recall having ever seen him before that moment, but she stared at him intently until, as if someone had come and bonked her on the head, she realized that his accent was a mix of English and German and his parents had died a few weeks earlier. He was also her cousin.
His face glowed as he watched the girl. Dramatically, she cried: “And this is the magic garden where the bunny lives!” She held her hands in O’s around her eyes, as if searching for the bunny. He joined her until they found it in the corner, picking it up with cupped hands and cooed at the pretty face and ears.
Natasha watched them like a movie she had already seen before, only to find that it was completely different from how it was remembered. The smallest detail seemed to pop out as if colored with highlighter: the gray, omniscient shadows of the day, the boy’s quick but frequent glances at his cousin; his nervous smiles. The younger Natasha was so submerged in the world she had created for herself that if her cousin had left at that moment it seemed she wouldn’t have noticed. He struggled for his part in the game, acting overly enthusiastic and asking questions if only to remind her of his presence. The girl Natasha would always blink, as if waking from a dream and answer him with a smile. Then he would not be able to help but smile as well, and finding this encouraging would ask more questions as she flitted across the room. She never seemed bothered by him; perhaps she even felt superior, as if it was she that solely tethered him to this world.
Watching them, Natasha became touched by their innocence and had an overwhelming sensation of nostalgia. She reached out, wondering if they’d be able to feel her even if they could not see her, but drew her hand back.
There was a loud bang as a man entered the room in a flurry. His coat flapped behind him, and the muffs of his hat were carelessly pulled behind his ears. He waved his gloved hands as he ran to one of the bedrooms. “Hurry! Put on your coats but hurry!”
Not two seconds later, as the children stood, he shouted, “They’re coming! Oh, God have mercy on the day, they’re coming!”
There was a change in the boy’s face that Natasha could see from the corner she was slumped in. A hardness had overcome his features and his silver eyes lost their childish light. Inside of him had settled a form of understanding that was much too aged, and yet there it was.
Natasha suddenly felt very hot and sick, and blood fell from her wounds once more; it pooled all around her and she wondered how it was no one could see it.
“I won’t leave without Mother!” the girl hollered.
“Your mother is dead, you fool!” cried her father. He stripped the bed of its mattress and began to collect the letters that laid underneath.
“Lucifer!”
The boy, Lucifer did not answer. He was distracted by a sudden noise that came from the room with the door with no knob. Inside, when he entered, he saw his younger cousin Natasha throw things at the glass cabinet that sat in the corner. He did not see what things they were, for she threw them so fast they were a blur, and the second they paused all interest in them was lost. He grabbed her hands and tears burst from her eyes.
“I won’t leave without her!” she pointed, and he saw on the top shelf was a photo of the late Mrs. Petrov.
“You fool, you couldn’t use the key to open it?” he barked.
“Oh I would’ve but the key is lost; it’s been lost for weeks!”
He told her to step back and she did. Then he took a heavy book and smashed the glass with it. The cabinet rocked back and forth a few times but they steadied it, and very gingerly he placed his foot on the first shelf. He was stabbed some place along the leg and winced, but continued up. When he was on the forth shelf, he reached upward and found the photo, and the moment it was in his hand, the cabinet rocked once more, and then tipped over onto its face.
Her father came in quite a temperament, and pushed the cabinet off Lucifer. He let out a pained groan. His body was extremely bloody. He looked like death.
“Oh, Papa, what do we do?” Natasha asked, holding Lucifer’s hand.
The answer did not come from his mouth but his expression. It was the first thing she’d understood that day.
He took her hand and she protested.
“You fool, you’ll die!” he said to her. “We’ll both die if we stay here!”
She sobbed as he led her away.
“Oh Lucifer, forgive me! Forgive me!”
Before she left, she saw the photo of her mother lying beside Lucifer’s bloodied head. It was in a very ugly frame with a silver bear in the corner.
She did not reach for it.
The middle finger of Natasha’s right hand was lying somewhere unknown; unknown because it was not attached to her hand where she usually saw it. Instead, there was a small stump where a bone poked through, and it was so pink from her blood it made her sick; and then she did it and got sick all over the floor.
Lucifer laughed. He no longer hid himself in the shadows, and she could faintly see him resting against the bureau. He’d grown. Wherever he’d gone, he’d grown older into a cadaverous, young man.
Natasha murmured, “I’m…sorry,” and then got sick again.
To himself, Lucifer reiterated Natasha’s words, and then stood with a dramatic swish of his arm.
“Sorry!” He bent over her. His eyes had no pupils.
“Kill me,” she begged. “Oh, I can’t stand the pain.”
“Kill you,” he said, as if taken-aback. “Death was the greatest gift bestowed on humanity. I want you to live.”
There was something in the back of her head that began to move and slither through her. A parasite of some sort. Natasha’s vision thrummed and pulsed and her chest closed; then she saw the face of such parasite, with two wild eyes and a hungry mouth.
She cried when it attacked her and Lucifer laughed.
In the following years, Natasha’s memory would abandon her, like the crumbs of a cookie, until she was completely dependent on the faculty of the nursing home she presided in, somewhere in Upstate New York.
It began on the day she met Lucifer. The following morning Martha arrived found her nearly dead, though unbeknownst to her that was the farthest she would move down the spectrum.
The event went on to be broadcasted across the nation. Who attacked the poor, ugly woman? No one knew. Natasha, on her healthiest days would say a sentence or two and then no more.
Ben, Martha, and Larry visited her frequently until there came a day when all three were dead. The first had been Martha who had a stroke, then Ben had driven while intoxicated, and lastly Larry was shot by a white supremacist. Each time a nurse had come up to Natasha’s room and held her hands as the news was repeated. Natasha showed a minimal amount of emotion. Maybe a twitch and then a tear, but by the next day the departed was forgotten. The only person she ever remembered was Lucifer.
“Lucifer, oh Lucifer,” she would say.
Who is Lucifer, they would always wonder.
Maybe she’s a Satanist.
There was nervous laughter then, until someone thought of her eyes which were cold and empty.
The years passed slowly and uncomfortably. She turned one hundred and two, so old and wrinkled her face appeared to sag as if at any given moment it would melt and fall. The old woman was always disoriented. She lost control of her hands and legs completely until they were unable to do the slightest bit of exercise. It seemed to frustrate her, and she would cry out and scream frequently.
Yet she lived. No one could understand how it was an old woman, so demented, lived with such a vital heart. Why did she never catch the flu or pneumonia? How did her memory and strength manage to abandon her, but not her breath?
There were frequent apparitions from Lucifer, who would watch hungrily as the old woman struggled. Occasionally, she would notice him and beg for mercy with her hands. He never answered. Until one day he did.
“My dear,” he said. “What is your name?”
“Lucifer.”
Lucifer laughed coolly. “Natasha,” he answered.
She said nothing.
“Repeat after me: Natasha.”
She let out a string of sounds that, if the imagination was stretched, could’ve been taken as such.
“I was Lucas until your father made me Lucifer,” he confided in her.
She let out another tumble of confused gurgles.
He decrypted her words with a smug smile: “How is your father? Well, I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.”
More pained gasps came from her mouth.
“Kill you?”
She nodded.
For a second, a look of uncertainty crossed his face, though Natasha never noticed. When he spoke he said: “I suppose I could. I need my anodyne. Will you speak for me?”
She murmured that she was tired in a weak voice.
“Good. Good girl.”
He patted her head. “I’m bored. Entertain me. I have an idea-die.” He laughed. “Doesn’t that seem like fun?”
What more could Natasha do but nod her head desperately? So that is what she did.
“I think we’ll have fun. Do as I say. We will have fun.”
The strangeness never quite wore off. Seeing Russia as it had been during her child days through Lucifer’s eyes. And then she looked into her own eyes, and they were Lucifer’s.
Her father entered, yelling at them to put on their coats, and Natasha attacked the cabinet in an attempt to rescue her mother, and through Natasha’s eyes Lucifer gleaned as he watched her frightened expression on his own face.
Before they left Natasha leaned over and whispered in Lucifer’s ears, “You’d not resent me at all if you knew of the happiness your misery brings me.”
Then they left. Natasha laid inside of Lucifer’s body, underneath the glass cabinet, wheezing and gasping. She would take the pain though. It had been many years since she’d felt pain; she almost preferred it.
There was a low rumble, and then a halt before the sound of boots reiterated through the house. There was a little eight year-old girl, lying underneath the glass cabinet. Then there was Natasha, amongst the hatted heads. The sound of voices hummed in her ears. They all wondered what to do with her.
“Kill her. Kill her. Show no mercy,” a voice urged.
“She’s me,” Natasha said. “I’ll kill myself.”
“Yes, but rather than live as you did before, isn’t it better to not live at all?”
Natasha looked up and saw Lucifer standing in the corner of the room. He mouthed: do it. Die.
Natasha looked down at the gun in the police man’s hand. She looked up at Lucifer. “This isn’t real,” she said. “You are not my God.”
Then she shot at him, though her attempt was futile.