The only window is in front of me, across the room, and covers the whole storefront wall. It’s dressed in loose black cheesecloth drapes, letting in very little light at the moment. I think of dark, rainy days, and starlit nights when the moon is high and the curtains open. Those windows would bring the outside in. I long to experience that.
The ceiling is roughly cut, weathered-gray cedar with thick rafters that hang over a dark, rich, cherry-wood flooring that reminds me of blood-soaked skin. Studio lighting—long armed pole lamps—filtered by ash colored lenses, scatter the room.
All the amenities are visible from the door I stand frozen in: a bedroom, kitchen, dining room, and bath. A bed covered with a red comforter is sitting atop a wrought iron platform, accessible by ladder, to my immediate left. The two walls it’s cozied up to are black slate. The barn-wood cedar ceiling in that corner of the room is specked with bright red, giving the impression it was once painted. The bathroom is built underneath. Through the open door I take in a lot of black and silver, and a bright red shower curtain. The contrast is cold, morose, and dark. It nurtures my nature.
To my right, another open wrought iron platform is snuggled up to two mirrored walls, and workout equipment is scattered around up there. An open L-shaped kitchen is built along the two walls underneath. It’s all cherry wood and black marble with stainless steel appliances, and looks like an open wound pouring into the living area.
The rest of the apartment is T-shaped, and mostly living room: carpeted floors, L-shaped couch facing a huge entertainment center on one side of the window, with its back to a home office, dotted with red equipment—desk-phone, laptop, and file, pen, and paperclip holders—is along the opposite wall. The couch has red throws and red pillows. I feel like I’m in a cave spattered with blood. My body trembles with delight, while my mind marvels at how he can afford all this on a breakfast diner’s profits. I wonder who he really is inside after seeing the darkness he surrounds himself in outside. I have never felt fear. The darkside feeds me. I am indestructible, a demon’s blunder, as unique as a human’s night fright. But I feel something I’ve not experienced before, and it’s deliciously uncomfortable.
“You coming in or are we eating in the doorway?” He’s wearing a cocky grin and has a plate full of food in each hand hovering over a small, black table with four red chairs outside the kitchen area.
Damn it, I want to bite the quivering lip he’s trying to hold in place. I slam the door shut with my foot and, with two cups of coffee in my hands, try to muster a sexy saunter over to the table.
He puts the food on tidy hemp placemats and heads into the kitchen. For the umpteenth time, I want to know just who this man is that he can captivate me so.
I set the coffee down on the molded, liver-shaped table and slide into a deep red chair that looks like it dripped off the black slab it’s resting under. The seat gives me a good view of Gaire’s ass as he digs eating utensils out of an open kitchen drawer; it also affords me an easy view of the red satin bed.
With a clink of silverware that yanks me right out of my daydream, Gaire sets down a fork and knife by my plate. He acts like he didn’t notice my complete and utter fascination with his bedroom, but his twitching cheek gives him away.
I’m used to being in control—total control—and this silly mortal behavior I’m experiencing is just not working for me. I shake off all the new feelings, whatever the hell they are, grab my fork, and dig in. Not like I enjoy eating. In fact, I abhor it. The functional side of preserving the human body is annoying, not to mention the aftereffects said nourishment has on the body. As I watch Gaire eat mouthfuls of bacon, his eyes sparkle with red dots I hadn’t noticed in the diner. I blink, and they’re back to the shamrock green they were before. There’s a fine sheen of sweat beading on his forehead. He’s avoiding eye contact, almost as though he’s ashamed, like a mutt peeing on the grass.
We both slip into silence as we eat.
How totally disgusting humanity is. Eating, defecating, showering, medical servicing, teeth brushing, hair combing, painting faces and nails, and dressing the rest of the body in an array of ever changing clothing, and for what? To die after maintaining a mere world average lifespan of 67.2 years? I munch a piece of bacon and think it’s no wonder he’s ashamed to look at me as he eats.
However, if I weigh the human race with mine, his life seems a better alternative. Doppelgangers do not eat, drink, sweat, defecate, breathe, get sick, or procreate. To have a child is to mentor a demon-conjured rejection, a mistake. That is the true nature of a doppelganger, and there is no love involved, no feelings at all. The thing I call Mother would simply walk away on some dead human’s legs should the elders deem me a threat and consume my entity. And they will if I bring notice to an otherworld existence.
While I can do without the daily functionalities of the human body, love, hate, passion, arousal, and the camaraderie of humanity draw me like a drug, and certainly are very addictive.
Gaire