Page 31 of Devil Inside

How can I move? Free myself?

There it is. The itch. The fire ants creep up on us from within. There’s no escaping this sensation in our skin, no matter whose body we are in. The burning returns and I am trapped in this hollowed-out mind, this withering body, decaying from the inside.

Escape. I must escape.Hurry. Before it’s too late. Before I’m locked in.

No one will come near us. No one sees us. Not this again. It’s as if we don’t exist, not to these people. Not to the young. Their elders are forgotten. Abandoned. Left to fester.

Stuck here. I am trapped again.

I can’t stay. If I stay, we fuse. Bound to this body.Suffocated.If I stay too long within one host, the risk of stranding myself inside becomes greater.

These vessels are meant to be temporary. Never for long.

Never forever.

I’ll never be imprisoned again. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way. It took years to break free. Trapped in shells that offer nothing but echoes. The loneliness that comes with solitude.Abandoned by family. Housed in facilities for forgotten fathers and mothers. Hospitals. Prisons.

Nobody touches them. No one comes near. No time to think. I must escape.

Now!

We collapse onto the ground. It’s a simple trick that we have learned in the leanest of periods: lure your host to you. Lower your defenses in order to snare your next vessel.

Our head hits the sidewalk. The pain is sudden, but there is no protest. There is blood running down our temple. We blink back the blood from our eyes, unable to move very far. Our arms barely work. I push back the pain as much as possible for our host. Minor abrasions, even for such a withered frame. There will be time to heal. We hope.

“Are you alright?” The voice belongs to a man. He hovers above us. We are rolled over onto our back. “It’s okay,” this man says. “You’re okay.”

We look up to find his face. So young. The look of concern in his eyes warms us. He has long hair tucked behind his ear. A ponytail. Such gentle eyes.

He’ll do just fine.

“Help me,” we manage to say as we hold out our trembling hand.

“Careful.” This man, without a second thought, takes our trembling hand and—

I slip in.

There. A cava. Sparkling. So much better. A relief. That was close. The notion of having been stranded inside an elderly vessel is now gone. We are free again. Inhabiting a much more agile body. We abandon our former host. Leave her on the sidewalk. Someone else will come along to help her all in due time. She is no longer a concern of ours.

We need to run.

“What happened?” another woman asks us. We don’t respond, picking up our pace.

“Hey,” she calls after. “Where are you going?”

Too many eyes are upon us. Watching us. We continue to move.

“Come back!”

Run. Escape.

There’s the burn again. The itch. Feel it seething. So I tap into another host.

Then another. All this skin itches. There’s no comfort, no respite. Each and every vessel feels worse than the last, no matter the age. The race. The sex. They weigh me down.

When all I want is to be free.

Hand over hand, body upon body, host after host, we run through this city. Dozens of hosts.Hundreds.I never stay inside the same vessel for long. Minutes, if not seconds.