Lonliness is a sickness that gnaws at your insides. It sinks into your skin and muscles, cutting to the bone. Dreary darkness consuming you and working at the very fabric of your self. It makes you doubt your worth. Whether your worthy of love, happiness, life. I hoped and prayed to things I didn't believe in as my circle got more and more superficial. There was always a sensation that I was a more private person, but insults would be sent my way. I was a creep, a weirdo, someone who was inherently dangerous due to nothing I had done. Maybe they could feel my unhappiness and wanted to avoid it like the plague. My self-worth was at a low and I wasn't good enough. There was no future for me. Everything I had ever done was worthless and I was never going to be enough for anyone. Not for my friends and family. Not for the people I cared about. I wanted to stop suffering. I wanted to die. It stayed with me throughout all of my thoughts like my own dark passenger. Constantly there and whispering the terrible things.

"Everyone would be better off with me gone."

"I should do it now, while my brother is still young enough to no feel the grief from my death."

"My father deserves to feel how he failed me."

"I'm a coward for not actually killing myself."

I would spend nights staring at the cabinets of pills and the razors in the drawers of the bathroom under the sink. It drove me to have breakdowns as I tried to will myself to cutting. I couldn't do it. I was a coward for not making myself feel the pain that I should be feeling. I should have felt worse, I deserved to suffer more. That was what I deserved back then. That's what I thought at least. It isn't that way as much anymore. I can bare to look in the mirror again, I have depth in my friendships. There is hope in the future, plans, goals and things to reach for. I'm not stuck in a pit with no escape. I'm climbing the stair, even if it isn't a crystal one. I am going to keep going.

When I was eight, Mom had a tumor the size of a softball just left of her liver. Calling it softball-sized made me smile since playing softball with a tumor would be gross. Seeing Dad crying reminded me not to smile about the tumor again. It was a Monday when she’d found out.

The doctors had said that they wouldn’t know if it was malignant or benign for a couple of days. I didn’t know what those words, malignant—benign, meant until people started whispering malignant like it was something dangerous with ears that would jump out and

get you if you said it too loud.

Cancer. It was two sticky August days until I’d heard the word being nervously passed back and forth between mom and dad when they had thought I was sleeping. Instead I’d sat at the end of the top bunk, perched like a secret bird feeding on their words and not being able to swallow such bitterness that caused so much silence between my parents.

When we went for a McDonald’s ice cream cone the next day after school it tasted metallic like the conversation I heard the night before.

Friday came and went without Mom hearing from the doctors. They’d done the biopsy--sliced, diced, and smeared the slides--but couldn’t give an answer about the softball growing inside Mom. She’d cried when I asked if she was scared. She told me that it was just the nerves and that she wasn’t afraid. We prayed at dinner for the first time that night.

Just after lunch the next day we drove sickeningly curvy roads for three hours into the hills of West Virginia for a chance for Mom to be healed at a big tent revival that looked like a circus tent for Jesus. No one noticed when we were thirty minutes late. They were too busy saying “amen” between the preacher’s shouts which were peppered with praise-Jesus-hallelujahs.

We sat on folding wooden chairs pushed too closely together so that our shoulders touched and it was impossible to cross my legs the way I wanted. The preacher wiped sweat from his bald head with an already soaked handkerchief while repeatedly calling the people “the body of Christ”. On that day, Christ smelled hot and thick like cheap deodorant cut with even cheaper cologne rising up as a sunburnt offering to his father. I dozed off, periodically being elbow-jabbed awake by Dad. My four year old brother was allowed to sleep; purse candy syrup dripping lazily from the left corner of his mouth.

All the while, the sugary sermon frothed from preacher-man’s mouth who was running, pacing, gyrating like god’s jester at the front of the striped revival tent held up with poles, ropes, faith and hope. I won’t lie. I have no clue about the finer details of the man’s message. I only remember the collection plate merry-go-rounding endlessly and being filled when the congregation would be whipped into frenzy by his addictive words which gave life to the promise of eternity and healing.

Near the end of the tow and a half hour service, after the purse candy was gone, and after I’d filled the back of a bank envelope with doodles, but before the last offering was taken up, the preacher called for people to come up for the laying on of hands and the reception of the healing power of Christ. There was a trickle of people who went forward. Mom and Dad whispered an exchange before privately deciding to join the ascension of the ailing body to the front of the tent in order to receive Mom’s share of the healing power of the lord. We walked to the altar as we’d snuck in the back: as a family.

I shuffled quickly, eyes down, feeling the looks and hearing the mumbled requests for Jesus’ favor from furrow-browed parishioners, squinting their eyes in consternation, hoping for an answer. Nearer the front were prayer “partners” who asked the ailments of the stream of people. One assured us that god loves a family that prays together and acknowledges the true followers of Christ. Jesus liked a posse.

The preacher had taken off his jacket before we presented our case to him. His suspenders accented the lines of sweat on the white long-sleeved shirt. The wilting collar of it was yellowed from weeks of summer-spiced salvation.

“Folks, we have a woman with us today that needs a healing!” His voice was getting hoarse.

The congregation hushed to below a whisper. A nearly silent intensity charged the air.

“Wanda? Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Do you know that he defeated death and can defeat any cancer that you may have?”

The crowd was moaning, nearly wailing with praise. I couldn’t see a collection plate but there had to be one making its round again.

Mom was nodding. Dad was trying to stop, unsuccessfully, the tears from streaming, my brother stared at his dusty shoes kicking grass, and I wondered why he called it cancer. He’d been told it was a tumor. Had god told him it was cancer? It wasn’t Mom or Dad.

As people manifested around us to lay hands on Mom, a lady spoke in tongues. Every sentence started the same way that sounded like “Ronda la-she-a”. Only the preacher knew how to translate it to English. It was one of his “fruits of the Sprit”. The preacher talked about our ability to be a conduit of healing and rebuked the devil for his stronghold on Mom’s disease, her body and her family. He shouted for the cancer causing spirit to “go back to Hell” where it had come from and just when we weren’t sure what would happen next, Mom was deemed healed, everyone sang praises and shouted hallelujah, strangers cried, and we went back to our seats.

On Monday a nurse called to tell Mom that her tumor was benign. Her softball was downgraded from dread to an annoying reason to have surgery; a non-metastasizing nuisance that frightened but couldn’t kill.

“I’m glad your tumor is better Mom.” I said.

“God healed you.” Dad said.

Mom cried, joy replacing her salty dread from the week, the day, the hour before, while she praised God for being cancer free. I wanted to ask her when the doctors had said it was cancer, but mom was busy calling Grandma, glad to have found Jesus in a circus tent in backwoods West Virginia.

The young Rita was liked in the village she was living in and was described as having luscious locks of black hair, an hourglass figure, and a face to stop even the nastiest of men from committing sins. Rita skipped merrily up towards her little home, whistling a favorite tune of hers and her partners. As the battered, but strong, bright blue coated house came into view, Rita increased her tune speed and her skipping pace. This was because today was a day Rita had been looking forward to for weeks, and one that would be spent entirely with her love Rio. He was the perfect lover in Rita’s eyes, as he was  incredibly loyal and was a shy atheist who enjoyed reading just as she did. He was also very muscular, and kind, with blonde hair and blue eyes. This mattered little to Rita though as she cared for his persona much more. What put Rita on the nonbeliever path was that Rita had seen her family murdered for no reason and had decided that no such god would let that happen if they were real, and Rio had chosen this path due to believing in logic and science before anything else. Upon finally making it back to her house, Rita began planning dozens of joyous things that the two could do for the day now but then she saw a note and it was written in blood. Rita read the note, and next Rita rushed to the crowded town square and saw something that broke her inside. There, hanging upon a cross was her beloved, his fingernails ripped out, his head shaved and stabbed, his feet nailed together, his once muscular body ripped to shreds by sharpened tools, and finally his eyes plucked out. Rita broke down right then and there, sobbing and sobbing as she had lost the only thing she had cared about in this world and was all alone. The villagers noticed and moved towards her but were stopped by an unseen, chilling presence. Suddenly a voice spoke to Rita saying that she could have all the power to have her revenge on the world she wished, if she became their human host. Rita agreed with little fight wanting to kill and make everyone in the town pay for their actions. Suddenly she felt her control over her body leave her as her formed turned bony and slender, her hair floated all around her, and her hands turned into claws. Next her teeth mutated into fangs and she grew dark, ebony wings from her back. During all this, Rita felt strangely happy and calm well until the voice from before said thank you for your body girl, I will make good use of it and just, so you know our new name is Eski, we shall become a revenge loving demon. With that Rita watched the possessor of her body start massacring the townsfolk and felt satisfied as her conscious drifted into a sleeping state.

KATA-KATA. KATA-KATA.

Her feet carried her as fast as they could. Her blood was pumping to the extreme as she gazed back to see if he was still stalking her. The deep fog clouded everything.

FA-THUD.

She felt her small frame meet the cold hard concrete beneath her. Her lovely green dress splattered with mud. Her adrenaline was sky high. Her fear was palpable.

Thud. Thud.

Her heart filled with dread. She was frozen, as if the ground itself were holding her prisoner. She could hear it clear as day. There they were, the slow methodical footsteps, which although elegant rang in her hears like alarm bells. He was closing in like a predator about to devour its prey. He smelled her fear as if it were a pungent perfume that she herself was wearing to seduce him. It chilled her to the bone; here she was desperately trying to escape the fate he had planned for her and she couldn’t send a signal strong enough to her legs to move. He was walking as if it were a Sunday stroll.

Thud. Thud.

Closer. They were getting closer. She knew she had to move. Had to get a signal through to her failing body. Every second wasted in her purgatory of fear was another closer to a grisly end.

THUD. THUD.

They were right on top of her now. The signal went through at last as she somehow managed to pull herself up from her concrete prison. She ran like lighting but was stopped dead in her tracks by an all-consuming shadow. His shadow. It engulfed her. She was frozen once more. So was he. He stood still as a statue. He had her cornered. And he was savoring it. The fog surrounded him as if it were at his command. ‘That face’ she thought. ‘That horrible face’. For it was not a human face. It was the face of a butchered pig. There he stood in his filthy, bloody apron, salivating. Beneath the apron was a belt filled with his instruments of destruction. The moonlight was gleaming off the carving knife in his hand. The blade intended for her, just like the others. Tears rolled down her cheek. He liked to see them cry. It amplified his pleasure. It was adding gasoline to his fire, which pushed him over the edge, from anticipation to action. She felt the steel pierce her skin as he dashed forward in one swift movement. It pierced her over and over again, slicing her skin as if it were nothing. Her scream could have woken the dead.

As if she hadn’t already suffered enough, he selected from his tool belt his meat cleaver and started chopping. Again and again and again. She would make a fine sell, he knew that from the moment she walked into his shop. Tomorrow her stripped carcass would be on display. She had met her fate at the hands of Chuck, the demon butcher of Angel Court.