Fiction Fragment Friday
It should not be hard to read between the lines on this story. Sometimes the act of writing can be a way to give form to things you are struggling with and give you the power to overcome them. I couldn’t decide on a story for today so I just started describing how I was feeling and letting it develop into a story about the magic user I keep touching on in my fiction.
I had so much I needed to get done, but instead of working on any of it I sat there overwhelmed by anxiety. It was frustrating because I had the motivation but couldn’t find even the smallest level of energy. The only thing I could focus on was the general anxiety that consumed my entire being. Every sound felt like it was the one that was going to be the final straw that crushed what was left of my sanity.
The anxiety wasn’t focused on any particular thought or fear. Instead, it felt like a pressure that held me in place. My very skin was a trap constraining me inside it. I wanted to scream to the sky in outrage and defiance, but my mouth wouldn’t work. Even breathing was difficult as the pressure pushed me down. My own treacherous body was betraying me at every turn. The helplessness was driving me mad.
My eyes desperately searched the living room for help. Instead of reassurance all I found was every stain, out of place item, and crooked picture on the wall. I saw unfinished projects and unrealized dreams in every direction. The one place that was supposed to be my sanctuary just reinforced my feeling of failure and self-hatred. I had failed everyone, but no one more so than myself. That was where my opponent had underestimated me.
With a gasp I stood from my chair. In my life I had performed many strenuous activities, but none felt more difficult than just standing with the metaphorical weight of the world pressing down on my mind. My opponent thought that crippling anxiety, doubt, and self-hatred would destroy me. Whoever they were they didn’t realize that I had a lifetime of experience with these feelings. They might slow me; they could not keep me from acting when something truly needed to be done. No one could compartmentalize better than I could.
“Show yourself you son of a bitch,” I screamed out to the world. Each movement, each breath, and each word lessened the pressure pushing down on me. “I said show yourself.” I pushed energy into my words. Energy moments ago, I wouldn’t have thought I had. I was not helpless. I was a magic practitioner. A guardian and a shield to protect others from the malicious creatures that walk in the dark. If I fell who would be there for all those that needed me? I took another step forward and flung enough magical energy into the room to send anything not firmly in place flying.
The wave of energy I had pushed out hit my wards and rebounded back through my home. Waves of energy bounced around passing harmlessly through me by causing damage I would be cleaning up for weeks. The words fed the energy with each rebound until finally something invisible right in front of me let out a scream of pain.
I watched as a human figure appeared out of the air. I couldn’t be sure if it was a physical being who had been obscuring their visual presence or a being of energy being ripped into my plane of existence. In that moment I didn’t care either. I had a target, and I was in the center of my own power. I focused the energy on my opponent and gave them a smile as the form stabilized.
There standing hunched over almost in arms reach I saw myself. His own smile was the thing of nightmares as he looked up at me with contempt. “Two can play at that game,” he said, and he lifted his arms sending a wave of energy at me. It hit like a physical thing lifting me into the air and flinging me across the room into my bookshelf which proceeded to collapse on top of me.
The pain was intense. I wasn’t sure if I had broken anything, but it was a distinct possibility. I had cuts gouged into me and wooden splinters sticking out of my skin. The waves of induced emotions hit me again like a train, but this time I had pain and adrenaline to help me focus through them. Rising to my feat I focused on putting up my mental defenses. This enemy crashed right through them like they weren’t even there.
He laughed at me. “Just give up already. I’m you. You can’t protect yourself from me. I know all your defenses, all your weak spots, and those horrible thoughts that you don’t dare give voice to. I am those thoughts.”
“You’re not me.” I spat the words at him, but they didn’t have any conviction to them. I had felt the flavor of his power as he tossed me across the room, and it was a part of me. He was a part of me. It was in that moment I realized what I was facing. “You aren’t even real. You’re just a shadow given purpose.” Something out there from the nightmare realm had used a fraction of my own power and fed it energy. This being was not truly alive. It was a shadow of myself pulled from my own dreams and turned against me.
“You don’t know anything,” he screamed as he approached me. He raised his fist and brought it down punching me across the face. “You’ve wasted your power. I’m going to use it better then you ever could have.”
He went to punch me again, but I pushed myself forward wrapping my arms around him in a bear hug. “No. You are a part of me though and I want that part back.” I pulled on the energy forming my shadow. Someone else had stollen my energy and my subconscious thoughts from my dreams. They had turned parts of me into a weapon that had come far closer to destroying me than I care to admit. In that moment though I felt my energy within him, and I took it back.
I held him tight as he disincorporated and flowed back inside me. With all my focus I filtered out the foreign energy and contained it in the only container I had within reach. The foreign energy was still connected to the being who had tried to assassinate me and I was not about to let them get it back without tracking them down. Items are created with a purpose and when they serve that purpose they have power. My cardboard Chinese takeout container was made to keep its contents from spilling out so it only took a sliver of my own power to make it an inescapable prison for this energy.
With the danger passed I collapsed to the floor. I lay there feeling physically and mentally broken and leaking blood onto my floor. I was grateful for hard wood floors because I wasn’t sure how to get blood out of carpet. I had more things I needed to do than I cared to think about with hunting down this being just the latest thing added to that list. As I groaned in pain, I accepted that would be a task for another day. I had spent the night fighting myself while I had won it left me with no energy left to do anything else.
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