He is my mirror. All that I am is reflected in him.
No wonder she sees the same.
Longing...
Need...
Hunger...
...Fear...
I want to scream to the heavens. I want to shred my soul from my body. I want to maim and torture and rend and kill.
I want to...
Weep.
I came here fearing the worst, never expecting this.
This, this is so much worse than I ever would have dreamed.
I thought she was my chance at redemption. I thought she was the new love, the mature, adult love we both need. Both of us have grown so much the last few years, grown together.
I thought she was mine.
And there she lays, writhing beneath my reflection.
Through steel and glass and stone I can hear her breathy moans. Two hundred and fifty years of experience in every erotic art known to man and demon have taught me how to discern reality from fraud.
She's enjoying herself.
There's no question that he is. I still remember what it felt like to be so young and needy, to have a buxom lass in my arms and bed.
Her breasts are exquisite.
He's kissing them now, but I can taste her on my tongue, my lips and teeth recalling how it felt to suckle at those rose- colored nipples, to nibble at the soft underside.
Even under the spell of the dancer, she made those soft cries and arched her breasts into my mouth.
As she's doing now on the bed beneath my son.
I'm going to lose it if I stay here much longer. I've watched hundred--thousands--of copulations. None have been like this.
None mattered.
Around me the fire still rains. I can hear screams threatening to drown out the sounds of increasingly noisy sex. People are dying in the streets.
I should go help them. There's nothing I can do here. Watching--hearing--this is doing me no good. Going in there and ripping him off her will do nothing. I'm growing more and more angry and frustrated and lost.
She's climaxing.
I can't bear this.
As he shudders inside her, he looks up from her pleasure-sated face and...
He can see me.
Unneeded breath catches rawly in my tight throat and everything freezes. He's startled, and then...
Triumph? Fear? Wonder? Confusion? Anger? Shock?
What will appear on my son's face?
I turn away.
Whatever he feels at knowing of my presence, I do not want to see it reflected on his face.
Shattering the mirror, I slip into the darkness.
End