Instinct

1
If only they knew what it was like, the voices in my head. Both angry, both animalistic, yet one prayed for my soul, for our happiness. The other only wished to tear the other voice apart and reveled in the realization that it would destroy me too. A soft prodding on my consciousness spoke up, “You don’t want to do this.”
My hand hesitated setting the bottle back onto my desk. Through the tears in my eyes I could barely read the prescription label, “Hydrocodone.” That alone wouldn’t do it. I didn’t expect that. It would however relax me enough to finish. This time when I dumped the pills out on the mahogany my hands shook. The voice again spoke, “See, you’re scared.” I shook my head trying to clean it out, the compassion and concern was breaking my resolve.
The first pill was easy, I knew it held no bearing on my life, it was just a pill I had taken a hundred times to clear up the ache in my knee. The top shelf vodka slid it easily down my throat burning the flesh and cauterizing my bleeding heart. The feeling of loss, of failure, and of hopelessness washed over me it drowned the voice and gave me resolve.
I took two pills the second time, following it with vodka. My heartbeat thudded in my chest, pushing up into the back of my eyes. My whole body was rebelling against what my mind was forcing it to do. That’s the funny thing with evolution, nature vs. nurture, your body learns to survive, at all costs. However, your mind becomes more complex it begins to lose the survival instinct and relies on a happiness instinct. Often that shift is what destroys the happiness. This was what happened to me.
The first time was my 10th birthday. I had lived with my cousin, Kyra, and aunt Annie and uncle Don for the last seven years. For all intents and purposes, they were my parents. Surrounded by our small family and a few friends my aunt set the birthday cake in front of me. The flames licked the air as the song began, as always, at the moment I was born ten years before, 6:38pm. My ears heard, “Happy Birthday dear Sam..” but my mind and heart heard a more menacing call. I’m only aware of the rest of the story thanks to my uncle Don’s new camera which recorded the scene.
My eyes seemed to lose their silver hue. My smiling face became stoic and my hand reached out towards the fire, upon contact as if under conscious control, the fibers lit like gasoline tearing up to my shoulder before my aunt doused me in punch.
There I stood ten years old, in the kitchen, my white long sleeve shirt gone on my right arm and the right side of me covered in red punch. That was what I came back to. I felt searing pain through my whole right side and screamed. With the mania gone and me back in control I seized my arm and crumbled to the ground. I spent that night in the ER with second degree burns on my whole right arm. We never spoke of that day, and I couldn’t have been more relieved it was over.
By this time I was on pill twelve and I could feel the mixture kicking in. I was getting drowsy. My head felt like a balloon and conscious thought began to fumble in my brain. I tied the rope to my closet rod on one end and the other into a knot that uncle Don had showed me during our camping trip on my sixteenth birthday.
Kyra and I had snuck out of the cabin to go swimming that afternoon. As it was my birthday I wasn’t to be doing anything more exciting than sitting on the couch watching a movie. Sixteen year olds rarely see the wisdom though. I ran across the bridge in a state of euphoria I would rarely find again. The excitement of breaking the rules, of sneaking out, of being by the water had heightened my senses. As my left leg pushed off the dock propelling me towards the water the feeling overcame me again. My heart rate dropped and my soul seemed to give out.
When I came back this time I was lying on the bank, Kyra was crying. Her brown hair soaked. She was looking at the ground next to me shaking her head whispering, “it’s okay, it’s okay, I’m sorry” I took her hand and smiled, innocently inquiring. Her face blanched white and she simply answered, “lets get back to the cabin Sam, this was a bad idea.” For the rest of the weekend she didn’t go more than five feet from me and couldn’t shake the look of fear and self loathing from her. When we got home she went to her grandma’s for a week. When she returned it was like it had never happened.
I could feel the slip knot tightening around my throat. The ridges cut into the skin and my body attempted to straighten up and fight it. However the pills and booze were winning. I had now finished the bottle of pills. My body tingled, my mind moved like it was swimming in a pool of jelly. Any coherent thought was gone. I listened to my heart rate as it raced and slowed at irregular patterns. My breathing followed suit. I was going to throw up soon I only hoped that enough had taken over my system that purging them now wouldn’t matter.
My knee’s began to falter and my eyes began to close. My stomach burned and rolled but it held onto its prize.
The clock finally struck 6:38 and my knees gave way. My body was too paralyzed to respond, it didn’t flail or over-exert in an attempt to save itself, instead I simply stopped breathing. The blur that had been closing in over my world now covered everything and black started to work its way in from the sides.
By my door I saw a bright light flash into my room. A figure moved quickly towards me. I struggled to scream “No” how dare this phantom vision come and take me. I had almost released myself. The voice in my head sighed in feeble relief while the other let out a feral snarl. It was definitely a man, he was talking to me, yet it was like hearing a voice through a megaphone under five feet of water. You instinctively know it’s loud, but it makes no sense. I felt the pressure on my neck release and my back settle onto the ground.
His hand ran to my stomach and warm spread through my body from there. With it came the pills and the vodka. Once I released them onto the floor I felt my body regaining feeling and clarity. This time I actually managed to protest. His voice began to come into focus, “It’s all my fault, I shouldn’t have listened, if anything happens to you I’ll never forgive myself..” As the clarity came back to my mind a fog of lethargy washed over my mind and body. My eyes began to close and I knew I would be asleep in seconds. If only I knew what had happened. 
2

When the sun finally assaulted my eyes the next morning I pinched them closed. Waiting, for my mind to realize what my body had already accepted. I had failed. I laid in bed feeling the soft breeze play across my face. Smelling the sweet smell of spring. Waiting. Waiting to be inspired. To get that moment, the one in which I realize it was all a mistake and I was blessed to be given a second chance. It didn’t come.
As I listened to the garbage truck down the street clatter and bang, and the shouts of the workers over the metallic lurch I waited. I waited for the crushing depression, the kind that drove me into the arms of suicide only a couple hours before. That didn’t come either.
Instead what I found was a feeling of immense, nothing. My body could feel the blankets laying overtop my shoulder, but I didn’t care. In my own disconnected way, I knew I was more disappointed than grateful. Yet, in this light, in this form, I was numb. Neither pain no happiness could touch my soul. In that instance I felt the farthest and the closest thing to peace I had ever known in my life.
The “peace” was interrupted by the chatter and sounds of life downstairs. Annie was singing and I could intermittently hear Ken’s coffee cup hit the table. I could almost bet that when I finally crawled out of this hole there would be eggs and bacon ready along with an absurdly decorated cake. No matter how many birthdays I manage to ruin Annie still attempts to make them special. For that I should get up. Still my body wouldn’t comply.
My door creaked softly open and Kyra slipped into the room whispering, “I’m so sorry Sam, I meant to make it back last night but I fell asleep! Are you okay?”
As she asked it I watched her face pan mine and take it all in. Her fairly ebullient behavior began to drop as she realized how I felt. “I’m okay Kyr.”
Kyra sat stoically for a moment, “No, you’re not. How bad?”
I knew I couldn’t lie to her why I even tried is beyond me, then it hit me. If I had succeeded she would have walked into my bedroom feeling guilty for falling asleep just to find me dead in my closet. The tears fell as I recounted what I could remember from the night before. “I swear Kyr, it was a mans voice, I’m not making this up.”
Her tears leaked out slowly and her face stayed passive so I couldn’t read her. “We should go down to breakfast Sam. Probably best if we don’t tell mom and dad. They said they have something to tell you today.”
That raises the heart beat, I don’t care who you are! The blankets flew back and I was on my way downstairs before Kyra even moved. I stopped just outside the kitchen to get my breathing back under control. I heard the door to my room open, was Kyra just now moving? The kitchen smelled as I expected, like eggs and bacon, and on the table sat a small round blue cake that simply said, “Happy 20th Birthday Sam.” I hadn’t realized until that moment how much I did look forward to her “overdoing” my birthdays.
Ken smiled and issued a cursory, “Happy birthday dear” before picking his glass back up. Annie set my plate down and nodded.
Kyra slowly made her way to the table with her own plate but didn’t touch her fork. “Am I dying?” Everyone in the room stopped in that eerie sort of way that makes you sure you just said the truth and everyone wished you hadn’t. Annie began to ramble some sort of excuse but Kyra reached over and touched my hand, “We need to talk, it’s time guys.” My heart rate began to speed again but Kyra tapped my hand again, it seemed remarkably slow. “Breathe.”
Ken set down his paper in slow motion and Annie made her way to her chair before everything seemed to catch up. Annie cleared her throat, it was obvious all three had been conspiring against me and already had a plan. Again Kyra cut Annie off, it wasn’t like her to show this much forced leadership around her mother. “Sam, has anything weird happened since you woke up? Has anything moved unexpectedly, has anything being going really slow, or have you suddenly found yourself somewhere else but not remembered moving? Anything along those lines?”
I felt my head twitch, as if clearing itself, Don’t jump. The voice was dull and raspy but echoed in my head, of course, I jumped. Epic fail! This voice was mocking me. Okay, now I was hearing voices, this was a whole new level of crazy. I mean there were always subconscious voices but not an actual voice. Stop obsessing, think back through the morning, hasn’t everyone been moving a little slow? The trip down the stairs, the movement of Kyra’s hand.
“Yes.” Kyra was staring intently at me as if trying to understand my every thought.
“What was it?” She tapped my hand and looked concerned, hadn’t she expected that answer?
“Yes, when I came downstairs, I was at the kitchen before you left my bedroom, and just now patting my hand felt like it took forever.” Annie released a pained huff and placed her head in her hands as Ken shifted his chair to comfort her. “What’s going on?”
Kyra leaned back, “I’ll need a little patience while I tell you. Can you do your best to give me that?” The corner of her mouth twitched slightly as she intrinsically knew I would interrupt.
Give her that time. Again I nearly jumped out of my skin. Kyra gave me a second to explain yet when I offered nothing but a nod of agreement she began. “You always used to joke and tell me if you became crazy and believed a different reality you might as well go with it because it’s all you knew. Okay, go with this, at least for now. I want to do this gently but your block head was never good at gentle.”
Mind if I show you while she talks? I didn’t jump this time.
Instead I managed to answer internally, Please.
“There is magic in the world, and your family was one of the most powerful. My family isn’t too terribly shabby but if the stories from you as a baby are any showing you’re one powerful magical entity.” We’re an entity now. I wasn’t sure which one of us said it, the voice or me, but it seemed like the right response. The room stayed but my depth perception shifted “closer” and I saw my parents from a young child’s view. I was barely taller than the coffee table. “As a kid you were able to do some crazy stuff, and some stuff you shouldn’t have been able to.” A ball of blue energy flew out of my hands and lit the curtains over the glass doors on fire.
A young black haired grey eyed man waved his hand at the dinner table and the flames went out. It was my father, I had a few of those pictures from before the accident. “Obviously your parents were also endowed with powers, and while you were exceptional they seemed to find it easy to watch out and protect you. When we turned three, both of our parents came up against one of the strongest demons known.” Annie released a quick sob, why was she even here if she had nothing to offer? “Our parents bound our powers in case they didn’t come back they wanted us to have the most normal childhoods possible. It took your mother, your father, your grandparents on both sides, and an extra angel to bind yours. It took me some magical kool-aid.” Kyra released a snicker.
In my minds eye I saw seven people standing around me, with a red dust spiraling amongst us. That’s the day they separated us. Again I jumped. Kyra paused in response to my movement. “When they went to vanquish that demon, they didn’t come back, so they were never able to lift the bind like my parents did. It automatically lifts on your 20th birthday.” Kyra paused for a response but I had none. How do you respond to that? I ate my bacon.
Upon finishing the third piece at a leisurely pace I began to laugh. “Really Kyr, you’re something else again.” As if on cue she was swaddled in a bright blue light and then disappeared from her chair only to repeat the opposite a foot in front of me. This time I jumped so far I knocked over a chair. My heart rate shot through the roof, and as she reached out towards me her hand moved a centimeter every thirty seconds. I watched as Annie and Ken slowly rose from their seats. The world seemed to go silent. Was I beyond sound? Kind of.
Who are you?
You.
Oh that’s freaking helpful!
The voice only laughed. This is just the beginning Sam, tonight is going to be bad, really bad, it’s better if you understand. So far it has just unbound one power and the block between our minds. This kind of bind doesn’t happen all at once, tonight it will be your body. You need them. So take a couple deep breaths and you’ll be back to their speed.
I listened to the voice, what other option did I have at that point? The world came back into focus and began to catch up. “Sam! Are you okay?”
I shakily rose to my feet as Kyra resettled the chair. “Y-y-y-ya.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t want to scare you but you need to take this seriously. We have waited too long already. We can’t be here when it hits midnight. We have to be at camp. And I have to have a blood relative of yours, so this isn’t going to be the only shock. James!”
Why was she screaming my father’s name, he’s dead, she’s well aware of that. The same blue light that swaddled Kyra appeared in my kitchen and when it assembled into a person, his grey eyes pierced my heart he hadn’t aged a day from the pictures at my bedside. “Samantha” He said it like my name was a prayer. As he moved forward to hug me I let the change of time take over.
WHOA! Did you know about this? The answer only came in the form of silence. What now you can’t answer? I was so mad, this annoying voice which had been chastising me through this whole thing now decided to take a vow of silence. Answer me! Nothing.
My father, he was in the kitchen right in front of me, his arms open, my name still lingering in the air. I had dreamed of this moment a thousand times. I would run up and hug him and tell him I loved him. But here he was, okay, and perfect and un-aged, and came at the simple call of my best friend. I wanted to hit him. Instead I took several steps back towards the opposite wall then found control over my breathing in order to bring time back. As soon as I was sure he could hear me, “You’re alive? You bastard! You have been around all this time! Where’s mom? Behind the curtain?” Allie released a cry. James’ eyes dropped in shame, good!
“Samantha, I couldn’t they wouldn’t let me.” It was his voice, he was there last night. My father had seen me try to kill myself. It was his voice through the void pleading for me. The walls began to close in, I found myself wanting nothing more than to be away from there. A warm sensation crept over my body. When it subsided I was against the back fence. Kyra emerged from the back door. She was shoeless, and striding across the lawn. Yet she stopped ten feet from me. Scared. I wasn’t mad at her.
With her hands raised in a show of appeasement, “He was the voice wasn’t he?” I nodded. She took another step closer. “I’m sorry.” I nodded. She took another larger step closer. “I wish this could be done more gently. They just told me it all last night. I wouldn’t have let you suffer if I had known.” She was close enough now I could see the tears in her eyes. “If there were any other way, I wouldn’t let you suffer now.” She was right in front of me. “I have things I have to do, for your safety, I only need his blood, I have it now, I can send him away. What do you need?”
I always thought in a moment like this I would have so much to say. Who am I kidding I never imagined a moment like this. “Him to go.” She nodded. “Let’s get done what we need to. I can’t process this. So just move me through the motions.”
I had shut down. She hated when I did this but today she let it go without poking or prodding or trying for more. She gently pulled me away from the fence and took me back into the kitchen. James was gone. I wanted him back now, but it was too much, to much to ask, too much to do. She asked me to do nothing, just let me sit for the next hour as she rummaged around the house loading up the car and talking in whispered conversations to her parents.
Allie was constantly teary eyed and Ken held onto his stoic silence. At the end of the hour Kyra entered the kitchen, “It’s time to go, come on hun.” I stood up in perfect obedience and straightened my clothing. Allie nearly knocked me over with her sobbing tackling hug. Some day I would have to talk to her about her reaction today.
Ken pulled me into a one armed hug and whispered into my ear, “You’re always they’re daughter. But I love you like you’re one of my own. Anything you ever need, just call. Say my name and I’ll be there, anywhere but camp. I love you, and remember, your parents are people too, they made their mistakes, those mistakes don’t have to make you.”
Any profession of love from Ken was odd, but it seemed to strike at my soul to hear his words. I didn’t know what scared me the most but I feared that finding out my father was still corporeal would just be the tip of the iceberg on the lies I have been told.

3
Kyra drove for three hours before stopping at the foot of a hiking trail. Her knuckles glazed white just before releasing the steering wheel. “We have to get to the top, its about a four hours hike, and we’re running out of time.” I nodded, I was still completely overwhelmed. I knew that as soon as someone poked one of the sore spots I would lose it, but until then everything in my heart had seized up. It was for the best, it kept me in motion, it kept the world from slowing down. The pack she slung across my shoulders was comfortable but far from light. “I trust there is still enough pain pills in your system that your knee will be fine.” Anger and pain touched her voice for the first time. I nodded and started walking forward. In all the years we had known each other we had never talked less. The northwestern territory traveled past us in a blur of snapping twigs and a never ending expanse of green.
After several hours of nearly vertical motion the terrain leveled out and we regained our breath. “There’s more I have to tell you, can you handle it?” Kyra’s voice was soft yet determined.
“Honestly Kyr, I don’t know.” My voice sounded dead even to me, everything was so far away.
Just a little bit longer and I can take over if you need me too. Again, I jumped.
That would be great, I wouldn’t mind riding shotgun in this horror show. I sniped back. The voice fell silent again.
“Your father was the son of a human alchemist and a very powerful witch. Your mother’s family is more intriguing, she was quite the mutt.” Her lip twitched at her choice or words but she decided to carry on. “Your grandmother was half witch, a quarter nymph, and a quarter demon.” I twitched on that word, I’m part demon, that felt like it explained so much. “Your grandfather was a quarter guardian, like me, a quarter illusionist, a quarter telepath, and a quarter psychic. So basically the combination and power of your mothers skills was never completely understood. My mother once said they were all certain her powers were limitless until, they weren’t.”
A small puff of air escaped my lungs at the reminder of her death which began to roll into the reminder of my father’s continued existence. “I don’t know much about why they made your dad a guardian after he died. He did die Sam. But unless you’re born as one, like me, you aren’t allowed to revisit your old non-magical life. Since your powers were bound he was banned from seeing you, to do so might revoke his powers and send him on. So he held on knowing that in twenty years he could be in your life. I suspect he always watched though.”
The thought of him watching from a distance my descent into madness, produced a searing pain in my distant heart. Watching me change and distort until the day he finally broke his contract in order to save me. It was again too much. I only produced a throaty noise and nodded my head. “Sam, I knew I had powers since I was sixteen, when I went to my grandmas, I didn‘t. They were enlisting me to be your guardian. They revoked the block on my powers, then gave me a beginners course on magical history and demons, gave me a broad knowledge of my powers and sent be back. Last night they called me up to meet them. They said it was important. Last night they gave me a history of you, so that I could relay it. If I had known all of these things all of these years I would have never kept it from you. I don’t know if that means anything right now, but I want you to know you can still trust me.”
My breath began catching in my chest my steady forward motion began to break. Kyra had done it, she had tapped one of the pieces on my perfectly fragile jenga pile and they were now all coming down. By luck a log sat off to the right of where we were passing. I absentmindedly shed my pack. I intended to sit onto the log but instead I collapsed onto it with a loud and echoing thud. Kyra had her pack off and was moving towards me. As she moved my mouth managed a wonderful fish impression as I attempted to form words. There was no one thing, one problem, one issue which came to mind, the weight just became too great, the only thing I was capable of doing was collapsing under it. Maybe it would crush me, finish the job I couldn’t do the day before.
For the first time ever I realized that the thought of ending it, of suicide, was not my own. It was a soft silky voice, but it held a rasp. Very different than the voice which had be joking with me all morning. This voice was evil. Through the sobbing breaths my voice broke. “Kyr, is it possible that I’m possessed. That two other entities live in me?”
Kyra shifted backwards and away from me, “Why do you say that?” Her voice betrayed her words, she knew something.
“Because all day I have been hearing this voice, its weird but it seems nice enough, and just now I heard the most malevolent urging ever. It seems like there are two people with thoughts similar to my own but still with different personalities. How does that happen?”
Kyra seemed to suddenly find her hands the most interesting thing on the planet. “Your grandma didn’t want to bind your powers. She said that demons don’t have souls, they have powers but those make them whole. She believed that by separating you from your demonic powers would separate you from your demonic self, so to speak. Your body is slowly breaking down the walls that separate those powers. During all of these years it seems reasonable that as that complete self was separate it developed its own personality.”
That seems logical, consider me a different self.
“So I am schizophrenic?” The chuckle that escaped my lips couldn’t hide the fear in my question.
“No. You literally have two entities in you, you and this demonic whole that comes from your demonic powers. Does that make sense?”
“Sure, now explain the third.”
“It’s probably just an extension of the other I wouldn’t worry too much.”
It isn’t me I swear, I want us to live.
“Ok.” The intrigued had stopped the swelling tears enough that I had regained some compulsory control over my own heart. “Let’s keep going.” Kyra must have been talked out because she quickly complied and we carried on our way.