Chapter Nineteen: "Mental Cage"

Aradia Smith.

My breathing slowly returns to normal and a feeling of loneliness hits me again. No matter how many times I sleep with Alex, no matter how many demons try to heat my bed, none of them have managed to make that feeling go away.

I get out of bed exposing my naked body and pick up my clothes from the floor. With Alex's gaze on me, I dress as fast as I can. I sit back on the bed and start to fasten the hideous slipper Karla chose to wear. I am about to leave that room without a word when Alex's hand catches mine. He closes his eyes tightly and slowly I turn to look at those pretty colors that adorn his dull and sad look.

"What?" I say in the coldest way I can conjure.

He looks down at our joined hands and intertwines his fingers with mine. In a quick movement I release his hand and this time, more gently, I say the following words:

"I'm not her, Alex." I unite my gaze with his again and the pain in his gaze overwhelms me and hurts me, but I know it's not my pain, but my sister's. "Learn the difference for once."

In the reflection of his eyes, I see my gaze, the darkness engulfing everything in their path.

"I'm never going to be her," I whisper.

I turn and walk away from him so as not to hurt him more than I have already done. I know I shouldn't sleep with him, that he doesn't help me at all, he doesn't benefit me at all. And I know that Alex only does it because I look like her, he only gets carried away at the beginning of the transition because it is the moment when my body has not changed and I still look like the innocent Karla. That makes me angry and a part of me feels hurt.

I want to feel what she feels when she is with him, I want him to look at me as he looks at her. I want that warmth filling my chest, to see his rosy cheeks, his tender smile. I want to feel what they feel about each other. But I am different, whenever I sleep with him I am able to see the difference. He doesn't touch me as he touches her, he doesn't touch me in the same way.

And for that simple fact, I hate them all. I don't understand why she is the damn privileged one, why she has to be the good one and automatically I have to be the bad one.

I clench my teeth in fury as memories attack my mind seeing the three of us in the past. When we both met Alex, I could come to realize what it was like to be "in love" but only because Karla conveyed it to me. It was so deep and warm what she felt for him that I ended up feeling everything. I think I was one of the first people who felt what it was like to be the third wheel of a relationship. I am certain that I invented that concept.

Each day they spent together, my hatred grew more and more. She forced me not to go out, to hide, and for her to take control. She didn't want me to intervene in their relationship, me, the bad girl. Karla didn't want me to corrupt her and locked me in a cage, deep in our shared consciences, for days. Sometimes I was able to accumulate enough energy to see what she saw and unfortunately, I always saw Alex's colorful eyes.

It didn't surprise me, not one bit. Being in that cage I had a lot of time to think and I came to the conclusion that either Karla had to be locked up just like she did to me or we would both have to die. We cannot live together because we always want to lock each other up.

Just as I was able to feel her positive emotions, she also began to feel the bad ones, the ones that she had ended up creating in me and I remember that I paid for her anger, or mine, even today I will not know which of the two it was, with me, her sister.

"You're the bad one!" She said with tears in her eyes "What is this?” She touched her wet cheeks and it was the first time she had cried.

"That's called crying, my dear." I rolled my eyes. "For you to be the only one feeling out of the two, you have no idea what they cause. ” Her cry from hers grew louder and I frowned, my anger beginning to show. "Can you tell why you're crying? You're such a fucking pain in the ass, girl."

"First of all, don't swear, it's bad."

"I am the bad one, I am allowed to." I interrupted.

"And second," she ignores me, "I have no idea, okay? Do you think if I knew why I'm crying I would keep doing it?"

"You really don't know anything about emotions," I say in a low resigned voice. "It's a shame that I know it more than you."

I crouch down and stare at a nice, smooth rock. With a wave of my hand I lift it up off the ground and it is at eye level. My left-hand clenches tightly and that same rock quickly turns to dust.

I sigh wearily at having to endure a misunderstood, incompetent, idiot who knows nothing and I lock her in the same cage that she locks me up for hours.

Until you calm down, you'll be in that cage, I told Karla.

Her cry of despair was so high and loud that my eardrum almost burst from inside my head. I muted it and went back to the creek to continue playing rock-smashing.

That was how she began to take a liking to be isolated, to the silence that only that mental cage provided. And she thought that I would like how she liked the experience.

The day she asked Grandma Margarett to do the final half spell, I fell asleep before she did. That kept me out of control and make her dumb, stupid, and innocent, a price she had to pay for keeping me out of the game. She wanted to stop feeling everything bad that the world and people gave her that pain — even though I was the cause of both. Thus began the game of becoming an actress. To change every two decades of town, city, country, planet, universe. She wanted to feel the tranquility of the cage but without disconnecting from the real world. Just so she wouldn't feel my pain and so she wouldn't destroy the world accordingly.

Just as I locked her up and silenced her that day, she did it again as they prepared the preparations for what would be the downfall of the Smith sisters.

I remember screaming until my throat burned until I was only coughing from the pain that I had caused myself. It was the first time that I could really feel something, something that was not influenced by Karla. The pain that she caused me, the loneliness that she gave me, the hatred that was formed in me I accumulated it and I waited to have enough strength to submerge from the darkness again and bring doom to all those with whom she was related. I wanted her to feel the same as me, to stop running away from the pain, to know that no matter how many times she reset her life, nothing would change for her, just as my situation did not change.

I managed to surface for a few moments, but they were brief at first, too short to hurt her. My encounters with Alex were what made me spend the most energy but the one that gave me the most satisfaction because I forced her to look. At no point did I put a blindfold on her because I wanted her to see what she had become.

I shake my head undoing everything that is swirling in my mind and I let myself be carried away by what I felt before the orgasm that Alex has very kindly given me.

With a sigh, I leave behind the Mendoza mansion full of drunk people and looking at the stars, I think about what remains to be done. Being the daughter of the devil comes with many responsibilities that must be carried out yes or yes. Henry, my dad, is waiting for my arrival and I can't afford to keep him waiting.

It only takes me ten minutes to get to Karla and Alice's house. I should kill all of her little friends too, but I need them. When they are no longer useful I myself will cut off their heads and hang them on poles for all mortal and immortal world to see.

I slowly climb the stairs, quietly enjoying their future reaction. If they don't know yet, they will.

Aradia'a back, bitch.