Chapter 26

Late into the night, when the moon hung high in the sky and most of the city lights were off, I leaned up in my bed and rubbed my eyes.

"Damn it, I fell asleep."

I looked towards the clock while putting on my glasses. The clock read 12:26 AM, so I slept about 5 hours in total, which meant everyone was probably asleep by now so I could drink the potion.

I stood up and crept over to the bathroom, making sure to avoid all the creaky floorboards that I knew of, and opened the door into the hallway carefully, looking out both ways to make sure no one was out this late, but both ends were empty.

I opened the bathroom door at the end of the hallway and looked at myself in the mirror, before turning on a faucet and washing my face with cold water to wake me up, and it did, as I recoiled due to cold water.

Digging into my pocket I took out the potion, which glowed dimly with the same orange hue as earlier that day, illuminating my reflection in the mirror.

I screwed off the lid and smelled the potion, it didn't smell all that good because of the horrid ingredients used to make it, but I just plugged my nose as I tipped it into my mouth, and drank the potion whole.

As the potion seeped through my body, the veins under my skin started to glow the same dim color as the potion, my eyes widened in astonishment and confusion.

Suddenly my head started to pound like a drum, I winced as I leaned against the counter, gripping my head as I let out a little groan, voices started to murmur through my head like spirits, and it felt like the world was spinning.

The ravings in my head only grew louder as my reflection in the mirror seemed to become its own being, and it smiled at me in a way that was calm yet terrifying.

"What's happening?!"

I fell to the ground in the bathroom, still clutching my head, my veins continued to glow as the voices grew louder, and my reflection was looking at my now pathetic form, its smile only grew wider as it walked away, leaving what I should see myself as in the mirror as the view of the bathroom reflected behind me.

Suddenly one voice seemed to overlap over all the others, his voice was layered like 2 singular beings, as it whispered in an illusory tone.

"Maybe I am the cardinal."

Then, everything went quiet and dark, my veins stopped glowing and the voices stopped, my reflection was back in the mirror as I saw myself on the ground, looking at myself.

I felt a warm liquid run down my head and into my eye, it was blood, warm blood. My eyes widened as I stood up quickly and grabbed a towel from the lower cabinet and wiped my face with it, trying to get rid of all the blood that leaked from my head and down my face.

I looked down at the towel while turning on the gas light above the mirror, the towel wasn't red like I thought it was, the liquid was ink black.

"What the?..."

I whispered out loud, placing my hand where I think the blood ran down, I shuffled through my hair and felt more liquid in the roots, I removed my hand and looked at the black liquid on my fingers, even sniffing it.

It smelt like copper, like the usual contents of blood. I've bleed before, but why is it black now? What is this? I grabbed the towel again before running it under the water and placing it over my head, wrapping it around like a bandage and sitting down in the dark bathroom, only the dim gas lamp told me where the toilet was so I wouldn't fall onto the ground and possibly injure myself any more.

Then my head started to race, not with those strange voices, but with my own thoughts. What did that potion do? Why did that all happen? That did that voice mean? 

It seemed like hours I sat on that toilet pondering everything, and my eyelids gradually lowered until I felt like passing out, but I had to stay awake, I needed to think about everything.

"Maybe I am the bird, what does that mean?"

I started to think deeper into my thoughts until it hit me, that philosophical rant I had a few days ago, that bird...it meant being able to be free from the bonds of fate, and fate being a force of nature.

"Why would I be the bird, why would those voices say that?"

I removed the towel from my head and looked at it, the same black blood covered the towel, but it wasn't as much, and it dried on the towel.

I threw the towel into the laundry hamper in the corner of the bathroom, before going back to Oboro's room.

I looked at the clock again, it read 1:12 AM, meaning I was in the bathroom for almost an hour on end, so I laid back down on the cot and closed my eyes.