The Seventh Obsession

                                                                            By

                               C.D. Turner

                                                "The Forbidden Romance"

Darkness and light. What would happen if the two of them became one? Here in the realm of the shadow, beings of unknown forms and sizes are everywhere. Here, the weakness the inhabitants can smell weakness and among Death, there are worst things. What means existence to demons means termination to mortals.  In the underworld, like in the world of the living, power is everything. You are strongest not because of your size or your roar but in the moment of opportunity when you strike and defend against those who dared to trod on what was sacred. A demon can only have what is sacred, it matters not what it is, his eyes, the horns, the weapon that is a part of him as much as his dark soul. There is nothing more precious than that. That was the truth of it for Elionist and there were no other truths. How wrong he was.

"Kara, it’s time for school".

"OK, I’m coming mom," said the fifteen-year-old girl as she hurried to get herself ready for the day. It’s the same as usual in the morning, Kara thought, there was nothing special about bleak weather and wet roads. It’s always the same as it had been since she was a child. Her father had left them when she was very young and her mother, in her distress, fed her the story that he died in a car accident and she would never see him again.  nine years later, it would seem that the dead walk the earth as she saw a man with her eyes and a very akin resemblance to her was sitting in the living room talking to her mom and holding her hand. Her mother’s head was down and she seemed to be crying.

"Why are you crying, mommy?"  Kara asked but her mom didn’t raise her head to acknowledge that she had heard her, in face neither did the man.

"Mommy!" Kara tried again but there was still no response from either adult. The man leaned over and placed a kiss on her mother’s forehead and whispered an apology, he was on his knees by this time in front of her mother, still seated in the armchair.

Kara tried in vain to communicate with them, for them acknowledge that she was there but after a while of scream at the top of her lungs, she came to the understanding that they just couldn’t see her or hear her for that matter.

It was an alarming feeling, new and crazy and she didn’t know what to make of it.  The most logical thing was that she was dreaming. Her knowledge extended no farther than that.

I know that I have not been the person that you married and I am so very sorry that I left you so long ago".  The man said, he seemed to be crying too. Was he sad as she was when other children were about to talk about their fathers and she thought that he was dead, had he suffered?

Kara was looking at him directly on his face, she was two inches away from him. She had tried the same thing with her mom a few minutes ago but still, there was nothing. But just as she was about to turn away from them, they looked at each other and to her surprise, something else looked back at her. Who or what it was, knew that she was there and it wasn’t her father that was looking at her either. Those eyes, fierce and cold lurking in the depths of the man that knelt before her mother.

There should be a scream somewhere in the back of her throat, she should back away because apart from the fact that she was invisible, this thing was looking directly at her, unmoving.

"What are you?" Kara asked as she reached out to touch his face.