Face the Demons - Just Not Your Own

A sad man in tattered shoes and a leather jacket two sizes too big eased himself onto the bench beside Tia. She fought back the impulse to glare at the man; instead, she stared straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge him. It was people like him – so visibly distraught and defeated – that brought her the greatest conflict.

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A chime sounded overhead, high and clear over the chatter in the congested train station. A disembodied voice regretted to inform passengers of line B502 outbound to Los Angeles that there would be a fifteen-minute delay. Tia gritted her teeth and wrapped her arms tightly around her bulging carry-on suitcase. Fifteen more minutes? Next to him? Her fingers itched towards the eyepatch buried in the front pouch of the suitcase, but she stilled the movement. It was the first day in years she had gone out into public without the fabric over her left green eye, and she wasn’t going to be spooked into putting it on just yet.

 

“Ma’am?” the sad man croaked. He cleared his throat. “Ma’am, what was that announcement? Something about the train to Las Vegas?”

 

“To L.A.,” Tia replied curtly. She focused on a flashing ad across the room, the lights burning into her eyes.

 

“Oh.” A moment of silence passed, then it seemed he felt compelled to explain. “Glad it’s not Vegas. That’s where I’m headin’.”

 

Tia gave a grunt of acknowledgement.

 

Seeming to take the noise as an invitation, he went on. “Might have a job interview at a casino there. I could be makin’ big bucks in just a few weeks. That’s what I need. Yeah, that’s just what I need. A good-payin’ job and – damn.”

Something hit the ground with a thunk and rolled into her foot.

 

“Uh, sweetheart, can you –?”

 

Blinking spots out of her eyes, Tia reached down and grabbed the thermos. Hot liquid sloshed out of a crack in the lid and landed on her hand. She winced as she passed it back to him, and in that single moment, she met his gaze.

 

His cracked glasses perched on the edge of his pointed nose, his beady eyes widening in surprise as he registered her mismatched eyes. A bald patch illuminated the top of his head, crowned with long stringy hair. He tried to mask his stare with a toothy grin, and as he did so, his demons appeared one by one, masses of indescribable shapes and colors, convulsing and fuming around him.

 

The distorted figure of a bully she called Taunts struck out haphazardly at grey Grief as they flitted around each other. A frail child she knew as Helplessness huddled between them. Hovering behind them all rose jittery Compulsion, desperately trying to grasp the air around it. One by one, those faceless beings turned towards Tia, sneering and crying out as they realized that she saw them.

 

Panic rose in her throat as a faint buzzing entered her head. She tried to focus on the man himself, but his demons surged forward, eager for her attention. Tia flinched instinctively as Helplessness clutched at her like it was drowning.

 

“You got really neat eyes, sweetheart. Green and brown – don’t think I’ve seen that before.”

 

Tia pulled back to the far side of the bench, forcing her gaze away. “Yup.”

 

“Does it run in your family?”

 

She almost laughed. If it had run in her family, maybe her childhood would have been less of a nightmare. Her parents thought her eyes were strange, yes, but they didn’t realize that it changed her vision – that it enabled her to see too much.

 

If it had run in Tia’s family, maybe her parents wouldn’t have ignored her when she told them about the monsters she saw at school. Her second grade teacher was shadowed daily by a scary faceless man that raised its fist and shrieked at her. When it realized Tia could see it, the demon would leer at her and grow more solid, and the teacher would become distracted. Tia named it Abuse, and to this day prayed that once she’d left the teacher’s life, the demon’s power had been diminished somewhat.

 

Tia had understood long ago that she if acknowledged the demons’ existence, they exerted more control over their victim.

 

Helplessness sidled into her line of vision, so she closed her eyes. The darkness was welcoming, but she knew that unless the man left, his demons would still be lurking when she opened them again.

 

Beside her, she felt Helplessness squeeze between her and the man, pressing close against him. She could sense Grief breathing down their necks.

 

“I – I didn’t mean to pry,” he said sadly. “It’s just – I haven’t really talked to anyone for a while, you know? Ma was the only one I got and we took care of each other. I…I made things hard for her sometimes, sure, but she never got mad at me, not even when I went down to the casino and… Well.” He spread his hands in defeat. “Vegas is the only idea I got left.”

 

This wasn’t working. Even with her eyes closed, Tia could feel the demons growing stronger. If she didn’t end this conversation soon, they would begin to overwhelm him. And if he was already broken down, if they got too strong… it had happened only once before, but that was one death too many on her hands.

 

Her eyes flew open and she stood so abruptly she nearly knocked into a woman passing by. The woman glared at her, and the next moment was flanked by Self-Loathing and Suspicion. Tia quickly averted her eyes and focused on the man.

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“I’m sorry about your mother,” Tia said as sincerely as she could. “I hope Vegas is what you need it to be.”

 

The man began to utter his thanks, but Tia was already moving, gripping her suitcase close as she propelled herself past travelers and earning angry glances. She kept her eyes trained on the sign for the restroom, trying not to excite the demons that were slowly manifesting around her.

 

She burst into the bathroom, bracing herself for more strange looks. Mercifully, it was empty. Tia let her suitcase clatter to the floor and she dropped to her knees, frantically digging for that damn eye patch. The odd-eyed ophthalmologist had “prescribed” it to her when she was ten, and it had always blocked the demons. Her fingers found the worn fabric and she stood, going to check the mirror as she put it on–

 

Something was staring back at her.

 

She froze, eyepatch clutched in her hand, staring at the reflection that stood behind her. It had more form than any other demon she’d seen, and she had long suspected it was because of how familiar she was with it. At a glance, it looked like Tia, except its face was too animated, its body almost stark white, and the eyes a piercing, unforgiving green.

 

Tia’s only demon met her gaze in the mirror. She thought that perhaps the demon looked disapproving, or regretful. Whatever it felt, Tia didn’t care.

 

“Screw you, Knowledge,” Tia hissed at her demon, before securing the eyepatch over her head.

 

She blinked rapidly to clear the vision in her right eye, and Knowledge was gone. Letting out a pent-up breath, Tia slouched against the wall, rubbing her eye as she resigned herself to wait in the bathroom until the train arrived to take her to Los Angeles.

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