Sunny: Mona Lisa Darkening

I shrugged away my morbid thoughts and concentrated on the here and now: the full moon riding like a giant beacon of light above us, and my people waiting expectantly for me to draw down its life-extending rays. There was no real science to it. I just opened myself — best way to describe it. Every child of the moon felt that distinct pull when the moon came into its full and ripe roundness. It was like an invisible, tugging rope reaching down to try to open up a door inside of you. I simply stopped resisting and let whatever was being pulled inside of me flip open and become just a conduit… a conduit of lunar light. It shone down on me now like a spotlight, filled me up, filled me to bursting, then overflowed out from me.

Little butterflies of light flittered down from the heavens, swooped into me and spilled out like a cresting tide, washing over my people, darting into them, bowing their backs, lighting them up like flickering candles set aflame. We shone brilliantly for a long spun-out moment in time until that lunar light was swallowed and absorbed into us. Until we no longer glowed and skin became simply skin once more, not incandescent light, incandescent energy.

The last two times I'd done this, the only two times I'd done this, that was it. Over. Finis. Not so this time. This time was different. This time something hazed my vision. Something hazed the moon, actually, because that was what I was looking at.

Like a veil being thrown across its bright surface, a shimmering darkness swept across the moon like spilling ink, blocking out the light like an eclipse, only faster, much faster. It occurred in the blink of an eye, so fast that I almost doubted what I was seeing. Would have doubted it had I not felt it as well — a weight like a descending hand reaching down to cover me. Not that gentle tugging sensation but something much more heavy and forceful.

My people cried out in alarm and I could do nothing to stop it or respond to them as a black power slammed into me, closed like a gripping hand about me… and swallowed me down into a dark and fathomless void.

I didn't lose consciousness, although that might have been kinder. Nope, I had to stay awake and aware throughout the entire experience of… well, I guess, dying. Because what else do you call it when your heart suddenly shudders into echoing silence and no longer beats?

The stillness of sound, the absence of it, was more noticeable to me because I was trapped somewhere inside my own body. I saw, I experienced sensations — the blistering heat, the gray reddening of predawn light — but they came to me filtered, through a thick and muffled layer, as if someone else was using my eyes and in control of my body and I was just along for an unwilling ride.

My taken-over body was lying on the ground. The very hard, very hot scorching ground. Get up! I screamed. But whoever was in charge now ignored me and just reveled for a moment in simply being back. Her thoughts. Her words.

Whoever she was, she was in no hurry to move in case it was all just a dream. I called it more of a nightmare.

She gazed up at the sky, all she allowed me to take inventory of. But it was worthy of note, actually. It was a scarlet, fractured sky, like it had been broken apart and put back together. And the impression wasn't just from the uneven layers of red firmament that transitioned one piece into another abruptly, but the twin suns themselves, shaped like the Chinese y in and yang symbols. As if a giant hand had plucked down a single sun, torn it apart, and cast the broken pieces back into the sky.

The light was abruptly blocked as a man, a mean-looking stranger, stood over us. No one I recognized. I just knew that he wasn't one of my people. The orange prison garb he wore was a really big hint.

Prison garb? I heard that other me wonder. She hadn't recognized the attire.

So he's human, flashed her thought within me, and the momentary alarm that had flared up over that rough and menacing face subsided beneath her smug superiority. Humans were inferior in strength and speed, she thought.

It was that familiar sneer in her voice that rang a bell in me. That made me think: Mona Louisa?

Of course. Who else did you think it was? came the contemptuous answer. Sounding exactly like that blond bitch of a Monère Queen whose essence and light I had sucked down into me.

But you're dead, I thought. Blaec, the High Lord of Hell, had killed her after I had done my unsuccessful best.

And now so are you. Her answer, and the rich, malicious satisfaction she oozed in imparting that news, froze me for a second. It had been my first thought, that I was dead, but still I had hoped for another answer. Hearing the words, feeling her absolute belief, totally flipped me out. I panicked completely. Started thrashing and trying to claw my way out of the thick void that surrounded me. My goal was up, toward the shimmering surface so seemingly far above, glimmering with faint, sparkling light. If I could just reach that surface, I knew that I would somehow be back in control.

Don't count on it, mongrel bitch, thought Mona Louisa smugly. You're weaker than I am now.

Which totally exasperated me. That's what got you killed before — underestimating people. Pay attention to what's happening around you! I told her.

Her attention snapped back on the strange human man as he crouched over her, his shaggy hair greasy and unkempt. "Now aren't you a purty thing," he purred. "I ain't had me a real woman for years, penned up the way I was like an animal. Another man just ain't the same thing as a woman, you know." His eyes, sweeping over me… her… us… glittered hard with lust.

Mona Louisa tried to move then, to sit up. But he stopped her easily with a hand on the shoulder. "No need gettin' up. I want you on your back the first time." His lips curled back in a cruel and eager smile as Mona Louisa raised a hand to push him… and couldn't. She — we — moved slowly, sluggishly. Even more alarmingly, his strength was greater than hers.

He nodded knowingly. "Took me a little while to gain back my strength. Should be a while for you, too. 'Nuff time for me to have my fill of you," he said, and began to open his pants.

"No!" she cried.

No! I screamed inside also, her fear spiraling and echoing through our body. Without her strength, she didn't know what to do, how to stop him from raping her.

"Yes, sirree. Plenty of time to slake some of my thirst on your sweet body. Go ahead," he urged, "fight me. I like it that way better." Flipping up her long dress, he yanked her underwear off with a happy grunt and crawled on top of her. Using his weight to keep her pinned down, he roughly spread her legs open. "The others ran off. And the two other guys here are like you, still weak. No one's gonna stop me. Hell, if I'd known this was what waited for me, I'd a gone willingly to the electric chair years ago."

Both Mona Louisa and I gagged as we felt his hard male organ push against us, probing for entrance as we lay there, exposed, our lower body naked, completely vulnerable to him.

I know how to fight, I screamed. Let me out!

With an abruptness that took me by surprise, she yielded to my demand and I felt myself propelled up that vast syrupy distance to the shimmering surface. With a gasp, I surfaced and found myself once more in control of my body. My hands that had been futilely trying to push him off me abruptly stopped pushing and went instead for his eyes. It was a clumsy attempt, with my limbs moving slow as molasses, but my nails scraped across his face and one nail managed to poke his sensitive eye. He rolled off me with an angry yelp of pain. Then just stared at me in confusion and the beginning of fear.