Twelve Hours to the End

2 PM

Anne has always had a complicated relationship with mirrors.

And her face. And her body. And her entire self, actually. The puberty blockers have lessened her dysphoria, but they did not increase her self-esteem. For the longest time, Anne felt nothing but vague disgust at her general existence. She did not like who she was and didn’t know how to fix that, so she just… completely avoided anything that would force her to confront that.

Mind you, that specific thing is no longer a problem. Anne likes who she’s become. She likes the person she’s growing into. As for her body- well, does she need to have an opinion on it at all? It’s functional, and that’s all she needs of it. 

Anne steps into the bathroom, eyes on the ground. As she washes her hands, she stares very pointedly at the sink. She’s an expert at dodging her own reflection by now.

Anne likes who she’s become. She’s neutral to her body, even.

But she still dislikes mirrors.

5 PM 

Marcy bleeds green.

Something about nanomachines or whatever. It doesn’t really matter. The fact is that she carries a part of Amphibia right into her veins. 

Anne does not. Her blood is red. She knows it from scrapping her knees. She knows it from papercuts. She knows it from a hundred tiny accidents from her everyday life.

But…

Sometimes, when she’s chopping vegetables, when the weight of a knife is tangible under her palm, Anne wonders…

If she were

To cut

Deep enough

What would she see?

This nameless god told her this body was a back-up. What does this mean, exactly? Is she an exact copy? (She’s not. Her mole is on the wrong side. She saw it, the first- the last- that one time with the fucking mirror mirror mirror mirror ) Is she in a human body at all? Or is she just in a vessel that mimics their appearance, and nothing else? If she slices open her belly- will guts spill out? If she snaps her arm in half- will she see the marrow? Or is she hollow, empty- hollow as a bird’s bones, empty as a casket?

Anne has a heart. Anne has a heart beat, if nothing else. But sometimes, sometimes, when Anne stands idle for too long, it feels like this heart is pumping something other than blood through her. Like maggots. Like worms. Something that moves and wiggles and lives. Her body is a house and someone lives in there, her body is a house and Anne has a blade and is this close to evicting the motherfucker-

She tightens her grip on the knife, and focuses on chopping the onions.

8 PM

Anne’s mother is a phenomenal cook.

Granted, every kid believes their parents make the best mc&cheese in America, but Anne is different in that she is actually right. Her mom is an amazing cook. There’s a reason why the Thai Go is so famed. Oum Boonchuy is a master of spices and sauces, and she’s only gotten better ever since she’s accepted to add bugs to some of her recipe at Anne’s shy request.

Anne wishes she could stomach more of it.

“You can eat more, you know.” Her father eggs her on. “You’re a growing girl. We won’t judge.”

But Anne shakes her head. “It’s alright, dad. I ate enough, don’t worry.”

Anne isn’t… hungry. In general, she means. She eats more out of habit than of genuine need. And it takes so little, for her to feel full- she wants to eat more, to taste more, to savor more! But her body plainly does not have the capacity to fit much food inside.

At first, Anne had thought it was a habit she’d picked up from Amphibia. When she first lived with the Plantars, she didn’t eat much either- through more out of disgust than need. Maybe her metabolism had adapted to that. Sasha had theorized that some of her nerves might have simply been shunted- which would explain why Anne rarely, if ever, feels hunger anymore.

Either of these explanations could work, honestly. It doesn’t seem to be impacting her health, so Anne hasn’t bothered to bring it up to any doctor yet. It’s nothing. Just a detail, really.

… But.

Sometimes, it’s… she…

A while back, Marcy had told Anne that the word parasite comes from Ancient Greek, para sitos, meaning the one who eats beside you, the one who eats at your table.

There is something. Inside of her. A sleeping fox lodged inside her belly. A long serpent forming her intestines. There is something that eats besides her, that eats in her place, something still and patient and

(holy?)

11 PM

Sasha doesn’t sleep much. 

She never said it outright (not to Anne, at least,) but it’s an open secret either way. The blonde shows up to school with deep bags under her eyes more often than not. She’s heard Mrs Waybright whispering to her parents in another room, I don’t know how to help her through this I don’t know what to do.

And Sasha calls, every night.

“ Hey, Boonchuy! ” Sasha’s voice is bright and happy and so incredibly fake. “ Sorry, did I wake you up? ”

She did, one time. Sasha had promptly apologized and hung up. She’s changed, after Amphibia. She doesn’t impose her needs anymore. If Anne asked her to back off, she would.

As it stands, though, Anne was not, in fact, sleeping. “Nah. What’s up, dude?”

Sasha starts going off on obscure cheerleader drama. Anne responds with questions, quips, and bursts of laughter. The two of them will keep going for hours, until Sasha finally gives in and conks out. They always do. 

Because, here is another secret that everyone knows:

Anne doesn’t sleep much either.

For different reasons, mind you. She assumes Sasha’s insomnia is caused by nightmares. Marcy has a lot of them as well, though she only speaks of them in hushed whispers ( it’s rude to speak of someone who is listening, Anne. ) Anne doesn’t have this issue at all.

But when she lays down, when she closes her eyes 

There is 

Light 

Behind her eyelids.

She doesn’t know how to escape from that. She can close the curtains, turn off the lights, jam her door shut. But she can’t hide from a ghost that haunts the inside of her body.

The light plagues her dreams, too. Pure, omnipresent light, so intense it feels like it could crush her, so overwhelming it feels like it could corrupt her. God is a jaw closed around her like a vice, and on the nights where Anne dreams of her death, she knows that light devours every crumb of her.

 2 AM

At last, Sasha leaves the call, Morpheus taking her in his arms, and Anne is alone. She gets up and tiptoes her way to the bathroom. She needs a drink, after speaking for so long. Then, she’ll attempt to sleep as well.

She doesn’t bother turning on the lights. The Moon seeping through the window is more than enough. Besides, she knows the way by heart by now. She pats her way to the sink, feel the curve all the way to the tap. She turns it on, feels the water with her fingers-

FUCK!!

Anne quickly pulls her fingers away from the boiling water. Who the fuck set it to be this hot. This is ridiculous. This hurt. Arrrgh. Anne stumbles backward muttering a string of curses that would get her mouth washed with soap if she was heard. Her back hits the wall. Rises her hand to blow on the burn and-

Sees

The

Mirror.

It’s dark in the bathroom. There’s a reason why Anne hadn’t switched on the lights. It’s dark in the bathroom, but not dark enough. She can still see it; the outline of this face. The shine of these eyes.

This face. This face. This face. This fucking face. The face that used to belong to a girl named Anne Boonchuy. The face of the girl Anne blatantly stole the life of.

Or maybe she didn’t. Or maybe she is Anne Boonchuy, and it is her face, and that doesn’t make it better because that means instead of being a thief she’s a girl who was shoved in a half-assed body. If that face is hers, then it’s wrong. If that body is hers, then it’s fucked. Because Anne used to be right-handed and she used to have a mole beneath the left ear and now it’s all reversed it’s all swapped wrong wrong uncanny monstrous-

Anne hears the mirror shatter first. She only registers afterwards that it’s her own fist that broke it.

For a few seconds, Anne stares at her hand. It’s bleeding. She can feel it run through her knuckles. It hurts, but the pain is dim. Distant. Like her earlier burn. This body is not hers, so this pain is not hers. That makes sense. That makes sense.

Slowly, Anne picks up one of the mirror shards. It feels cold. It feels sharp. If she holds onto it too tightly, she’ll cut her fingers.

Anne drives the shard right into her belly.

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts, but not as much as dying. It hurts, but she is not dying. That fact hits her like a brick. She is not dying. This cannot kill her. She’s sure. She’s certain. This cannot kill her. She cannot be killed.

Anne pulls the shard off. Blood splatters on the wall. She’s hurting. She’s in extasy. She just did something terrible. She just did something glorious. She drops the shard into the sink, looks down at her stomach, and

From

This

Little hole

She sees light seeping through.

The sight sends a thrill down her spine that cannot be put into words. Determination fills her whole being. Something has been put into motion, and she has to carry it to its end. She has to. It’s her duty.

Not here, though. The shard is not sharp enough. It will not do. Anne makes her way to the kitchen. Slowly. These muscles scream at her to stop moving, to stop bleeding. She doesn’t care. She smudges red on every wall as she leans against them for support, until she finally reaches the knife cabinet.

She takes her time picking the knife. She needs a big one. Her body is bigger and tougher than your average shrimp. She wants a pretty one, too. It’s her body she’ll be opening. It deserves a bit more dignity than a 3$ Walmart knife.

Finally, she finds the appropriate blade. It sinks into her flesh with minimum resistance. She cuts vertically, like she’s been taught to empty fish. More light shines through. She needs it out. She needs it out. She needs to grab its neck and wring it out. She plunges her bare hands into the wound, taking fistful of her intestines to unravel them out. Anne pulls, and pulls, and pulls, pulls her guts out, pulls that light out, feels the blood and the soft flesh beneath her hands, until finally, her fingers close around something solid.

It’s small. It’s smooth. And it is very much not an organ.

It’s a stone.

Anne squints her eyes to see past it’s blinding glow.

It’s a single, red, gem.

“You cheating little fuck.” She hisses between her teeth. She never accepted divinity. She gave them a tentative maybe later. She did not consent to this, she did not consent to hosting calamities inside of her, she will pry the broken pieces of god outside of her if it’s the last thing she ever does.

Anne drops the gem on the table, next to her intestines. Heart and Wit. Heart and Wit. Heart is obvious. As of Wit- she guesses it’s behind one of her eyes. They have to be the source of this terrible light.

Neither of them are ideals. She needs to see to locate the gems,. And her heart, the actual organ, is safely hidden inside her ribcage. If she pulls an organ out, she can always put it back together, but if she breaks her bones? No, no, she can’t just smash her ribs to pieces and reach inside of her. She needs to be smarter than that.

Anne glances down at herself. If she pulls the rest of her viscera out, she could sneak a hand from under the ribcage to grab the second gem. It won’t be easy, but she can do it.

So Anne sets off to do just that. She widens the cut, from navel to collarbone- she needs to see the gem to grab it. Then she starts piling things on the table again. First her stomach, that fragile little thing. It’s tricky to get it out. She ate not so long ago. She doesn’t want to burn the furniture. Then the liver. It feels slimey and flat. It fascinating, in away. To see every lump of meat she’s made of. Humans really don’t amount to much, do they? How could she have ever doubted she was one? It’s not that hard to make one.

At this point, she has enough space to pass a hand through her ribcage, so she does just that. It’s still pretty hard to navigate, though. Her lungs take so much volume. She can see her heart from above, but poking around is a pain. She can’t seem to get a good angle. Where is the gem? She can see the light. She knows it’s here. Where is the gem? She needs it out. She needs it out. Her hands are trembling from this frenzied need, from the fever of this divine disease she has yet to pull out. Where is it? Where is it?

The need is so profound, she doesn’t notice when the kitchen lights are turned on. She only rises her head when her mother screams.

Anne flinches under her mother’s gaze. Suddenly, the full weight of her action dawns on her. Here she is, body gaping open, a hand around her heart and another by the pile of meat on the table. Here she is, a thing of horror, a walking corpse that has not been allowed to die.

Her mother is on the verge of tears. Anne wants to comfort her. She wants to hug her. To hold her with those bloodstained hands and promise it’s fine, she’ll fix this, it’ll be okay, she won’t do it ever again please forgive me. 

But when Anne moves to do that, she realizes that she can’t. She’d rather die than have this godly parasite encroach on her a second longer. And, Anne knows, dying is no longer an option for her.

“Mom,” she calls, voice heavy and desperate. Can her mother hear? Can her mother hear how important this is to her? How much she need to reclaim her body as hers and hers alone? 

“Mom, please.” Anne pulls her hand out of her chest. She lays it on her exposed sternum. “I can’t reach it. This light. I need to get it off but I can’t reach it. Please. ”

There is light under her eyelids and a gem surely lodged behind her eyes, but Anne hopes, she prays, that her mother can tell the depth of her plea.

“Please, mom. Help me.”