June 6th, 2016: Adam Baudin
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts, we make our world.
Buddha
“Get her over here.” Henri directed everyone over to a table in the back room where he did his healing work. Nate cleared the space of any clutter as I set Violet on the stiff cushioned top of the massage table.
She had been out cold the whole ride back from the cemetery and hadn’t stirred once. We had checked her pulse several times and it was strong, but she had yet to make a sound.
“I just can’t get over your face.” Nate’s mouth was screwed up to one side as he stared at me.
“The face bothers you, but this doesn’t?” I held my arms up for Nate to get a good look at the scorched flesh pulsating with a smoldering orange glow.
“That’s just nauseating.” Nate turned his attention away.
Henri had left the room and returned with a bowl of herbs and resins that he lit ablaze and trailed under Violet’s nose.
She jerked, and when she did, the whole room jerked with her.
Henri toppled over the table, Nate fell backward and smacked his head against the wall, and I lunged forward towards Violet’s head.
“Jesus Christ, what the fuuuuck?” Nate cursed loudly, rubbing at the knot that was forming on the back of his head.
Henri was trying to gather the embers from the burning coal that had been in the bowl as he responded, “You need to be a bit less blasphemous in this situation.”
I hadn’t realized that my hands were on the sides of Violet’s face. I was standing above her and must have caught myself before I smothered her.
My hands were on—her— face.
They were on her face, yet her skin didn’t scald under my touch.
That third eye stared up at me, but Violet’s original eyes were still closed.
“Is she okay?” Henri brought the bowl back over near her face. Nate braced himself in the corner and waited for another jolt.
“She’s fine,” I responded absentmindedly.
Henri brought the incense to her nose again, but this time the room didn’t just move; it changed completely.
Blood began running down the walls as the robin’s egg blue of the room faded into a muddy mess of sticky wet wallpaper.
Snakes appeared all over the floor and slithered in and out of the table and between our legs.
Nate had jumped up on a waiting chair and was trying to pull his sneakers as far away from the reptiles as possible.
The table that Violet was laying on morphed into a giant spider, covered in wiry black hair.
She sat straight up, all three eyes open as her hair rippled around her in slow motion.
“Please, make her stop!” Nate yelped as a giant boa constrictor began winding itself around the leg of his chair.
“Violet.” I began, unsure of how to approach her. This woman definitely had some unresolved anger issues.
“Violet.” I lowered my voice a little and came around the side of the—spider—so she could better see me, “I haven’t the slightest idea how any of this is happening, but could you possibly…not. Nate is about to have a heart attack.” I finally was in a position where I could see the whole of her face, but I didn’t expect what I saw.
Where emerald green eyes had once been, there were now milky white spheres; the iris behind the cataract indistinguishable under the cloudy lens.
She was blind. That fog had taken her sight from her but left her with an extra eye.
“So—much—madness.” Violet squished her eyes shut and balled her fists up at her side. The room began to shake again as the ground beneath the giant spider split open and the snakes coiled in fear as their lengthy bodies plummeted to the lava bubbling below.
“Violet! Enough!! I don’t know what you’re doing or why, but this needs to stop!” I hopped to the side as the chunk of floor I had been standing on fell away and hissed when it connected with the fire below.
Nate’s chair was teetering on the edge of the cavern, but Henri had managed to scramble up on a bookshelf.
“Violet!” I raised my voice, hoping that it would snap her out of this hell she was creating.
The walls had completely crumbled away now and we were sitting bare on the streets of New Orleans with a burning volcano below us.
“Adam, if you don’t make her stop, someone else will,” Henri yelled out over the roaring of the wind that had picked up around us like a cyclone.
Someone had to be seeing this. The police would be here soon and they would rather shoot the strange girl that was creating a firestorm in the middle of our neighborhood than try to talk her down from the ledge she was on.
“Enough!” I roared, heated from her blatant disregard to my pleading with her. I tasted the sparks spewing from my mouth as new teeth split from my gums. I felt the forge burning deep within my belly as I lurched forward and snatched Violet off her spider.
I kicked the arachnid into the fiery cavern, but not before it knocked Nate out of harm’s way and into the darkened street. I reached out and shoved the bookshelf that Henri was perched atop and it shattered against the black top, my brother skittering across the street as he hit the pavement.
Violet ripped her arms from my grip and thrust them out as the foundation that was still standing peeled back to form a fortress around us.
“We’re all going to burn.” She hissed, her pale lips curling back from her teeth. The third eye winked at me before a bright purple light erupted from it and slung me across pillars of swaying earth that were sunk deep into the molten pit.
“Violet. Listen to me; I don’t know what is going on any more than you do, but you have to stop. You’re drawing the wrong kind of attention. If people see this, the cops will come for you…they’ll kill you.” I pleaded with her as she stood on her toes atop a thin section of the floor.
“They’d kill us anyway.” Her voice echoed around me as she shot up in the air and came straight down on top of my shoulders. We teetered on the edge of the cavern before plummeting down towards the lava below.
