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It’s dark I can’t breathe I can’t see

Blind, I exist in a void, a tightly co for someone to crank ulp air

Though I no longer have a mouth, somehow I screah; those ways in which she interacted with the physical world

I knohere Barrons keeps his car keys and that the mirror in the study on the first floor of the bookstore is the booby-trapped passage to his underground lair I kno to navigate it; I once helped her gain entry I know exactly how she takes her coffee, applies her reets and speaks with her adopted mother, her false father I understand every nuance of what to say and do to pass myself off as Barrons’s Rainbow Girl

Her body e Navigating the icy terrain is different but not difficult The cold, however, is unpleasant and makes me shiver I share her distaste for inclelide across the wintry, windy abbey grounds,of muscle and bone with each step I’d like to sink within, pry open Mac’s box and murder her after a splendid afternoon of tea and torture for taking this vessel so for granted that she abused, neglected, and risked it at every turn The vessel that was meant to be h She should have done better Because of her frailties, I embark on life handicapped

The first of looift of power he was given The power I would strip froency

When he appears from behind the rubble of charred, ice-dusted stone, I’m struck by the keen desire to possess his body The undeserving prick’s vessel is superior to ht I, like my former incarnation--the corporeal copy of the Sinsar Dubh that has since crumbled to dust on a slab--possess another’s skin via physical contact? Might I duht Christian be capable of containing the enor to the point of uselessness?

The body I have is certain yet flawed

Christian’s is not flawed yet not certain

MacKayla would call it the old bird-in-the-hand or bird-in-the-bush adage

I giggle at the thought of MacKayla She has neither birds nor bushes She’s in Hell and I put her there Through desire, lust, greed, and supre in the cold breeze "Mac?"

"Nervous laugh I always think I’ll get used to how you look" He accepts the excuse, too consu to be focused on the world And ouldn’t he die tonight? He believes the world populated by obvious erous of us are the least obvious He relies on his skill as a lie detector, reading and judging the conflicting emotions of others