Shatter

Chapter 12: Edward

It was so cold.
The sharp, windy grey air cut my skin as if it were winter.
As if it were always winter. 

Sometimes I doubted that monsters even lived here. It wasn't exciting: simply some black and white, colourless, endless space. Wouldn't it be more interesting to taunt young children? To scare the hell out of them?

Sometimes my vision glitched. It was getting stranger every time it did... I didn't understand the reason my vision would glitch like an old television screen―absolutely no idea―I wish I knew, in fact.

Sometimes I wondered why this was happening. I had to think back to the past. 
Well, then again, I always did. The past was my life. The future is not. I clung onto my past, and did not care about the future. What was the point, anyway, was what I asked myself. 
I left the orphanage like a fool―just because I was scared. Scared of the man in the mirror. Or, in other words, my fear. 

It was irritating to think that the man in the mirror was only a fear. To me that seemed like such a little thing... the man in the mirror was much more of a fear―a peculiar, frightening creature that haunted my thoughts day and night―or maybe he was just all of those, combined.

He was the whole reason I left the orphanage. 

Oh, that foolish me... I wished that part of me never existed. I remembered every day I had fun with the other orphans... oh, I should've been more grateful. It wasn't too boring there... much better than this―The Other Side. 

Sometimes I thought that one day, Carmen might betray me. Everyone could be unpredictable in their own ways... what if Carmen was never really my friend? What if....

I suddenly felt a dart of pain in my arm, as if there was a knife cutting into my flesh. 

I looked down. 

No, it wasn't a knife.

It was a Fear. 

I gasped in alarm, and jumped back, startled. 

"Hello," it said, innocently. "Sorry to startle you..." It looked down at—something that seemed like feet? "I'm just lonely over here. I want to be good, not bad." 

I wanted to trust it, oh, I did, but it required trust. And the Fear could break the trust ever so easily just with a single sentence. I tried to back away. 

"I don't know why I'm here..." the Fear continued, "I got here a couple of days ago. Tell me what this place is!" Its wail rang out in the emptiness, echoing against an invisible surface. 

"It's The Other Side," I said, cautiously, accepting that it could leap out at me at any moment. "You are a Fear. You are here because people are afraid of you." I took a few steps back. "People are afraid of you."

"But I don't know why..." the Fear said sadly. 

I slowly backed away as the Fear looked like it was going to cry. "I want to go back," it whispered, and in that moment I thought I saw a little boy with a pleading face, as if it were stuck here and couldn't get out. "No one's afraid of me!" 

I bumped into something. I turned around. 

I realized, suddenly, Carmen wasn't here. 

Carmen?

Where was she?

I sighed. "Look, I don't know why you're here," I said gently to the Fear. "But you must be here for a reason. A good one." 

The Fear waddled towards me. "Can you help me get out?" 

No, no, Luna, you're being too nice. Shut up and move on away from this thing, I thought. "I don't know... I'm sorry—I just have other things to do." 

"I can help!" the Fear chirped eagerly. "What do you need? In return for what you do for me, can you take me back to earth?" 

"I'm not an angel," I whispered, "I don't know. I don't know." 

"I'll help anyways," the Fear said, though its face drooped a little. "My name is... wait... I... don't really remember... I think my name is Edward." 

"Well," I said with a sharp intake of breath, "Hello Edward."

I guess there was no looking back now. 

Idiot! I shouted at myself in my head, You idiot. Have you not learned that betrayal is the easiest thing to do? Luna, you'll never change....

"So," Edward said, jerking me out of my thoughts, "What do you need help with?"

"Two things," I replied. "First of all, I need to find my friend—Carmen. Second of all, I need to destroy The Other Side."