"Empty" by Kai Delmas

What a strange twist of fate.

I often thought about what our reunion would be like when I was young. Before the darkness. I never imagined it to be like this.

Her on my table. Pale. Cold. Unmoving.

Me with a scalpel in hand and the darkness rising in my throat. Hungry.

If I could still feel, I wonder what might be going through me at the sight of her after so many years. What would a normal person feel?

Anger? She left me. Anger seems a reasonable response.

Sadness? She was my mother after all.

Or indifference?

I’ve managed without her for all these years. She was gone before and she’s gone now. Nothing has changed.

But it’s about to.

The demon I carry in the emptiness that is my soul slithers across my tongue, coats my teeth and squirms to free itself from my shut lips.

It’s time. It can’t wait any longer.

My scalpel slides into her neck and slips down her torso in a long red line. I cut. Then peel muscle and skin aside, exposing her ribcage.

My work is methodical, precise. She may have been my mother, but at this moment it makes no difference. A body is a body.

Bones crunch and crack, the rib cutter doing its work, laying bare the organs I seek.

Darkness thickens in my mouth, threatening to spill out or block my airways as it bloats. Hungry. Impatient.

First, I remove the liver. I lift it with both hands and I finally let the demon out.

It coils around her dead flesh like inky tendrils in one moment and a cloud of black smoke in the next. It consumes all there is—meat, fluids, and the mistakes of her past that she had locked away.

We have a deal. It gets to eat, and I get to feel again.

But maybe this time is different. It’s my mother after all.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

The demon doesn’t care.

It undulates in the air, taunting me. It knows I need this as much as it needs me.
Without feelings, what am I?

I reach out and let the darkness return. And with it, it brings my mother’s memories and emotions.

I see my father. At a bar. A drunken night of fun. Something I wouldn’t care to see, but caring is something I no longer do.

Except for now.

Now I feel what my mother felt. Stupidity. A mistake. Something she would have undone if she could have.

The vision ends and the darkness swirls around me like the fresh memories within.

It’s hungry. Waiting for its next meal.

But I’m seething, grinding my teeth.

I’m a mistake.

The truth I always feared has been revealed. She didn’t want me. Didn’t love me. She left and turned me into what I am today. An empty vessel for darkness. Nothing else.

The emotions fade as they always do, and I am left aching for more. As is the darkness.

Next are the kidneys, filled with all the pressures she felt, the things that became too much for her to handle. I already know what’s coming.

I see myself screaming. I’m a baby. A little girl. A loud kid that causes chaos and never rests. Something she could never get a grip on.

A part of me wants to stop. I don’t need these emotions. Anyone but hers.

But the demon needs her insides. And we have a deal, so I keep cutting.

Next are the lungs, black and brown. Cause of death.

They hold her regrets. Her first pack of cigarettes and me, I assume.

The darkness feasts and I prepare myself.

I see our house through a car window. It’s raining. Her hand moves to the door. Stops. She stares at the house and turns on the ignition. She looks back in the rearview mirror as she drives away.

Breath catches in my throat. Her regret is mine in this very moment. I suck in big gulps of air. What have I done? What did she do? Why? Why did she leave me?

My breathing doesn’t steady. I wait for her emotions to leave me, but something is different. There’s a crack inside of me where a wall stands tall and strong.

I always thought I was empty, but maybe there’s more inside of me than I ever knew.

The dark cloud shifts impatiently. It’s waiting for its little morsels of flesh.

Without precision or care, I cut out the bits and pieces that are too insignificant to hold any emotions: gallbladder, spleen, pancreas. They don’t matter.

As the darkness snatches them up, I go for the heart. Carefully, I slice through the aorta and free this big muscle of hers from her now empty chamber.

I hesitate. But only for a moment.

Then I offer her heart to the darkness. It wraps around, devouring all.

My chest tightens and I don’t know what to expect, what to feel. Emotions that had lain dormant for so long tingle inside of me.

I’m uncertain. I’m hopeful. I’m angry. I’m afraid.

The darkness finished its meal; it creeps up my arms and hovers before my eyes.

I see myself in the distance. Across the street. In a cafe. On a bench. Through all ages of my life.

And I feel sorrow. Pain. Regret. Fear.

And love.

My mother loved me.

She left me, but she never stopped loving me.

The darkness floats above me and I open my mouth out of habit. It’s time for it to return. It’s had its fill.

But it doesn’t come.

I look down at my mother’s corpse as tears sting my eyes. The wall I had built to protect myself is crumbling to pieces.

I blink up at the demon I carried within me for so long and watch it dissipate. There’s no room for it inside of me anymore.

I’m no longer empty.

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Kai Delmas loves creating worlds and magic systems. His fiction can be found in Zooscape, Martian, Crepuscular, and several Shacklebound anthologies. His debut drabble collection, "Darkness Rises, Hope Remains," was published by Shacklebound Books. You can support him at: patreon.com/kaidelmas and find him on Twitter @KaiDelmas or Bluesky @kaidelmas.bsky.social

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