Imaginary Friend

AN: This is from the Phantom's point of view, if you didn't realize. ^_^ Enjoy!





I don't know who I am.

I don't know what I am.

All I know, is that my very first breath occurred the exact same instant that Jacob took his. A great big wail as he was born from his mother's body, his pink little limbs covered in unknown stains, bald, and no teeth.

And I hated him.

I hated him with every fiber of myself.

Which didn't make sense.

I came into being as he came into the world. I had no knowledge of myself, of anything. Only him. From that moment, I was somehow tethered to him. If I were to walk away more than a couple of feet, everything grew shapeless, as if the landscape were fading to a blank white canvas. And that canvas was terrifying. I don't know why. But on numerous occasions I ventured out into it, overcome with detestation for that small bundle of crying screaming baby. Each time, every further away step I took had me going deeper into that suffocation whiteness. Like, if I went far enough, I'd dissolve into that nothingness. Become nothing.

Now when I say walk, I don't really mean it. For my movement flows like a river. I move my legs but they are not what propels me. I drift, slide, float when I need to move. Or, I merely need to think of where I want to go, and I am moving there. Also, if Jacob moves, and I don't actively fight it, I will be pulled along with him.

And there's really no need for me to leave his side anyway. Nothing in my existence is real. Well, it's real, but not to me. I can't touch anything. It's as if it's all covered with a thin covering, a film. Blocking me from feeling. Everything is smooth. If I were to touch an animal, maybe try to pet a cat, I would not feel the fur. Nor would my touch affect that cat. I have no control on anything.

I am a non-person. I am not even that. I am a nothing. Forced by some unseen force to be with this random boy for his whole life.

There's some part of me that feels like there was a life before this. And I believe in the very depth of me that I was a very bad person in my former existence. In the beginning, during Jacob's youth, my thoughts were dark and confusing. Making me feel nothing but rage and wrath at everything. It went on like that for a long time. Everything was bad, everything made me ache to hurt, to destroy, to kill.

Only because of Jacob was I able to come out of that darkness. It happened suddenly. One day, he was playing, wandering far from his distracted mother. I followed like a dog, wanting to wring his neck. Then, he stumbled, tripping over some fallen branch or something, and it resulted in him tumbling down a rather steep hill, right onto a single-lane road running around the outside of the park. Coincidently, a few teenagers out for a joy-ride were driving by, not paying attention of course. Jacob lay sprawled on the road, dazed from the fall and not aware of the car. It hadn't even been going fast, but it would have surely hit him.

In sick fascination, I watched it get closer, a deep part of me wanting to see him splattered across the pavement. But, moments before impact, I found myself running, hurtling towards him, and I grabbed him around the middle of his childish waist, bringing the both of us off the road and rolling to the side, into the grass.

He lay more confused beside me, and I pushed him from me as if I were burned.

I had touched him. Felt his skin and pulse and warmth and hair. All of it making me shiver from the feel of it. I'd blacked out. When I awoke next, we were in his mother's car, and he was in the car seat, talking excitedly about how an angel saved him, had taken him out of harm's way, to his mother. Who was listening and not really listening. Only nodding, relieved Jacob was alright, but not believing him.

I was seated next to the boy, sitting comfortably and confused and then ecstatic. I had touched him. Felt him. I wanted to do it again, but fear kept me away. Fear of it not happening again. So I kept my hands to myself.

For years.

Then, something changed.

Growing with him. As he aged from baby to toddler to child to teenager to finally adult. I was there. I was his shadow, his guardian angel, his negative. I don't know. But, my hatred turned to love at some point. The demons and hatred in my head and my heart changed without my knowing. It might have been from watching him sleep as a baby, that angelic face so content and innocent. Maybe seeing him learning to walk, a great big grin on his clumsy lips. Or watching him run in the sunshine as he played with his friends after school, the sun making him look like some divine being. Perhaps as a teenager, watching him struggle with his sexuality and eventually giving in as he stroked himself to completion with a men's bodybuilding magazine he'd bought in denial.

Watching him lose his virginity to some boy he'd met in college, and the resulting tears of their break-up. Wanting to comfort, but unable to.

Maybe it was when he'd grown up and moved out. All alone and scared of starting his new life after college. In his own apartment.

One night, I couldn't stop myself. He was jerking off, elegant fingers wrapped around himself and other hand fisted in the sheets. His breath came quick and short, cheeks flushed prettily. Not that Jacob's especially feminine or anything like that, but at that moment, he always looked so gorgeous to me.

Unable to keep my hands to myself any longer, I approached his bedside, all but shaking as I reached for his active hand, layering my own fingers around his. There was a gasp, a jerked surprise and wide eyes staring down in confused fright.

But, I just stroked him, even as he tried to get away, I held him in my palm. He was hot and thick and throbbing against me, his fear not doing anything to hinder his arousal.

After he came, I was terrified. I had touched him. I had touched him. It had been almost 20 years since I'd touched him, and it had felt good. And for the first time in my entire solitary existence, I was aroused. I could look down and see myself engorged, excited, hard. And at first, I didn't even understand, because I had never had a penis before. My body was normal, except I had no genitals.

But touching Jacob had made me suddenly able to pleasure myself, and in my excitement, I had run off into that white abyss. Almost fleeing in combined embarrassment and regret and quickly pained lust. Just before I felt myself about to drift in that nothingness, I gripped myself, falling to my knees from the feel and coming almost immediately.

I let myself stay in that abyss until I felt like I was being pulled apart, then I made myself trudge back to where Jacob was. His apartment. It was now days later. And Jacob looked...odd. He had shadows under his eyes. And when his phone rang, he jumped almost ten feet in the air. Listening to his conversation, I realized I had done more harm than good. He was scared, afraid he had hallucinated. My action had made him question his own sanity.

I had made him afraid.

But...a month or so later, when he was touching himself again, I came to his side and wrapped my fingers around the length of him, helpless to resist the siren call of his warm skin. Again, after his release, I ran to the whiteness and took care of myself. I knew it was selfish. But I was drunk of the feel of him, and from then on, I didn't even wait for his own lust to make him touch himself. I came to him and worshiped him.

He was the light, the beacon, the whole meaning for my existence, of that I knew. The only way I could properly show my love for him, was to bring him release. Fingers around him, fingers in him, fingers loving him. I knew he grew used to it. I knew he regarded it with scorn and distaste. But it was the only way I could show myself. He'd never have accepted me any other way.

Or so I thought.

The last night I came to him as hands, I stayed behind, for once, desiring nothing more than to watch him as I came, but, then I saw him crying. I saw him curl onto his side and sob as he tried to find sleep. It was then that I vowed to never touch him again. I never wanted to harm him in any way, and this was hurting him. I was hurting him.

So, for two weeks, I stayed away, just far enough in the abyss that I could see him, but far away enough that I could no longer hear him. It was torture. He was my life. The only life I ever knew. And I was breaking him. I was nothing more than a creature because of that. Not worthy of him. Never again, I vowed, never again would I touch him.

But then he brought home some vulgar brown-haired boy. Some writhing scratching beast, screaming obscenities and heaving against Jacob like a wanton whore. I couldn't stand it. When that little slut started nosing down my Jacob's abdomen, I lost it. A righteous rage welled up inside of me, and my body started humming, throbbing with anger, and I approached that crude boy, my fingers hooking around his throat and choking him before I even realized that I was touching him too. Though, unlike my Jacob, I couldn't feel skin. Only a hard surface, filmed like everything else besides Jacob. Yet, I was touching him and moving it, affecting it, altering it like I couldn't alter anything else.

His throat was being crushed beneath my grip, and then, even as I yanked him off of Jacob's prone increasingly-agitated form, I couldn't stop myself to wonder why I could move him. Even as I found the strength to throw his struggling body into the far wall. Then I marched to the door, yanked it open, watched the offending male flee in fright, then I turned to my love.

He was huddling around himself, terrified. Of me? I didn't know. But I tried to make it better, tried to hold him, forgoing my vow to keep away as his tears made me ache inside. But he shoved me away.

Then, with more passion than I thought possible, he confessed to me his deepest wishes. How he wanted me with him, thought he didn't even know me. How he needed me by him, not leaving him anymore, how he loved being touched by me. It was music to my ears.

I couldn't stop myself as I shoved him to the bed and pressed my lips to his. A kiss. The first. The best. My whole life centered on that one point of contact and I felt my own skin tingle and something else. Something made me feel more...substantial.

I don't even know how, but I spoke, I breathed, I let out a sound that was his name. And his reaction was pure pleasure.

Next, his fingers explored me, every touch making me more aware of new spaces on me that felt good. My shoulders, my arms, my back, everything below my waist. It was all hot and tingling and tight. I made my way down his body, taking his length into my mouth and making love to it like I had my hands. But before I could bring him completion, he pulled me up, begging me, begging me to make love to him.

How could I resist?

I prepared him and slide myself inside, almost overwhelmed at what I was feeling. So much more than my own hands could bring me. And all I could do was thrust into him, almost trying to make myself a part of him. And I did. I released myself into him, possessively. He was mine now. No one would ever touch him again.

But, even as we lay together, I knew I was selfish. For, what could I ever offer him? I wasn't a real person. I was his shadow, nothing more. And I wasn't even sure of that. I knew nothing of myself, so how could I be his?

I was selfish and I didn't care.


TO BE CONTINUED