Lucifer

"What do you want?" It echoed around my dreams, without my ever knowing just where it came from. But somehow I knew it meant that whatever I answered would be given, and so I didn't know how to answer, as if afraid of what I want, afraid of myself, perhaps?

"You know what I want," I say.

"Yes, but I want to hear it from you," the voice says in my mind, and somehow it doesn't fill me with terror that the entity can reach into my mind, as if I was used to my mind having all its doors left open. In its saying this I can sense that there's a good reason why he wants to hear it from me, as if it's it that wants to take something from me.

"I want to be like you," I hear myself say, even though I don't know what it's like. "I want your power, to be feared, to be loved, to be everywhere and nowhere, invisible and omnipresent. I want you to become me."

I close my eyes and expect the spirit to approach me. When I open them again, nothing is there.

"I am already here," it says. "Right here," and I feel it pointing into my brain. My pulse drops down my jugulars, and as I pass out I feel the ground beneath me give way into a pit.

I wake up in a sweat, and all the terror that I should've felt in my dream catches up with me now. I gasp. But the dream doesn't let go without one final shudder, and underneath my gasp I hear a hissing whisper: "You get your wish."

I reach for the lights. No one is here, but every time I turn the other way I feel as if someone is right behind me, as if it's scattering for the shadows, as if it keeps sneaking behind me, as if it's holding on to the back of my head. The sense of presence doesn't let down as I wake up, and it's so oppressive that I can't ignore it. I look in the hallway, the living, the kitchen, the bathroom… then I see my face in the mirror, and it's not mine. In that one moment that I scream my face morphs through all possible forms. I wake up, realizing it was just another dream, step out of bed only to feel my real body still asleep, and with all my effort I can't get it to move.