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And so we stay there, neither one of us saying anything, until it feels like hours have passed.
TRINE
Malon is sitting on a sofa next to the window. He looks a bit worse for wear, his skin paler than usual, his eyes a light seafoam green color I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.
I swing my legs off the bed and look him in the eyes. “How are you holding up?”
“I think I’m going to need therapy, honestly,” he says.
I raise my eyebrows.
“No? No therapy humor?” he asks.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I just want to know how you are, really.”
“I don’t know how I am,” he replies after a minute. “I think I’m okay? I expect everything will be very different now and I don’t know if I’m ready for that. But I feel, I don’t know, unburdened.”
“Because you’re not a demon anymore?”
“Because I’m…because I don’t feel like I’m carrying the world on my shoulders anymore,” he says. “But I do feel really weird that I’m no longer connected to you. It’s…I don’t know, I feel like I could see inside you before, and now I can’t. You’re a mystery to me.”
I laugh, mostly because I really wasn’t expecting that. “You know me better than anyone else in the world,” I say. “You’ve been in my head.”
“I don’t know how you’re feeling right now,” he says.
I tilt my head, my eyes narrowing. “That must mean the exorcism worked,” I say. “Quick, think something at me.”
He cocks his head, his green eyes narrowing.
“What did you think?” I ask.
“I think it didn’t work,” he says. “You would be blushing if it had.”
I roll my eyes, flashing him a smile. “If you say so,” I reply.
“I do say so. It was absolutely depraved.”
I laugh, then get serious as I watched him. “So you’re not a demon anymore?”
“I guess not,” he replies, looking down at himself as if it’s the first time he’s ever seen his body. There’s a kind of childlike wonder in his eyes I don’t think I’ve ever seen there before. “It’s hard to tell.”
“What happens to the guy now? The one who you possessed, you know, before you were this.”
He shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “I feel like he wanted permission to leave a long time ago and I didn’t give it to him. I couldn’t, mostly because I didn’t know what would happen to the body. But I think it just meant that he had to live longer with his mistakes and that wasn’t something he wanted to do.”
I stare at him. He’s talking about this quietly, calmly. But it still sounds bewildering to him, like it’s completely taking him by surprise that all of this is happening.
I’m glad that it seems to be over, but I can’t help but wonder what this means for me going forward, too. Being possessed hasn’t been the most comfortable experience, obviously, but at least it’s something I’ve come to understand. This…I don’t think I get it. I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to get it. It has to be worse for him. “So before you were Malon, what was your name?” I ask.
“Moloch,” he says. “But don’t call me that. It doesn’t feel right anymore.”
“So Malon?” I ask.
“You can call me babe,” he says, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips as his eyes shine. “If you want to.”
I laugh, shaking my head. “Have you always been such a flirt?”
“No,” he replies. “You bring out the best in me.”
