Chapter 243 : the real Sophie

I of course knew realistically that I was hallucinating but on the other hand every tiny bit of this perfect slim ebony haired girl tried to make me think that she was really there. She was too solid to be something that my brain could make up but I also knew Sophie belonged only to me and my head. So why now was she sat on top of one of the clinic’s cabinets with her head balance on her hands smiling at me through her perfectly white teeth.

I had seen tiny bits of Sophie before but it was only ever in the mirror and she was always hazy, always foggy round the edges like she knew as well as I did that she didn’t really belong to the mortal world but here she was real. Every detail precise right up to the way her chest rose and fell as she breathed and the minute hairs on her arms standing against her bronze skin.

Sophie was stunning to behold in this form. It seemed almost too impossible that my brain could make up such a beauty. Her hair was the darkest Ebony black that hanged straight and shiny mid-way down her back. Her complexion was a sun kissed golden that made her skin almost look like it glowed and her face was just stunning. Her eyes an ocean blue. Her nose just the right size to hang over her plumped perfect lips, but even though she had all of this it was her body that was what stunned me the most. It was more perfect than I thought a body could be. She was so thin. There were no lumps, no bumps no scars or blemish in sight. She was what was expected of perfection. Sophie would have had the shiny insides that I longed for and worked for. Her beauty was to such an extent that I was sure it wasn’t even human and it was so far away from what I had it made every nerve on my skin ach.

“ Aww, poor little Mia, so flawed and dirty. Don’t you wish you could be like me?”  Sophie asked as she delicately flipped herself off of the counter and started twisted her body around to some music that was inaudible to me. Every angle was more perfect than the last and she knew it. I hurt to look like her. “You could be like me Mia, if you tried.” Sophie finished her dance and flipped herself back up onto the counter with the elegance of and agile Persian cat and blew me a kiss. “You know that I will look after you Mia. I am your only friend. These people just want you to be fat and ugly just like them. You are better than that. You could have all this.”

These people… that didn’t fit right either. It was true. Visually in a cosmetic approach neither Emmet nor Esmee matched up to Sophie but they had their beauty. Even with Esmee’s scars and her paler skin she had a glow about her that was so amazing. Emmet was a protector - too tall and too muscular and at first glance scary but he had his beauty as well and they had always looked after me. They had cleaned my cuts, moped up my sick and held my hand when I cried… Sophie had never done any of that. She had only ever caused them. 

“They like me; Emmet and Esmee. They don’t care what I look like and they look after me. You’re beautiful on the outside but they are on the inside.”

I should have known better. I knew what I had done before I had said it and I knew she would be angry but nothing could prepare me for how she would react.  Sophie changed, in front of my eyes, her body twisting and bubbling and contorting into something different, something evil, something dark and terrifying. Her skin blistered and pulled apart and blood spurted from hideous new scars in her arms. Her face become white and her eyes blood red as tears of crimson poured down her cheeks.

“Mia You are destroying me!  I can be your only friend! I was trying to help you. I was going to make you perfect and strong and good. I’m not the bad one! They are and you are!  Look what you are doing to me Mia!” Sophie shrieked, big holes opening up in her chest where a black heart thundered in an offbeat rhythm. “Well I won’t let you go Mia. You’re all mine! I won’t you go!”

With that Sophie exploded and the smoke that was left of her shot in my direction, burying itself under the skin on my chest leaving me no other choice but to scream and scream and scream.