"I love Gothic Horrors as much as anyone." I had said to my friend Karen. That is when the Crowned Stranger made glaring eye-contact with me. I shied away, I don't like making eye-contact with people like that. "Let's get going, I want to go home."

"Okay, Kevin." Karen took my arm and we left the mall as it began to snow lightly in the twilight of a winter's dusk.

All the way home we smooched and sang Christmas Carols loudly like idiots. Walking.

The Crowned Stranger was following us the whole way. We got home, made love, ate dinner, exchanged gifts and went to bed. The Crowned Stranger watched all of this from some shaded place. I know not where.

I awoke to the Crowned Stranger's voice inside my mind. Everything seemed strange. I felt like I was looking at myself through the eyes of someone else. I became very disoriented and I stood, or rather erected onto the edge of my bed in a mere instant, through no effort of my own.

Then the Crowned Stranger was felt, like a presence, and I knew it wanted me to come to it. It was calling me. I knew not why.

I was walking down the stairs inside my home, but these stairs were not my stairs. It is very difficult to explain how such a thing is. It must be seen. It is like if the whole world were just the staircase in the dark, but you can see your stairs when you close your eyes. It is like walking down them, not endlessly, but in some kind of singular perception. And then there is the reflection, when you open your eyes, those same stairs are being watched by you, as you descend them. And then you reach the landing.

I had become so disoriented by that time, that it became difficult to comprehend my own home. It was like as though everything were artificial, nothing was from the earth. Not even myself. And I could see myself standing there in my living room, observing myself. It was not easy to realize what I was looking at.

And then I noticed a mirror. I saw then, the Crowned Stranger. This being held a knife for me and suggested that I should just kill myself. I said "No." and I dropped the knife.

I can still see it shattering like glass, the option gone. I apparently had made some kind of wish, or decided something fateful. Blindly, unfairly. If I could go back to that moment, I would.

I stepped over the broken knife and began to strangle the intruder with my bare hands. When he fell to his knees I kept on strangling him. When he fell to the carpet, I did not relent. When he tapped my arm, begging for mercy, I still held. And when he stopped I was still holding. And when I was sure he was dead, I finally let go.

Then I saw that he was me. I looked again at the mirror and saw that I was actually the Crowned Stranger. Somehow I had just killed my own body, and now I was in his. I had to get it back inside me.

I dragged my body back to the kitchen and began to search for a way to get it out. I used a meat-tenderizer to break open the skull with repeatedly heavier blows, resenting the destruction of my own face.

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Finally I had opened up the skull and I started getting my brains out. I wondered if I should microwave them first, for some reason but was revolted at the idea of damaging my own brain in a microwave oven. So I just ate them raw.

It occurred to me that I was going to need something to keep me from getting anxious while I waited to get that digested. So I wished for music, and there it was. That was it. The whole house lit up with beautiful light.

The music started playing and I danced until I had struck every object from its perch. My ragged clothing swayed and I donned one of the masks on the wall. The white mask over my dark tan, the ballroom mask with purple flowers and feathers. I went upstairs to get the gloves that would go good with it, a pair of Karen's nice white gloves.

I looked over and saw her watching me with great terror. I tried to tell her who I was, but she saw the blood and didn't believe me. She was so scared that her reaction kept shifting, like she was speaking in tongues, flailing, crying, then just staring.

I just stood there, completely unsure why I was feeding off of her fear. I didn't actually like seeing it, but for some reason the sensation was undeniably good. Then I decided that I could get more of myself in myself, now that I had the brain.

I went back downstairs.

That is when they shot me down. Several loud gunshots took me. There was a brief moment before they killed me, I think, but I didn't convince them I was an okay guy or that I was me. They just saw the blood-soaked Crowned Stranger.

So I stood there then, holding the same gun that had just killed me. I was trembling because I had never held a gun before. But within moments, my hand steadied itself. I could suddenly remember my own mother's face, out of nowhere.

My mind cleared and I realized I was standing beside the Crowned Stranger in some citadel, looking out through the eyes of the same cop that had just killed me.

The Crowned Stranger turned and looked at me and smiled. His face was a blank, but he smiled. It is just a feeling, in the citadel of the Crowned Stranger. I asked:

"What is happening?"

And the Crowned Stranger told me that this was entirely my own fault. We were the cop that ended up staying. The Crowned Stranger could make anyone do anything, it seemed, simply by asking nicely.

That is how the Crowned Stranger seduced Karen.

I was quite horrified at first, but then I remembered in some shocked haze, some of the events that had led me to that moment. I looked instead at the Crowned Stranger and saw the shadows on the wall. I thought that this would be my best chance to try and stop the Crowned Stranger.

So I had to strangle my beloved to death. She actually fought back though, and managed to use one of my pens to open up the neck of the Crowned Stranger. I continued to strangle her to her death, so that the Crowned Stranger could not keep her.

And then I fell down dead next to her. The citadel began to crumble into chunks and dust. I looked below the citadel and beheld an splendid city with streets filled with revelers. The streets, from above were like staircases. The skies were a true night, a reflection without stars.

And as it all shattered and broke apart I watched and I laughed at the panicked strangers as they fled and fell into open cracks. I walked among them and I now laughed at them, as they died. They were all the Crowned Stranger in their ballroom masks and gloves and dresses.

I went among them, ragged and hewn, laughing at them. And my laughter could explode them into walls as their entire city fell before me. Then it all fell silent and I was left alone in that place.

I spoke in tongues into the darkness, my eyes unseeing. But I knew my own reflection finally. And it wasn't the Crowned Stranger, for that I am thankful.