There were those who walked on this Earth who had no idea how important two minutes could be. For the mundane lives protected from the shadows of evil lurking in the corners of city streets and apartment blocks, it was the time taken to eat a snack, or brush ones teeth, or make a drink. For those who could smile and laugh and live freely two minutes was nothing, an insignificance, a time for a small chore. 

But for those who dwelt in the dark, it could mean everything. It could be the difference between happiness and emptiness; love and loneliness; freedom and imprisonment. It could even be the difference between, as strange as it sounds, the gift of life and the inevitable force that is death. For those who dwelt in the dark, two minutes could be deadly. 

And it was the only time I had left before I died. And the only time left before I came alive.

My tongue always held a message it was not allowed to express: hold on to your humanity and keep it close. I would warn everyone about the danger I kept locked away. I would protect them from their unknown fear and I would keep them safe from the darkness that only corrupted and destroyed. But I did not have that privilege. 

I stared blankly at the floor-length mirror in front of me, gazing at the man who was so distant to the world he was supposed to be living in that every waking hour felt like a dream, time and memory blurring to became a mere illusion. I watched my reflection glance at his surroundings, barely noticing the black marble floors of the hallway; the grand, ebony piano and the leather sofas of the living room; and the king-sized table and dark wooden cupboards of the kitchen and dining room. He didn't even seem to care about the white, gauzy curtains swaying to the side of the gloriously large window that showed him the perfect view of one of the most renowned cities of the planet. After only a month of living here, the man in the mirror should have been spellbound by the beauty in front of him, should have been captivated by the wonders of the new world.

But beauty became irrelevant when the only thing that filled my mind was the dark and dense cloud of impending doom. 

I hated reality.

And because of that, I only had two mirrors in my luxury, high-rise apartment on the top floor of the Penthouse Building in the City of Angels. My reflection was of little use to me now: vanity had been traded in for self-loathing long ago. 

I was a big bloke. People who didn't know me found me intimidating. People who did know me feared me. I wasn't much of a talker and I rarely smiled, so I couldn't exactly blame them. My appearance didn't help either. My arms and torso were thick with muscle; my skin was tanned with random scars from an origin I never talked about; my shoulders were broad and strong; and I stood at an impressive six foot five. My hair was jet black; my jawline was razor sharp; and my eyes were a penetrating steel-grey that most could not hold the gaze of. 

I needed people to fear me. I couldn't afford to get close to anyone. It was better that way. Better for the poor souls who had the terrible misfortune of having to deal with me or anyone of my kind, for that matter. In my own way, maybe I was saving them.  

Life was repetitive: I did this every day. Stood for those two minutes in front of my full-length mirror, regarding the reflection staring back at me that had lived for too long, and seen too much, only to come to the realisation every time that I had nothing, that I was empty. It was always sobering. 

I knew that some people in my position would have regarded me a fool, a sentimental imbecile who took for granted the power that I was given. But in reality they were the fools, because it was one thing to be powerful, but it was another thing entirely to be free. And I couldn't even be free from myself. 

I only had one minute now. Dread started to fill me like a bucket of ice being thrown over my entire body, chilling me to the bone. I held back a shiver. Now was not the time for fear. 

I should've become use to this by now, but I hadn't. I doubted I ever would. 

I was like fire and water, really: two opposing forces that wanted something the other loathed, and it was slowly tearing my soul apart. 

But it didn't matter. Because in a minute I wouldn't be able to feel it at all.

I stepped quickly away from the mirror, sick of the blank, grey eyes that stared back at me, and made my way towards the perfect view of the setting sun sinking beneath the great, white mountains that towered over my penthouse flat. I took a deep breath and savoured the beauty of the human world: the blinking city lights of L.A, that dazzled like little diamonds bathed in the red glow of the evening; sitting carelessly between the glorious Hollywood hills and the consistent lapping of the blue sea on the west coast, palm trees swaying in the gentle breeze. 

I could see it all. The view was breath-taking. Some people would say I was lucky. 

But they didn't know me. It wasn't like it didn't come at a cost. I would give up everything, and I mean everything, if I could be free. 

I didn't have anything to give beyond vapid riches and power anyway. 

Those with a claim to wisdom called this the Twilight hour: when day hadn't quite become night, and the world was preparing to transition to the darkness that made the lights shine brighter, but also dowsed the land in a crushing and relentless shadow. They said the Twilight hour was, for a reason the humans could never put a finger on, bathed in melancholy and dwelling sadness. 

Humans had incredible instincts; I had to give them that. Sometimes they didn't understand their feelings, but nonetheless, they could be so sharply intelligent it stifled the likes of our kind. And then, of course, there were some who had no intelligence whatsoever. 

Those ones never lasted long. 

I had seen so much of the humans, so much that their lives had become normal to me. Their worlds were so different to ours: there was more than the simple moral colours that sides of the typical coin of good and bad stuck to. They lived in shades of grey: positive and negative blurring like raindrops on a wet painting, so that in the end the answer to whether something was appeasing to the human soul was deeply embedded in their torn and conflicting hearts. The war then started between the dark desires that sin brought temptation of, and the holy goodness that God made them with. 

Their world was so much more interesting, had so much...more, than ours. There of course, was the darkness: the violence, the liquor, the drugs and the death; but there was also the light of love, companionship and happiness. And sometimes the darkness and the light combined, or got messily mixed together, and in the end most humans didn't know what to make of their own lives. 

But I understood. I got what the humans went through, because in the light of the day I went through it too. The conflict and the confusion of human life was something I, in all of my years of experience, could not solve and it continued to baffle me constantly. It was something my colleagues wouldn't understand. They had no empathy for the life of a human being. 

Our kind didn't care about that, of course. We didn't see the messy and untidy beauty of the human life. We just cared about destruction, and pain, and suffering because that was our purpose. I was alone in my observations because I wasn't like my kind, well, half of me wasn't, and I would continue to be alone. I was always going to fight myself. I would never let him win.

And that was why chaos erupted in my soul at the same moment every day, when the setting sun disappeared behind the sea and darkness descended; when the melancholy of the Twilight hour finally resided to be replaced by something so evil, even the shadows of night could not compare. 

And my last thought before my eyes began to darken and my mind began to fill with poison, was my identity: the reason why this war, this internal conflict, would never be won. 

I wasn't human. 

I wasn't demonic. 

I was both. 

Hybrid.