East Hastings - Story in works.

[deadpie]

This is my new story I'm working on. I'm pretty proud of it, but it's not like most of my usual writings. My other story 'Sleep' is on hiatus because I'm bored of it, so you'll have to wait ten years for me to go back on working on that one. But besides that, enjoy my new story, which I promise I will keep updated as much as possible. It's something I feel like I won't give up writing on, no matter what. Well, here's the first chapter.

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I.



The priest yanked the machete out of the chest of a battered corpse, than swung it right at the man who taught me how to count without using my fingers. I was hiding inside of cabinets peeking out to watch the family I grew up with fall down slaughtered with most of their limbs sliced off.

I didn’t have an escape.

One of the priests knelt down and opened up the cabinet. His eyes were sea blue, but the type that would drown a million innocent humans. No, that blue in his eyes wasn’t of peace, but violence. He grabbed my right arm, dragging me out and tossed me right next to my neighbors. I tried to stand up to run off from them, but slipped on blood and fell back slamming my head on the tile.

“We’ve got a kid over here”, the man called out. “Seems like he’s a demon too. Do we kill the boy or not?”

A tall priest walked over swinging his katana at someone who was trying to stand up, stared at me for a few seconds and answered, “We’re bringing the kid with us. Too many people have been killed today; we don’t need the blood of a child on our hands too.”

“But he’s a demon. The boy can’t be saved with the black blood that runs through his body.”

“It’s not for us to decide whether or not he is to be damned. I can sense something different about this boy. I’ll set up an audience with the Pope tomorrow and he shall decide his faith. As for the moment, I’ll decide his faith and you’ll follow the orders of your superiors.”



A fire is consuming a church from across the street while a crowd panics out in fear. My best friend David is taking pictures off his camera, making cheesy Jesus jokes as I take another drag off my cigarette. He goes through the images, deleting the out of focus ones and says, “You know tomorrow everyone at school is going to be tearjerking their dicks off over this. Whoever did this is my fucking God, dude.”

It’s about an hour before its midnight and my parents are going to be down my throat with a crowbar wondering where I was. Fuck, I need to think of a good enough lie, but tomorrow they’ll grow curios I was here. I toss my cigarette into a car that had its window down and say, “I need to get home dude. You know how my parents are. They might think I joined a satanic cult and started eating fetuses and shit.”

He laughs, but I’m being completely serious. After he finishes up looking at his pictures he gives me the nod that he’s ready to go and we walk off from the burning church.

David’s a year older than me, 17, with a rebellious personality without a reason. A couple years ago when I met him it was his offensive raps at a mall that got me interested in hanging out with him. When I found out he went to my school, it seemed like the both of us would work as friends pretty well.

Halfway down the street we took our separate ways home. I don’t really like walking by myself, mainly because I feel like someone’s always following me. I’ve always been told there’s nobody to fear here and I shouldn’t have to worry about anyone attempting to hurt me, but its complete bullshit. Our world is at a religious war – battling faiths and bleeding irony.

About twenty years ago, over two hundred synagogues were set to flames in a single day. Not only that, but over five hundred churches were also found burnt to the ground that same week. Temples of worship were being destroyed. About thirty percent of the world’s population was atheist, so many religious extremists felt like they needed to protect their faiths at all costs – even if it meant brutally killing people in the way. This lead to a weapon ban of all guns and ammunition here in America. Many other countries put on strict laws, so the usage of swords and other weapons grew. Violence was growing without any sense of stopping.

Five years later, the existence of my race, the demons, were brought out to the public. It was harder for my kind to hide, especially live. Our race was peaceful and we weren’t out for blood, but once people are hunting after you, you have to protect your territory. What brought us to fighting back was the death of an eight year old girl, Lilith.

She was found out in the woods miles away, raped and stabbed to death, her arms torn off, and hanging by the neck from a tree. It turned out that a collection of priests were involved, working for the pope himself. That’s when the plan against the Vatican came up.

It failed horribly. Over two hundred demons that attempted to fight back against them were slaughtered. Ever sense then, any demon in sight was to be killed. When our race was shown fighting back, we were made to look exactly what they wanted us to look like – vicious monsters.

My story starts out in the Catacombs of Paris, miles underground in hiding. I was told my mother died when she gave birth to me and my father, well, he’s apparently someone not to be talked about. We had a way up to the surface, but we had to be very careful. It wasn’t easy trying to get food and such, but we’ve been around for ages.

When I was seven, two adults that were taking most care of me had found out that it wasn’t safe here for us, so we had to run. The three of us traveled across sea to America, which took around four months to set up. Eventually we met up with another group of demons we were told about and decided to live with them.

Our home was out in the woods, where it was always cold and the sky was always pouring rain. There wasn’t much sunshine, but it was better than no light at all. I had teachers and everything to support me. Hell, it seems like I’ve learned more from them than I’ve ever learned from the school I’m going to now. There were about fifty us in our cabins, so we all got to know each other pretty well.

I don’t know how they found us, but they did. And when they did find us, not a single person survived, except me. Being a ten year old boy at the time, it’s something that’s traumatized me enough not knowing if I can really trust these people who saved me. I was spared because I was ‘special’. After they killed all of my family, I was on a plane straight to the pope.

They decided that my life was worth saving, whatever that means. I got sent back to America and had to move in with two humans that had to report everything I did every single day back to the same Priest that killed all those people.

I’m at my house, thinking if I want to really go inside there or just run away. That thought comes across every time my eyes look at the front door, but if I ran, they would find me. I open the front door, only to come home to the quiet house of sleeping souls. At least I don’t have to pull an excuse out my ass for sneaking out of the house.

My room is freezing cold, but at least it’ll help me sleep tonight. Swords are laid out on the floor next to my bed, sitting in order of shape, size, and color. I own eight swords, five switchblades, twenty four ninja stars off of ebay, and one dagger.

I toss off my shirt and get under the covers of my bed, planting my face against my cold pillow. Sleep isn’t always comforting with my nightmares, but it does help clear my mind. ‘100, 99, 88, 87’ I whisper to myself. One of the best ways of teaching me to fall asleep is counting backwards from one hundred while picturing the number in my head.

Eyes grow bricks at sixty four and shut.



Fucking alarm clock screeches in my ears and I jump up, grabbing one of my swords in fear. Mother walks in, grabbing some of my clothes off the floor and says, “Father Brian will be driving you to school today. Remember to visit the councilor when you get there, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah”, I mumble itching at my raven hair. “Can I go over to David’s house after school?”

She pulls the sheets off my bed and I get up, frustrated knowing that she’s growing impatient of my laziness to wake up. Her obvious answer is, “No, you’ve been out of the house too much lately.”

Fuck you.

I go over to the closet, grabbing my school uniform and a pair of clean boxers, than make my way to the bathroom. Next, I strip down to the floor, turning the shower on and jumping in.

Allot of people ask me questions about my tail. Yeah, I have one and so does any demon you’ll come across. My tail is black, the same color of my hair, and quite soft. It has a mind of its own, so I don’t have to worry about it getting in the way when I’m sitting down or just walking around for instance. I usually wear shirts that are a bit longer so that my fucking boxers aren’t showing the whole time when it’s sticking out. People will ask, ‘Why don’t you hide it?’ Well, dumbasses, it’s not something I can just shove in my pants. It’s about two thirds the size of my leg, so it’s not easy to hide. And no, it doesn’t get in the way when I’m taking a shit. It’s surprising how many people ask me that question. If anyone tries to pull on it or hurt it in any way, it sends an extremely painful shock to the person. It can’t be cut off either, unlike any other part of my body. It’s just something people will have to deal with.

After my shower, I dried off with a towel and brushed my teeth while trying to find my homework that I swore I left somewhere near the toilet. I toss my clothes on as fast as possible, not wanting to have to listen to mom bitch to me about how long I’m taking to get dressed, than hurry out of the bathroom.

My pack of cigarettes aren’t in my pockets. I don’t know how I’ll make it through the day, maybe a couple hours, but then I’ll probably have to split my stomach open and pull my guts out.

“Seth”, my mother yelled out in the kitchen. “Hurry up, Father Brian is already here waiting for you!”

I got out to the kitchen and grabbed a random textbook off the counter. “Ready.”

Once I got inside his truck, which was pretty big, he started off a conversation by saying, “I haven’t seen you come to any services for a year now. Seems like you’ve grown a little taller though.”

Taller? Maybe an inch. Yeah, from five foot four to five foot five. Is he trying to make fun of me?

“Well, I’ve been going to a different one”, I reply back to him. “It’s called St. Judes. Sorry if that bothers you that I haven’t been going.”

“No, it’s alright, son. As long as you’re still going to services, that’s all that matters. It’s a good thing that you’ve got parents taking you to catholic school. Especially that special program you’re in. That’s a gift you should be really appreciative of.”

Except it’s all a big joke. I don’t know whether I’m an atheist or agnostic. It’s pretty obvious demons exist if I am one, but there’s never been any proof that angels do. Growing up I was shown proof that most of the things like the universal flood in the bible were false, all just things to convince people on God’s side. I was told that God is dead by some and by others that he never existed; that the only one that does exist is Satan. Everyone at school is scared to be by me, except David and his friends, also known as the kids who really don’t want to be at the school.

Really, I don’t know what to believe now. Too tired and confused to know who’s been telling the truth to me and who’s been lying the whole time.

“What’s troubling you, Seth?”

Shit, I’ve been so tired I forgot about walking to the counselor’s office. Almost feels like a blackout, but I was consciousness during it. None of it makes sense, but it does in a strange way to me.

“I want to know why I was saved”, I answer. “Like, why am I one of the only demons in the entire world to be saved from being condemned? It doesn’t make sense. Why do you trust me?”

He rubs his face like he’s clueless of what to say, which he usually does when I do decide to talk. “Your heart was still innocent, even with what you are. We trust you because you’ve been loyal to us.”

“I’m a fucking demon. How am I worth saving? You’re kind killed my real family in front of me. I tripped on their blood. When I sleep I relive that night. I don’t know why I still try to play nice guy here when you’ve destroyed me so badly.”

“We didn’t destroy you. You need to realize that your kind, as demons, aren’t as good as people as you think. I know you believe that your race is kind and loving, but it’s just impossible for us to see with what we’ve been told. The only answer in this life is the Lord. Do you accept that?”

I want to tell the truth and say no, but instead, I let the lie slip and I say, “Yes, I accept him. He’s the only thing keeping me alive right now.”

“Good”, he smiles to me. “I’ll see you in two days on Thursday then, right?”

I’m already on my way out of the room and before he can stand up, I’m out to the school hallways.

Halfway to class I feel something on the side of my stomach burning, like as if I’m a cow getting branded. I fall down, screaming out and lift it up, which shows out some type of symbol. This one I recognize from a book, one that I was read to in the Catacombs as a kid. It’s the symbol of Abyss, the lord of chaos.

[Kahn]

Not only can I tell that you enjoy writing this, you didn't use the usual name that you use (Damien). Instead, you used Seth.

I like it so far, less profanity. Hoping for more. It provides inspiration.

[deadpie]

Thanks, my nigga.


II.


The pain was brief, but stopped after I cried out in the hallway. I rushed into the bathroom to hide, because I didn’t want any teachers popping out of the hall finding out I was the one screaming. After slowly counting to thirty in my head, I exited the bathroom and walked down the hallways as if nothing happened.

I pulled my shirt up to where I could see the symbol again, than pulled it back down. What the hell is this thing? Why do I have it all of a sudden?

“Seth”, a voice yelled out to me. It’s Mrs. Jennings, my Special Education teacher. “You’re late. Do you have a good reason?”

“Had to take a real long piss.”

I’m not in this program because I’m stupid, because in my opinion, I’m pretty smart. Not trying to bump my ego, because I don’t really have one. Due to my ‘emotional issues’ the school thought it would be better if I was in one classroom all day, except for lunch obviously, so I wouldn’t have to worry about being in large classes with people staring at me; which is pretty stupid because everyone at this school already stares at me and knows what I am.

And no, it doesn’t bother me that people are freaked out by me. I find it pretty awesome, knowing that all these Bible thumping teenagers think I drink the blood of babies on a daily basis.

I walk into the room, heading to the back desk and dropping my geometry textbook right down on the next, which makes a loud slamming noise. Mrs. Jennings sat next to me, opening my book up and says, “Did you forget that work I gave you yesterday?”

“It’s somewhere in my bathroom, probably hiding under towels. You know, I’m feeling pretty tired, so do you mind If I just sleep until lunch?”

She stands up, walks to her desk, grabbing a couple sheets of paper and a bible. I have the urge to slam my palm against my face as she sits back down to me, but I hold myself back. Another lesson in scripture and I’m going to kill myself.

“I want you to read Romans twelve verse fourteen to me.”

“You know, my eyes hurt and I don’t think I can read right now.”

She’s getting pissed off, but that’s pretty much what I want. I can’t really get in trouble with her no matter what I do, mainly because discipline is limited in special education classes. Although, being too much of an ass can end me back in the councilor’s office.

I grab the bible from her hands, flip open to the page and read, “Bless those who persecute you; bless, and don’t curse. Wow that might just be the dumbest thing I’ve read all week.”

Dammit. I shouldn’t have said that, but it’s too late now. She grabs the book from me, putting it under my desk and says, “Doesn’t that mean anything special to you? Your counselor called me when you left and said you’ve been wondering why you were saved.”

“Of course he did”, I sighed. “Are you saying I’ve persecuted you and that’s why I’m forgiven, or whatever the hell that even means in your definition.”

“You don’t have to be so vulgar.”

“I’m a demon, so I think I’m aloud to use the word Hell, ok?”

She grips tight to the pencil in her hand, growing in fierce frustration. I know I should stop before I end up getting myself in a pile of heap, but this seems like too much fun and I’ve gone too far to go back now.

“We don’t mean that you personally have persecuted us Catholics, even though you are one of us now, but you’re race, the demons have been sense the beginning. So we blessed you instead of cursing you. Does that make any sense?”

“Not really. I mean, if you blessed me, you could have blessed the rest of us. We were a nice civil group until that little girl Lilith was brutally murdered.”

Nobody really liked to mention Lilith, because it was true that was the true reason us demons fought back. They knew it, but were too afraid to admit it to other people. My teacher flipped through my math book and finally gave in saying, “We’ll just do some geometry for now. Don’t expect this to be over though.”



“East hastings”, the girl repeats to me. “This morning, in one of the most dangerous places in Vancouver, the Downtown Eastside, everyone was found dead. Not a single person was alive. There were no traces of a biochemical weapon; it’s said that everyone just choked to death, but without feeling a single thing.”

I finish my Doritos, tossing the bag to David across from me and reply, “That’s pretty crazy.”

He looks into the bag, than tosses it back at me. This girl that I’m talking about, Elizabeth is a seventeen year old atheist that David dated for a while, but now they’re just friends. She’s been trying to find a way to tell her parents about her true beliefs, but her parents have been known to be quite violent and extreme. But so is every religious family nowadays.

She continues, “The strangest part about all of this is that in a huge intersection over there, they spotted a fire that looked like a symbol. The rumor is that the symbol is of Abyss, the lord of chaos. I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s all bullshit, but what do you think? I mean, you’re a demon, so does that mean anything to you?”

“Uhhh…..” I paused for a couple seconds thinking of the right thing to say. “No, I mean, I have no connection to my race now that I’m here, so I wouldn’t know anything about it.”

“That’s disappointing.”

My hands are shaking and I’m craving nicotine. I ask David, “You got any cigarettes on you? I’m craving and feel like I might have a seizure or something if I don’t get any.”

“Yeah, sure”, he replied. “We’ll have to go out the back doors of the school though.”

The two of us stood up with our trash, purposely missing the trash bins and exited the cafeteria. The two of us went out the back of the school doors and went down where the woods were. He pulled a pack out, lighting one for himself and then one for me. I took a long drag, trying to process what the symbol meant. It can’t be a coincidence that it showed up on my skin and was found there in Vancouver.

David put out his cigarette on his shoe and said, “Class starts in about two minutes. I’ll see you after school.”

“Yeah, sure”, I mumble itching at the symbol on me. He walks off and once he’s inside, I decide to keep walking through the woods. The ground was still muddy from the rain storm a couple nights ago and most of the trees were dead and ready to fall down at any time.

Someone is close by. I don’t know how I know, but it I can feel it. The snapping of branches is coming closer, like as if they want me to notice them. I stand still shutting my eyes, letting whatever it is come to me instead of running away.

“Don’t be afraid Seth”, the voice whispers in my eyes. “I’m a demon, like you.”

I open my eyes, only to see the tall man staring directly into my eyes. His eyes were twitching and I knew he was one of mine by the sight of his tail. I backed away from him and asked, “How the hell did you find me?”

“That doesn’t matter, but I want you to help me. If you do, I assure you I can give you something that you’ve wanted for a very long time.”

“And that is?”

“I’ll let you meet your father.”

I tossed my cigarette at him and laughed to myself. ‘My father? Who the fuck do you think you are? I don’t want to know who he is. He’s been out of my entire life, so why should I want to suddenly bring him into my life?”

“He didn’t have a choice”, the man says angrily. “I can promise you that he’s wanted to be with you for a very long time. You know what happened in Vancouver today and it’s only the start of many of those disasters to come.”

“Are…we responsible for this?”

I didn’t know if I wanted to use the word ‘we’ or ‘you’. Sure, we were both the same species, but I’m living with different people in a new life style. Not that I really have wanted to, but I don’t think of myself as one them as much as I used to.

He replied, “I’m afraid so. Someone attempted to summon an ancient demon, but once that person did, it killed everything in its way. The demon is invisible, but it can’t do harm now sense it’s drained its own power when it was awoken. We need you to find him. He knows how to find your father. We need him more than ever now.”

The hell did he mean by that? “Why is he so important? Is he like some leader or something?”

The man smiled viciously at me and said, “Your father is Satan himself.”

What? I try to say something, but my throat has gotten so dry that I can’t speak a single word. It made sense now, why I’ve been so ‘important’, but why has it been hidden from me?

“I…Why did everyone hide this from me?”

“To keep you safe. Now that you know, you understand how important it is for you to stay alive.”

I grab the dagger hanging from his side and pull it to my throat. He doesn’t look shocked at all, but I’m ready to do it.

“What if I just kill myself right now? What will happen then, because I swear on my father that I’ll do it. I’ll slash my throat wide open.”

“Put the blade down”, he orders. “I don’t have time to play games with you kid. If you killed yourself, than there wouldn’t be any chance of finding the invisible demon. In that case, our race would be doomed.”

I pull the blade down from my neck, tears forming, but I fight them back to make sure he doesn’t notice how weak I really am. “And how do you expect me to find him?”

“Well, you’re the only demon other than Satan that can see him. He’s somewhere in Vancouver, so that should narrow it down.”

“And how the flying horse cock do you think I’m going to get to Vancouver?”

“Come with me. We’ll stop by your house and you can pick whatever you need up and we’ll drive up there.”

I burst out laughing, not really knowing what to say. Everything’s still a shock right now.

“Alright”, I say. “Fuck it, I’ll do it.”



“Why the hell are you home so early”, my mom yells out at me. “You know I’m going to report this all to that priest. You’re going to be in a load of shit if you don’t start explaining yourself.”

I stuffed the last sword in my briefcase and looked over to her, feeling like this would be the perfect time to tell her whatever if it’s my last time I ever see her.

“If you didn’t have your fingers up your ass for so long, maybe you would realize that I’ve never meant a single word I’ve ever said to you. I’m not catholic, I don’t want to be saved, I hate your voice and I wish you were drowning in a sea of piss right now.”

With that, I brushed passed her and out of the house, rushing up to the car parked outside. My mother was running out screaming swear words at me and I tossed my bag into the backseat, jumping in the car as fast as possible as we drove off from her.

I looked out of the window as I could see her running after us, but failing incredibly. Hell, I never want to see her face again or this town. Maybe meeting my dad is something I should look forward to. After all, I’m the only hope for my race.

I’m hungry for licorice.

[deadpie]

So this marks that I've written over 7000 words to this story in only three days. Well, here's the third chapter.

>Implying anyone reads/gives a shit.


III.


“We’re going to ditch this car later tonight”, the man says to me. “People are going to be going batshit crazy when they find out you ran away. You might not even have a chance to come back without them wanting to kill you.”

I jump up to the front seat, going through his glovebox and pulling out a couple albums. “So are you saying I won’t get to see my friends? And you haven’t told me your name yet, by the way.”

“It’s Samael and yes, I mean that you won’t ever get to see your friends ever again; that’s implying that you even had friends that were really your friends in the first place.”

“Well fuck you, Samael. I’ve got about six. Can we stop at a gas station? I need to pee, get something to eat, and a pack of cigarettes.”

Samael pulls out a pack of cigarettes from under his seat, tosses them to me and says, “It’s going to be an eight or nine hour drive, so I advise you to either sleep or shut up the entire way. We’ll take a rest stop when we’re low on gas.”

I buried my hand into my arm leaning against the car door, trying to find a relaxing position for my legs. My head was buried in thousand thoughts, wondering what David would think after hearing that I’ve left. If I did ever come back, what would really happen? They’d probably send me straight back to the Vatican and do exactly what they did to Lilith. Too much possibilities, and for now, I need sleep.



Someone’s screaming from outside of the car. I stretch out my arms to notice that Samael is gone. Another scream shouts out and I open the car door, standing out to see another car parked behind us. Samael is someone’s body out to a ditch.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“We needed a new vehicle”, he replies back. “So, I found one. Unfortunately, he tried to fight back, so I kind of…Slashed his throat.”

“What do you mean you kind of slashed his throat? You either did or you didn't! How do you expect us to get away with this stuff? What if someone drives by and sees us?”

He cleans his knife off with a handkerchief, putting it back on the side of his belt buckle. “Now kid, nobody is going to find out. Just grab your bag out of that car so I can light the fucker up. The guy had a camera in his car, so if you want to take pictures of the car when we burn it you can.”

“Does he at least have any food in the car?”

“Uh, the man has a bottle of Diageo and a gigantic bag of twizzlers. And if you need to use the restroom, you best do it out there yonder by the trees. We’ve got about ten minutes until we hit our final destination.”

I look down to see the human, getting a gut feeling in my stomach where I almost want to vomit. Haven’t seen anything like that sense the incident. The way his eyes looked like as if they were staring straight out towards the sky, but not looking up to God, but more in shock and fear. I walk off to the car, grabbing my suitcase out and rolling it up to the other car, tossing it in the back.

“Sorry you had to see that”, Samael said opening the trunk. “But there’s only going to be more of it from now on.”

He lit a match, then tossed it in, running towards me and yelled, “Get the fuck in!”

I jumped into the backseat and he was already starting up the car. As soon as I looked up an explosion in front of my eyes went up with flames. The car went in reverse, tossing me towards a seat and I pushed myself up to the front, pulling the pack of cigarettes that he gave me out of my pocket. “Do you have another match?”

“Of course”, he replied dumping a handful from his pocket on me. “Sorry you didn’t get to get a picture, but I forgot that we would have about three or four seconds to back off. You awake now?”

I use my teeth to start the match, light my cigarette and toss the match out the window. The wind is cold, but I don’t mind it. We pass by a sign that says, “Welcome to Vancouver, Canada”.

“So where exactly are we going?”

He keeps his eyes on the road and explains, “Downtown Eastside, exactly where nobody is daring to cross. We don’t have to worry about it being guarded off or anything, because they’re locking that area down as a safety hazard for the next year. Who knows, maybe they’ll have it closed for longer. Once we get there, we’ll find a place to sleep, than you start your mission.”

“My mission? Then why are you here? I can’t do all of this by myself.”

“Dumbass”, he mumbles. “I’m here to make sure you don’t die, but like I said, you’re the only one that can find him. It’s more of your mission than mine.”

I take another drag of the cigarette, trying to keep focus to everything he’s said to me. All of today has seemed too long and too fast paced; it’s happening all too sudden.

The car stopped right at a neighborhood with bodies scattered across the road. I opened the cardoor, stepping out and Samael did the same. “So they never thought of picking any of the bodies up before leaving? They’re just going to leave them all here to rot?”

“Pretty much”, he answered. “Notice how the air smells clean though. This place should stink of death. Seems like when all these people died, even though they went unconscious, their bodies stayed in a stable state. You should grab your suitcase. We’re going to sleep over at one of these humans’ houses.”

I did what he told me to do and grabbed my suitcase out of the car and followed him up to one of the houses. The front door was open and the windows looked shattered; the entire neighborhood itself looked destroyed, but I remember being told that this is one of the largest places for crime in Canada.

Samael sprinted out to the living room and tossed himself against the sofa before I had even taken four steps into the house. I creep out an eye to the hallway as if I was breaking into a house, which in a way I was, and walked to the room at the end of the hall. Inside was a queen size mattress just lying on the floor with no sheets or pillows. I sat my suitcase next to the mattress, laid down trying to use my arms as some type of pillow to hold my head up.

For a while now I’ve been confused of my own skin, trying to understand why we demons look more like humans. Ever sense I was pushed into Catholic School I’ve read about the demons that seem to be horrific monsters, but it’s all wrong. We have the same type of skin as humans, most of our bodies work the same way, except that we’re built stronger and healthier with immunity to most life threatening diseases. Our blood is darker, which is what some people call black blood, but I don’t see how that really makes us different. Of course our tails would be one thing that would make us seem distinct, but it’s not like it’s really of important use. I used to think for a while that I must have some type of disgusting body underneath my skin, but after watching a leaked video online of a priest skinning a demon alive, that thought was gone.

When I was fourteen I got a call from the house where the man on the phone said that if I didn’t leave the town in two weeks he would kill me. I tried to hide this from my mom, but it didn’t take long before a couple more people started calling and she picked up the phone. Not only did I have the nightmares to worry about, but now the fear that while I’m sleeping someone might snatch me out of my bed and lock me in their basement to torture me.

It ended with a simple announcement from Father Brian. Really, I don’t know what he said, but it convinced everyone to stay away from me and I wasn’t the blood thirsty hellion people make me look like.



A horn went off in my ear and I screamed like a girl waking up to see Samael laughing his ass off at me. He was holding some red horn in his hand and a cup of ramen noodles in the other. “Hey, we’re leaving soon. I made you some of this food, so hurry up and eat. We don’t need to waste any time here.”

I grabbed the Styrofoam cup from him, giving him a grin to tell him to fuck off and slurped up a mouthful of noodles. He opened up my suitcase, pulling out my weapons and laying them to the side of my mattress. He studies one of my katanas and asks, “Do you know how to use this?”

“I’ve been training”, I answered. “Well, I’m probably not as good as you need me to be, but I’ve studied techniques and I think I could defend myself.”

“That’s good, because you’re going to need it. I lied to you when I said that this place was abandoned. This morning I saw a group of men wearing gas masks walking around outside.”

“What? I’m not going to kill people.”

He laughs at me tossing the katana in my lap and says, “Kid, you’re going to have to learn pretty soon that where we are in this world right now – it’s kill or be killed. I can’t let you die, whether you want to or not.”

Whether I want to or not? Does he know about the pact I made?

I slurp up the remaining noodles and grab a pair of clean clothes out my suitcase, along with my lucky dagger. He points out to the hallway and says, “There’s a bathroom with a working shower to the right in the hall. Toilet doesn’t work though.”

The restroom was trashed of newspapers and cigarette butts. I stripped down and pulled back the shower curtain, revealing a large centipede by the drain. It looks dead, so I hop into the shower cautiously, still freaked out by the damn bug.

As soon as I turn on the shower water the bathroom door slams open and Samael starts screaming “Get out of the fucking shower! They’re coming to search this house!”

Shit. “Well, close your eyes for a second. I need to get my clothes on.”

I step out, grabbing my clothes as he shields his eyes while holding one of my swords in his hands. As soon as I got them on, I grabbed my katana, put it under my belt and pulled my dagger from the sink where I left it.

“Be quiet and get ready.”

Samael stood next to the door as I stood on the sink, waiting for the door to open. Footsteps ran pass us to the room at the end of the hallway and I could hear about three men’s voices. They came back, stopping at the door. My hands tightened on the dagger and my stomach tied up in knots with a familiar fear.

The door opened and I immediately jumped at one of them, stabbing the masked man in the chest and knocking his gun out of the way. Samael came towards and stabbed another through the neck, pulling the sword out sideways to tear the man’s head halfway off. The third man aimed his weapon at me, but before he could fire his head fell down between my legs.

I scream out.

I scream so loud that I bet David can hear me from home. My legs begin to wobble and I fall down to the carpet. Samael knells down to me and covered my mouth, but I’m already sobbing and shaking in fear and shock.

All three of them were dead and I had killed one of them. Me. Responsible for death. Committing a mortal sin.

“It’s going to be alright”, he whispers to me. “I’m sorry.”

I pulled his hand from my mouth, and cry out, “Shut the fuck up!”

He tried to grab my arm, but I kicked at his stomach and run off. I run out of the house and started sprinting down the streets trying to get as far away from him and those bodies as far as possible. Images of the beheaded man start consuming my thoughts though and seeing all these dead bodies scattered everywhere isn’t helping much.

A tall tower from ahead stopped me from running as I put my dagger back in its case and clipped it to my belt. Something inside of it is calling for me. There’s a presence somewhere inside of their calling out my name. No, not calling, but howling.

I looked behind me to see a spec from far away that looked like Samael. He was coming after me. There’s no other choice; I have to go inside and face whatever is howling for me. I start running again, picking up a pace and charge through the door.

There’s even more bodies in here. A few of them seem to be like police officers and others look like normal civilians. The voice is coming from above; possibly on the top of the tower itself. I go towards the elevator and hit the highest floor number, sixty six, and pull my katana from its scabbard.

The elevator shakes when reaching thirty and the voice itself is growing louder. My hands are sweating, but I won’t let go of my weapon. Whatever this thing is that wants me, I want to be ready for it. The elevator stops at the final floor, opening up to reveal more bodies scattered, but these aren’t humans now. These bodies are demons.

I keep my head up trying not to look at them, but it seems impractical to ignore all the corpses. The walls are rumbling and I can hear the echo of its voice. As soon as I reach the end up the hall, I come to a door. When I open it, only more bodies of demons are laying down on the stairs. I run up trying to ignore what’s right below me and reach to another door. Under it I can see sunlight. This leads to the roof. Whatever is calling for me has to be up on here.

My right hand grips onto my weapon as I use my left to turn the doorknob, then opening it slowly. At the opposite side of me a man stood on the edge of the building with his arms crossed smiling directly at me. His eyes were blood red with a shaved head revealing the tattooed symbol of Abyss. He put his arms down, appearing in front of me in the blink of an eye and said, “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

[Origami]

Making a note +subbing this thread. I'm working on an English paper; however, from the looks of it, I may enjoy reading this.
Will return later.

[Quick_Sylver]

Engaging, honest and pretty cool. I like.

[deadpie]

IV.


“Don’t be afraid”, he taunts. “I’m not going to hurt you. Actually, I’m here to give you what you want. All those people piled up near the stairs died to give you something you want. Don’t you want to meet your father?”

I put my katana back into its scabbard, walking out onto the roof with him. “I find that hard to believe. There’s more to the story than that, isn’t there?”

“Well, you’re the one that will have to carry out your father’s plan, whatever it is.”

“But why me? What makes me so important even if I am his son? There has to be a better reason than that.”

He laughed, walking towards the edge of the roof and looking down. Everything was quiet for a brief moment, but I could hear footsteps all the way from the ground. There’s no doubt that it’s Samael. He probably knows the building and everything that this happened in and now he’s on his way up here.

“Samael won’t interfere”, he says walking back to me. “And yes, I can hear every thought running through your mind. Now there’s a certain way all of this is going to go down and there will be consequences after this ends, mainly for me, but I’m going to ask you to please cooperate through all of this.”

I look down from the building eyeing the bodies scattered out around the buildings and streets. “Well, it’d be nice for you to explain that type of stuff instead of just telling me something going to happen and not telling me what it is.”

“I was getting to that”, he aggressively responded. “Now, once your father can speak through my body—“

“Speak through your body? What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means the only way he’ll be able to communicate to you is through me. Now please don’t interrupt me. My body will only be able to hold his consciousness inside of me for such a short amount of time before I give out. What I’m saying is that I’ll die after he’s finished speaking to you. When I die, my body will disappear and all of those people will wake back up. Yes, they’ll all resurrect, but not as zombies. I never meant to get all of these people killed, but there are consequences from summoning certain demons from the depths of Tartarus. That’s why we aren’t all summoned at once or one multiple basis, but planned out schedules in deep precaution of what could happen.”

“Alright, well let’s get to this.”

He slaps his hand across my face and says, “I wasn’t finished! Now, because I don’t plan on coming back to Tartarus when I die, I’m going to give you my strength and power. You’ve probably noticed the symbol that showed up somewhere on your body. It’s a connection between us. That’s not the only symbol on you though. There are thousand on your body, waiting to be shown, but one of us has to be summoned In order for that to happen. Once I’m gone, you’ll have the ability to take someone’s life with your own mind. That means you can have complete control of every part of their body by just a simple balanced thought in your mind. You’ll be able to plant ideas and thoughts in people’s brains. Although, I’d recommend you train yourself from not accidently killing every person you get angry at. Now the reason why you and not any other demon can take control of these powers is because you’re the son of Satan.”

The ability to control the human body with my own brain. I was hoping that the lord of chaos would have some type of power where I could shoot blasts of fire out of my hand, but I’m guessing that’s not possible. Then again, this isn’t supposed to be possible. People have been trying to master mind control for ages, but doing it in a matter of few seconds just by looking at someone that’s passing by – now that’s a whole new level beyond anything people have ever even thought would be possible to master.

“Now, we begin.”

The lord of chaos stood in the middle of the roof, kneeling down and put his head against the floor, chanting out words I used to know as a kid. It’s been so long that I’ve forgotten most in Rhefugi and Greek language.

His body immediately stood up like a nail, jolting like as if he was having a seizure. I back away from him, expecting for body to explode or something, but instead he falls straight back down. The man pushed himself back up, staring directly at me as if he didn’t know who I was or what just happened. My hands are growing sweaty and I know that the man I’m looking at now is in fact my father.

“I haven’t seen your face sense I saw your mother give birth to you”, he says looking dumbfounded at me. “You’ve grown up so fast and I wish I could have been there for you. Having me asking for help from a son I haven’t seen in sixteen years should be the last thing I should ever do, but I’m sorry for all of this.”

For some reason I have the urge to take my sword out and jab him in the chest, but at the same time I want to latch my arms around him and never let go. “Why can’t you be summoned back here? I don’t understand how I even got to this planet if you’re not aloud here. How does it all work?”

“Your mother was able to be summoned to this planet peacefully and I had to do what I’m doing right now to see you when you were born. I would have guessed that you’d figure out by now why I can’t come back here in my full form, but I know they’ve hidden secrets from you for a long time. The simple reason for why I can’t be summoned back is because it would trigger an apocalyptic event. Everyone on this planet would immediately die. Just like what you’re looking down at here in East Hastings with what happened to them, but because I contain much more strength and power, it’s harder to summon someone like me here without causing the end of the world. I’d rather live in that hole for as long as possible as be responsible for killing both our races and the other species.”

He pulls my dagger from my belt and points it straight towards me saying, “Your mission is to kill the pope. Once you have done that, you’ll come back to East Hastings and another demon will have to be summoned to carry out the second plan.”

“Or you could just tell me all of the plans so you wouldn’t have to keep taking over bodies of our own kind and killing them.”

“You still have much to learn, Son”, he says staring at my dagger. “I can’t be sure of what to do next because I don’t know if taking down the pope will be enough or not. Now, I’m not trying to cut things short, but I have to leave now. I love you and I really wish I could find a better way to fix all of this.”

He handed me back my dagger and I put it back in its place, trying to hold myself back from crying. This is how I meet my father? I look back up to him and ask, “How can you someone who’s dead?”

“Seth, it’s more complicated than you think. I have to leave.”

“Wait, you can explain to me!”

The body in front of me that was standing in front of me started falling apart like sand in thin air. He was gone by the time I could even try to stop him from completely disappearing. A door creaked open from behind and I look over to see Samael at the door and says, “We have to get out of this place right fucking now.”

I ran to him as both of us rushed down the stairs and towards the elevator. As soon as we got in we started noticing people were waking up, picking themselves from the ground. “Holy fuck, you stupid shit! Why the hell did you run off? What if you got shot by one of those masked guys?”

“Well, I’m sure I could protect myself. Besides, that’s not the point. I don’t know if you know this, but all the people out on the streets unconsciousness are about to wake up.”

“Yeah, I know that. That’s why I told you we need to get out of here right now. Once we hit the first floor we’ll have to sprint out as fast as possible. I want you to follow me. We’ll have to get back to that house, grab your suitcase and get out of this place before it gets shut down by blockades from the government.”

“Alright. I can do this.”

The elevator stopped at floor one and the two of us immediately sprinted out as it opened. We jumped over people as they started to wake up. Some of the ones awake were staring at us, which only made me want to run faster. It wasn’t long before we reached up to the house. I looked down the hall to see three of those men still dead as could be and puked out onto the carpet. He walks me over towards the door and says, “Just wait here and I’ll get your stuff. I forgot about that mess.”

He calls that a mess; those people there slaughtered like sheep. How do people forget the ones they’ve killed? Do they just kill so many people over time that they get over it or is it just some trait some people feel and remember while others can move on? There’s no way I’m going to forget that person I killed, even though I never knew him. It’s still a life. He could have been a father with children or a good friend.

Samael comes back over to me and hands me my suitcase. The two of us charge out of the house and back towards the vehicle. I toss my suitcase in and get the passenger seat as he starts up the car. We honk our way down the road as people stupidly try to move out of the way, not knowing of what’s going on.

I roll my head back on my seat, noticing that I’m sitting on that load of matches that he tossed at me last night.

“Seth, I know something’s on your mind. If it’s what happened in the house or the situation you had, you know that you can talk to me. I’m not the best at giving advice, but I’m going to watch over you to make sure you stay safe, so I’d like to know if you’re doing alright or not.”

He pulls out a bag of twizzlers from the back seat while still honking at people and hands them to me, expecting that to be what would get me talking. I open it up and while chewing on one ask him, “What do you mean by one year ago?”

“The situation with Dustin. I know you haven’t forgotten about that and I wouldn’t be surprised if you still think about it every day. You wanting advice or not kid?”

He knows about Dustin? Well, who doesn’t know about what happened with him. After all, it was the biggest story in my town and I was the one getting fingers pointed at even though I wasn’t responsible in what happened to him. I know the truth behind what happened and many other people do too, but are too afraid to face the fact that his death was caused by members of a church itself.

Dustin was the only person in my life I’ve loved and they killed him right in front of me one year ago inside of a church. It should have been me, but they wanted me to suffer with the guilt and anger. Now that I have this power, maybe I can get revenge. Bringing him back might not be possible, but justice can be.

[deadpie]

V.


I walked to Dustin’s bedroom, seeing him sitting on the edge of his bed looking down at the carpet. He was holding some photograph in his hands than crumbled it up when he say me. “You ready to go”, I asked him. “School starts in about thirty minutes, so we better get walking.”
He stood up and grabbed his backpack from off the ground, tossing it over his shoulders and said to me, “I feel like something bad is about to happen.”
“Well, I feel like that almost every minute of the day”, I reply. “You get used to it after a while though. The faces looking at you; realizing not everyone is actually trying to kill you.”

We went out to the kitchen where I met up with my mom, whom was sitting at the dinner table reading her bible with her mourning black coffee. She raised her eyes to us and I realized I was holding Dustin’s hand. I pulled his off of mine and she laughed looking at the two of us saying, “You already know I don’t have a problem with it, but if anyone else around here figures out, you might not make it alive for a day. Just promise me you two won’t get caught doing anything in public or that you don’t go telling people about your situation.”

“We promise.”

The two of walked out of the house, now trying to separate ourselves from holding hands, which seemed almost impossible. I met Dustin when we were thirteen at my school. He was in my program that I’m in, but for much different reasons.

Because he was open about telling people his sexuality, the town frowned upon having him in normal classes. For the past two summers during that time he would be sent to some camp to help ‘straighten him out’. Literally. Of course it never worked. It didn’t take long for me to invite him over to my table with David. When he did get accepted to our humble family of friends I got interested in him and tried giving him a hint that maybe I was actually having something for the guy. I let him stay over at my house and that’s when I told him that I was gay. He kind of connected the dots and guessed that the reason I let him come over was so I could tell him in private, which lead to us finally coming together.

We had to hide our secret as a couple at all costs; not even our friends at the lunch table could know about this. My mother found out pretty quick, but she never had a problem with it. She was just hoping that we weren’t banging the daylights out of each other, which was the only part of it she was really against, which wasn’t really a problem until a couple months after we were going out.

The two of us had lots of plans for life together; expecting to fly as far as we could from the town and have some life with no mistakes. It’s pretty unreasonable knowing that no place on this planet accepts people like us, but we still talked about it allot. Mom once told me there was a time where people like us where getting our voices out and being respected, but then again, all things good must come to an end.

Halfway down the block he asked me, “I know this sounds incredibly stupid, but do you think we’d ever get married?”

“Well”, I paused lighting a cigarette. “No offense, but we’re only fifteen. I don’t want to really think about shit like that.”

“No offense taken.”

A van stopped right up to us, coming out of nowhere as it seemed like, where about four masked people ran to us. I tried to grab Dustin’s arm and help him run off, but one of them had already tossed something over my head which emptied all sunlight from my eyes and buried it with darkness. I could hear him screaming and I tried kicking back at the man pulling my arms, but it was useless. My body was tossed down and the sound of the van door slammed closed.

“Shut the fuck up you fucking faggot”, a voice screamed out. “If you scream one more time, we’ll kill you right now! That would just end the fun for us and I’m sure Father Joshua wouldn’t want that.”

My arms were being tied by some type of wire, along with my legs. I already guessed it would be impossible to escape from these and even if I did, there are still these humans who would beat me down and tie me up again.

I could hear him crying and while sitting there, I was trying to think of how anyone could have found out. Mom wouldn’t have just told.

We reached a stop and I could feel someone grabbing onto my arms again, trying to make me walk, but he had to drag me instead. The smell got to me once we entered the place and I could sense holy water from a distance, which I’m allergic to. I already knew where I was right before they lifted the hood over my head – I was in a catholic church.

Two men dropped Dustin down about three feet across from me, taking off his hood. He looked directly into my eyes, sobbing out and said, “I’m sorry, it’s my fault. My dad got suspicious and he said he’d kill you if I didn’t tell him.”

Right after he finished that, his father stood up from above him along with a priest. One of them from behind me was tying a chain up from under the church pews and came over to me, tying my arms tightly. He did the same to my other arm on the other side than went over to Dustin doing the same to him. My hands were double tied now; which would make it impossible to escape at this point.

“Seth”, his father said to me. “All because you were saved doesn’t mean the evil inside of you was completely cleaned away. You still had the heart of all seven sins inside of you and you tempted my son with lust. Now that he’s fallen for your tricks, someone has to pay.”

“Fuck you. If you’re going to hurt anyone, do it to me. I’m the demon and I’m the one that came to him first.”

He laughed, pulling out his sword and putting it next to Dustin’s shoulder. “If I killed you, controversy would grow allot larger than if I killed my son. Plus, I want you to live your life knowing that it was your fault he died. You’ll be traumatized having to deal with that shame and sadness every single day. Yes, I want you to suffer.”

“I’ll fucking kill you if you hurt him.”

He kicked Dustin in the back, using his foot to push him to the ground. Doing this, he handed his sword to the priest, who smiled back at him. My stomach was knotting up and I puked out all over myself and yelled, “You fucking cunt! I swear I’ll kill you!”

One of the men from behind me grabbed me by my hair, rolling tape over my mouth again and again until the roll of tape was done for. Even though I knew I couldn’t be heard and yelling wouldn’t work, I still tried.

The bastard pulled down his son’s pants, than doing the same to his own. I shielded my eyes back, finally reaching tears knowing what he was going to do. The sounds of screaming voices went out through my head and I thought about what happened when I was ten, seeing my original family and friends die in front of me.

My head was forced to look by the hands of one of the men, having a fist pound me in the gut for keeping my eyes closed.

“That’s strange”, Dustin’s father said. “I thought you faggots enjoyed this stuff. Shouldn’t he be begging for more of this?”

My boyfriend still had his eyes pinned on me, as if he was still trying to tell me he’s sorry, but I nodded my head trying to tell him that it’s not his fault, but I don’t think he was getting it across to himself. His father pulled out of him, pulling his pants back up and said, “Son, get on your knees. I’m disappointed in not just you for being who you are, but me as a father. How could I raise such a horrible son? But worry no longer, because death has come to take you.”

He moved to the left and the priest stood behind him as Dustin got on his knees. I pulled my head away, facing another punch to the stomach and hearing a loud cry from him. As soon as I looked, I saw the priest pinning the sword through his heart, pulling it out slowly. I tried to scream as hard as I could, but it was just sounds of mumbling. I couldn’t control it.

They circled around me, taking swings to my face and stomach over and over until I was beaten out of conscious. When I did wake up, I found myself in the middle of the road with a car in front of me, the headlights almost blinding my eyes as a woman comes out asking me, “Are you ok? I’m going to call an ambulance.”

“For fucks sake lady, does it look like I’m ok?”

I blacked out again, waking back up in a hospital bed with my mother, Dustin’s father, and a police officer next to the machines hooked to my body. He just had to be here and I knew why – he was reminding me that it all did happen. That grin he was giving me was his way of saying, “If you tell, you die.”



I didn’t tell because I knew that at some time, instead of giving my life to give out the truth, I would get my revenge. They covered up his death and made the story around the town say the two of us were kidnapped – that I was alongside him and ended up getting involved because I was a witness. They got away with their story, but now I’m going to make sure that they don’t get away with it.

Samael stops the car at my house and asks, “So how are you going to explain it all? You going to say you ran away, but realized how much you really loved your mom?”

“Pretty much”, I replied. “But it’ll take more than a couple words to convince her, because when I went off on her, I told her allot more than I should of.”

I opened my door, pulling my suitcase from the backseat, which hit him in the face as I reached it up to me and stepped out of the car. He smiled at me and said, “I’ll be back tomorrow night. Good luck.”

Yeah, Good luck.

[Peace God]

The last one might be the best so far. So graphic and epic.
Overall well written story...gotta love the villains.

[deadpie]

VI.


I slipped my katana back into my suitcase before entering my house, expecting to see my mom sitting at the dinner table by herself waiting for me, but she wasn’t there. The house was quiet and cold, which started drawing an uncomfortable feeling in my body. I dragged my suitcase into my bedroom, setting it to the side of my bed and flicked the lamp on from my night table. My mother was in my bed, clenching on my pillows and smiling directly at me.

“Mom, what the hell are you doing in my bed?”

She sat up on my bed, holding a picture in her hand that looked a little crumbled up. I knew what it was. That’s the picture Dustin tossed on my floor in my room moments before he died. In that photograph is a picture of him and his family, along with his uncles and Father Joshua; all of those men where there when he was killed. Mom hands me the picture and says, “This was in your closet somewhere when I went through your room searching for answers why you left. I told everyone that you weren’t feeling good and made excuses to the priest I’m supposed to write to about you every day. Now that I’ve done that, I want explanations.”

Some part of me wanted to tell her the truth – every little piece of it including what really happened to Dustin, but instinct told me to lay low. I toss my shoes off, sitting on the bad away from facing her and answer, “I ran away because I felt like I needed to. Took me to realize that I’m better off here than on my own. What I mean is that I’m sorry for doing this and all that stuff I told you, because I didn’t really mean any of it. I just feel like I’m about to lose my sanity, like I’m on the tip of the thread right now.”

“Just promise me you’ll see the councilor tomorrow morning right when school starts? I’ll be able to drive you if that makes you feel any better.”

“Yeah, I promise mom, love you, goodnight, now can you get out of my bed already?”

She smirked at me, walking out of my room and got under the sheets of my bed, sinking down into the covers expecting to drown inside of them. Looking over to the other side of my bed, I pictured Dustin there sleeping like he usually would every night when he came over.




A hand on my back woke me up, sending me jumping off my bed and onto my mom, my fist ready to slam into her face. It took me a couple seconds to realize I was standing over my mom. “Uh, I don’t know how to really say this, but, sorry?”

“Don’t apologize.”

I pick myself up, than help her get on her feet as well, running over to the closet to grab my clothes. My suitcase was still sitting next to my bed, but I realized that the only thing in there was just clothes now. Those weapons, they weren’t as important anymore. My brain itself contains a weapon; something that is as strong as any blade.

The shower is colder than usual and my toast for breakfast tastes stale. My mother looks more of a housewife than she usually does. Everything I’m walking by in this house seems duller and objects seem to have less meaning to me. All that matters at this point is revenge.

Mom started up the car and I ran out of the house to the garage, getting inside, remembering I forgot my lunch money, but food doesn’t sound that appetizing today. It’s raining hail and the clouds are a glob of grey. Reminds me of the couple times when I was really young and we had to leave the Catacombs to find food. It would always rain like hell those days. Of course that sound of rain was always trickling down over the walls when I lived there, which used to be pretty aggravating, but right here right now, the sound of the heavy rain is beautiful.

“They say it’s going to rain for the rest of the week”, my mom says trying to obviously start conversation. I lean my head against the window where my cheek grows cold and my breath fogs out on the window. “Is something wrong, Seth? You seem a little off the wagon this morning.”

“The weather; I’ve never felt more like home than now. Not the home from in the woods, but the one before that. You think the weather is like some plague, but I think I could live with this forever.”

“Hey, I never said I didn’t like the weather. After all, this is what God wanted the weather to be like today, so I’m not going to get upset at him for this.”

Every time she brings up faith and God I go silent. She’s not as negative and bashing with her Christianity, but I’ve never liked how she thinks every positive thing is a gift of God. Gifts are temporary and all add up to nothing, because when you die you can’t take those presents or valuable instruments to the grave with you.

The car stops at the front of the school and I get out of the car not looking back at my mom, but taking my type to the entrance with letting the heavy rain fall down on me. Once inside, I walk a little faster to my councilor’s office dealing with the stares of people on me.

Of course when I got in, he already was sitting at his desk leaning back with the notebook and pen in his hands, ready to take notes and shit. Sometimes I think a therapist would just be a better option, but my mom doesn’t have the money for that nor does anyone want to give advice to someone with a tail for fucks sake.

“Heard you were sick”, he says clicking his pen. “And it seems you got a little wet from the rain outside. Anyways, how’s life?”

“I want to bathe myself in blood, cause mass murders, and split my throat open in front of a large audience.”

Why the hell did I just say that? It’s like I couldn’t control myself, like my own thoughts took control. Dammit Seth, why do you have to be such an idiot?

He stared like a statue at me for about thirty seconds in shock, than put his notebook down and moved his chair closer to me. My palms were growing sweaty and more thoughts were racing, but I tried not to directly think about him, because knowing about this power I have, it brings me fear. Fear that I might lose control and accidently hurt people.

The councilor puts a hand rubbing his goatee and says, “Have you been praying lately? That’s one of the only ways you’ll keep your sanity right now. These thoughts of yours are none more than of the Devil’s coming over your mind. Because you’re a demon, I’m guessing these thoughts are harder for you to control, especially sense you’re also trying to stay Catholic.”

Except I’m not catholic and the devil is my father.

“Well, moving on, what else is there to talk about?”

He pulls his chair back to his desk, writing a couple more things down as silence fills the room. The scribbling sounds of his pen are making me anxious though, feeling like he might report what I said to someone.

Fuck. It feels like someone’s pulling my brain out of my skull, but like as if my brain itself had its own soul attached to it when being pulled away.

“I guess we could end this early”, he mumbles flipping through past pages of the notebook. “But don’t go to class, instead, go to the Gymnasium. There’s some guest speaker talking and whatnot.”

Soon as he finished talking I sped out of the room like I usually do, sliding down the holes on my wet shoes and jumping around on lockers causing loud noises to echo through the hallway. The gym doors were wide open with the bleachers sticking out. About everyone in the school was either sitting down already or trying to find somewhere to sit. I walk in slowly, trying to avoid any faces, but it’s hard to do when you need to find somewhere to sit.

David’s waving his hand around like he’s trying to signal a drunk driver from slamming into a child and yelling out my name, “Seth! Sit with us!” I try to hide my embarrassed face while rushing up to the top of the bleachers to sit down in between him and Elizabeth. He hands me a bottle that’s wrapped with a brown paper bag and says, “That’s whiskey. Thought that it’d be cool getting trashed listening to these assholes talk about how anyone who’s not straight is sentenced to a lake of fire. Don’t drink too much though buddy. Last time you came over and I showed you my Mom’s stash of alcohol you finished two bottles of everclear.”

“You should know that us demons”, I inform in-between gulps of whiskey. “We’ve got good tolerance to stuff, so all of this right here is probably equivalent to one beer for me.”

Elizabeth nagged me in the side to remind us a teacher was coming by. I hand him back the bottle and he hides it behind his backpack, almost dropping the damn thing out of his hands.

About ten people are out where the basketball court is and one is molding a microphone. Immediately when I look down to see him, it clicks to me who this guy is – Dustin’s father. Whoever thought that finding revenge would be this simple? He pulled his bible out from where he was holding it under his shoulder, flipping it open and says, “Today, I’m here to tell you guys about a matter that I know a great deal about. This is something that I’ve seen head on, something that I’ve had live under my house hold once before. I’m sure you all know what homosexuality is, correct?”

I need to kill him. Right here in front of all these people. Hell, an audience would just make this better. He continues, “This morning all those people who were found dead in Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, Canada, they were found alive. None of them remember going anywhere when dying, but maybe this is a gift of God. Now you might ask me, what do you mean, Gift of God? Well, America has been battling homosexuality for a while now and this is God himself repaying us for what we’ve done. The more of those fags out of the world, the more miracles we can expect.”

His skull bones are easy to turn snap. I focus my mind on the man, staring straight into him and direct all of his blood in his body to immediately shoot up to where his head is. While doing this, I focus on putting pressure on his skull bones until they’ve cracked down into billions of pieces, focusing all this matter inside of his head and letting it grow as large as possible. And then…

Boom.

The fuckers head explodes brain fragments out like confetti shooting upwards, sending blood in every direction everywhere possible. Everyone in the gymnasium was screaming out, running down and panicking, but I sat down. A flicker of blood slapped my chin and I whipped it off, smiling, looking back down to see his headless body lying down emptying a pool of blood.

The preacher has been silenced.

[Kahn]

“This morning all those people who were found dead in Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, Canada, they were found alive. None of them remember going anywhere when dying, but maybe this is a gift of God. Now you might ask me, what do you mean, Gift of God? Well, America has been battling homosexuality for a while now and this is God himself repaying us for what we’ve done. The more of those fags out of the world, the more miracles we can expect.”

It almost seems as if the old Anti-Civil rights south has come to life once more only to combat homosexuality.

[deadpie]

VII.


My legs are frozen down and my hands are rattling uncontrollably. All of my enjoyment of killing that man is gone and replaced with fear and discomfort. I can’t take my eyes off his body, still emptying of blood from his neck. He looked like the first person I saw that died that night when the priests found out where my people were hiding. I remember looking out of the window as one of them was decapitating a young girl right down in a pile of leaves.

I’ve killed two men in a matter of two days; yesterday morning and right now. What the fuck is happening to me?

“Seth”, a voice yells at me. “We need to go. Everyone’s leaving the auditorium. Seth? Are you listening?”

I don’t know who’s talking to me because every sound around me is low pitched and distorted. My lips are stuck together and even though I want to say something I can’t. My own gut feeling is taking over me and I have no control over it. All I can do is focus on the corpse down below. Eye sight darkens and the sounds of vicious laughter ripple through my ears. I turn my head slightly to the right to see my friends running off, knowing I’m alone in this room now. My eyes shut and I feel myself slip back down, falling deeper into sleep until the darkness consumes me.

“Seth? Wake up. We need to get you somewhere else.”

I open my eyes back up to see my councilor above me. I’m still here in the gymnasium and when I look down, I notice that the man’s body is gone, but the gigantic puddle of blood is still there. He helps lift me up to my feet and I sit back down, rubbing my eyes. I ask him, “How long was I asleep?”

“Only for an hour”, he answers. “I want to know why you decided to stay behind. Did you faint because of what you saw? If it’s because what happened triggered you, I need to know.”

“I didn’t have control of my body. It’s like I was just pinned down to where I was sitting, which would be right here, and there was people laughing in my ears.”

“Well, I kind of expected this to all be the reason why you fainted, so as soon as I found out I contacted your mother. We’ve decided it’d be best if you moved onto talking to someone else other than me, like a therapist.”

I stood up back up looking into his eyes and said, “I’m not seeing a fucking therapist. All I want is to go home and get some rest.”

As soon as I start walking off from him he grabbed me by the wrist and gave me this face like he was saying I couldn’t go, but I resist, pushing his arm off mine and ran out of the gym. The hallways are completely empty of people, so I’m guessing everyone was sent home early.

The sounds of someone’s shoes alarm me and I look back, seeing my councilor who’s been following me. He says, “You need help, Seth. If you don’t get a therapist, than I might have to turn you over to the Vatican and have them decide what to do with you.”

I start sprinting down the hall as fast as I can to reach the doors at the back of the school, pushing them out of my way and running through the mud. It’s still pouring rain, but I don’t mind any of it. The weather could be a good advantage is they’re trying to chase me. The woods are coming up in front of me as I keep running and I take one look back behind me to check if anyone’s chasing me before continuing to run through the woods.

Fuck, If Samael was here maybe he’d know what to do. It was an idiot move to go off and run from him because now there is no turning back. It’s either I keep running or they take me away. They wouldn’t give a demon a second chance.

Do they know I’m the son of Satan? Is that why they decided to save me? What if they’ve been keeping me alive because they want to use me somehow?

I stop myself, noticing that Samael is standing out right in the middle of the woods looking at me, like as if he knew I’d show up here at this very spot and moment. He smiles at me and says, “So tell me what your fathers plan was. What did he exactly want you to do that could save our people?”

He walks closer to me and for some reason, I feel scared of his presence. My body is covered in mud and I almost trip over trying to step back from him, only deciding that if I were to start walking back from him that might egg onto his curiosity of why I’m afraid of him. I look down to my shoes and say, “He wants me to kill the pope.”

“Well like that wasn’t obvious”, he says sarcastically. “And now you have people running after you probably going to send you to the Vatican right now. Are you scared?”

“How did you know?”

“Because I watch you, kid. I’m always a step ahead of everyone. That’s my gift. Maybe you’ll understand more about me in the future, like how I’m not really as good of a person as you think I am.”

“What?”

My heart starts pounding faster and the mud on my skin turns more into liquid as it comes in contact with my sweat dripping off every inch of my body. I am scared and not just of him, but being caught. I’m scared that I’ll disappoint my father and end up dead like Dustin. And also, I’m scared that I’ll never be able to give justice to the people that killed Dustin. But at the same time I don’t want to hurt people, because the two times I have I’ve felt more of myself being pulled apart from me.

“See, I know you can kill people, so it shouldn’t be a problem for you, especially with that new power that you have. Yes, I know you didn’t tell me about it, but like I said, I’m always a step ahead, which means I’ll always know things before you do. Now tell me that after those first couple seconds after killing that man that you didn’t feel like it felt good. I know you enjoyed blowing that fuckers head off. To be honest, I was entertained.”

“It’s not like that”, I fight back. “Yeah, I might of felt good for a couple seconds after killing him, but afterword’s I felt just like I felt when I killed that other guy yesterday morning. I can’t keep killing people because it’s not me.”

“That doesn’t matter anymore. Do you see what these people are doing to us? Have you heard about what they’re saying about East Hastings now? That place we were at yesterday was becoming a shrine of worship this morning. People from all types of faith are going there to see this place, because they believe it’s where Jesus will return. But you want to know what just happened in the past two hours? People started fighting. It’s not much of a surprise knowing about the religious wars, but now those streets those people were kneeling down to pray in are being filled with severed limbs and heart filled rage. At the same time today, another young girl that’s a demon was found dead. She turned out to look exactly like Lilith when she was found dead. Stuff like this happens every single day against us. You know which demons they’re mainly going after? They’re going after the young ones because they know that’ll make us enraged more. They want a fight and now with you and your ability, we can fight back. It’s time to give these bastards what they deserve.”

I pull one foot out from the mud and put it a step behind me and say, “Well, how do you expect me to do that?”

He smiles back at me, picking up a long branch off the ground and says, “I’m sorry to do this, but it’s really the only way.”

“What do you mean?”

Samael swung the branch right at my head, knocking me over and slamming me down into the mud. There wasn’t any pain though, but I could feel myself slipping back into the darkness of unconsciousness.

I open my eyes seeing myself sitting a large dinner table. Across from me is the Pope himself, dressed up and everything. On my plate is a large salmon fish with shrimp next to it. The food looks tasty, but like as if someone was working on it for a whole day setting up the plate. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has people that do nothing but prepare him food all day.

My clothes are still the same, but the mud on me seems mostly dried up. Now would be the perfect time to do it, just use my thoughts to shut down his heart. No, that would be too obvious; knowing the only two people in here is a demon and one of the largest figures alive right now.

He finishes off a piece of shrimp and says to me, “It’s come to my attention that you’ve been struggling to do as you’re told. You ran away from your councilor knowing what the consequences could lead to. I’m getting this all correct, right?”

“Right”, I mumble under my breath staring at him. He takes another bite of his food and I look around the room, trying to avoid the silence in between. What I need to give him is some type of brain disorder- a severe case of dementia. I focus my thoughts on him, planting the thought inside of his brain. He’d lose his mind with this and possibly kill people. Actually, to make sure, I’ll tweak with the disorder and make sure he does. He’s cutting up his fish while I’m practically planning his death. He would grow a more paranoid and scared personality at first and kill as much people in his way before killing himself. Now judging by how long it’ll take for this disorder to come in full contact with his brain, I’d say this will end up happening in around a week. Because I can’t just kill him right here, I can still make his death controversial. Dementia happens allot for aging people and there’d be no way they could point the evidence back towards me. It’s the perfect crime.

“Well, he says placing his fork down on his plate. “You know that I could easily give you the fate that you deserve, but I don’t like to think of myself as a rude or cruel person. As for me, I believe in redemption and giving people second chances. So what I’m saying is, I’ll keep you saved from your sins as long as you give me something in return.”

“And that would be?”

“I want you to grow more with your faith. You being a demon makes this very easy for you to lose that, so you must keep close to it. When you go back home you will have your Confirmation set up. In this, you’ll become a perfected Christian.”

I gripped my hand tight on the fork, imagining myself running over and sticking it right into his eye, but released knowing that I had to play along.

The plane flight was pretty long to get home, which was pretty stupid sense I only had a fifteen minute conversation with the Pope. My mother drove me home from the airport and when we got home I went straight towards my room, shoving my face in my pillows. I push off my shirt and pants, tossing them at my door, finally free of those muddy clothes. My body was freezing in fear of what would happen next. Samael would come for me and I’d have to whatever my father wanted done next. To be honest, I don’t know if I want to keep doing this shit.

[Kahn]

Glad you got through this one, waiting for the next, nigga.

[Sunshine Girl]

I love reading these
:D

[deadpie]

VIII.



“Why are you scared?”

My councilor’s leaning back in his chair, nibbling on the eraser of his pencil and looking to me. I fiddle around the zipper to my binder and drop it, telling him, “Because I feel like you might be right about what you said. Maybe the devil himself is causing these thoughts.”

“And how do you plan to stop them?”

“I can’t”, I quickly respond. “Because I have no faith in anything and I can feel any positive emotion in me right now draining, even as we speak.”

He scoots over to his desk and jots some notes down, then looks back up to me and asks, “What was it like at first when you found out Dustin was dead?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, I asked how it felt when you found out Dustin died.”

I picked my binder back up, sliding it open and flipped through the empty pages. His eyes are pinned to me, even though I haven’t looked up to him, but I know he’s staring at me. The sound of his voice comes up, but before he says a single word I grab a pair of scissors from my binder, jump to him and jab it right into his neck.

“Do you want to know how it felt?” I took the scissors out of his throat and he tried to put pressure on it, but started spitting up blood giving me that face like he already knew he was going to die, but maybe some miracle would save him. So I stuck it back into his throat pushing my hands to go deeper into him, than releasing it.

My hands are covered in his blood, dripping down my wrists and jeans. His blood is crimson red, beautiful and somewhat shiny. I rub my hands all over my face pushing my fingers deep into my skin as if I want his blood to sink into my pores.

Wake up.

I open my eyes immediately jumping up, noticing I’m in my bathtub full of freezing water. The second thing I notice is Samael sitting by the door, looking at me. I run over to one of the cabinets, wrap a towel around my waist about to yell at him, but remembering my mom would probably her, so I whisper in a pissed off tone, “What the fucking hell are you doing in my bathroom?”

“I was hoping I’d be able to talk to you about yesterday.”

“Do you have to talk to me at this moment, right here and now?” Really, I don’t even know how I ended up falling asleep in here. I don’t remember waking up to come to the bathroom or anything.

Samael says, “Well, the pope isn’t dead, so what exactly did you do?”

“I gave him severe dementia; made it where it will force him into violent actions including suicidal ones too. Don’t worry, he’ll be dead by next Friday I’m sure.”

“And how can I know you’re telling the truth?”

“You can find out next Friday.”

He opens the door and walks around my room, going to my window, pulling it up and putting himself halfway out. As soon as he’s out of the room I go to my closet to grab some clothes, finally thinking about the dream. I’ve already forgotten about most of it, but the only part vivid to me right now is me shoving a pair of scissors in my councilor’s neck.

I toss my clothes on my bed, pull my towel off and turn around to make sure my door is closed, only for my mom burst open with wide eyes at me. When can I ever get some privacy around this house?

She turns around after staring in shock at me for a few seconds and I toss on all my clothes, then remembering it’s a Saturday, so I don’t need to wear the polo. As soon as she notices my pants are on, she asks, “Sense when did you get a tattoo without telling me? What does that even mean?”

Shit. How do I explain it?

“I got it when I ran away”, I lied. “Was looking at some designs in a tattoo shop, saw one that looked cool, and the guy told me the story behind it, so I got it. Sorry, I was going to tell you about it today.”

“And you’ll get it removed by the end of the month. I’m not going to help pay for the removal; you’ll have to figure everything out yourself. If that’s still on you in a month, I’m going to write it up to one of the high priests. And don’t forget, you have confirmation next Friday. The Pope took the liberty to have one of his people call me and explain the situation.”

“Ok mom, just can you leave my room? I want some privacy.”

She grunts, rolling her eyes and walks out slamming my door. And you’ll get it removed by the end of the month. I’m not going to help pay for the removal; you’ll have to figure everything out yourself. If that’s still on you in a month, I’m going to write it up to one of the high priests. And don’t forget, you have confirmation next Friday. The Pope took the liberty to have one of his people call me and explain the situation.”

“Ok mom, just can you leave my room? I want some privacy.”

She grunts, rolling her eyes and walks out slamming my door. A few seconds after she leaves a buzzing sound goes off from under my bed and I reach down under, grabbing my phone from underneath. I barely use the damn thing and I only have about three people that ever talk to me on it. I answer the call, “What do you want?”

“Dude, it’s just me, David. I was wondering if you wanted to hang out, maybe get trashed or something along that line.”

“Uhm, Sure. I’ll ask my mom and I’m sure she’ll be ok with me coming over. Give me about fifteen minutes.”

“Sweet. See you then.”

I toss the phone into the restroom, look back under the bed and grab an orange polo, staring at it as if it’s something I’ve never seen and put it on me. There’s probably allot of things under my bed that I’ve forgotten about; like one thing I know of right now is that empty bottle of champagne I got a year ago.

Mother is back at the kitchen table like she usually is reading her bible with a glass of wine against her cheek. I loosen my shirt up by pulling at the neck area and ask, “Can I go over to David’s? I’m not sleeping over; it’s just me hanging out for a few hours and then I’ll be back here.”

“Why not”, she replies. “Actually, I’d like the house to myself for a while, so if you want to spend the night at his house you can.”

I smile, running to the front door and sprinting as soon as I’m outside as people that walk by give me their long faces. The weather is still quite cloudy, but it’s stopped raining finally and I’m sure it’ll be back tomorrow morning.

The door to David’s house is wide open and I stop myself before entering, only hearing loud pissed off music blasting from inside. I kick my shoes off at the door just in case his parents are home, because Hell knows every time you wear shoes in this house they come at you like vultures scavenging the dead. He’s in the kitchen pouring two glasses of what seems like Vodka while a blunt hangs down from his lips. Once he notices me he hands me a glass and says, “You got here rather quickly.”

“Now did I?”

He gulped down half of the glass and handed me the blunt. I took it from his hands, looking at it and say, “I don’t understand how this stuff is supposed to get you stoned. Last time when I came over and you tried to smoke me out I ended up smoking all of your green with barely feeling anything. I mean sure, I felt a little bit more funny, but I wasn’t like you laughing at every damn sound and word.”

“As cool as it is having a tailed friend”, he says taking the blunt back from me. “I wish I had someone I could get stoned with. You’re not that much of an exciting drinking partner either.”

I gulped the whole glass down and looked at him as he studied his glass. Something was hidden inside of his thoughts and I could hear it echoing inside of his brain. He brought his eyes up to look at me, which showed that he was crying.

“You remember that Church that got burnt down a couple days ago?”

“Of course”, I responded. His thoughts are racing, but I don’t know if I really want to read them sense he’s my friend.

David fills his glass back up and continues, “I burnt it down. Yeah, that shit was me. The best part about it is that I was proud of doing it.”

Too late. The thought was right there and I read it. I already know what he’s going to confess to me and I bite down on my lip, trying not to emotionally respond yet.

“After I tell you this, I’d like you to leave. Don’t try to say anything afterword’s, just leave immediately. I need to tell someone about this before I tell my parents. A long time ago before you were living here the Priest from that church was really social with my parents. Well, I joined the Choir and he would always tell me how much he loved for me to sing. One day in his private office he said he wanted me to sing to him because he loved my voice so much, so I did. He reminded me of how handsome I was and told me he had some type of feeling for me; something he never felt with anyone else, but I couldn’t tell. I was eight years old.”

He stopped himself, forcing the Vodka down and staring down away from me. I think of what would make out to be the right words and say, “I’m always going to be here for you through anything. You know that right? I know you said don’t say anything, but how could you not expect me to say anything? I mean, you’re my best friend.”

David looks back up to me, attempting to smile as I continue, “I’m going to leave like you told me to, but if you need to talk to me again then don’t be afraid.”

I stand there trying to keep myself from losing it and eventually give him a last look before walking out of his house. It feels wrong leaving him in there as he gets shitfaced right after finding out he was raped by the same Priest that killed my boyfriend, but it’s what he wants. He’ll ask for help, I know it.
Halfway home I decide to change my path and walk towards the burnt church or whatever is left of it. On arrival, there’s already a large group of construction workers that seem to be halfway finished. That’s how it is in the world now – a church will be rebuilt in less than a week but a museum would be gladly pissed on while it’s being burnt down.

There’s a trailer not too far from where the construction work is, which seems large enough to be a home. My guess is the man is living in there.

I carefully make my way to the trailer, peeking through the windows to see Father Joshua sitting next to his mattress in prayer. The door doesn’t seem locked, but I need to make myself sure that he doesn’t come at me with a weapon. There’s a kitchen knife next to a miniature fridge. Hell, I could just use my ability to make sure he doesn’t move.

My hand gently pushes open the door as I walk over to him, seeing him frozen in prayer, but with his eyes raised up to me. I smile to him and say, “You can speak, Father.”

“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing? How are you controlling me you bastard demon child?”

“You are one sick fuck. Now don’t worry, I’m not here to kill you. Isn’t that a relief? No, that would just be too much fun. See, you’re going to kill yourself.”
I can sense his body tensing up and struggling to try and take control, but he’s too weak. He spits out at me, which goes far enough to my pants leg as I am still standing above him.

“This isn’t just about what you did to Dustin”, I say picking a sword up from his side. “You remember what you did to my friend David? He told me what you did today, but he didn’t tell the full story. No, he left out the part where you continued to rape him until he was twelve, and then decided to stop because he was starting puberty, so he wasn’t as cute anymore. Don’t even try to deny it. For fucks sake, I should have you castrate yourself too! Unfortunately, sense I want to get away with this, I can’t go as far into that.”

He’s started crying now, but not tears of regret, but more like tears of fear. The man is scared of death, but has faith in a higher power, yet I think death doesn’t seem that much of an issue to me, while I don’t know what I want to believe in. Father Joshua knows that I know he’s scared and he knows that he’s going to die now, no matter how much he wants to live.

Sadly though, some people just need to die.

I hand him the sword and tell him, “At least I’ll make your suicide honorable. Now I’m going to force the thought inside of you telling you to stick this sword into your stomach and disembowel yourself. Many people call this Seppuku if I’m saying it right. In this, it’s a death saying you killed yourself to die in honor instead of wanting to fall into the hands of the one that is against you, which would be me in this case. Now doesn’t this all paint a really ironic image in your head of how and why you’ll die? Its great fun and a good joke, but for some reason I’m just not laughing. Why aren’t you? Don’t you agree it’s a funny joke?”

Joshua takes the katana from my hands, pulling it from its sheath and poking it to the bottom left of his belly. He looks back to me in tears and says, “I can tell your soul is growing with violence and anger. Now it’s too late for you to be saved. It seems like you were the weak one here.”

His hands grip onto the sword and I stare into his mind telling it to make the thought take action. The priest sticks the sword deep inside of him then yanking it to the other side yelling out in pain. Quickly, I force him to stick his hands into the open stomach and start pulling his intestines out.

I left as he gave out his final cry before falling to his death in a pile of his own guts, walking back down the path to where my home is.

A part of what he said is right about me – I’m becoming more violent and full of anger. Right now walking away from killing him in such a brutal way, I don’t feel shame and nothing of my past is making me feel guilty of what I did. For a reason that’s unknown now, it felt good. Maybe everyone is right. Maybe my father is what’s making me come closer to insanity.

----------------------------------------------------

So far I've gotten down 17,000+ words.

[Dorsum Oppel]

Shit comrade, do me a favor and right a book. I haven't been able to read fiction in a long time, but you kept me groveling for fuckin' more. Subscribed.

[deadpie]

FINALLY got to writing the next chapter.

------------------------------------------

IX.


I come home to see the piled up suitcases at the front door and my father sitting with my mother at the kitchen table. My dad was gone for a business trip in California for a full month and we didn’t know if he was coming back sense he’s a warrior for the CAAI (Christian Arms Against Ignorance). The religious war that’s been going on has made this country so unstable that army’s like this are allowed to grow and fight others. Nobody really wants to stop anyone because it’s not like a Christian police officer will go against arresting a Christian Army. It’s the same with any other religion or belief. His mission was to find as much Mosque’s and destroy them all without anyone knowing it was the CAAI behind it.

My father is forty years old, but still a strong man bench-pressing over three hundred pounds every day. Everyone where we live knows he’s not someone to mess with and he wouldn’t have a problem killing anyone who disagreed with his beliefs. That’s the huge problem with him and I. Even though my parents think I’m Catholic, they know I’m still a demon. My mom isn’t as bothered about it, but my dad barely even looks at me. I guess it’s because if he did pay attention to me more often he knows he’d tempt himself to kill me more, which would cause problems with the Vatican and them trying to make sure I stay under protection as long as I stay Catholic. I’m not, but almost every day I question my beliefs, because I don’t know who’s right – The people I was raised with or the ones that are trying to wipe out my kind.

Now that I think of it, it’ll only be a matter of time until they just pull the rope on me. I’m guessing after they’ve killed every demon they can find, they’ll just decide to kill the ones they said they ‘saved’ and the ones that they’d ‘protect’.

“Your dad’s home”, my mom says. “Are you going to say hello to him?”

I brush the lies out, “Hello. Glad your back.”

He looks over to me with a smirk and turns his head back around. I walk out of the kitchen and to my room, tossing myself onto my bed and pulling my pillow down towards me to hug tightly. When I opened my eyes, I could see a note directly on my bathroom door. It read ‘WOODS’.

Fuck. Samael is going to end up getting caught if he keeps hanging around my house. I roll off my bed and fall down next to my suitcase, opening it up finally and grabbing my dagger out. There’s still blood on it from the first man that I killed.

I stand up, go out of my room and attach the dagger to my belt buckle. Dad stops me from in the living room and says abruptly, “You can’t leave the house. The news just said someone killed Father Joshua and said it’d be safer for everyone to not leave there house for another few hours. Your mom doesn’t want you get hurt.”

Funny how he just said my mom doesn’t want me hurt, like as if he doesn’t mind if I do though.

“Can’t I just go down the few blocks to David’s house? I left my jacket there.”

“A jacket isn’t worth dying over.”

He sighs loudly to himself and grabs onto my arm, then asking, “Do you want to work out with your father? Maybe we should get some time together now. I mean, I’m pretty busy most of the time, but I think we could get some bonding done here.”

What the hell?

“I guess”, I shrug. “But I never work out, so don’t make fun of me.”
He goes over to mom who’s on the sofa cuddled up to a box of tissues mourning the pedophile priests’ death. The two of us go out to the garage where dad has all of his exercise equipment. Something’s obviously off about my dad wanting to spend time with me, but I can’t get inside of his head for some reason. His thoughts are sealed off from me.

Dad tosses over a pair of boxing gloves and tells me to put them on. Surprise, my dad wants to beat the shit out of me for father-son time. Not like it bothers me, because I wouldn’t mind bashing my fists into his face a couple of times. He says, “No punches to the face. I’ll go easy on you, so don’t worry kid.”

I put the gloves on, attaching them tightly and flexing my fingers in them to get used to the feel. He starts jumping and looks like he’s ready to beat the living shit out of me with a smile on his face. The only thing I’m doing is standing where I am with my arms ready to block him. I block his first couple punches with my arm, but it hurts like hell.

“You’ve got to get yourself moving”, he says. “You can’t hit me standing there like a statue. Is that how you train with those swords I bought you? Do you just stand and swing them around? Maybe I should get you signed up for training classes or something.”

“Or maybe you could just teach me yourself.”

He takes another hit and I block it, although this one hurts more. I put on foot back, relaxing my feet and keep trying to focus on his mind. It’s full of rabid energy flowing from every part of his body, but it’s his awareness that’s off. He’s not expecting me to get even one hit on him. His ego is so large that he thinks he’s indelible.

“I’m busy too much. You know I wouldn’t have the time to teach you anything. But maybe if you got those lessons you could join up with the CAAI and spend more time with me. Your mom would like that I’m sure.”

I duck down from one of his punches, moving to my left and standing back up to get a hard hit right to his side. “I’m not going to spend my life killing people to spend time with you Dad.”

He’s impressed not only that I was able to get a punch to him; but that I was able to hit him harder than any of the punch I gave him. “That was a nice move. Maybe I shouldn’t judge you after all.”

My hearts racing because I can’t read him and I don’t know if he’s going to come at me stronger now. The jumping up and down is distracting me from focusing on his future attacks and I don’t want to make myself look stupid in front of him. Soon enough he sneaks up close to me and punches me right in the chest, sending me back a couple feet. I balance myself up and circle him as he tries to circle me, trying to see if I tangle his movements up maybe it’ll be easier to get in his head.

“I’m thinking that maybe I should stay down here for a month or two”, Dad says. “Try to catch up on being a father for you and maybe help make this town safer. Seems like every week something inane happens around here. Church burnings and now a Priest getting killed?”

“Not be rude or anything, but it’s a little late for you to try and catch up on being my Dad.”

He throws another punch at me and I block it, getting me close enough to hit him in the side again and send him to the ground. I pull my gloves off and toss them down, rubbing the sweat running down my face. It’s not the fighting that exhausted me, but trying to get in him. His brain is like a jigsaw with billions of pieces multiplying every second. As soon as I get to the door he says, “Where you going? We just started this. You can’t just walk away.”

“I just did.”

“We’re not through!”

Mom is looking straight at me as soon as I walk into the living room and I yell, “I’m fucking sick of him! He’s trying to pretend to give a shit about me all of sudden, when you know he doesn’t. When was the last time he told you he loved you, Mom? I bet it’s been half a year sense he last did. Want to know why? Because he’s busy blowing Mosque’s to smithereens. He cares more about killing people then his so called family or whatever the hell this even is!”

She stands directly up and rushes over to me, slapping me in the face. “Don’t you ever talk about your father like that ever again. He loves me equally as he loves you and you know for a fact what he does is for a greater good.”

I put my hand to my face in shock, expecting her to of just taken what I said and process it, but she didn’t. She turns away from me, weeping loudly and falling to the carpet struggling not to break down. Now I feel like she may actually agree with me, but might not want to admit to it. Or maybe she really is sick of having some demon for a child.

“Mom, I’m sorry.”

I go down the hallway to my room, slamming the door shut and getting into my bed pulling the covers over my head. My dagger is poking into my leg and I pull it off my belt, tossing it out from the covers and pushing my pillow in the darkness up against my face. I grip tightly onto the pillow, shoving my face into at as hard as I can and scream.

Someone’s footsteps are coming up to me. I let go of the pillow, peeking out from the sheets to see my Dad trying to fix a smile. He sits down on my bed and says, “Sit up next to me.”

I do it anyways, even though at the same time I want to just sneak into his brain and blow his fucking skull to pieces, but I’m interested in what he has to say. The closer I sit to him the more he scoots up to make sure I’m close to him.

“You had a point with all those things you said”, he says. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt your mother’s feelings, but she obviously doesn’t accept the truth. It’s true that I haven’t told her I love her in a long time and it’s also true I’ve put more effort in the CAAI then I have towards this family. But now I actually want to do something as a father. I want to give you a figure to look up to and not one to despise. You’re my son. Even if you’re a demon, it doesn’t mean you don’t have the emotion us humans do. I just saw all of that emotion when you went crawling in your bed. Don’t go under there for answers. For now on, I want you to come to me. I love you and I’ll always be here for you.”

His thoughts are stable and it doesn’t sound like he was telling a single lie. I don’t know if he really will live up to what he says, but I guess I could try.

A sharpening pain in my chest sticks out like a billion stings from bees. I look down, only to see him with my dagger in my chest. I look back up to him seeing him with a sickening smile, chuckling to himself like as if he’s getting off on this. My stomach feels like everything is just being balled up and exploding. I can’t kill him though, I don’t want to for some reason. He lets the dagger out, dropping it to the floor and cries out, “He tried to kill himself! Call the ambulance! Hurry!”

The lights in my eyes dim until there’s no light left and I let the void take over.

[deadpie]

X.

My eyes peak open, seeing my mom sitting across from me with her hand gripping onto mine. There’s wires connected to my chest and arms, not something I really like to wake up to. She asks me, “Are you feeling alright? If you’re in any pain we can get one of the doctors to give you more painkillers.”

“I’m fine, Mom”, I reply. “Where’s dad?”

“He decided to go on a new mission. What you did, it hit hard on him. You’ve been out for three days.”

The fucking bastard tried to kill me and now I’m the bad guy. Well, I’ve always been the villain in his eyes.

From out the window by the door I can see David and Elizabeth staring directly at me. My mother lets go of my hand and stands up saying, “Two of your friends are here and they wanted to talk to you, make sure you’re ok. I’ll leave you alone to speak to them. I love you, Seth.”

She walks away from me and I look away from her as she opens the door to let my friends in. Some IV bag hanging above me, which is strange because I don’t know where they would get blood identical to mine sense I can’t use human blood. That’s unless they have some massive storage of dead demons under the hospital where they suck the blood out with a straw and spit into the bags. I wouldn’t be surprised knowing how much my species is hated.

“We got here as soon as we found out”, Elizabeth says. “I’m happy you’re alright. Well, I mean you look good right now sense you’re awake, but I’m just glad you didn’t…die.”

I don’t know what to really say sense it’s not like I could just say my father was the one who put me here. “Uh, thanks for coming I guess. Although, I didn’t really think you would want to see me like this. I’m sorry, it was a stupid decision and it won’t happen again.”

The more I talk the more my stomach aches. Even moving my hand makes the pain grow.

David is staring right through me with his eyes, like he knows something about me that I’ve been hiding from him. I don’t have to go in his thoughts to prove it, I already know. He turns to Elizabeth and asks, “Do you know if Seth and I could talk alone for a bit?”

“Uh, sure.”

She looks strangely back at him, and then gives me a smile before walking out. The second the door shuts he slams his hand across my face and says, “You fucking killing that priest. Who else have you killed? Did you kill that guy at school too? It’s right what they said about demons after all. Is that why you tried to kill yourself? Because you realize how much a piece of shit you are?”

“Stop”, I say stopping him from continuing his tantrum. He sits down in the chair next to me, scooting up and I continue. “There’s allot of things you don’t know about me and allot you would never be able to understand. First, I’m not a bloodthirsty person. Yeah, I killed those people, but it was out of rage. Do you not remember that day I came to school with bruises on my face after Dustin’s funeral? I know what happened to him because I saw it all in front of me. That priest was the one that shoved a sword right through him. The man that was at our school was Dustin’s father and he raped him. He did that to his own son before having the priest kill him. You understand why I was out for revenge now? Of course you don’t. You’ve never had to watch someone you care about die in front of you.”

He stands back up and looks at me again, trying not to smirk. “Get better, Seth.”

The door slams and the only thing in this room making noise is those stupid beeping machines. This ugly hospital gown is uncomfortable and my feet are freezing, but I would have to pull myself up if I wanted to push the blanket down to cover them. Any movement sends a jolting pain back to my chest.

A woman enters the room with a syringe, walking towards me. She looks too young to be nurse and too damn hot. I mean, she looks like some of the girls from my school with huge boobs. There’s no way this girl can be a nurse.

“This is just going to make the pain less brutal”, she says. “Although you might be a sudden pinch, when you wake up everything will be alright.”

“Wait, did you just say wake up? If it’s like painkillers, why do I need to be asleep?”

“Shit, I suck at this.”

She jams the syringe right into my arm and the pain in my chest burns worse than it did when I was stabbed, but a few seconds later, I feel myself drifting out of consciousness. Immediately I wake up, finding myself in a bedroom.

The first thing I notice is that the pain is gone. Second, that sexy nurse is sitting on a bed that’s across from me. The room itself is pretty large and has four beds on each side of it, along with a working desk with a computer in the middle. Then there’s another girl who seems less slutty but more suspicious walks up to me. She’s wearing some type of black leather uniform. I squint my eyes trying to make sure she was real; because there are no way two hot blondes could be in the same room with me. The nurse girl is wearing an identical leather costume.

“We’re sorry for killing you back there at the hospital”, the girl in front of me apologizes. “It was a bit more difficult than you think. We had to make it look like you died in the hospital, then we stole you from the morgue you were shipped to. The thing Jessica gave you was just made to make you look like you were dead, so you really weren’t. Then Jessica and I had a mission right after where we had to rescue some dumbass that left this place and got caught.”

“So where am I again?”

These two girls have tails too. I’m guessing that they’re demons. This place must be some type of hidden town or whatnot, kind of like the one I lived in. The other girl, who I’m guessing is Jessica got up and stood next to the other girl and said, “You’re in the same exact town you live in. The only difference is that this place is a mile underground and has a population of about five hundred of us demons. I’m sure you’ll love it here.”

The door next to opens, revealing Samael all dressed up in suit and tie like he just got back from a wedding. He says, “When I found out you were in the hospital I knew it was the perfect time to bring you down here. Eventually you would have to find out, like I wasn’t going to just let this all slip. When the Pope decided you wouldn’t be killed one of the High Priests that he talks to came up with the idea for the place you’d live and who you would live at. What the Pope didn’t know is that High Priest was actually working with us and he made sure you would live here so you could eventually join us down here. These two ladies are part of the team you’re a part of. Emily is eighteen years old and is one of our best combat fighters. Jessica is a year older and is even better than me with a katana. I’m sure these girls could teach you some good moves and such for training. They’re also part of the highest ranked team of Demons and take on the heaviest, most dangerous missions. There’s another member, Adam, but he’s not here at the moment.”

“Then where is he?”

“He’s out shopping.”

I laughed out to myself. The highest ranked team is two blondes and a guy that’s out shopping? Am I really supposed to take any of this seriously? Actually, I’m still wearing the same hospital clothes.

“Well, sense he’s out shopping, do you know if he can pick me up some clothes? I’m into kind of the plain stuff; polo’s, suits, black jeans, just shit like that. Why do you have him out shopping anyhow? What is he buying?”

Samael doesn’t take this as a joke and replies, “I’ll tell him to stop by Wal-Mart and get you some clothes. He only goes out shopping because of the million dollars in fake money he found from a mission a few months ago. Sense he’s one of the only demons that don’t have a tail; he can roam the public anytime he wants without having to worry about hiding a part of himself or even getting the slightest glimpse someone thinks he’s a demon. On the contrary, we have a huge garden down here for food supplies, so we don’t have to really worry about going up for food. Of course we do some hunting once in a while because nobody can live off fruits and vegetables forever and expect to have good strength, but we at least keep ourselves healthy.”

This is all insane. I’m dead to my friends and my parents. Well, more like my two friends and my mother. I’m never going to see my home ever again or get my dagger back. Not like I really want it now sense it was once stuck inside of me.

Samael leaves the room on his phone and keeps the door open. I pull myself up from the bed and ask the girls, “So, is this our room and do I get a tour of this place?”

“Yeah, this is our room. That’s why there are four beds. We’ll give you a tour. Adam’s going to be pissed that you moved in though. He kind of likes sleeping in a room with two girls.”

“No kidding.”

Emily led the tour, showing me around the place. We live down in a hallway with a bunch of other rooms, which is where the other people here live too. The hallways are pretty long and wide, but it’s surreal to walk down because it just feels like a never ending tunnel hallway. Then there was the gigantic cafeteria, which is apparently the center of the place. The garden and kitchen was next door to it, which had more food than I expected. Well, this place is feeding over five hundred people a day, so I guess I could understand how the Garden is a mile long. The training rooms are pretty large too. This place has about every weapon imaginable, even a few guns, but nobody except Samael is allowed to touch them.

When we got back to the room there was a guy who seemed a little younger than me on the computer nodding his head to some music. I’m guessing this is the guy Samael was talking about. His hair is black like mine, but allot longer like he really hasn’t heard of what a haircut is. He turns around, stands up and says, “Nice to meet you. My name is Adam and you are?”

“The son of Satan.”

“Oh, you”, he replies. “I’m guessing you’re the new dude on our team. Your clothes are on the bed. There’s a restroom where that black outline in the wall is next to Jessica’s bed. You just push it and it’ll open up for you.”

“Thanks.”

I walk up to the part of the wall he was talking out, which almost looks like someone just used a sharpie to draw a large rectangle. As soon as I put my hand on it the door pushes back and reveals the bathroom, which is completely white and completely clean. It literally looks like one of those bathrooms you’d see in the home magazines.

“Wait a minute. I still have to tell you guys about your mission tomorrow”, Samael says grabbing my arm, and pushing me back into the room. The four of us look at each other and then back at him. He continues, “Well, this mission is very dangerous, but also quite important for us. There’s a Prison in Paris where a certain Demon is being held captive. The special thing about him is that he can help summon Satan. Not only that, but he has a special ability of resurrecting the dead. Our goal is to rescue him, then go all the way to East Hastings. After that we’ll have to gather other summoners. I shouldn’t have to tell you how important of a mission this is and that we do not fuck this up! I’ll be with you on this mission too. We leave tomorrow, so you guys better get your get-to-know-Seth thing down by tonight and tomorrow morning, because after that you’ll have to rely on each other and me to get us through the mission. And Seth, welcome to the group.”

[deadpie]

XI.


Samael walks out from the room, leaving us and I head back to the restroom to get changed. I push back the door to close it, strip down, and put over the clothes I had lying on the ground. It’s strange, wearing this right now because I feel like I know this means I’m going to have to adapt to this place and live here for a long time. Once dressed, I leave the bathroom as three of the other teenagers I just met are standing next to the door.

“We’re going to the training room”, Jessica says. “It’d be cool if you came with. The three of us wouldn’t mind getting to know you and see what you can do physically.”

“Sounds cool, I guess.”

The three of us walked down the hall and make our way to the training room, which is completely empty. I never liked huge empty rooms, but whatever. Emily goes over to the weapon center, which is a small room connected to the training room and comes back out a few minutes later carrying four katanas, a scythe, and a battle axe over her back. She puts them all down when she gets back over to us and says, “Pick whatever you want.”

I kneel down to pick up the battle axe, smiling at it as it glimmered back at me. Jessica grabs two katanas and Emily picks up the long heavy looking scythe. When I get up Adam is on the other side of the room already, sitting down looking like he’s meditating. I ask, “What’s he doing?”

“Oh, we haven’t told you yet”, Jessica says. “Och, The sun speaker; he was summoned when he was a kid and his ability was given to Adam. Och was begging to be summoned because he was dying of old age, roughly being around four thousand years old. You know who he is right?”

“No, I don’t recall hearing about him.”

Emily butted in, swinging her scythe to the ground and balancing herself on the handle and says, “He was Satan’s left hand man and stopped most of the archangels when they first attempted to take over the tower of Babel. Och did so by what scripture said, ‘summoning a blizzard of black flames from the clouds and burn the archangels to crisp. This ability that he had is what we just like to call black fire, because that’s literally what it is; fire that’s black. Obviously, Adam hasn’t been able to do anything like that. Well, not yet I guess. Although, a few missions ago he ended up lighting every single warrior in a church that we were told to destroy. Immediately after he did it he passed out, so lately he’s been trying more to control his ability.”

“No fucking way. Do you girls have anything special in terms of abilities?”

Jessica kicks at the scythe stuck to the ground, knocking Emily over and answers, “No, we’re just sexy sisters that can kick ass like nobody’s business.”

I look back at the axe, not really knowing what to do with it or how to train at all really. Usually I would go out in the backyard and practice by myself, but being with these people, it almost feels embarrassing. They’re stronger than me and the only things I can do are getting inside people’s heads and control their body. Sure, it’s a pretty good ability, but it won’t be helpful if I have fifty people coming at me with katanas ready to cut me to shreds.

Jessica and Emily move off from me after noticing what a boring shit I am and I decide to sit down with the axe resting on my legs as I watch them fight each other. The more I watch the weaker I feel and the more I know Samael’s expectations of me are way too high and they’ll be getting me killed.

In the blink of an eye the room goes pitch black dark and the two girls scream out. Adam yells out, “Can you feel that? I fucking did it! Turn on the lights!”

My body is already sweating bullets like as if I’m standing in front of an overheating furnace. When the lights turn on I look up to see the most beautiful, yet strangest thing I’ve ever seen. Long black flames were coming from the ceiling and the lights almost seemed like stars, like as if the sky was on fire and those stars were all that could shine through it.

Adam runs over to me crying out in laughter. He looks directly at me, holding out his hand and snips his fingers, which immediately makes the flames disappear like some magic trick.

“Pretty cool, huh”, he says. “The last time I tried that I—“

He falls over in front of me slamming right down onto the ground. I can’t help myself but to laugh, but I stop myself from continuing after I realize that a fall like that could be serious.

The girls sprint over towards us and turn him over on his back. Emily grabs his arms and Jessica grabs his legs and I move out of there way as they push past me.

“Is he going to be ok? Do you want me to put the weapons away? What the hell is going on?”

“Forget the weapons”, Emily says. “Come on, we have to get him back to the room!”

I drop the axe from my hands almost chopping all the toes off my left foot and run up to them. We make it up to the room and the girls put him down of his bed. Jessica goes underneath his bed, pulling out a box that seems like a first aid kit and takes out this gigantic syringe like thing.

“What the hell is that?”

“Adrenaline.”

She smacks it right in the middle of his chest, shooting him straight up yelling out. He rolls off his bed pulling the syringe or whatever the hell it is out of his chest. The two of the girls look at each other, running out of the room and leaving me in here with him. I’m still a little confused on what’s going on and now why they just left. Are they getting Samael, going to the restroom or what?

“Shit.”

I look over to Adam, sitting on my bed as he crawls into a ball on the floor. He keeps mumbling curse words to himself, then kicks out his feet and screams out shit louder than any thirteen year old girl could. What the hell do I do in this situation? If I try to calm him down he’ll probably light my body up in flames.

“I’m fucking weak”, he whines. “And I’ll never be able to bring my brothers back. It’s my fault. If I stood up and if I was strong, maybe I’d be able to do something, but I’m just weak. Here I am, crying to some douche looking stuck up brat expecting something to just magically make me stronger.”

“You’re stronger than me. That’s for sure.”

“Of course I’m stronger than you, but that’s not the point. The point is that I’m not strong enough to keep going on these missions and I wasn’t ever strong enough to save my brothers.”

He pulls himself back on his bed, putting the pillow over his head and screaming. It’s all déjà vu, because I remember doing these moments before my father tried to kill me. I say to him, “I know you might think I’m a stuck up brat even though you don’t know much about me, but I’ve gone through a shit load of things too. Like one example is my father tried to kill me a few days ago after telling me how much he loves me. I know what it’s like to lose people close to you though. When I was ten years old everyone except me in my village was killed. Then a boy- a close friend of mine was killed. So if you want to talk about whatever it is, I’m here.”

The two of us sit in silence for a few minutes until he breaks it, finally speaking, “My father lost touch of reality one day. Two years ago when I was twelve after a mission I went to go see my family. They lived in that long hallway that we live in now. Well, I remember opening the door and seeing all six of my brothers scattered on the carpet torn from limbs and blood splattered up the walls and painting the carpet. My mom was in the bathroom in the shower with her head completely sliced off and I found her head in the toilet. When I left the restroom my father was looking directly at me holding a long dagger. I… I didn’t know what to do and my body froze up. He rushed over to me and grabbed me by the throat, tossed me down and hacked off my tail. He wasn’t injured from the shocks that my tail tried to send because everyone knows they don’t work on other demons, so yes, he sliced off my tail. I was screaming in pain, crying of rage, but lost in complete confusion. My body was telling me to just burn his fucking body, but at the same time I couldn’t at the time. I fainted, woke up back where I was to see him to the right of me in the bathroom biting on my mother’s arms. When I stood up he didn’t even notice how close I was to him. I torched his body and listened to him scream out, begging for me to stop, but I didn’t.”

Adam stopped talking and got under the sheets of his bed, digging the pillow back into his face. I decided to not ask any more questions or keep speaking. A few seconds later Samael and the girls came back in. Samael turns to me and asks, “Is he alright?”

“I don’t know, but I think it’s best to not talk to him right now.”

“Alright. If anything goes on, you tell Emily or Jessica to get me. You kids should get some rest now. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

When he leaves I sit down on my bed, just staring down at the carpet. In my head, I’m picturing what Adam told me about his brothers with them on the floor dead. It’s something I’m familiar to seeing though; seeing people you love and grew up with dead right in front of you. Even better yet, slipping on the blood of one of your neighbors that taught you how to read.

Finally, I get in the covers of my new bed and spend a half an hour moving the sheets and pillow around trying to find a correct way to sleep. Once I do I finally close my eyes, counting backwards from one hundred and picturing the number as I say it. Ninety nine… Ninety eight… Ninety seven… Ninety six…



I open my eyes as I feel someone pushing on my shoulder. Adam is standing above me and whispers to me, “Wake up. I’ve got something to show you.”

He goes to the door poking his head out and I get up, stretching before going over next to him. The hallway is completely empty as we walk down in it. Halfway down I finally get the nerve to ask, “Why did you wake me up and what’s so important for me to see that you couldn’t wake the girls up?”

“I’ve showed them this before”, he says. “No, not that, you perverted fuck. This is something that Samael probably wouldn’t want you to see. They don’t want anything to do with this, so I decided you’re going to help me when the time comes.”

“What time? What the hell are you talking about?”

He slaps me on the face and quietly says, “Shut up. I’ll show you once we’re down there.”

Down there? I didn’t think this place could go any lower underground then it already is. It seems like everyone in this entire place is asleep, like as if there’s some required bed time. This place seems as If there’s something strange about it that I’m not seeing. Even though it’s not like that I didn’t suspect that from the beginning. Although, I’m suspicious over everything.

We get to the cafeteria, go to where the kitchen is until we can hear footsteps. He tells me to get down and not move, so I do as he commands and hide under the counter. I’m guessing whatever this thing is it must be dangerous or pretty important sense we’re having to get pass guards or whoever is walking around.

Adam is gone for a few minutes and when he comes back he says, “I didn’t kill the guy we’re about to walk over by the way. He’s not hurt or anything, so don’t freak out when you see him.”

I stand up and follow him and step over a man flat out on the ground. The two of us keep going and stop at a door. He pulls out a key from his pocket and opens the lock on the door, slowly opening it and walking in. The first foot I take out of the room and into the next I notice the difference in how this room is completely nothing but old bricks and dark tunnels. It reminds me of the Catacombs for a second.

He tugs on my arm telling me to keep following him as he starts to run. We reach stairs and I try to keep up with him as we rush down them. As I catch my breath I ask him, “Where are we?”

“This is a collection of tunnels that goes down to a dozen of doors. Those doors connect to twelve other places like this one. Tomorrow we’re probably going to visit one of those to get to Paris sense it’s the fastest way there. Six months ago a guy our age was forced to make these portals for those rooms. In return, they would give him about thirty minutes of sunshine outside. He’s down here where all the rooms are, completely caged in with no escape. Well, he’s escaped a few times, but now he’s imprisoned behind a heavy door that ways a hundred tons. They’ve got him drugged out all the time so he can’t escape or barely even function.”

We finally reach the ending of the stairs to a final tunnel. We walk passed the twelve doors on our way and at the end we stop to a much larger and fancier door. Adam enters a four digit number into the key code connected to the door and its slides open. The two of us rush in, coming to another door. He says, “This is the final door. Once we enter, you’ll get to meet him and I’ll tell you exactly what my plan is.”

I gulped as he entered the next passcode into the door. This one moved slowly to the left and revealed the boy in a corner of the white room which looked like it was almost made of white pillows as walls. The boy was wrapped up in a stray jacket that seemed tight and impossible to escape.

“Meet Matt”, Adam said. “If he wasn’t wearing that stray jacket you’d find a symbol on his right arm. It’s the one of Ozgin; the demon of madness. His ability was given to him by his father, Ozgin who after six hundred years couldn’t bear to keep the ability because it was literally driving him insane. Even though Matt is only fifteen the ability has already lead him to complete madness. With the help of that summoner that we’ll be saving tomorrow, we could probably get rid of his ability. If we can do that he wouldn’t have to be in here anymore. The issue is that we’ll need Samael out of the way if we want to do this sense he’s the one who ordered for him to be locked away down here. He also was the one who forced him into making those doors. Take a good long look at Matt and see what they’ve done to him. All abilities can be controlled with practice, even one like Ozgin’s. I’m not saying we kill Samael, but we’re going to have to find a way to get him away when we do this.”

I do what he says and stare at Matt, disgusted in a sense of seeing his eyes spin around like as if that’s the only part of him he can move. He looks like he doesn’t even notice we’re in here. I turn back to Adam and say, “I’ll help you.”

[deadpie]

XII.


“We ready?”

Jessica puts a hand on the door, looking back to us before opening it up. Here we are this morning; Samuel, Adam, Jessica, Emily, and I down where I was last night when I met Matt. Samael had said that the door would take us to a place similar to this one, but somewhere in Paris so we would get there faster to find the summoner.

She pulls the door wide open and all of us go through. Me being last to enter I shut the door. We’re in hallway similar to the one we were just in. Emily says, “We should put something here to remind us which door to go through when we get back.”

Adam pulls out one of his few pocketknives and sticks it right into the door below the eyehole and says, “That should do it.”

All of us agree and we follow Samael down the tunnel. Once we get to the end of it we enter a large room with tables and books scattered everywhere. These books are for children and the tables have Crayola marks scattered on them. I’ve been here before.

This is the Catacombs; the first place I lived in when I was a child. I go over to one of the tables, flipping through the pages of a book and stopped at the back of it where I see my name in red marker on it.

“Welcome to the Catacombs”, Samael says. “Seth, it’s been a while hasn’t it? I’m sorry if the nostalgia makes you feel strange.”

“No, it’s good. I’ve missed this place.”

“That’s good. We might be coming back here a few more times for future missions. This place was abandoned a few days after you left. Although nobody was caught here, the Catholic Church made sure we wouldn’t start having people live back here by making the Catacombs into a Museum. Of course we’re lower than where anyone is allowed to visit mainly because it would take about a day for someone to find their way here, but there’s a special way inside here to reach the surface of Paris quick.”

Jessica is staring at the wall, which is built of human skulls and says, “Well, shouldn’t we get going? This place is scaring the shit out of me.”

“Yes, we should”, Samael replies. “You can look longer when we get back, Seth. I’m sorry, but this is a very important mission and we need to do it quick and correctly.”

We go through another hallway and to another room I recognize, which was solely for entering and exiting. The door still looks the same, which means the booby trap is probably still there. I stop Emily from opening the door and abruptly say, “One careless step and you’d fall into a pit of arrows. Once you open the door you’ll have to jump to the other side to where the stairs are.”

Samael smiles to me; obviously happy that I know this, but it bothers me he didn’t point it out before me if he cares about our safety. Well, that’s unless he knew I knew and was testing me.

She opens the door slowly and all of us stand back to examine the trap. The other side isn’t too far of a jump away, but its death if one of us didn’t get pass it. I went towards the wall, putting one foot up against it and charging straight through then jumping right when I got to the tip of the doors entrance and land roughly to the stairs.

The girls go next, and then Adam and Samael last. Samael pulls out his lighter and says, “It’s a bit dark here, but the light will come the sooner we get up.”

The walk is long just like I’ve always remembered it to be, but eventually we get the light and the next door at the end of the stairs. Samael opens up the door, revealing a kitchen with four tall men in suits staring directly at us.

I look around, remembering where we are sense it’s been a while. Emily asks, “Is this place a coffee shop?”

“Yes”, I answer. “This place has the best coffee you’ll ever drink in your entire life. It’s been open for about a hundred years now.”

The four men tell us to follow them, which makes it obvious their on our side sense they’re tails are visibly showing, so we do as we’re told. They take us over to a van outside of the coffee shop and we all enter it trying to find a comfortable spot. One of the guys says, “We’re going to take you to where the jail is and that’s when you’ll have to break in. We’ll have to leave immediately though, so we’re counting on you to make it back safely. It’s only a mile away, but it’ll be a dangerous run back to the coffee house. Once you’re back in the house, you’ll have to set the place on self-destruct. They’ll trail you back and we can’t risk having them getting to the doors that lead to all of the other underground hideouts we have.”

Underneath my feet is a pile of swords. Adam hands me one and examines a few while the girls stare out of the window enjoying the scenery. I have a feeling that the scenery won’t last long though and that this mission might be a complete failure. This sounds like a complete suicide mission and I’m not really up to blowing up one of the places I’ve lived in. The driver stops the vehicle, turns to us and says, “We’re here. Good luck to you all.”

Jessica pulls the door wide open and sprints out immediately and the rest of them do the same. I feel stupid waiting a second before running out too, but catch up to them at the front of the prison. The prison itself looks long, rectangular, but small in terms of height. We reach to the front door and Emily kicks it open, letting us run in before she comes from behind and attacks the guards next to the entrance. I unsheathe my katana and run up to the front desk where four men are and try to attack as quick as possible, but they notice me halfway to them and jump over to fight me.

The four of them aren’t too hard to see inside of their heads, so sense I’m in a quickly tight situation I learn their basic moves to use against them. Adam backs me up as I charge towards and duck down and slide in a circle using all my strength in my hands with the sword to dismember all of their legs from underneath the kneecap.

I stand back up, seeing the charade of dead bodies and only one alive, where Samael has his sword to the man’s throat and asks, “Where is the summoner that you have locked up?”

“He’s on the third floor – cell C119”, he whimpers. “Please let me live. I’ve got a wife and-. “

Samael sticks the blade through his neck, waiting until the man stops gasping for air before pulling his sword back out. My stomach turns and I almost puke, but force myself to take this and know there is only going to be more of this as we go on.

Emily takes one of the officer’s keys to open up the gated door, where about three dozen more officers come running towards us with swords. I run out knowing that I’m about to get torn to pieces, but Adam grabs the back of my shirt and says, “Watch this shit.”

He pulls out his right hand, tossing me to the ground and I look up to see all of the guards bursting into black flames, turning their bodies to ash in a matter of seconds. I stand back up as we start back to running, looking for stairs or something to get to the third floor. The prison is completely silent, like as if there was nobody working or nobody imprisoned, but a minute later the sirens started ringing and the clacking of shoes came closer to us. We found an elevator, which is surprising because I never thought elevators would exist in prisons, but it didn’t matter. All of us got in and Jessica hit the button for the third floor. Funny, the elevator even has that chill out music.

“Nice attack”, Samael says. “Do you still have some strength left in you?”

“I’m just getting started”, Adam laughed. He took his katana and nudged on my shoulder telling me to watch as he jabbed the sword directly into his chest, then pulling it back out. The sword was black and flames shingled from the edges of it. “Don’t worry, I’m not hurt or anything. This is a trick I was taught a few months ago.”

The elevator stops, slowly opening and three officers jump in the elevator with us. I push myself out and focus on the hundreds of other men down where the rest of the cells are trying to connect with their consciousness quickly and when I do, I focus on weakening their motor skills. My head goes light weight for a second, probably because I’m focusing on too much people at once, but I keep going and fight anyone in my way. They try to run towards me but only fall down and for every swing they take towards me send them tossing their sword out of their own hands. I bite on my lip, trying not to think about how I’m killing these people, but kill anyone in my path anyways.

Everyone else runs up towards me and we move left to where the C cells are. Obviously, more people are running towards us and the people in their cells are screaming and yelling for us to release them. A man from behind me kicked me forward to the ground and pulled his sword to my face, but Emily hacked his head right off with a battle axe. I wipe the blood off from my face and I’m trying to stay strong, but my body aches and I’m tired. Using my ability would weaken me more and I haven’t used it enough to clearly control it more.

We clear the halls of officers and finally reach the cell. Adam uses his sword to slice the bars down and Samael steps in the cell, picking the old man inside up off his bed saying, “We’ve come to rescue you and take you to East Hastings. I don’t have much time to explain everything, but we need your help to summon Satan. Now we don’t have much time before a shitload more people come to kill us, so just trust us and we’ll keep you safe.”

The old man seems dumbfounded, but comes with us anyways. We rush back down from the elevator to the first floor and to the main entrance we came from. Emily and Jessica go up to the door, ready to bust it open so we can go on our mile run back to the coffee shop, but Adam yells, “Stop! Look outside of the window. We’re surrounded.”

I run up to him pulling the blinds up from the window to peak out. He’s right. There’s tanks parked right in front of us and an army of men with swords. The possibility of getting out alive without being blown to smithereens is zero.

“So that’s it”, I mumble. “We’re all dead and the mission is a complete failure.”

“No.”

Adam takes his sword and sticks it right back into his chest, pulls it back out and the katana is normal again. He goes to the middle of the room sitting next to a pile of corpses and crosses his legs like he’s about to meditate. The girls move away from the door and all of us sit down on the floor next to him. He shuts his eyes and says, “I’m picturing the path we took to get here and what it would probably look like with the small glimpse I took outside the window. Once I have everything mapped out, I’ll color in my mind where I want to attack with the flames, and then I’ll focus on keeping it stable long enough for about ten minutes so we can make it out alive. Once it is all planned out, well, you’ll know once it’s started.”

We wait, staring at him and constantly looking around the room. The dead bodies is distracting and I stand up, walking over to the front desk and moving a dismembered man out of the way to puke out into the trashcan, mainly spilling it all out on the floor. My body is shaking, but I realize that it’s not my own body that’s doing this, but it’s the vibration from everything around me; the ground, bodies, and every object. I walk back over to everyone and they stand up moving out of Adams way.

Everything was silent like as if I went deaf, but then a loud exploding noise busted out through outside, blowing the windows and the door to pieces. Adam stood up and screamed, “Run!!!”

All of us ran out of the prison and I looked up and to the right of me, only seeing the enormous black flames consuming everything in its path. Everything that was touched by the flames is bound to be destroyed and I’m pretty sure this fire is going to end up being seen around the entire world now because nobody has ever seen fire that is black or a fire this large in Paris.

Not a single person comes out to attack us through the fire, probably because if they tried to they would be killed instantly by the fire itself. Once we’ve reached back up the coffee shop we rush back to the kitchen and back down the stairs.

“Good work Adam”, Samael says. “If it wasn’t for you, we’d all be dead right now.”

We reach back to the pit and Samael goes first. Emily helps the old man jump over, where he almost fell in, but still made it past. The rest of us made our way over and back into the room. I ran out the room past them and went through a different hallway, one where I and the people I grew up with lived in. All the doors were open and every piece of furniture, food, and object was torn to shreds or tossed around the room. I reached my room, which was small, but everything was still in its place from when I left. My clothes were still on the bed wrinkled up. That day I was packing trying to decide what to take with me and what I would just keep here, so I left them on my bed. There was something I remember leaving behind though when I left. I got down on my knees reaching under my bed, grabbing a leather box with a small lock attached to it. The trick with this lock was that it didn’t need a key, but used the fingerprint of the owner of the box. I pushed my thumb against it and it unlocked.

“We’ve gotta’ go”, Jessica says entering my room. “Samael just turned bomb on.”

“It’s not a bomb. The thing he turned on is just going to turn this place into a heavy rock like material. It’s kind of like the place just turns into cement and dries up, but a little different. The only problem is that can only be set off by someone that has the passcode. He doesn’t have it, so I don’t know why he told you this so called bomb are on.”

She backs out of my room slowly and I pick up the box, following her and meeting back at the hallway where we came from. Emily pulls the knife from the door and opens it up, letting us all in before she did. The old man then said, “So, you do realize for this to work I’ll need six other summoners with me to help make this happen? I’m also guessing you, Samael, are the one that was chosen to have your body taken over by him too.”

“Wait what?”

“Yes, it’s true that he chose me”, Samael replies back to the man. “Kids, Satan can’t come to this level of earth without taking the form of a body. The body has to be chosen and strong enough, someone that can withhold the strength of the most powerful man alive. That also means that once this summoning is done, I’ll be dead and he’ll have control of me. He’ll speak to you and everyone else with my mouth and walk in my skin.”

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this? You really think I want to look at you as my father? It’s not the same. This is wrong and just insane.”

Samael runs up to Adam slamming his fist right into his face and kicking him right in the stomach. I back away as Emily and Jessica run towards, but he says, “Back off! I attacked him only because he was about to attack me. Thanks to you interrupting me, Seth, I didn’t get to finish telling you all everything I was going to say. I also have an ability that I’ve never told any of you about; that of Ronove, the knowledge staff. His power is able to briefly let me see into the future of anyone or anything in front of me. It doesn’t go too far, but I can see an estimate of five minutes of the future when I chose to. I knew something was up with Adam and when I decided to use my ability, I realized that this fool was going to try and kill me so he could use the summoner to get rid of Matt’s power. Yes, Matt the one in the large door in caved behind us all.”

Adam pulled his hand up about to light Samael into flames, but Samael grabbed his arm and twisted it to the opposite side, sending my friend yelling out in pain. I run up to Samael with my sword swinging it towards his head and he ducks right in time running right at me and knocking me over, punching me in the face.

“Stop it”, Jessica screamed. “I don’t want to fight you, but I will if you hurt them again.”

He put his shoe against my face, pushing down as I tried to get up and move, but I couldn’t. Samael says back to her, “No, you won’t. The sad thing about you girls is that you never disobey anything you’re told to do, even if it means me breaking Adam’s arm and beating the shit out of the son of Satan. No matter what, you’ll just stand in watch. I know this because I’m looking into the future right now and I know you won’t attack me.”

I know how to prove him wrong. All I have to do is get inside one of the girl’s head and force them to attack. I focus my mind on Emily, slowly getting inside, but she’s not easy to take control of. Although, I find the right spot in her head and let it snap, whispering into her mind to release all emotion and kill Samael.

Emily runs towards him pulling her battle axe up and hitting down right on him, which pins itself right into his chest. She lets go, letting him fall to the ground, but she’s confused of what she’s done like she didn’t even realize she did it and backs away.

“You bastard, Seth”, he coughed choking on blood. “You’re going to kill me to save someone who can’t be saved? The rules have been broken and you’re doing this all in front of a summoner. How are you going to explain to anyone what has gone on here?”

I pick myself up, pulling the axe out from him and say, “I’ll say you were a traitor, because technically you are. You attacked two other demons just because you don’t want Matt saved. For what? What’s the purpose of wanting him in there? Now it’s going to happen. We’re going to help Matt, but first, I’m going to let you do what you wanted to do. Me, you and the summoner will go East Hastings while the girls get Adam somewhere for medical help. When we get there, I’ll let this mission finish. You’ll get to die thinking you’re ability was going to save you. You’re not going to do anything to me either, because you know that I can see into your head and then use your ability too. Now you’re realizing you’re weak. Everything’s going to work out exactly as I planned. Do you realize telling me about your power meant letting me use that against you?”

“Your father won’t be pleased.”

“Shut up”, I yell back. “I don’t have a fucking father! We’re going to East Hastings and you’re going to give up your pathetic soul to Satan. When that happens, I’m going to tell him what a waste of a parent he is and I’m going to tell him what you did. Now didn’t you say we were on a time limit for this mission? Then we should get going! Get up you weak piece of shit!”

He tries to stand up, but I realize he’s too injured to do so, so I decide to help pull him up myself. He says, “Alright, you’ll get what you want. I’ll take you to the door that’ll lead us to the other summoners.”

I help drag him and ask the summoner to help me as we move him past the other doors until he tells us to stop. We reach the door, which is marked as number 12. Samael lets go of us, pulling the door open and we go inside, leading us to a large empty room.

“We’re here”, he says gasping for air. “The building we went to when you met Abyss is right above this place and the other summoners are probably up there waiting for us. We should get going.”

The three of us slowly walk through the middle of the room to the other side and to the door which opened up, revealing an elevator. It’s the same elevator I was once in. This place was directly connected to the building and must be solely made to it. I pressed the top floor button as we all got in and the summoner warned us, “Once we go through with this, we might be looking at a catastrophe of thousands of people dying. Summoning such a powerful being will kill about everyone nearby in a hundred mile radius. Are you willing to take the risk?”

“Do we have a choice?”

He was quiet after I said that and we stood in silence, waiting to reach the top. Finally, we did and the door opened, revealing six other summoners sitting down meditating not noticing our presence, almost like they have just been waiting for us. The summoner stands in the middle of the roof and says looking at us, “Shall we begin?”