It was a dark, and comfortable night. Twelfth grade was at the eve of passing, and I felt…Comfortable. A cup of coffee was held loosely in my hand as I walked through the kitchen. For all intents and purposes, it should’ve been an enjoyable night. I would’ve stayed up reading, and probably looked at a rising sun in panic, with the sudden memorization that hey, I had school that day.
Only, I didn’t get to enjoy a peaceful night, spent alongside the books I so adored. Instead, I walked into the living room, coffee still in hand, to the sound of breaking glass. Most of our front-door is made of glass, or at least the top is. So when it broke, all I could do was stare as an arm, wrapped in tight leather, reached through, and snapped the lock down.
There were a few quiet moments, as the arm reached out, and grabbed at the handle. My body didn’t move, almost my entire thought process had halted, the moment that the glass struck the floor. Perhaps the only distinctive thing that happened at that moment, was that my hand tightened, and my legs started shaking.
Finally, in all of an instant, the door was opened, and we stared towards one another, face to face. His eyes were blue, beneath his mask, and that was the only thing I could see besides his lips. Still, if I had to guess, I’d say he was a year or two older than me.
A singular moment passed, where the only thing we did was stare towards one another, eyes wide and breath held, before a gun whipped itself out from his right hand, and ended up pointed directly at my face. All I could do was wait, body uncompliant to the desperate need to run, the want to get as far from this situation as I humanly could. He moved forwards, gun in the air, and words blasting from his mouth.
“Get on the fucking ground!”
I didn’t need to be told twice. Reality reasserted itself in my mind, and I dropped. He was directly above me in a mere moment, gun pointed towards my skull, right at my brain. One pull of the trigger and it’d be lights out; world gone without any preamble. There’d be no words said, no hard-fought battles over that pistol stuck in his grip.
“You’re gonna tell me where the valuable shit in this house is, yeah? Everything’ll go nice and easy, and you’ll get away scot-free, won’t ever hear from me again,” His voice was deep but wiry, twisted a bit by a strange warble of fear; something I wouldn’t understand.
It took a couple of seconds, deep laboring seconds where all I could wonder about was a twitch of his finger, my scattered brain matter across the floor, and deep, deep rivulets of blood. But eventually, after what felt like hours, I managed to force out a sentence.
“M-most of it’s in…In my mom’s room,” I was surprised he could hear my voice, in the small whisper that I felt it blurt out as.
As he stood himself up, I started to think about what I’d just said. My mom’s room. She was still asleep, had always been a heavy sleeper, and I’d just sent him into her room. His footsteps slowly dragged away from me, and I begged myself to stand up, to do something, get him anywhere but in her room. Just like before, I was betrayed, arms, legs, and head, all refusing to move themselves even the slightest amount.
From her room I heard a cry, and then she was shoved roughly out into the dining room, before being kicked down, flat onto her stomach. I heard the man shout something again, and desperately swiveled my head. He had the gun pointed directly at her skull, and his finger was on the trigger.
It felt like the world flipped itself, spinning violently before my eyes, a rollercoaster I couldn’t escape. A dangerous sort of nausea settled into my stomach as I did the only thing I felt like I could. The action made little sense, it wouldn’t save anyone, it would just put me into more danger. But one singular hand lifted into the air, like I could project a stop sign onto reality.
Only, something else happened. Dark, ink-blot matter seemed to claw forwards from my veins. In a violent pulse, they rushed forwards, slamming directly into my palm. From one second to the next, they had extruded themselves from the middle of my hand, and shot through the air.
In one, horrible second, his finger tightened around the trigger. In the next, a tentacle made of impossible darkness slammed straight through the side of his head, splattering blood across the floor, and physically splashing the room in tendrils of brain matter.
A second passed, the body collapsed against the floor. Another one flitted by, and my mom scattered backwards from the body, eyes staring at me in uncomprehending shock. A third, and then the tentacle violently retracted, whipping across the room, and up my arm. When the fourth came around, I felt my eyes roll into the back of my head, and the world went dark.
-7
Pain. Like milk curdling in twice the speed, or plastic twisting as it burns. Something just outside perception, yet surrounding it. Encroaching ants upon a candy bar, every single movement made that sensation pull itself from just beyond…Wherever it was.
When I opened my eyes, everything lost sense. I was laying down in my bedroom, head propped upon one of my arms, body twisted over so my nose rested on the inside of my elbow. Carefully, slowly, so as not to upset whatever strange sensation moved just beyond my understanding, I sat up.
There within my room, stood a man. He wore a suit, and a small smile, and seemed for all the world as if he belonged here. In that small moment, the events of last night carefully reinserted themselves.
“Yes, I killed him, you can take me to jail now,” I said calmly, trying my best to prepare for what would happen next.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
What surprised more than anything, however, was the laugh; deep and hearty…Genuine, “I’m not here to arrest you; the man worked for a gang, did you know that? Not only did he work for them, but he was stealing from them. Y’know what happens when you steal from a gang? Nothing good, but they gave him a modest chance at surviving; pay it back in full in three days…”
All I could do was stare; I felt like I’d been doing that far too much recently, “So you’re not…”
“Hardly. Instead, I’d like to introduce myself, and tell you a couple of things,” The man walked swiftly, yet not threateningly, to the edge of my bed, “The first of which, is that I’m your father. I felt it important that we start off with that for a multitude of reasons,” He sat down at the edge of the bed, and stared down towards the floorboards, “The second of which, is that I’m the king of Hell, the Devil,”
“You’re…Sorry, what?” My thoughts seemed to kick into gear a moment after the thought left my mouth, “Wait. If I’m your…Son, and you’re not just batshit insane, that would mean that I’m the Antichrist,”
The man’s mouth began to quirk up just a bit, “You’re not the only one, but we can get to that in a bit. Do you believe, if you were not one of my children, that you’d be capable of summoning a tentacle from your hand?” With that, he began to raise one of his fists, upon which an entire hill of miniature tentacles seemed to bloom, taking over his entire hand in a strange illusion of sentient fur.
“Okay,” I could see all of the tentacles quite clearly, with the light that he’d flipped on not moments before, “So you’re the devil, then, and I’m one of your children,”
“Glad we got that covered,” The man replied, putting his hand down, “Now, given the fact that you have…Awakened, you will have a multitude of different responsibilities as one of my children. One of the most important, is taking care of demons,”
“Taking care of demons. Like what, keeping them as pets?”
He chuckled at that, “No. Like killing them, or sending them back to hell,”
After a moment of thought, I nodded, “But why would you want that? I mean, you’re the devil and all, shouldn’t you want people to end of possessed?”
“No, not at all,” The man’s face went from relaxed to serious in an instant, “If enough demons end up on Earth, the apocalypse will begin. I’m not quite sure if you’ve read ‘the good book’ or not, but when the apocalypse ends, I die. I would enjoy avoiding such a circumstance if at all possible. As such, I have called all of my children to attempt to stop the demons from invading Earth,”
“But don’t you control them?” I replied, “You’re the king, and all,”
“I do not control demons. I control which souls end up tortured by the demons, and how severely. Otherwise, I have no say within their affairs,”
I nodded silently at that, and for a moment, there was silence. I was, an antichrist, apparently. That fact seemed to linger in my mind, as I tried to figure out what to say next. What was I supposed to do with knowledge like that? After almost an entire minute of silence, a question entered my head.
“I-if demons are walking Earth, why haven’t normal people seen them?”
The Devil laughed at that, “Some have. Most that do end up in Psychiatric Wards. Seeing a demon is not kind upon the human mind; it warps the way they see the world. They will start to see things, nightmares within the waking world,”
“Oh,” I replied, my voice a whisper from five miles away, “So…Do I just go out there, and, I dunno, point my tentacle-thing at them?”
“For the most part, until you learn other skills. You will not be alone; I have no interest in letting my children die. Your brothers and sisters will find you soon enough,” He then stood up, brushing off his suit, “Now, I have elsewhere to go. If you need assistance, call. Do not expect me to appear each time, but I do endeavor to answer when questions are had,” With that, he vanished; it was like the whisper of thousands of rough voices, all fading into quick sand.
After a moment, I picked myself up, and walked towards the living room.
My mom was there, sitting silently. She had a cup of coffee cradled into her hands, and she stared down into the murky brown. When my foot creaked under a particularly loose floorboard, she jumped, and her head swiveled to look towards me. We shared a silent glance, before I managed to parse the words that had held themselves in my skull for the last couple of minutes.
“Why did you never tell me?”
Something behind my mom’s eyes came unglued, and she started to cry, “I…I just…If you knew I thought you’d think…And…”
Without a thought, I rushed forwards. Comforting people was something I’d never learned how to do, but I tried my best to get her to calm down. An hour seemed to pass in a couple of minutes, as we retraced the past, and she told me college, and some ridiculous nonsense she and her friends had gotten into; how a couple of days later she’d met…dad, the reveal, and how she eventually ended up here. I stayed silent throughout, only getting up to get myself a cup of coffee, and when she was done, I told her about everything dad had said, how I had responsibilities as one of his children, that I had to start fighting off demons.
“You have to start…” Her entire body seemed to keel over for a moment, and I could feel her start to panic, “Y-you…Do you have to fight them alone!?” Her voice was laced with worry, and I could see her eyes widening.
Desperately, I tried to calm her back down, “No! No, I don’t have to fight them alone. T-there are other antichrists out there, and there’s supposed to be a group that’s going to find and help me,”
Slowly, some of that panic seemed to leave her, and she nodded, “Okay, okay. Do you think you’ll be able to do it? I can call up an old friend of mine, and figure out how to get you out of it, if you don’t,”
I smiled a bit, “I think I can, I’ll just need the extra help, at first. Last night, when that tentacle flew from my hand, something clicked…”
It’s almost impossible to describe. That all-consuming fear, just for a moment, had unraveled, and I’d taken control. It had been dangerously impulsive, and amazingly stupid, but I’d managed to take control of the situation, and force that insurmountable wall aside. I didn’t want that feeling to fade, or that control to fade to static.
So I knew I needed this. If I ever wanted to be…Free, in my life, I needed to do this. Even if it meant risking my life, and fighting demons of all things, I would accept it. For a moment, I felt optimistic, perhaps even positive. Oh I knew it wasn’t going to be all fun and games, and would likely be impossibly dangerous, but I thought I might make it.
Only, pictures of demons can’t even compare to how truly horrifying they are. Images of these impossible horrors hardly ever does them justice.