The clock steadily ticked away. We stood in Carter’s apartment, waiting. Vincent’s leg was jumping, eyes downcast, Alyssa had a knife in her hand, flipping it and twirling it through the air. All I could do was wait, see what Carter would decide. He was the leader, it seemed. It felt like years had passed since that proclamation. We were close to the end, to the entire annihilation of the human race. Years spreading throughout the span of three weeks. There hadn’t been any other hunts, because Carter had proclaimed I wasn’t ready yet. I’d tried my best, learning how to use a knife from Alyssa, trying to figure out what Eldritch Energies were with Carter.
My power distorted the natural order of the universe, it seemed. Up was down, things that should die survived, impossible monsters bloomed form my hand. Eldritch Energy, was something called Unnature, quantifiable wrongness practically exuded from my palm.
As the clock struck twelve, Carter pushed through the door. He glanced around at all of us with a sly grin, and dropped a greasy bag in the middle of the living room table.
“Sorry, thought we could all use something to eat,” he said with a shrug, “So, Ben, tell me how you feel,”
“Umm, sorry, what?” I replied, “I thought this was-“
“It is,” He said quickly, “I mean, tell me how you feel about this. Do you feel ready for this? And don’t bullshit me about it, this is a serious question, and I need you to consider it,”
I stopped myself from what felt like the obvious response, and forced myself to actually ponder it. The first demon I’d ever hunted had been a nightmare. A slop of pustules, a fleshy, decaying organism, with eyes in all the wrong places. But I’d managed through it, despite the horror that had overtaken me a day afterwards, I had fought through, and came out on the other side. There would be other demons to fight, and they would probably be worst, but I had a capable team beside me, people that would slot into my weaknesses with their own strengths.
“Y-yeah,” I replied, “I feel, good isn’t the operative word, but I feel…Capable,”
Carter studied me for a moment, before nodding, “Okay. In a couple of days, we’ll be going on another hunt. Keep in mind that we’ve had people covering for our asses while we trained you. Things are going to get a lot more difficult when you’re out on the field,”
“I know that,” I said, reaching out for one of the burgers, “But…Nobody’s gonna do this besides us, y’know? You can’t expect someone without…What we have, to try and fight those sorts of horrors,”
“You’re correct about that,” Vincent said after swallowing a bite.
“So,” Carter was silent for a moment, as he grabbed at a soda, “I believe that you have what it takes. You’ve already been on one hunt, and your ingenuity probably saved all of us,”
“Does that mean I’m in, or is there a ‘but’ coming at some point?”
“There is a ‘but’ coming, if you will. Your abilities need a lot of work. You managed to summon something that helped in the moment, but currently you’re unreliable,”
I nodded, feeling a mild amount of shame. The tentacle was the only thing that I could manage reliably. When I attempted to use my abilities, everything just felt…Off-kilter. It was annoying; I could summon monstrosities that the human mind shouldn’t be able to see, and yet I couldn’t get any of it to piece itself together.
“Yeah…” I replied quietly.
“That does not mean, however, that you’re not prepared. Alyssa’s been training you with a knife, and Vince has been training you to hide. You have enough to be part of the team,”
A relieved smile raised itself upon my lips, “Okay, um, when do we start?”
“A couple of days,” Carter said, “You still need a few days of rest, despite having the last three weeks, I won’t trust you until you’re at your best,” He paused for a moment, taking a sip of his drink, “Now, the most important thing I can warn you of, is that you won’t get any breaks after this. With the amount of demons breaking through, and the minimum being breached, we can’t take things easy after this,”
I nodded silently.
“I’m thinking a week, enough to get you prepared. Keep in mind that we never get to know what we’re up against, we just know that we’ll have enough luck to find one,”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“Okay,” I replied, “So we’ll meet back here in one week?”
Alyssa nodded, standing herself up, “I have a chemistry assignment that’s due, so I’m gonna run,”
Vince picked himself from the couch, “And I, have some minds to sort out,”
Another interesting thing about an Illusion focus, was they could change memories, not just perceptions in a moment. One thing Vincent did in his spare time was visit mental hospitals, and help as many people that had witnessed demons as he could. From what I’d been told, it was almost like a job to him, something he practically obsessed over.
“I have some homework to do as well,” I replied after a moment, “Umm, can I catch a ride with one of you?”
“Here’s some money for the bus,” Alyssa replied instead, handing me a couple of bills, “Also enough for another soda, if you want one,”
“Thanks,”
-7
The door to my room stood open, and I stared blankly towards my bed. Despite a lack of activity, the day felt long. Slowly, I sat down on my bed, grabbing at my phone. There was a week left to prepare, a week before I had to fight another demon.
Dread, that’s what was steadily moving its way throughout my chest. An inexpressible dread, and half-memories of the monster that I’d first been forced to fight. I had no doubt that this one would be worst, and I wasn’t that I’d be capable of handling it. A monster made of flayed flesh, or perhaps even something more grotesque, was waiting for me at the end of the week.
“Hey, are you okay? You’ve hardly talked at all since you got home,”
I blinked, rubbing exhaustion from my eyes, as I looked up towards my mom, “Y-yeah,” I replied, “I’m fine, just…”
“Did you fight another demon?” She asked, walking into my room and sitting at the edge of the bed.
“No, but I’m going to have to, soon, and…” I paused, choking, “I don’t know if I can handle it. I told them that I’d be able to, but, but mom they’re terrifying,”
“If you don’t feel like you can, you don’t have to, you realize that right?” She asked, voice quiet.
“But I do!” I replied, practically enraged, “The apocalypse is…It’s on the edge of churning into motion, and if I don’t do something, then I can’t even say that I tried. And I’m terrified, but…But I have to. The others are working, and I know that they’d continue if I wasn’t there, but I can’t ju-“
“It’s okay,” She interrupted, voice calm, “I understand. I mean, I wish you hadn’t just dropped that there’s a possible apocalypse on me like that, but I understand,”
I chuckled lightly, only then realizing that I’d started crying.
“If you feel like you need to do this, then you need to do this. I know, without a doubt, that you can manage it if you need to. Just because you’re afraid doesn’t mean you don’t have strength, remember that, when you’re fighting whatever monstrosity it is that you find,”
I nodded, laughing lightly, “T-thank you mom,”
“Of course. Now get some sleep, you’ll need as much as you can for the next while,”
I did just that, laying myself down, and staring back towards the ceiling. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to imagine whatever horror I’d end up fighting, but that doesn’t mean my head stopped trying. Images flashed themselves through my skull, until inevitably, I was just too tired to care anymore. The world dropped off the face of a dime, and I lost myself in a wash of darkness.
-7
The next day brought with it a steady wash of quiet. Mom had left for work, and I was left to walk around the house on my own. I set about making myself a coffee, and preparing for the last week of school. It felt like an entire world was coming to an end, with the great outdoors of taxes opening itself up to me. Then there were my…Other responsibilities.
It was difficult not to think about what would be done later this week. A demon, and I had to take a part in hunting it. I hardly even wanted to think about what that would entail. Hopefully it would be easier to fight than the last one, what, with me knowing at least the slightest amount about my powers. But saying something like that would be kidding myself, and I knew it.
With a coffee in hand, I sat down in the living room, laptop carefully placed upon the coffee table. Another thing that they’d been teaching me to track for, was demon activity. It was surprisingly difficult, considering there weren’t any large omens that processed when they broke through. Instead, you had to look for small clues within large-scale tragedies. Any demon that made it through to Earth left a lot of tragedy and destruction in their wake. Yet even then, it was difficult to parse between human-related tragedies and demon made ones. There was a school shooting, for example. It didn’t make the news because the Antichrists didn’t want it to, but it reportedly involved a demon running rampant inside of a school. For all intents and purposes, it looked like something that a human had done.
There was some related media in India that looked like it could’ve been a demon attack, and thousands of other reports I spotted that looked similar. It seemed, in comparison to just a week ago, that there were thousands of demons sprouting out. We were losing.
That fact played through my head through the rest of the week. It wouldn’t leave my skull no matter how much I wanted it to. The Anti’s were losing, and demons were breaching the gap, breaking into the waking world. Perhaps the worst part, was knowing there was nothing that I could do about it. The apocalypse was getting closer to hand, and I knew that the demons would inevitably go beyond the minimum really, really soon.
It was only a matter of time before the world was overrun, and something incomprehensible made itself known.
You rarely think about ‘the end’, or the larger picture. It’s always the small-scale tragedies that take our breaths away, and put fear in our hearts. But the night before the hunt, I felt myself curling in my bed. The world would end, demons would keep breaking through, and the apocalypse would start. There was nothing I could do to stop it; there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.