Armageddon. Doomsday. Ragnarök. For eons many had predicted a cataclysmic end to human civilisation. And yet none of these prophesies came close to explaining what was to come at the time of the great change. This momentous occasion came about suddenly, without warning, and without fanfare. There were no great catastrophes, no disease, no famine, no fires, and no floods. No angels descended to whisk the good and the worthy up to the promised land. Instead, the first, and only sign of this event was the emergence of demons. The presence of these supernatural entities signalled the end of the old ways of man, and the beginning of the next chapter in human evolution.

Barry lay in his hospital bed, unable to move his withered and weak body. His scrawny legs had given up years ago. The shrinking muscles of his arms had long felt heavy, and eventually they too lost all meaningful function. He felt weary and decrepit, like an old man nearing the end of his days. The act of breathing had itself become a challenge, with each rise and fall of his chest now requiring conscious thought and effort. Speaking was a challenge, and he preferred to be silent to conserve his small energy reserves. He hadn’t been able to eat real food for months now, the risk of aspiration too high, instead he was fed nutritious mush through a tube in his stomach. His eyes and eyelids still worked, but he’d seen enough of the blank hospital ceiling and flickering ward lights by now that he preferred to keep them closed. Time passed agonisingly slowly, and his life was devoid of all pleasure or meaning. Fatigue and exhaustion dominated his senses. The only remaining silver lining of his miserable existence was that soon it would all be over.

Barry had been born with a rare genetic disease known as muscular dystrophy. As a result, his muscles progressively atrophied, weakened, and lost all meaningful function. It was a life limiting condition, with very few sufferers of the disease making it to adulthood. The doctors had said that he’d done well to make it to his eighteenth birthday, like that was some sort of impressive achievement. Those comments provided little solace to Barry, and if anything, just added fuel to his internal anger. Was he meant to be grateful? The last few years were hell, and he was relieved when the muscles around his heart and lungs began to give in as it meant that his pain and suffering was nearing its end.

In the early days, when he was younger, things weren’t quite so bad. Even though he was in a wheelchair for most of his life, he could still go to school, make friends, and play video games. He’d met plenty of celebrities when they visited the hospital, and he got to participate in numerous unique experiences through the various sick kids’ charities. But Barry no longer wanted anything to do with all that. He was now fully bed bound, he needed help to feed himself through his stomach tube, he couldn’t scratch himself, he couldn’t wipe his own arse, he couldn’t even change the television channel without assistance. He was helpless, tired, sore, pumped full of trial drugs, and entirely fed up. To make matters worse Barry’s mind was full of the regret and disappointment at all the things he hadn’t done in his short life. Most prominently on that list was the fact that he’d never kissed a girl or participated in any sort of romantic activities. He felt like he’d been denied many of the normal life experiences that come with growing up. By now the despairing frustrations of his complete helplessness and loss of dignity had all become too much, and he longed for the sweet release of death.

As it neared midnight, Barry could feel his breathing becoming more laboured. For many this sensation of breathlessness would be worrying, but Barry embraced the feeling, knowing that it signalled the beginning of the end. He smiled through the gasps as he waited for death to claim him. His parents had already left for the night, and the nurses had just recently done their rounds, that meant he was alone, and no one was around to try and prevent the inevitable. Finally, his pain would be over, and he could enter eternal slumber.

Finally, after some time persisting through the physical and mental torment of choking, Barry started to gurgle as his weak heart completed its final, feeble beats. As he took his terminal gasp of air, he felt his body lighten and he opened his eyes to take one last look at the world around him. His aches and pains began to fade and just as the peripheries of his vision began to go dark, he thought he saw a dark figure floating in the air before him. With his last ounce of strength Barry squinted to get a better look at the mysterious being in front of him and he saw a clawed finger reach forward to touch his forehead. At this very moment his vision went dark, and he presumed death had finally claimed him.

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Barry’s slumber was suddenly interrupted as he felt his body slam into something cold and hard, as if he’d been dropped onto solid concrete. He had the wind knocked out of him and he could tell he had an egg building at the back of his head where his skull had hit the ground.

“Ouch, what the hell?” Barry sputtered as he forced his eyes open with surprisingly little effort.

He was met with a strikingly bright white glow, which forced him to quickly close his eyes again for fear of being blinded. It took a few moments before he risked opening them once more, this time with additional care and patience. Barry pushed his arms by his side and sat up as his eyes continued to adjust to the strange white light.

“What is going on, where am I?” he said to himself.

He felt like he’d just woken up from the deepest sleep of his life and it took him a moment to recall his last memory before this.

“Wait, did I finally die?” he muttered to himself before he froze in shock.

His heart skipped a beat, his body trembled, and his mind rattled as he simultaneously brought his hands in front of his face.

“I can move my arms!” Barry shouted with unimaginable excitement.

His vision still hadn’t stabilised and now his eyes were welling up, further disrupting his sight. He laughed and cackled uncontrollably as he continued to wipe the tears from his eyes, standing up in the process.

“I can stand!” he trumpeted in joy, “I can scream!”

By this point he was bounding up and down whilst alternating between waving his arms around sporadically, wiping the tears from his eyes, and rubbing the aching lump on the back of his head. This went on for some time until a high pitched, snappy voice sounded from behind him.

“Ugh, why do I always get the weird ones.”

Barry spun around swiftly in the direction of the voice, his glazed vision showing only a dark outline of some small person standing around ten metres away. Gathering himself, Barry was finally able to clear the tears from his eyes and allow them to adjust to the light. What he saw in front of him made his stomach drop. Before him was not a person, but some sort of devil creature straight out of a horror book. The monster wasn’t big, only standing around four feet tall, but its features were frightening. It had dark red, leathery skin, with thin yet muscular limbs at the end of which were long, clawed hands and feet. It had two black horns protruding from its hairless scalp, and a jet-black, triangular tipped tail that swirled in the air behind it. Barry stumbled backwards at the sight, falling onto his bottom before scrambling another few metres away like a startled crab.

“What are you?” he spluttered between fearful breaths.

The devil thing just shook its head and muttered something inaudible to itself before offering its snark reply.

“How rude. Shouldn’t you be asking who are you, not what are you? How is that any way to greet someone? I have a name you know.”

Surprised, Barry stared for a moment before gathering his senses enough to muster a response.

“You’re the devil! Which means I’ve been sent to hell haven’t I? Well that’s just great, I live a life of pain only to die and be sent onwards to a place of eternal suffering, how is that fair?”

The creature just looked at Barry with a befuddled expression before a toothy grin appeared and it began to laugh hysterically.

“You think this is hell? And you think I’m the devil? Oh, that is good. You have no idea do you?” the creature said between snorted laughs, “Firstly I’m a demon, not the devil, and my name’s Gupa thanks for asking. I am your assigned guide to the next steps in your journey. Secondly, this is not hell, this is limbo, the place between the old world and the new. Thirdly, you should be thanking me, if I’d have been just a minute late then you truly would be dead. I’ve just given you a second chance at life.”

Barry was stunned. He had so many thoughts going through his mind that he thought his brain was going to explode. This entire situation was so entirely unbelievable that he could only assume he was going mad. Eventually however, some small sliver of logical reasoning came to him. There were only three real possibilities as to what was happening. Firstly, this mythical demon creature was real and telling the truth about his second chance at life. Secondly, the demon was real, but was lying to him, most likely with some other sadistic and sinister intentions. Thirdly, and most likely, Barry had lost his mind and was dreaming this entire thing up. However, that would mean that he wasn’t dead. After all, the dead don’t dream, do they?

“I’m so confused,” Barry thought to himself as he scratched his head anxiously until his swirling thoughts were interrupted as the demon spoke to him again.

“Look, I know this all seems strange and unbelievable to you but let me help by answering some common questions. Yes, this is real. Yes, I am real. No, I’m not lying. No, I am not going to try and eat you. No, you can’t go back to your old life. Oh and no, I am not a mind reader, I’ve just been doing this job for a long time now, and it was obvious from your facial expressions that your thoughts were going haywire.”

With that, Barry opened his mouth, muttering something incomprehensible, before the world again when dark and he slammed back down heavily into the ground, having passed out from shock.