“Let’s try blue today,” Aubrey said and selected different shades of blue from her tray of pencil colours. She put the tray away to resist the temptation of taking any more. In one hand, she held the pencils side by side and looked at them closely. “I choose you,” she said, taking one out and putting the rest down beside her drawing. She used the light blue to shade the sleeves of her outfit, starting strong at the cuff and fading away at the shoulder. Her phone played lofi music lying face down on the left of her notebook, staying out of her drawing hand’s way.
Then it rang. She glared at it as if she were going to throw it if it didn’t shut up. She sighed and continued the drawing, the ringtone making her lines jagged. She switched blues and filled in the denim pants of the outfit. The phone didn’t stop ringing. Aubrey picked up the phone. It was Damien’s mother.
Uh oh.
“Hi, Aubrey. Is Damien with you?”
“I’m at home and I think I’d know if he was here. Maybe he’s with Sophia.”
“I called her already. Damien didn’t come home and he isn’t answering his phone.”
Oh fuck.
“Do you know where he might be?” she added.
“No. Last time I saw him was at school and he said he was walking home.” Aubrey looked at her watch. It was almost six o clock. Damien’s mother went silent and Aubrey heard her discussing something with Damien’s father. “Okay, thank you,” she said and hung up.
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
Aubrey messaged Sophia to ask if she knew anything. Sitting at the bottom of her notifications was an email sent earlier in the day from Victor Halliday. Aubrey opened the email. Victor skipped the polite greetings and other formalities as a teacher and went to the point.
check on Damien
She typed an email back to tell Victor that Damien didn’t arrive home, but she assumed that he wouldn’t answer anytime soon. If he could somehow sense that Damien was in trouble, he was probably already dealing with it. Aubrey put her phone in her pocket and ran downstairs. Neither of her parents were home yet so she didn’t need an explanation for dashing out of the door and driving away in her car.
She knew the route Damien used to get home. She found the quickest way onto it and backtracked towards school, looking around in the quiet areas. If something bad happened anywhere else, everybody would know and all the questions would have an obvious answer. In the corner of her eye, Aubrey saw Damien’s barely recognizable bag. All the students had the same bag and the only thing letting her know that it was his was the bright green water bottle. Aubrey jerked the wheel and she turned towards the crossing. She was out of her mind, but tried to stay calm. She jumped out and analysed the bag. On the pavement was his knife. There were blood smears on the blade and drops of red on the pavement and the road. She panicked at thoughts of what may have happened.
She looked around for some sign of where he might have gone. She followed the trail of blood, each drop spaced far apart.
She got to a crossroad and looked up. Her answer laid in the distance at the foot of the mountain where the sun set.
______
Fucking - scorch marks - everywhere… How did this place not burn down?
Victor looked round him, analysing the ground and the nearby trees. There was a vicious battle, shown by blood spatters on the trees and little pools in the ground. The bark of some of the trees had been shattered off by blunt force, revealing the lighter skin beneath. The air carried the scent of old burn. Victor could sense the leftover energy from Damien still radiating strongly from the black scars on the trees and in the ground. Whoever Damien was fighting wasn’t looking to kill him. The lack of a nearby corpse was the dead giveaway – the lack of Damien’s corpse, at least. Victor recognised the two that were there. They were students. He didn’t care much for them. He tried to, but being in a demon situation, he wasn’t in a human mood.
Victor thought through the other possibilities, if not murder, to narrow down who it could have been. Any name among demons not big enough for him to know wouldn’t have survived what happened here.
Imprisonment. Somebody would want to contain the power. Recruitment. Some demons would want something so powerful at their side. Usage...
Leech!
The Sunday demon sighting wasn’t a lie after all. Leech crossed a gate in search of Damien. The good news was that Victor knew where to find her, or at least how. The bad news, she had Damien. Of all the demons, he thought. He was frustrated, but not surprised. He saw it coming. He looked North and took the flashlight out of his pocket to test it. The sun was close to set. The shadows would fall soon. All he needed was his flashlight, the sword on his back and the mask on his face.
Leaves cracked behind him. In a fluid, compound motion he twisted around and pulled the sword from its sheath.
“Aubrey?”
“Mister Halliday!”
Victor took off his mask and sheathed the sword. “Where’s Damien?” she yelled as she ran towards him. Victor wasn’t sure if he should tell her. She was worried; terrified. He could feel it. She didn’t seem ready to know. “... A demon got him,” he said, “The one from the news on Sunday.”
“What?!”
“Don’t panic,” he said calmly. “I’m going to find him now.”
“Take me with you. And Sophia. Both of us.”
“No!” right away he lost the easiness and became assertive.
“Please!”
“Why?”
“Because we’re his friends! We want to be there to help him!”
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“It’s too dangerous, Aubrey. Go home. I’ll take care of this.”
Victor walked away, but Aubrey was determined to go with.
“What about when you get to Damien!” she yelled. “You said it yourself, Damien just thinks you’re a teacher, but that demon won’t hesitate to fight you. You need us there so that you don’t get killed.”
Victor stopped. “... Shit,” he muttered.
“You need us. Bringing us with is in your best interest.”
Victor turned around. “Fine,” he said, “You can come along, but you follow what I say. Word-for-word. Unless you want to die.”
Aubrey was taken back by the last bit, but didn’t dwell on it. “What about Sophia?”
“I’m not waiting for her. Every second we wait is one second closer towards something bad happening to Damien.”
“What if I tell her to meet us there?”
“She doesn’t know how to find the gate.”
“She knows how to find the forest and the house.”
“I’m not babysitting, Aubrey. One child’s enough. I’m headed straight for the gate, nowhere else. And do you think her parents are just going to let her cycle to a forest to look for their missing friend on a Monday night?”
Aubrey didn’t answer. Victor continued walking. Aubrey quietly slipped her phone out of her pocket. She messaged Sophia to let her know where she was. If she and mister Halliday went missing, she didn’t want it to be a mystery.
“Shouldn’t we let Damien’s parents know?”
“That’s only going to complicate things. Demons like being kept secret… Why did your parents let you out on a Monday night?”
“They weren’t home when I left. If I come home late, I’ll just tell them I… had an extended session at the gym or something.”
“What house?”
“I didn’t say anything about a house.”
“You said Sophia knows where to find the forest and the house. What house?”
“That house we were at. Where you found us.”
Strange, Victor thought. He didn’t remember seeing a house.
“Don’t you have a car?” Aubrey asked.
“I can run to where we need to be quicker than the roads will get us there.”
“We aren’t running.”
“Still faster than driving.”
“Do you think I can’t run?”
“Can you?”
“Pshhh. I’m one of the top athletes.”
Aubrey dashed past Victor. “Keep up!” she yelled.
“You don’t even know where we’re going!” Victor yelled back. One of the last things he needed was another teenager to take care of. He started running.
______
Smoke rises from the burning corpses. All it took was a bit of war to reduce a lush green landscape to an ashen waste. These poor men who had to die for their fearful kings. If only they knew how futile they were.
In the distance, a man slides into the crater and walks towards me. Most likely a brave knight who won’t back down... He wears no armour. This is no knight. He wears a cloak with his hood over his head and a bandanna over his mouth.
He stops a few bounds away from me. I could easily just burn him away now like an insect, but he hasn’t attacked me yet. Maybe he has something to say... but he only stares like a mute. Then he slowly raises his hands to throw back his hood and pull down his bandana.
My heart sinks, a void forms in my stomach, a chill falls down on me.
The brown hair and freckles drag me through my life before the instant all over again.
______
I open my eyes and gasp for air as I float out of the depth of the dream. As I come into my body, I hiss at the pain that coils around me. It feels like I’m wrapped in barbed wire that tears into me with every move I make, pulling old wounds open and forming new ones. My eyes adjust, but I still see nothing. My shoulder blades carve at each other. My hands are chained behind me. My pants are soaked by the damp ground I kneel in. Considering the sliced wounds all over me, I can’t be sure that it’s water.
Like an instinct, like I’d been here before, leaving no time for me to comprehend what’s happening, my body violently pulls on the chains as hard as it can. A loud clang against the wall-mounting lets me know that I am not getting out. The cold stings my wounds. The more I focus on the pain, the more it feels like gashes and not slices. Every muscle aches. Every bone aches. Every organ aches. Everything fucki- Everything aches. Some of the pain is deep. Very deep. I think it might be an organ bleeding out. My body finally gives up after a minute of struggle. It hangs forward by the chains like a ragdoll.
A giggle echoes ahead of me and I look up. A silence… followed by light footsteps. I try to see what’s coming. Only a vague silhouette, blacker than the surroundings. My pain fades. I feel hungry. My mouth salivates more the closer the silhouette gets. I have a strong craving, and yet, nausea grows with my disorienting dissociation.
The footsteps stop. I can feel the subtle change of temperature in front of me. I can sense a presence, close enough to stick my tongue out and taste.
“Did you have a good rest?” a woman’s voice asks in a posh, Victorian accent.
I kick up towards the sound of the voice with my mouth wide open, lips back and a roaring scream that tears up my throat. The cuffs of the chains cut into my wrists like cleavers. A loud whisper responds and I feel a stake drive into my belly. It doesn’t feel like a physical attack. It feels like a ghostly hand reached into me and snatched my stomach. My body freezes in tense pain. I can’t inhale. I can’t move. Every muscle in my body is pulling and every bone in my body is being crushed as a result. I can feel tension in places I never knew I could. I can only stare at this black figure with my mouth wide open and my stiff body hanging by the chains.
The pain caught me at the brink of becoming the demon. I am at the very edge of it. I feel what it’s like to be the demon, but as myself, without the possession, without the intrusion of my mind. I feel it’s power. I feel indestructible. What is this world to me?
The feeling holds for a moment then, slowly I descend back into nausea, down to my knees, exhausted and in pain. A fiery glow shines up, bright enough to show the figure of the woman, but too dim to show anything above the bust. All I see is the twinkle in her eyes and the black that cloaks her body.
I look down. Dim red light pulses out of my stomach - to the beat of my heart - along a whispering black tentacle that curves over her shoulder and into her back. She reduced me from a vicious demon to a dying little boy in seconds.
I… I can’t keep my eyes open. I can feel my heart coming to a stop! It throbs in my head with each pump as it stops. My diaphragm refuses to work. My lungs refuse to take in air. Why does it feel so blissful? In my head, I struggle, but my body indulges in this feeling of letting go. It simply relaxes and gives in to this.
The tentacle slips out right at the last beat. Her timing was precise. She started before I could fight and stopped right before I could die. The light footsteps recede. I didn’t die, but my body hung in disappointment like I had. I gasp for air and my weak diaphragm lets it all out again. I tremble. I am cold, on more levels than physical. I feel hollow. Every few seconds, my tongue juts out and bends down when I feel myself about to throw up, but all I do is gag and nothing comes out.
I thought I should feel terrified or even angry. I want to feel terrified and angry. That’s how I should feel, isn’t it? But, how can I feel anything negative in the presence of this motherly darkness? This darkness who cares for me? This void who gives me nothing to fear?
My eyes close and I hang my head low. There is nothing to hurt me in the little abyss that I am locked in. Nothing can haunt me here. No demons or ghosts can find me. The past doesn’t exist. The future will never come. Life can’t bother me. Death had rejected me a long, long time ago. I am alone.
What am I?