A sacrifice. A pact. A body. A mother willing to do it all. Conviction. That’s all it took. Conviction.

They weren’t even aware of it, either Vicar. If they had been, if they knew what crept and waited and stalked their room, perhaps they never would have taken the elevator.

They came back from dinner, a hasty buffet that had annoyed the chefs Though Apollo had decided to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and chew full bottles worth of sour aspirin throughout.

The meal was satisfactory. The patrons, impressed. They rode the private elevator up and to their floor. Not a word was spoken, both were tired. Apollo stood against rails, Dion put his hands behind his back and dozed off as the numbers rose. Apollo felt wired. He tasted ash. He scratched his arm and turned away from the moonlight outlined mountainside. He looked up to the number rising above the elevator door. His hair stood on its end. There was something in him, though he could not think it through, it was just a feeling after all. A cold feeling.

“I’m ready to pass out,” Dion yawned.

The door opened. There was an obscene silence. Ferns in small pots shivered as they walked by. Dion extended his arms and yawned, the warm light against his face. Apollo scratched himself. He did notice he dug into his flesh. They both kept to the left side and towards their dormitory.

The silence grew like an ever-expanding wasteland, a sonic landscape devoid of all things joyous or exciting. Apollo felt the cold on his cheeks now.

“Whats the number to our suite, again?”

“Shut up,” Apollo said. He stood still and turned his head counterclockwise. Then clockwise. Then he lost track as he tried to follow the vibrations. For it was feeling that came first, feeling before the sound.

The vibrations rose up his feet. Dion turned. He must have figured it out by then. So now they both stood edgy and waiting, tense and flexed for combustive movement.

Something was been lugged, dragged in the room. It sounded rough, like metal, for it scratched the floor with a horrible creaking.

“Somethings wrong.” Apollo faced the sound coming from around the corner. A plant fell. The dirt bled out onto the floor, the aloe vera rolled some few inches before stopping.

“You think?” Dion put his back against a wall.

The lights shattered. Or shut off. It was hard to tell in the pace of things.

“Shh.” Apollo put his finger to his lips. They looked up, back, below, around, for the noise meandered about and came from all walls and all depths and their hearts were pounding, and their eyes were in rigid unrest. The mini-vibration made their bodies ready. Apollo dug into his coat instinctively. There was no portal there, no weapon either. He crushed a pack of cigarettes he found in a pocket and sucked in his lips.

"What's that noise?" Dion asked. Apollo shushed him again, between Dion and his throbbing heart it was hard to tell where the sound wandered and stopped.

He turned his head once more, behind him this time. For the sound came from the other hallway corner. A roundabout of cacophony.

It was going in circles. Apollo’s eyes widened.

Apollo knocked on the individual doors of rooms.

"What, you're going to ask for help?" Dion asked. "I thought we were the help."

"Don't you get it?" He smacked a door that read 602. "We're alone. Always were. It’s a setup."

"Well, what do we do now?" Dion’s voice quivered.

"I thought you liked these kinds of things?” Apollo clenched his chest. “I thought you liked the thrill. Where’s that enthusiasm when I need it?”

No answer. There was no time to answer. The noise approached. They put their backs against each other. The picture frames on the walls were falling, the glass was shattering, the plants and the lights and every dingy thing in this hall quaked with reasoned fear. And the scratching approached, the crackle of the floor.

They were in a linear hall, with only two corners. One was silent, the other was obvious. They turned their heads.

The scabbed and blackened feet were the first to show.

Like scorched earth.

"Apollo," Dion grabbed him by the shoulder.

His whole body turned to face the noise, the figure, with its lazy approach. It pulled against the corner of the wall and crumbled it as it came around, such that its two hands were the first things to be seen. And it slogged, like a dragged, wet corpse.

Apollo’s eyes widened. The monster was in full view, tall yet hunched for the low ceiling. One arm was hypertrophied, swollen with round growths all around - this arm grabbed the anchor that dragged the rug, that made the sound, that caused the shaky fear in his (Apollo’s) heart. His neck showed, though there was no head attached, only empty large shoulders. And his second hand was extended out, open grip, palm forward. There was an eye. Yellow, zip-zagging across each corner before settling and focusing on the Vicars.

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His stomach turned. He looked over to his partner. Dion almost knelt over, his legs shook.

The demon mumbled, pained. The anchor dropped to the floor. It screamed, all three of them. The chain dangled.

“Get ready.” He faced the monstrosity. Dion was sized. His limbs looked inhibited, as paralyzed.

“Move!” Apollo shouted. Dion’s neck strained to even look at him. The locomotion of the monster was beginning. The chains shingled. The demon ran.

“Fuck.” Apollo pushed Dion against the wall, flat. He himself went to the opposite wall, flat. The monster came in between them and then passed them and twisted his ankle with a full rotation to turn around. The bone was snapped, sticking out from its scorched feet. It didn't seem to matter, twisted ankle or not as the healing process had already begun, the cells already regrew and the torn ligaments, re-bonded.

“I'm scared too,” Apollo clenched his chest as if to confirm it himself. “But we got to put up a fight. There is no choice for evacuation or help or escape. There never was.”

Perhaps he had gone deaf, for his face did not show any life to it. Maybe he was braindead, for his body did not move, not even as the monster approached again. Looking at the broken partner, who hugged the wall and who slowly fell to his knees, Apollo felt disgusted. He felt it in his gut, a churning feeling. And knew he was alone, worse, that he was babysitting.

He met the monster midway. The anchor came up, dragging and ripping wires from the ceiling, then back down on him, he dodged. Electrical wire spat sparks. He punched the abdomen of the creature. His body hit flesh, though the impact seemed dissipated against his tight muscles. He retracted his hand, looked at it and smiled. It was broken.

He stepped back. His hand regenerated, muscles and skin and all. The new flesh had a lighter tone of brown to it.

He looked to Dion. His heart would not stop racing, his rage and fear and sadness all came at him like competing floods. Each current swallowing the other. Each, fulfilled by the two prominent voices in his head.

Get rid of him. No, he can fight. get rid of him. he’ll hold us back. no. yes. kill him. no yes get it over with no yes let him no yes no no yes no

“Dion, I need you to fight!” Apollo screamed.

The demon approached, eyeball spinning as his hand extended out. It propped its anchor again, above his shoulders, to crash it down on Apollo. He dodged again, barely. The anchor struck the floor. The floor burst. The splinters shot up, embedding themselves on the ceiling and into Apollo.

Dion crawled away from the smoke, the smoke of which Apollo inhabited. He was taking stakes out of his chest, spitting blood. And with his other hand, clearing the air and looking for the monster. Perhaps, that’s why he smiled, when he was shocked to find out that such a large creature could hide in such thin smokescreen. Laughing, smiling, a curious development. Enjoyable, even.

It hid. Somewhere, deep within dust and wreckage. The pipes from the burst hole were opened, water leaked. The monster moved up. The floor cracked, all that held the hall together seemed to be a thin layer of wood with the tactile strength of cardboard.

The wounds left by the daggers of wood were healing. He raised his hands up.

He felt danger in the wind. Sweeping death, as the chain holding the anchor, spun and dangled and extended out. Apollo crossed his arms in front of him.

And it hit. Hard. He heard (heard before felt) the concussive sound of all his rib cage breaking.

His body flew. Both arms, instantly broken. His limbs knocked over every lamp and standing picture as his body flew across the hall. He bounced a couple times on the floor, the carpet rode up as his face ground itself against it. Like the flesh had been peeled off of him for a skin graft.

He struggled to stand. His body struggled to heal. Yet he inched forward.

Everyone is unreliable today, aren’t they? He shook his head. You most of all. The man who killed me, keeling over.

He bled from the top of his face, somewhere along the forehead. He could tell by the streak of blood blinding his left eye and the test preoccupying the right side of his mouth.

Dion was in front of him, shaking, with clenched fists at the monster who came forward, spinning his anchor. The sound it made - the low swooping sound, like a dying helicopter wing.

Apollo took a step forward. He felt four different wounds open at once, blood spilled out of his mouth.

Angry, afraid. He looked to Dion who did nothing, who shivered and waited.

“Fight!” Apollo coughed. “Fight, right now,”

Dion looked back. Forward. Back. Forward.

The anchor spun faster. Apollo realized it, foresaw it: Dion would die.

He ran, his ankles bled out as his weight compressed them. He gained momentum. The creature too, gaining momentum. Speeding up.

It was a race, Dion at the center.

He screamed all the way down the hall.

The anchor shot out. It went for Dion. Apollo pushed him away and braced for it. Hugging it, almost, he clenched it close to his chest. His feet dragged wood and steel up as he was pushed back, to the end of the hall. He hit the wall, his body dug deep into metal and wood.

The demon paused, surprised almost. He began pulling the chain of his anchor, slowly, methodically. The rattling links went on like an endless rust-colored snake, Dion watched it as such, his back against the wall, his legs about to give in.

But the anchor stopped. Five yards in, it came to a complete halt. The demon tugged at it.

It would not leave from that cloud of smoke left at the wall, where he had sent Apollo.

He yanked a little harder. Nothing. No, worse. He was getting pulled. He wrapped the chain around his arm and thought to tug it out, in his stupid mind (or lack thereof one).

The stupid, lacking shoulders of the simple monster who only wanted to push and pull and beat and kill. He flashed his eyes to see at the cloud of smoke, at the man contesting him.

It was like a newborn awakening. This new sensation of its very brief life. The demon paused. As two red eyes stared out from the smoke. Crimson, deep maroon.

He felt the strength of this creature, what he thought was a broken man, Apollo. The dominant strength of this red-eyed thing hidden in the crater and dust where he had shot the weak man (what he thought at least, was a weak man), as it pulled, hard on his chain. Yanking, drawing him closer. A pause, a tie between the two. Only briefly. The force of the pull came back again, at its strongest and the demon was sent towards the puller, the smoke, and the red eyes.

It came to its natural end then and there. A fist had knocked it down, with a fist that punched it down towards the floor.

It did not break flesh! No, Apollo knew that. He only sought to move the beast to a docile position. In that smoke, in the haze, he had pocketed himself the anchor. Apollo raised it above his head and slammed it down straight through the chest of the demon.

It was the time of firsts for the demon. As it slept without consent. As it felt the long fingers of someone crawling into its chest.

As the fingers inspected and prodded and found that cancerous, red stone. The philosophers stone, plucked away.

The defiant limbs of the monsters lashed out against its offender. It never hit his mark though, only air and drag.

Apollo looked down at the beast, with the anchor through its chest. He squeezed the philosophers stone and looked through it.

Eat it. You need it.

He squeezed it.

Eat it, it’s ours.

It shattered in his hands and fell to the ground. Both the red dust, and himself.