by Jack Porter
“Stop!” I said, then coughed at the effort of speaking. That straight arm to the throat had hurt! “You don’t know what you’re doing!” I croaked.
He laughed at me. “What are you gonna do?”
With that, he held the tube up to his nose, held one nostril closed, and breathed in my most prized possession as if it was a line of coke.
Chapter 3
I stared at him. “You unutterable fuck,” I said. “I can’t believe you just did that. You complete piece of shit.”
All my efforts over the past few months had come to nothing. They were gone, snorted in an instant by this sorry excuse for a human being.
“Do you know how much time, effort, and money you’ve just cost me?” I heaved myself up to my feet and clenched my fists at my side. I was getting over my shock at what he’d done and was working on a serious case of righteous anger.
“You are a walking, breathing piece of excrement!” I yelled. “It’s like all of the cock-heads in the world got together and elected you their King! I’d call you a rotten ballsack, but at least they have some use! You’re nothing but a crusty fuckstain, and I hope your dick rots and falls off!”
I was really mad. Sure, Chad had never been the best roommate in the world, and in fact had been close to the worst. But this was a new low, even for him. It was like the time he drank the last of my milk and never replaced it, only ten thousand times worse.
I was so angry I wouldn’t have been surprised if steam had started to rise from my skin. I wanted to hurl bricks at his face, wanted to stuff him headfirst through a window, and the only thing that prevented me was the fact that he was bigger and stronger. And he was just standing there, showing no interest whatsoever in my blossoming rage.
“Oh, don’t get your man-tits in such a tangle,” he said, just as condescending as usual. “I mean, it’s not like it was ever going to work, anyway. Look at me. Just the same as before. Where is this demon who was supposed to materialize inside of me?”
He had a point, but I was too pissed at him to care. “You rancid, festering turnip!” I yelled. “Whether it had any effect or not doesn’t matter! The point is, you had no right to take that from me. That was mine, not yours! Do I have to smash your brains with a rock before you figure it out? That powder was not yours to take!”
As I spoke, I stalked toward him, fists still clenched tightly enough that my palms were starting to ache. I could feel the cords in my throat tighten in my rage, and while I really wanted to threaten him, my voice had started to come out as a high-pitched squeak.
Nevertheless, it seemed that my fury was making an impact. Chad was still laughing at me, but at the same time, he held a hand out as if to prevent me from coming any closer.
“Hey man, calm down,” he said, and it was obvious by his tone that he wasn’t taking me seriously enough by half.
It was too much. I let out an inarticulate roar of pure rage and hurled myself at him, not that he could bash me aside with ease, just wanting to hurt him, just once, just so I knew that I could.
I expected him to move out of the way, or simply hold me in place. But for some reason, Chad seemed distracted. “Hang on, there’s something–” he began, and I hit him in the chest with my head.
He buckled. “Oof!” he said, and to my utter delight, he went down onto the floor. I landed on top of him and knew I’d finally got my chance. Even as he held his hands up to ward me off in a way that spoke more of distraction than fear, I stood over him and rained punches down on his face, his chest, and at every anything I could reach.
“Stop,” he managed, sounding almost irritated at my efforts. It was as if he barely noticed I was trying to hurt him and twisted out of the way more to give himself a moment of peace than because I was doing him harm. “There’s something—”
I just hit him again, with everything I had in me. But Chad barely noticed. His eyes grew very wide, and I saw the first hint of fear within them for the first time.
But it wasn’t fear of me or my fists of fury. There was something else going on, and it changed everything.
Chad started to seize. At first, his teeth clenched tightly shut, and he seemed to go stiff. Then he let out a series of pain-filled grunts, and it was like he was trying to sit up but couldn’t remember how. With his arms clamped tightly to his sides, he performed a series of quick crunches, punctuating each one with another grunt of pain. I was still standing astride him but soon realized something was wrong. I stepped aside to give him some room, and that’s when things started to get really freaky.
His grunts of pain ran together until they were a wailing cry that grew into a crescendo. His jaw was locked into a grimace of agony, and his arms and legs started to spasm. In moments, he had gone from being a douchebag in complete control to being a hyped-up breakdancer on the edge.
I stared at him for long moments, not understanding what had happened. But of course, it was obvious when I thought about it.
“The powder!” I breathed, and felt my own eyes grow wide. Somehow, the essence of the demon was causing this to happen. Was it toxic? Or was the demon itself trying to form within Chad’s bucking, spasming form?
“Help me!” Chad managed to force out the words interspersed with his wailing. Fear and horror flashed in his pain-filled eyes, but also a pleading expression that I’d never seen on anyone before. For another three heartbeats, I stood there with my mouth hanging open, wondering what on earth I could possibly do.
Then it was like he kicked into high gear. He was like a fly spinning its last, flopping about on the floor, completely out of control. I watched with growing horror, knowing that I could have been in Chad’s exact position if he had gone to work in the morning as he usually did. I could have snorted the demon powder just as he had done, and it might have been me dying on the floor in such a spectacular way.
Did that mean that Chad, one of the world’s greatest pricks, had inadvertently saved my life?
Maybe he had. Then again, maybe the demon essence wouldn’t have had the same effect on me, given that I’d done all the preparations needed to bring about a more successful fusion.
Nevertheless, Chad’s pleading touched a part of me I’d thought long since buried. There was no place for compassion in this world where anyone you meet will stick a knife in your gizzard for looking at them sideways, and even those who are guided by angels regularly indulge in some seriously messed up shit.
Yet that’s what I was feeling just then. Compassion for my douchebag of a roommate even though he’d made my life a living Hell ever since I’d moved in. That, and a side order of guilt for added flavor. After all, it had been my demon powder Chad had snorted. If I hadn’t accepted it in partial payment for a job, Chad wouldn’t be kicking about on the floor like a Pilates instructor on speed.
Anyone with any brains would have called for an ambulance before doing anything else. But not me. I just went back to him and tried to hold him down, tried to keep him from hurting himself.
At the same time, I began lying to him. “It’s okay,” I said. “Everything will be all right. This will be over soon, and then you’ll be back to your normal, douchebaggy self.”
For long minutes, I held him and lied, all the while thinking about how sideways everything had gone. Almost, I wished I’d never tried to activate the demon powder and that Chad was still sneering at me like the huge prick he was.
I held him as tightly as I could, accepting the occasional bruise that came my way as he lashed out in his delirium. And, finally, after a while, he began to relax.
But he wasn’t coming out of it. If anything, he was getting worse. When I was finally able to let him go, I could once again look at his face.
His eyes were still open, but unseeing. He had some sort of froth bubbling up from his throat. He seemed calm, but in reality, he was as stiff as a board. I couldn’t move his arms away from his body, and his head wouldn’t turn.
He was still breathing. His chest rose and fell, and the fro
th at his mouth bubbled and shifted with each breath he took. But there seemed to be no one at home. Chad had left the building. All that remained was his corporeal form.
I stared at him as a growing knot of worry formed in the pit of my stomach. “Fuck,” I said out loud. “What the fuck do I do now?”
Chapter 4
It was by far the most fucked up a thing that had happened in my life until then. I couldn’t help myself. I had to stare at Chad as he lay across my carefully wrought runic diagram in the clear space at the foot of my bed. I was sitting on the floor with my back to the wall, crunched up in the corner next to my gaming set up. One of the reasons I’d taken the room, aside from the cost, was the size. I had every everything I needed squeezed into that single room, including a mini fridge. There was even an ensuite bathrooom, so if I didn’t want to, I didn’t have to leave the room for days at a time.
And now there was Chad, still breathing, still technically alive, but messed up beyond all recognition. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, I guessed, and thought that I might have to start calling him FUBAR instead of Chad.
I wondered what I was going to do with him lying there on the floor. Even now, he was still pissing me off. Why couldn’t he have just thrown his fit in his own damned room? Or even the lounge? At least then I wouldn’t have to look at him then.
I shuddered, a spontaneous response to what had happened, and realized that I was doing a pretty good job of disassociating myself. But that wasn’t very useful.
“Come on, Simon,” I said to myself. “Get a grip, you big dweeb.”
It was a start, but no more than that. “Chad’s gone all catatonic, or worse. Not a problem, except that he’s in your room. So, what are you going to do about it?” I asked myself. “Here’s a thought. Why don’t you give the ambulance a call?”
I guess I was in shock. That’s my only excuse. It took me until then to even consider what anyone else would have thought of right away, and it took even longer before I could figure out that I needed to actually move if I was going to do it.
My phone was still on my bed. When Chad had interrupted me, I’d finished the ritual to activate the powder but had been checking the forums to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. I did my best to avoid looking at Chad’s vacant stare as I made my way past him and dialed the first two numbers of the emergency code before I stopped and thought about it some more.
Chad and I didn’t really get along. It wasn’t a secret. The guys I hung out with online all new how much of a dick my roommate was, and I’d said more than once that I’d quite like to rip his balls off and jam them down his throat.
In addition, he had ingested a powdered substance that tested positive for the divine. It was my powder, and he’d taken it in my room, surrounded by arcane items, while standing in a runic diagram that clearly hadn’t been drawn by an amateur.
Attempting to make use of anything divine, whether it was no more than a simple artifact or a divine being itself, was illegal. Very illegal.
As illegal as all Hell, in fact.
Punishments varied but could include incarceration for a very long time. Given all this, did I really want to finish dialing that emergency number?
No.
No, I did not.
I put my phone down and glared at what was left of Chad. “You infuriating piece of shit,” I said to him. “It’s your own fault, you know. I’d be able to get you some help for anything else. But this? You kinda brought it on yourself.”
As if in response, Chad’s body gave a minor flinch, the merest echo of his earlier activity. Other than that, he didn’t change.
For no reason other than I didn’t know what else to do, I started to wonder why this had happened. Would it really have happened to me, given the preparations I’d made?
Was it the demon, trying to resurrect itself within Chad’s body after so many centuries being nothing but dust? Was that demon even now stuck inside him, trying to make use of a vessel that was unfit for the purpose?
At the thought, something hit me. Perhaps it wasn’t too late. Perhaps it was still possible to do what I’d planned at the start and take the demon into my own body.
Maybe I just needed to figure out how.
Chad was so far up himself that he could have brushed his teeth through his asshole. But that didn’t mean he deserved to be ignored while I ferreted through my books and the online forums for the specific knowledge I sought.
I wasn’t really a bad guy even then. I knew the difference between right and wrong.
But here’s the thing. There’s a reason this world measures status along two separate continuums. Legal and illegal. Not one or the other, but both. It’s because people aren’t just one or the other. Even Chad, who, as well as being an asshole, was also about the most law-abiding stiff you ever met. Well, except for his thing with the drugs. So as well as his healthy legal status somewhere in the mid-twenties, he also had a fairly low illegal status to go with it.
A truly good person would never have done what I did, no matter how much Chad kinda deserved it.
But, even though I wasn’t really a bad guy, I’d never thought of myself as being a particularly good person, either.
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t go around kicking kittens or stealing sweets from toddlers. I didn’t lock people out of their computers or pretend to be their bank so I could scam their password information.
But there was a reason I was open to raising a demon when other Ascenders focused on the more angelic side of the ledger, and it wasn’t just because there was less competition.
A part of me, a small part that I kept locked in the attic and fed only scraps once in a while, actually liked the idea of being attached to a demon. Much more than being attached to an angel, if I even had that option.
I was tired of being a low-status nobody, and I liked the idea of power without limit. Did that make me a bad guy through and through?
I liked to think it did not. But if my hat of choice wasn’t black, then it wasn’t completely white either. More like a shade of grey.
Instead of doing what I could to help Chad, I did all I could to help me.
I don’t know how long it took to find what I needed. I was still in shock at what had happened. But some hours passed with me searching through all the resources I had in something akin to a fever. I tapped into forums I hadn’t used for ages, asking questions in the most oblique way, checking them every minute for an answer. I had a million or two tabs open, shining a light on all the dark corners I could find, searching for a very specific ritual, including those that the powers that be didn’t want anyone to know.
Finally, I had what I needed. All the ingredients to a dual ritual, one part of which was designed to expel a divine entity from whatever it possessed, and one part of which was about accepting a demon into myself.
If I did it right, I would be able to take the demon from Chad into myself. Hopefully, with the preparations I’d already made, I wouldn’t end up as he did.
Finally, I was ready. “Sorry about this, Chad, but I really don’t see many options.” I said. He didn’t respond, didn’t do anything much in except breathe in and out with bubbles forming at his lips.
“Here goes nothing,” I said, and tore his shirt wide open, exposing his chest.
At the same time, I started to chant, forcing words that tasted of bile through my throat, saying out loud things that haven’t been said for generations, if ever before. I knew that if I got the pronunciation wrong by even a little, then everything I did would come to naught. But as I’d said to Chad, it wasn’t like I had much of a choice.
I kept chanting, feeling the ebb and flow of the words, understanding their intent in my soul, keeping the cadence and rhythm going as I picked up the ornate, sacrificial dagger I’d purchased a couple of years earlier and never needed to use.
I’d thought at the time I might sacrifice a chicken or maybe a goat if I needed to. I never thought I would use it to sacrifice
a person.
But there I was, kneeling next to Chad as I chanted, the candles starting to flicker as if blown by a wind, and the light choosing that moment to dim.
I kept chanting, repeating the words I had learned, building them into a crescendo as the weird effects continued around me. Chad was still lying in the runic design I’d made to activate the powder, as was I. It seemed as if I had summoned an unholy wind that flicked at my hair and whipped through my bathroom. It felt as if there was a storm coming, and the temperature suddenly dropped so I could see my breath.
Once again, Chad started to seize, and I wondered if whatever was left of him was somehow trying to get me to stop.
It didn’t matter. It was already too late. I had reached the end of my chant, and there was only one more thing to do.
I didn’t hesitate, bringing my dagger down in a rush, stabbing Chad in the chest and pressing down as hard as I could.
The blade buried itself all the way to the hilt, and I felt Chad clench in a moment of unconscious pain. Then he relaxed as the life left him, and I knew what Dexter felt like every time he put an end to his victim.
It was a major rush, and I didn’t think I would forget it as long as I lived. But the killing was only one part of it. The next was even more important, and it would need to be quick.
At the top of my voice, I shouted a series of syllables that should have been impossible to pronounce but which felt right to the depths of my soul. The burgeoning storm within my room seemed to choose that moment to release, and I was buffeted by a crash of thunder that shouldn’t have existed. I was Dr. Frankenstein at the top of the tower, and Chad was my monster. But instead of harnessing the electricity of the storm to give life, I was doing all I could to take it away.
With a convulsive movement, I withdrew my knife from Chad’s chest.
This was the moment of truth. The proof of the pudding. The crux of the matter. This was when the demon would cross over from Chad to myself. If, of course, the demon truly existed, and Chad’s response was more than some sort of reaction to a toxic substance he had chosen to ingest.
