by Jack Porter
My room was suddenly quiet. So quiet a pin drop might have sounded like Quasimodo’s bells. The only sounds were those of my heart beating loudly in my ears and my own labored breathing. There was nothing else. Nothing at all. Not even the sounds of the building shifting as it settled in for the night.
As to whether it had worked, I couldn’t tell. Chad looked just the same, except that the light in his eyes had faded to nothing, and the bubbles on his lips seemed to have gone.
Then, I saw something that filled me with joy and trepidation all at once. A tendril of diaphanous something rose from the wound in Chad’s chest, curling its way through the air toward me.
It could have been a tendril of light, an indication of Chad’s soul as it left him.
But it wasn’t. Instead, it was dark and cloying, a black presence that seemed to crawl its way out and quest toward me.
The sight was so vile and malicious that I immediately cowered, moving away. But, as if it was prepared for that, the translucent, oily nothing seemed to lunge like a cobra, fixing itself to my mouth even as it worked its way from Chad’s chest. It forced its way in, a French kiss from a demonic presence, and I started to panic.
If it’d had any substance, I would have clawed at it and pulled it away. But it did not. It could have been no more than a hallucination that somehow tasted of sulfur and bile.
If anyone had happened to enter my room at that time, and if they had been able to see what was happening, they might have thought I was sucking something gross from Chad’s chest.
It was an awful sensation, but it was mercifully brief. Within only moments, the tendril of whatever it was left Brad completely, and, like a strand of spaghetti, slipped itself into me. I choked and swallowed and tried to hack it back out, but there was nothing I could do.
For good or ill, I had done what I set out to do, and transferred something from Chad into myself.
For long moments, I sat there on my knees, swaying at the enormity of what I had done. I broke out in a cold sweat and told myself just to breathe, that everything would be all right, that this would be over soon enough.
I recognized the very same words I’d spoken to Chad, and knew I was lying again.
And that was enough. Suddenly, I was laughing out loud. I felt a sense of euphoria I couldn’t explain, and all my worries seemed to fade away. I started to feel really good, but the laughter wouldn’t stop. I kept going until my sides started to ache, and I felt myself getting lightheaded.
I’d never heard of anyone laughing themselves to death before. There were rumors of a kind of mushroom that might have that effect, but it wasn’t exactly the type of thing where the proof was easy to find. I didn’t even know if it was possible to do it. Maybe if the victim laughed themselves into a heart attack, or maybe a stroke. But for me, I just kept on laughing in a bout of mania that didn’t seem to stop. I was in my room with the corpse of my roommate beside me, the bloodied knife still in my hand, and I’d just ingested whatever it was that had killed him.
I laughed and laughed and laughed, until I could laugh no more.
My last thought as I started to lose consciousness was that at least it was better than how Chad had gone out. He’d spent his last moments in terror, whereas I would be found with a broad grin all over my face and the echoes of my laughter still in my room.
Chapter 5
It turns out, I didn’t die.
The next thing I knew, I was making my gradual way back to consciousness. It took forever and seemed to happen in stages. First, I became very aware of my right hand as if that was the only part of me that was awake. Fairly useless, I had to admit, but it was a start.
Then my back started to signal the type of dull, throbbing pain that you might get after your first gym session at the start of the year. You know the one. It’s the one you turn up to out of a sense of obligation, having thoroughly ignored any form of physical activity for about ten months straight. You signed up along with everyone else as part of a new year’s resolution and booked a personal trainer so you would have no excuses. You did the work, feeling pretty good about yourself, until the next day.
Yeah. Like that. Pain in muscles I didn’t know existed. A deep, centralized ache that made it feel like I’d aged sixty years overnight.
Of course, you would never go back to the gym after that because it just hurt too damn much and it was easier to sit on the couch. But that was beside the point. The point was that I lay there, quietly suffering, aware of my back and my hand for several minutes before everything else clicked into place.
Then I wished it hadn’t. The ache in my back was bad enough, but it was nothing to the screaming in my thighs.
“What new Hell is this?” I grunted, dimly aware that I was still alive. The ritual hadn’t killed me, nor had some crazy roommate come along and stabbed me through the heart. I couldn’t work out why my thighs would hurt so much, then realized it was because of the way I had been laying.
Anyone normal would have flopped onto their side as they lost consciousness. But no. Not me. I’d been kneeling over the corpse of my roommate with my head flung back as I laughed at the ceiling. Of course, when that laughter had become too much and I collapsed, I’d simply fallen back from a kneeling position, with my feet still tucked under my ass.
I had been blessed (if that was the right word) with a combination of physical attributes that would have made any self-respecting athlete laugh. Weak muscles were a given. Bones that didn’t fit into the “brittle” category from a medical perspective but were close enough that as a kid I’d grown used to wearing a cast.
And, to top it all off, weak ligaments and tendons as well.
I had dislocated shoulders, elbows, and even my knees on a regular basis. Sounds awful, and it pretty much was, but if there was any benefit to be had from this disappointing configuration, it was that I was more flexible than most.
But even that wasn’t enough to protect me from the agony of lying in such an unusual position for so long.
I groaned in pain, and even though my brain seemed to be the last part of me to fully wake up, by then I was conscious enough to flop around for a bit as I tried to straighten my legs.
Finally, I managed to do so, kicking something soft, heavy, and yielding in the process. The part of my mind that was still asleep knew what it was and began shrieking on the inside of my skull. But the rest of me didn’t want to listen. I knew it was something awful, but just for the moment, I wanted to enjoy the comparative pleasure of not having my legs cry out in pain.
Unfortunately, it was then that I became aware of my other various ills.
My mouth and throat felt like they were covered in dry wall dust. It was unpleasant and made swallowing impossible. My eyes, even though I had yet to open them, felt scratchy, as if someone had attacked them with heavy grade sandpaper.
But that was nothing compared with what was going on in my head. It felt like someone had wrapped a steel band around my skull, heated it to a thousand degrees, and then tightened it to the point where my brain was in danger of exploding.
Every heartbeat felt like it increased the pressure on my brain, and with it came the type of nausea usually reserved for bobbing about on the high seas in a tiny boat.
My physical self was a long way from being a gift from the gods. It was almost like I was the result of a genetic experiment where all the good DNA went to my theoretical twin and I was the result of the mess that remained.
But if there was one thing I had that pleased me, it was my cast iron stomach.
Sure, I could get queasy, but things had to get very bad indeed before I threw up.
I felt like I had the worst hangover ever. A solid ten on the alcohol overindulgence scale. The type of hangover that made strong men swear off drinking for life.
But it wasn’t quite bad enough to make me throw up on the spot.
“Wake up.”
Huh? What?
I was sure I’d heard something. A voice telling
me to wake up. As if that wasn’t what I was trying to do anyway.
Out of no more than a desire to be contrary, I shook my head. Just a little, just until the world seemed to slosh my brains about in my skull.
“Don’t wanna,” I managed, forcing the words through my dry, scratchy throat. At the same time, the effort of my denial was enough to push me across the final barrier between sleep and awake.
I opened my eyes to see the nub of a candle inches away from my face. It had burned down to just a couple of inches before drowning itself in its own wax. I found myself looking at it, not really thinking much, just admiring the arcane designs I’d carved into the length of it before it was lit.
I wondered how long it would take for such a thick candle to burn down so low, and how long it had been out. Hours, I guessed. Hours and hours.
Did that mean I’d been asleep for that long?
“Wake up,” came the same dry voice in my head once again.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said even as I frowned in puzzlement at the disembodied voice. “I’ll get right on that.”
Despite my words, I didn’t move again for long moments. I knew I was lying on the floor, and that it was likely I’d slept there for some time. But for the life of me, I couldn’t understand why. Although, if I was honest, I had to admit that I wasn’t putting a lot of energy effort into figuring it out.
The last thing that seemed to wake up was my sense of smell. The candle was the first thing to announce itself to my olfactory sense. The neutral odor of wax combined with the sharp tang of smoke still lingering in the air from when the candle snuffed out. Then I caught a whiff of something metallic, a hint of sulfur, and then the worst smell of all.
Shit.
That did it. All at once, I was wide awake and sitting up. My first thought was that somehow I’d crapped myself in my sleep, but I quickly dismissed that as a possibility. The events of–when was it? This morning sometime? Yesterday? I didn’t know for sure and had no way of knowing.
It didn’t matter. The events that had led to me losing consciousness came crashing back all at once. I knew what had happened, knew what I’d tried to do. And knew that the smell of shit and blood came from my roommate, who was still lying on the floor next to me, just as dead as he’d been before.
I couldn’t help myself. My first instinct was to scramble away, and I did exactly that, pushing myself back into the corner against the wall next to my gaming set up. My heart had started pounding in my chest as it had done before, and all of a sudden, I found I could talk more easily.
“What the fuck?” I said.
It had all been real. For the few minutes it had taken for me to fully wake up, I had forgotten what had happened. Or maybe I hadn’t. That small part of me that had been screaming now seemed to sit back with an air of satisfaction at my self-induced horror.
It had really happened. Chad, a finalist for the asshole of the year competition, had ingested my powdered demon horn as if it was nothing. He’d had a fit, and in response, I had done what literally no one in their right mind would think to do.
Used him as a human sacrifice for a ritual that only had an infinitesimally small chance of success.
I was disgusted with myself, appalled, even, and yet also strangely proud. It wasn’t like I could tell anyone what I’d done, but if I could… some of the guys from the boards I hung out on would treat me as if I had suddenly become royalty.
But the big question was this: Had it worked?
I took a deep breath to steady myself and looked at my hands as if they would tell me if I’d merged with something demonic. But they looked the same as always. I stood and moved about to see if I could feel any difference, but aside from the lingering aches and pains, I felt the same as normal.
With one minor exception. I had to pee.
With a disappointed sigh, and not even considering where the voice that had told me to wake up had come from, I headed to the bathroom.
When I was washing my hands, I glanced in the mirror above the sink. I had the type of face that led me to avoid mirrors as a matter of course. But every now and again, I had to check to see if my hair was in place or if I’d developed a huge zit on my nose.
This time, instead of a pale, pockmarked face with a mashup of unfortunate features staring back at me, it was the face of a demon.
Chapter 6
I may have yelled and put my soapy hands on the sink to steady myself, but I’ll never outright admit it.
Everything was different. What little hair I’d had no longer existed, replaced by a crown of sharpened horns Darth Maul would have been proud of. My skin had changed color, becoming almost black, and my eyes glowed with red fire. I looked positively demonic, and for that reason alone, I should have been hideous to look at. But the face that stared back at me from the mirror was undeniably, spectacularly, good-looking.
But that wasn’t enough to stop me flinching away in a panic, clutching at my head with my hands to confirm or deny what I was seeing.
“What the fuck?” I said again, even though it should have been very clear what had happened. I mean, I had been trying to absorb the essence of a demon. What did I expect to happen if I succeeded?
Nevertheless, I couldn’t believe it. The demon face in my mirror took on an expression of shock as I felt around for any evidence of those sharpened horns, but found none. With my mouth gaping open, I could see that my teeth had been replaced by a row of serious fangs, and I ran my tongue over them just to see if they were real or not.
But just as I could feel my dark, thinning hair with my fingers, I could also feel my real teeth with my tongue.
I took a deep breath to calm myself down and stared at the image in the mirror. “This isn’t real,” I said out loud. “This can’t be real.”
“Why not?” came the voice in my mind.
“Fuck!” I shouted, flinching away from the mirror, catching myself awkwardly against the back wall of the bathroom and knocking the ornamental, metallic lizard sculpture hanging there askew. “Shit!” I said. “Fuck shit!”
In the dark recesses of my mind, I got the impression of laughter.
It was enough to cut through my panic. I had been laughed at all my life, for one reason or another. My lack of height was one thing, but let’s get real here. School kids are mean. They picked on everything, from my lack of coordination to my weight, and if you think my unfortunate facial characteristics earned me a pass, then you would be sadly mistaken.
Even as a kid, my status had been so low as to almost be nonexistent. Ironic, given that I now made much of my income helping kids improve their status.
Regardless, there was one thing I’d learned in the face of all the awful comments and teasing.
I’d learned how to make them stop.
I clenched my fists at my side and glared at myself in the mirror.
“Yeah, yeah, very funny.” I said. The best way I’d found to stop people picking on me was to get angry. Of course, with major-league assholes like Chad, not even that worked, but even he got his in the end.
The thought of Chad lying dead on my floor was enough to bring a smirk to my lips.
“I guess it worked, then?” I said, talking out loud to the face in the mirror.
“If you are referring to your attempts to draw my essence into the world and into yourself, then yes, it worked.”
Unbidden, my smile grew broader. It had worked! Somehow, despite Chad’s attempt to screw everything up, I had managed to draw the essence of a demon into myself. I had taken the first step along the path to Ascension, the first step along the road to fame, fortune, and everything I could ever desire.
I had woken a demon from its millennial slumber and drawn it into myself, and now and forever, its powers would be mine to control.
But first, there was something I needed to do.
“Tell me your name,” I said.
Once more, I sensed the demonic presence in my mind stifle a laugh. “What does it matter what my n
ame is?”
“You know as well as I do that drawing your essence into my body is just the first part. As things stand, there’s nothing stopping you from leaving me at the first opportunity and seeking a different host, or even making your way back down to Hell. With the effort I’ve put in to finding you, and what I had to go through to draw you in, I will not have that happen. So, tell me your name!”
The demon’s laughter grew stronger.
“You are not a good host for my essence. In the time you’ve been sleeping, I have been working my way through your mind. You are the least of all possible human hosts, and if I had the option, I would have already left you behind. I will not tell you my name. You will not have the chance to bind me. Instead, I will take what power I can from you, and take my leave as soon as I am able. If you let me go willingly, I will grant you enough of your strength to continue your pathetic existence. If you try to resist, I will suck you dry and leave nothing but a husk in your place.”
It was a chilling threat, and I knew for a fact the demon could do as it said. All the lore I had read pointed to just such an end for those who were not prepared.
But I’d spent years studying for just such a day. And I would not be denied.
With a convulsive movement, I grabbed the neck of my t-shirt. I would have torn it in a dramatic gesture to show him I wasn’t some bumbling fool to be trifled with. But the fabric proved stronger than I expected, so instead of the dramatic gesture I was going for, I spent a few moments bumbling about trying to take my shirt off over my head.
Finally, I managed to get it done, so that the demon could see the runes I had tattooed onto my test for just such an occasion.
“By the power granted me by these runes, by the will of Lucifer himself, tell me your name!”
