Demon of Dreadnaught

by Daniel Rogers

  From the car just a few yards behind Andrew, the Detective watched the teen bee-line straight to the glass front door of the Windstream apartment complex. He saw the boy slam into the door, full speed... Then detective Dan will say forever in the retelling of these events, that when the boy hit the door, Detective Dan consciously blinked and missed seeing the teen open the door and enter the building. But the detective didn't blink, he saw, and just couldn't believe, but the woman in the back seat saw exactly what happened and understood immediately.

  Katherine had to get out of the car. Detective Dan would later report that she became frantic, crazed, like a possessed person. From the back seat of his unmarked car, without the traditional safety gate that police cruisers have, Katherine quickly, in the midst of a tantrum, climbed into the front, scratching and kicking the detective, then flung herself out of the passenger side door into the street. She needed to get close to her son. She sprinted to the apartment building door but found it locked tight. There was a keypad code needed for entry into the building.

  The detective rolled himself out of the car to chase her. His report would say, "She stopped her hysteria for 2 or 3 seconds and took a deep breath. Just as I reached her location by the door she hit the door, with an unknown object, and broke the glass." Katherine could feel the vibrations of evil as she entered the building. They stimulated her lusting pleasure centers with the force of any real vibrator. Running up the two flights of stairs, at first behind her son, then as she became more aroused and edged closer to the ecstasy, of pain, regret, and evil, that awaited in one of the apartments upstairs, she became faster, more powerful! She passed the boy near the top of the second flight, shoving him out of her way. To enter the apartment with the door ajar and a vaporous essence wafting out.

  2 hours ago

  He took one last look back at his mistake. The bearded man with a motley of different esoteric tattoos covering his torso, arms, and face. Runes, alchemical symbols, hieroglyphs, and most importantly the demonic sigils which linked him to the only real magic available in the world. He met eyes with some grim-looking man who was watching over everyone gathered at the scene and ran away to prepare the rituals for re-summoning. The man ran down the alley to a low rise wooden gate. He ambled over lugging his oversized and unwieldy black garbage bag. The man dropped into the manicured edging and bushes of a department store. He walked through the front and made a bee-line for the employee area where he was greeted warmly by a few of the box-boys spread thin around the back area. He squeezed into a little known unused closet where a few of the overnight workers take cat naps. The man upturned his garbage bag and the lifeless, dry scaled armadillo thudded onto an old stiff canvas, exploding a layer of cigarette ash and blunt smoke into the to make the dim cramped room into a miserable hazy temple.

  The dead animal twitched as the man began some silent prayer to an evil existence trapped in the rigor-stiffing armadillo. Demon worshipers are masochists. The ultimate slave. They must acknowledge and believe that there is this sinister force which leaves no evidence of its existence in this world. They rely on stories that read like depressing horror fairy-tales, to guide them in performing ritual acts of cruelty on innocent things. They defile their bodies with tattoos and poisons and they defile their soul with misdeeds and blighted pacts, all in anticipation, in a hope, that a thing which no-one else believes, is real. And that this thing, believing in it, is evil, hate incarnate and has absolutely no purpose but to make the worshiper or someone else suffer and die to claim a soul and cause it agony for eternity. The demon worshiper hates them-self and in their desire to be abused equivalent to their self-loathing, they sacrifice everything to absurdity found in ancient stories told by ignorant primitives.

  The demon worshiper hates and hopes, but when they are diligent, they are always successful. The craze inducing vision clawing its bloody way out of the carcass in front of the man was a demon. Having 6 arms, rippled with sinewy muscle and ill-positioned taught tendon, 6 hands with 6 rusty jagged nail-like fingers on each hand. Stringy red ooze and the sickening sound of cracking from formerly healthy bones being torn apart and scraped by the large abomination emerging from whatever extra-dimensional hellscape exists inside the rotting carcass of an armadillo. The demon stared with one of its six eyes the rest dart about the demon's small almond-shaped head, like scattering roaches exposed to light. The man was always awed by the dark beauty of his demon familiar being born.

  It never spoke, it was mouth-less, but it scratched a sound on the ground in such a way that the darkest secrets of human nature and petty desire were chiseled into the man's doomed soul. Its name was "The 6" He knew the mistake he made. The person he killed earlier in the street was only a vessel. The person was incredibly full of worthlessness, and sorrow. A death which was sweet for the demon, but it was not the power source that would elevate the man and his demon familiar into the higher ranks of the devil kingdoms. The murdered man's family was the true prize. Rare flesh housing rarer spirits. After the rebirth ritual was complete, the man's demon familiar had a new animal body. A small blue bird with marble eyes colored infinite black followed the man now, out of the department store to find a wild woman and feast on her immortal soul.

  Tone's apartment was a small one-bedroom, which he shared with his mother. She wasn't home and he'd just had amazing sex with his young girlfriend. She had the amazing habit of laying on him after he finished, just tracing his nipples and small areolas gently. Then she would look at him, smiling seductively and kiss his brown muscled chest, over and over in perfect rhythm to his heartbeat. Like she was trying to literally kiss his pumping heart.

  She was engaged in this, warm sticky lips leaving goosebumps on the man's chest and awakening his member when his heart organ was stopped... Violently. He saw the horrified eyes of Helga, rising from his chest to meet his final gaze. Then black swallowed his world. He might have thought he was merely blinking if his consciousness didn't go just as instantaneously as his vision. Helga never screamed. She heard a deep sickening burst in Tone's chest. Like a firecracker stuffed into an orange. There was a liquid explosion and then death. It was Tone's heart exploding, that only startled her, looking up after hearing the sound was what horrified her. Behind her dead naked boyfriend, was an older man with a tattooed face.

  He had the wrinkles, pitted skin of an old addict. He had no clothes on but was instead wearing what must be 100 belts. Different sizes and colors, and some buckled, others tied off. They wrapped around him, overlapping and hanging haphazardly. It was not polished S&M gear, just regular belts appearing exactly as one would imagine if they saw someone attempt to put on 100 belts by themselves. Beside the belted man a bird flittered and tweeted wildly. The sound of the bird's staccato noises seemed to paralyze Helga. She watched the life snatched from her boyfriend's eyes, by a naked freak, and she couldn't scream. She couldn't even use her arms to raise her body off of her dead lover's flaccid member.

  The Belted man had no weapons. His hands were wrapped in thick leather belts, they couldn't even close to make a fist. Belts covered the man's mouth, but Helga heard him mumbling. There was too much noise in the apartment. The tweeting was incessant and loud. Helga attempted to focus her eyes on the man's eyes, but from her drooped paralysis, she could do nothing, could say nothing. She only suffered the tweeting and growling that seemed to fill the space in the apartment. She wasn't thinking, or scared, just dizzy from the sound... Like a dog eating a rawhide bone right next to her face. She couldn't feel anything either, she tried to look for her brother. If she could just find him, she would know what to do to get away, he was always there to help her focus. She looked for grey... She saw only black.

  Katherine was inside the apartment within a few moments of Tone's death. She watched the bird cry and the belted man chant. Her eyes were wide when she finally caught sight of Helga lying on top of the naked and muscled young man, drained of all his blood and turned grey. Katherine Lunged for the bird, Growling like a star
ving beast. The man with belts quickly raised an arm to block her. The belted man didn't understand what state she was in.

  The beautiful woman was not human. She was not a powerful soul that he would share with his demon familiar, increasing his earthly occult powers and the demon's standing within the unknown hierarchies of hell. The man had drunk two souls today and was actively swallowing a third, rare, soul of the Helga girl. His Magic and physical power should have been overwhelming. Just being in his presence should have been like a debilitating poison gas for people. This Woman though, was tangled in his many belts, snarling, and growling like an attack dog. She had grabbed his arm when he raised it against her to stop her from getting a hold of his familiar. Pain. Sharp, tearing, burning, ripping, unstoppable pain washed over the man. He thought he was protecting The 6. He was tricked, as all men who deal with demons inevitably are, and so was dying now.

  Katherine Could no longer hold back her nature. The vibration of the man's soul and the delicious familiar drove all humanity from her body. She became the demon beast that was inside her. She became, once again, the evil monster that she truly was. She was never a good mother, she never loved another person in her whole life. She was a selfish creature. Truly a Ravenous Dog. When she took hold of the man's arm, she didn't hesitate even a moment before plunging her small blunt human teeth into the man's flesh. Though she had the body of a human, she moved faster, bit hard and wild like a monster. Over and over she bit down, shook her head violently and ripped away at the man's arm. Within seconds she had torn through flesh and flowing veins, her teeth snapping through muscle like cutting rubber bands. The Belts didn't slow her down. Biting and kicking hard against the man's ribs she tore away so much of the man's upper bicep that his arm dangled away from him, like a belt on a clothes hanger. He looked at his mauled appendage in shock. Katherine eyed the real prize in the room. With her left hand, she flung the man away like scrap meat gets flung into the trash and turned to the now silent black-eyed bird.

  As Andrew recovered from his mother's violent shove,

  He grabbed at his back. There was a nail from the siding lodged just out of reach. He suddenly felt crushing helplessness. Thinking only, "Why? Why has this happened to me?" He was hurting from the nail, from his mother's hard shove, and from a drowning fear that squeezed his lungs. The thought of taking another step literally burned and stopped his breath like drowning. He heard the growling scream and re-steeled himself to help his sister. He stepped confidently into the apartment.

  Andrew was immediately hit by a rough leathery mass of man and blood and both tumbled together back out the front door. He struggled to remove himself from the man wrapped with belts. The nail in his back was caught in a buckle and torn out as he stood up. He looked at the moaning man and rage washed over Andrew. He'd never seen the man, but hate for the evil bastard was in him anyway. Andrew shed a tear and started to march away when the man grabbed at his foot. In kicking the man's hand away, Andrew untangled one of the man's arm belts. He went into the apartment again to the bed and saw his naked sister. Sleeping, no... Dead. Dead and grey with her grey boyfriend.

  Andrew turned back toward the man. He was so mentally broken, he didn't even see his mother or hear the Black scraping of "The 6" He ran out the door heaving. After a vomit, with head bowed and drooling, Andrew saw the suffering man in belts lying next to him. The belts that were shrouding his body wiggled on their own. They undulated like so many dying worms. The buckles popped open and the belts squirmed away. The man had horror in his eyes, similar to a face Andrew saw in the dark black area in the back of his mind. The man's face reminds him of his sister and what she must have felt in the last moments when he was killing her. Although he couldn't have any conscious knowledge of this, He'd never seen the man before, But He Knew. He watched the belts open and squirm and die. When the last belt unlatched itself, the man screamed in agony and died that way. Bug-eyed and with his mouth gaped open but cocked awkwardly because it was dislocated by the force of the death wail. Andrew walked into the apartment for a final time, to get his sister.

  The Detective's official report was a skewed version of the chaos unfolding in the small apartment. Watching the woman bound up the flights of stairs like she was stepping over lego blocks and then shoving the grey-haired teen boy so hard the wall cracked when he hit it, in her desperation to enter the apartment, frightened Detective Dan. But his gut pushed him forward. He had a bum knee that the department didn't know about. Dan was slow getting upstairs, he never chased a suspect, he couldn't, any quick turn down an alley, or climbing over a gate, would dislocate his knee and he'd be riding a desk the rest of his career. It's the reason he developed his uncommon ability to pull out confessions. Moving as quickly and carefully as he could up the flights of stairs, The detective watched the boy recover from the shove, go into the apartment and in an instant, be knocked down again, this time by a mangled man, tied or wrapped in a bunch of thick straps. Seeing the rhythmically spurting blood from the unknown man stopped the detective mid-flight. There was so much drooping bloody meat covering everything in bright red. Seeing the boy untangle himself to go back inside, snapped the detective out of his gore shock, thinking something really important must be inside the apartment. Nearing the moaning man, climbing stair after stair one at a time, the detective identified that they were leather belts which were strapped all around the, clearly dying, man. Before Dan was close enough to step over the man, Andrew ran out of the apartment retching. Piercing through the puking sound and death moan was a hiss, like a snake. The detective couldn't understand what he was seeing. The belts were alive? They writhed and twisted and unlatched themselves from the man. The ones near the man's feet even slithered like snakes toward the detective. Painfully hissing and trailing blood, before they reached him they disintegrated into a sickening mist. Then The man Wailed in agony and all motion stopped. Andrew and the detective locked eyes for an instant. Andrew's eyes registered only a singular focus, his mind didn't even process what was happening here. The detective, however, was dumbfounded trying to think of any explanation at all for what was happening today. He had lived a normal life for 30 years, and in a single day, everything he knew about the world was about to be upended, leaving behind no evidence. Just this man, whose job it was to explain, on record, the day's events. He followed the resolute teen into the apartment only to be greeted by pure madness.

  At the instant of its master's death, the demon familiar's covenant was complete. The demon could no longer occupy physical space and had to return to the demon plane. Its bird body exploded into flames. Katherine grinned excitedly. Finally, her pathway would open. Growing from nothing inside the burning bird, "The 6" appeared in its true form. Mouth-less and massive, the beastly eyes searched excitedly for their delicious prize. She addresses the dull grey six-armed demon in vulgar guttural sounding demon language. "Cursed Brother, You seek your master's soul, but it does not come to thee, for I have spilled your master's blood. I have a claim to its death agony, thus, Familiar kin, you shall return to hell weak and wanting. What will you do my unlucky kin? The mouthless demon Swiped six arms at the woman with blinding speed. If it could make contact with anything in the physical world, the woman would have been sliced into thick messy filets.

  Katherine continued unruffled, "But I offer thee a covenant. Thine time is short for this world. Thee shalt open a rift and leave, but if you take me through the rift, I shall give thee the spoils of this human's soul." The 6 was not hesitant to accept the deal. It had cultivated the hate and corruption of the witch's soul for 140 years. Whispering hatred and devious machinations into the witch from the time it was just a confused teenager. The 6 shared its demonic power with the witch, like putting money into a savings account. The six was weak in hell, but with the witches death, all of the accrued evil torment and negative emotions the witch and the demon familiar caused on the earth was to be collected by The 6 and it would be able to use the energy to build up its palace in hell. Kath
erine continued, "I knowest thine kind are adept at worldly magics, I was locked in this human husk. Use Familiar Kin Magic to free me from this world." The 6, being a demon, always approached a situation from a greedy and narcissistic standpoint. It knew that this deal could be turned to its benefit. Katherine was desperate to return to hell and did not question when the 6 tasked her with slitting her wrists to perform blood magic

  Andrew Held his dead twin and wept, unconscious to all that was happening around him. Andrew didn't hear his mother talking, Andrew didn't see the giant faceless demon casting a spell in his mother's blood. Andrew didn't feel anything when, in the course of the transfer of the witch's soul, his soul was unexpectedly yanked from his body.

  Detective Dan thought he must be dreaming or dead.

  The woman suddenly slit her wrists and the whole apartment turned suffocatingly dark. It was as if all the light were being absorbed by a smoke black hole, except for the color red. The blood flowed from Katherine's wrists in a thick river. It didn't fall to the ground, it floated around her and around the demon and around the boy. Like a dim party streamer tossed about this way and that by an apathetic decorator. Then the dead body pushed passed the Detective ambling zombie-like. It walked through a floating stream of blood. Like a rock in white water, the blood splashed around the deadhead. Churning and flowing around the obstacle leaving a red mist hanging for a moment as the zombie crossed the blood stream, which resumed its clean hose-like flow pattern when the dead man had walked through. Despite the horribleness of the demon and the strangeness of the blood magic and darkness of the atmosphere, and the deadness of the moving corpse, the Detective, never drew his weapon. His career was 4 years in and he never had to pull his firearm despite facing down violent or crazed perpetrators. He wasn't so shocked that he thought a gun would be useful against... Whatever the fuck insanity was going on in front of him now. Besides, Nothing in the apartment felt dangerous to him, he was simply an unlucky witness to something that really had nothing to do with him, and his report definitely reflected that. Before he could come to terms with what he was seeing, the Darkness covered everything. Dan was blind for a few seconds and then as if opening his eyes from an ordinary blink, Dan could see again. He saw only an ordinary apartment with two desiccated corpses. It didn't take him long to decide that everything that disappeared from the apartment, would certainly not go into the police report! the blood, demon, zombie, mother, the son... Nothing made it onto paper.