by Monica Rossi
The wind blew and he caught a whif of late blooming roses on the air… and something else. The hair on the nape of his neck stood up and he froze in place, seconds before the sound of angry dogs reached him. A lot of angry dogs.
Demon sprinted towards the tallest of the nearby trees and quickly skimmed up and out of reach. This had not been in his plans for the night.
They surrounded the tree, huge mouths dripping with anticipatory spittle as they jump and snapped inches below his feet.
“Now now, children, play nice.” The black dogs ears stood straight up, and they quieted. He could feel the emotions rolling off of them, the anger at having their territory invaded being replaced by confusion. “Hush pretty girls, it’s alright. Go back to what you were doing, I’m a friend and I belong here,” Demon said in a calm steady voice. He should love dogs, they were his cousins after all, but something had always held him apart from them. Maybe it was the slight repulsion of their complete domestication and supplication to humans, but something about them just didn’t sit right with him. Even being around them made him a little uneasy. He much preferred cats, who didn’t give two fucks about you, took care of themselves when you were away, and owned you just as much as you owned them. Having a cat was more like being in a partnership than having a pet.
That didn’t stop him from learning how to speak to dogs. You just never knew when that skill would come in handy. Like when you’re spying on a multi-millionaire and trespassing on his property and his dogs want to come say hello. A handy skill to have indeed.
His new canine friends went back to whatever business they had been involved in before and he continued making his way to the house. It was annoyingly slow and he again wondered at the sanity of someone who would willingly own this much grass that would need cutting. He had to have fulltime landscapers who did nothing but make sure the grass was exactly one and a quarter inches high, he rolled his eyes. So much wasted time and resources.
Finally he got close enough to the house, if a five story monstrosity of ornate carvings and pale stone bricks can even be called such, that he could almost monitor the people inside by their heat, their voice, and the cadence of their walk. The people on the first floor that is. He couldn’t split his concentration between all the levels at once, and that was a problem.
How was he going to find out what shady dude was up to if he couldn’t even find him in the house?
He looked nearby for a convenient hiding place that would keep him hidden long enough to think of some plan of action that would get him inside and close enough to the ‘boss’ to gather some information.
Somewhat near the back of the home, a large gazebo overlooked a manmade pond that Demon was 99% certain was stocked with huge goldfish or some of those koi people insisted on painting on everything. Maybe he could hide in the ceiling beams of that while he worked out a plan.
Before he could make a move, he heard loud voices carrying over the yard. Skulking further behind his current hiding spot, a trellis with climbing vines, he whipped his head in the direction of the sound.
Four burly men dressed in tight black shirts and pants came spilling out of the back of the house. Two of which were carrying something wrapped in a sheet between them.
A body, a fresh one. Demon sniffed the air. He smelled death but no rot, no blood. This murder had just happened while he sat outside trying to figure out what to do.
The men made their way to an outbuilding that was larger than any home Demon had ever lived in, and went inside. The last one slamming the door behind him. Well, you probably didn’t have to try to be too stealthy when you lived on fifty acres of fenced in private property, he doubted he’d have been that worried about witnesses either.
Taking a quick look around to make sure he wasn’t missing some pair of eyes that would see him and alert the household, he made a dash over to the building. Made of the same stone of the house, but without all the windows and ornate masonry, the building seemed to only have one entrance on the front, a set of double doors, and one entrance on the back, a single door with no windows. In fact there wasn’t even a screened duct he could crawl into and then come in from below. No windows, two doors that lead to unknown rooms, and no way of knowing what he was walking into.
He sighed and shrugged as he busted down the back door. He was tired of hiding anyway.
Five set of eyes turned towards him. Just his luck, they were all there plus one.
“What the hell?”, “Who the fuck?”, “What are you…” the men were all standing around the body of a woman, which had been unrolled, red hair still vibrant as it splayed across the cold concrete of the floor, beautiful hazel eyes staring at nothing.
“Uh, didn’t mean to crash the… necrophilia party guys. Could one of you tell me where to find head dude in charge of bad shit here? I think I need to have a few words with him.”
One of the larger men lunged for him, which he sidestepped easily as he pulled his knives out of the sheaths at his side.
Without much thought one long evil looking knife rammed into the mans back and straight through his heart, the thrill of it vibrating up Demon’s arm, and just like that he was in the red hazed trance again. Time seemed to slow down as he step and side stepped, letting the men charge or retreat as they would. There was no danger here for him, only the beauty of the dance. A dance of death, one he knew all the steps by heart.
Blood sprayed, catching the light in a beautiful ruby droplets and he marveled at the complexity of human life, how this blood maintained the body in perfect rhythm. And yet the simplicity of it was also beautiful, take away the blood and the complex function ceased. The heart failed, the brain stopped firing little neurons, the muscles locked in place. All because of these beautiful ruby droplets.
He could kill them all as easily as he’d take out the first guy, but that wasn’t what the dance demanded. He had to let them try, try and fail, but try anyway.
Or that’s what he’d thought as a fist caught him in his side, sending him flying into a wall and landing hard on the floor. He shook his head, it had been a long time since someone had gotten a solid hit on him.
He straightened up, prepared to kill them all, when a bullet flew through his shoulder, burning as it went, the pain spreading quickly to his entire arm and torso. He knew he was in trouble and that it was time to get serious.
He held his hands up in front of him, knives touching, and breathed in, taking in all the energy he could from all the living things around him. He exhaled and said the words he never before had to use.
The language was undecipherable to human ears, but he’d known them since he was a child.
The ground shook under him, the four remaining men tried to find purchase. He began to heal, the bullet and whatever poison had been on it worked it’s way out of his shoulder to fall in a blue puddle on the floor. Finally his body began to emit a green smoke that left traces of light in the air as he moved, and he was moving faster than the any eye could detect.
He scored one across the side, a painful injury but far from life threatening, and cut the tendons in another ones ankles. He darted around the room, jabbing, slicing, cutting as he went until none were left standing but him.
One was on the floor gurgling and choking on his own life’s blood and bleeding out from his wounds. Demon did a flip and landed over him.
“Shake free of this mortal coil and do better your next time around,” he said before a quick jab to the heart put the large man out of his misery. The rest of them looked like they had also taken enough abuse. It was time to end it. He set his mouth and went to work, landing quick and decisive blows to each of them. He allowed none to suffer long. He should have saved one to ask questions, but he’d injured them all too badly, there were none that would be able to speak coherently.
He caught his breath and surveyed the carnage. The room was covered in blood spatter, the floor a dark red instead of concrete grey. He looked around, finally taking the time to see what kind
of building he was in and realized it was full of tools for landscaping. This building that was bigger than most houses was a garden shed. He shook his head. People were unbelievable.
Wiping his knives and returning them to their sheaths he started making his rounds. He didn’t always have time but when he did, and he was alone, he liked to close the eyes of the dead and offer up a small prayer to whatever gods might be listening for their souls, and his. It was probably an empty gesture, but it didn’t hurt anything.
He finished his rounds and then came to the woman’s still form, lying in the middle of a death circle, like a sacrifice. He wondering if he should even try what he was contemplating, it could backfire and then he’d lay dead beside her, another corpse to frame her body.
He knelt down beside her. Her skin was flawless and almost luminous in death, she’d been beautiful, of that there was no doubt. Laying a hand over her eyes he began the old chant of return, the one his mother had taught him to use when he’d lost a favorite toy or book. But this time, instead of willing a thing to come to him, he was willing a soul to return to its body. He wasn’t even sure such a thing was possible, but he needed to find out what Richy Rich was doing with Big Dog and it was likely this woman could tell him. If he could return her soul to her body for just a few moments he might be able to solve this puzzle without all the poison ivy risk of hiding in bushes.
“Come on, come on,” he urged after he’d finished the chant.
Nothing happened.
He leaned down to see if maybe he could detect a shallow breath, a faint heartbeat, any sign of life, when a screech from behind caused him to jump straight up, quickly turning toward the sound, hand reaching for a knife.
His eyes traveled from the body on the ground to the ethereal form standing over it, misty hands covering her mouth, terror in her eyes.
He’d somehow summoned a ghost.
“What have you done to me?” she wailed, the sound scratching painfully against his ears like his eardrums were being dragged across broken glass.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?” she asked again, louder, causing Demon the cover his ears with his hands, hoping to filter the sound.
“Calm down,” he yelled back, “I haven’t done anything to you. You were dead when I found you.”
“But why? Why am I dead? I don’t know what is happening,” her hands moving to frame each side of her head, the look of pain and confusion apparent on her face. She looked around to see all the other bodies strewn around her, “This is Fredrick’s security team.”
“Now, I did kill them, so…” he shrugged, maybe he’d get points for that if they’d had any hand in her death.
“Frederick.” Her eyes became steel, her hands clenching at her side.
“Is Frederick the rich dude who owns this house?” Demon asked, hoping he was finally going to get some information.
“Yes, and he killed me. HE KILLED ME!” she screamed, her form suddenly shooting around the room faster than he could follow.
“HE KILLED MEEEEEEEE!” she screeched again.
Demon covered his ears again and tried to think of something that would calm down an angry ghost before it alerted everyone in the entire state to its existence.
“Hey, calm down. We can figure all of this out. I just want to ask you a few questions and then we can work on sending you back to the void or heaven or wherever it is you came from.”
The white blur paused for a moment before zooming towards him. He put his arms up to block whatever it was she was going to do but she just blew right through him. His body lifted into the air and he landed hard on pallet of stacked bags of potting soil.
The ghost didn’t slow down as she continued to shrilly protest her death, making a loud windy spiral around the room.
Demon sat up, propping his elbow on his knee and sat his chin on a balled fist. This was not going very well at all.
Sidney drifted in the space between. It was so peaceful and calm here, she wasn’t sure she ever wanted to leave.
After the last vision of her past she’d been left floating in darkness. Fear had seeped in and began to consume her until strange sensations took over her body. She felt light rather than saw it. It soaked into every fiber of her being, filling her with warmth and energy and she knew that it was sacred. She felt the vibrations of sound, the rumble of cars jostling overhead, the breeze as it rustle through the leaves, waves as they gently lapped against a shore.
She was everywhere and no where at once.
Her consciousness had expanded to unimaginable proportions. Simultaneously she felt all the living things as they trod upon the Earth, felt the currants as they swept through the oceans, felt the fiery magma as it churned through the core of the planet. No room was left for fear or doubt or second thoughts, she just was. One with everything. It was truly wonderful.
She knew this couldn’t last, she’d get lost inside it, there would no longer be a Sidney, soon she’d forget that Sidney had ever existed. That didn’t seem so horrible, in the scheme of things, in comparison to the hugeness she now encompassed, Sidney was really insignificant. So when the pulling began, she fought it. Fought to hold on to this new expansion, she wanted to be lost inside this beautiful cacophony of everything, to feel the forest burning hot and the cool floods as they rushed against her. Nothing that could ever happen to Sidney would ever be able to compare to these wondrous things.
But the pulling was incessant and too strong to fight, but she did nonetheless, and she lost. Slowly her awareness narrowed, slowly shrinking, until she was back in her own skin, aware of only what such a tiny body could feel and see.
The loss was devastating, and tears streamed down her face at what she would never be able to feel again. How could she ever go back to being just Sidney when she had felt the whole world?
Before she could gather herself, she felt herself expanding again, but this time she felt herself travel down a silvery cord. She saw it as it grew from her navel and reached out, the only light in the black void of nothingness. She felt it as it searched and a small dog materialized in the darkness, the grass appearing under its feet, more and more of its world came into being as she watched.
The cord stuck the dog and moved through it. Sidney cried out, scared that the dog would be injured but it didn’t act as if it had felt anything, but she did. She felt it’s hunger, it’s loneliness, it’s urge to play as it wagged it’s tail at the man who walked by, she felt It’s need to love and be loved and it resonated with in her. A mirror of her own needs.
The cord traveled through the house, she felt it as it passed through walls until it came to a girl. A girl with long shiny black hair and perfect teeth and a perfect figure. It was Jessica, her sister. The cord whipped through her, not pausing at all as it continued on its journey. She felt her sister’s fear that she wouldn’t be able to make the rent this month, she felt her frustration at not being a better person, a person who could cope with life without the help of her parents, she felt the loss of people she’d loved who had abandoned her when she hadn’t been part of their society any longer, and more than anything she felt the need for attention and acceptance, to find a place where she would fit in without judgment.
Sidney wanted to reach out to her sister, to hold her and tell her that she knew how that felt, but the cord kept moving, traveling through a man and woman at the same time. And then the cord snaked through another person and another person and another and another until Sidney was overcome with all the emotions these people were emanating, all so similar to her own.
The cord continued, on and on, traveling through homeless people and executives, dogs and squirrels, fish and birds, soccer moms and prostitutes. She could no longer differentiate one person, one animal from another, and still it continued, on and on. All these people, all these animals, each with different names and lives and homes and worries but all with the same needs. To be loved, to be accepted, to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
Sidney crie
d out, it was too much, she couldn’t handle any more, and the cord still searched.
“Please,” she begged whoever was listening. She wanted to say more, to say that she understood, that all of us, every sentient creature on this rock were all one. She wanted to tell them that they didn’t need to show her any more, but all she could get out was please.
Without warning the cord disappeared leaving her to her own emotions, and her on consciousness.
She was no longer in the void nor in the field. She had returned to her own body, the black fabric feeling scratchy against the bare skin.
Outside was silent, nothing could be heard except her harsh breathing and the sound of blood rushing through her body.
She wanted to fall down, to rest, to close her eyes and not think of anything or feel anything again for a thousand years. She was exhausted, but strong arms pulled her to a standing position on wobbly legs.
“Sidney Sanderson as we remove this cloth, this symbolic womb from which you will be born again, you will look upon the world with new eyes. Eyes that have seen the illusion of self, eyes that have seen the vastness of creation, eyes that have witnessed the connection we share,” the deep male voice rumbled and Sidney shook along with it.
“Come forth child, be born into this world with the knowledge you’ve gained tonight, and walk the path of light and shadows.”
The black cloth was torn free and a gasp escaped her, light from a roaring bonfire blinded her momentarily and the feel of the cool breeze on her naked skin stunned her.
Chanting began and Sidney’s vision cleared. She was surrounded by people, some naked like herself, some in simple robes, others in ornate costumes that shimmered in the firelight. All of them in a circle, all with eyes full or tears and wonder. She saw her reflection in them, how she must seem, and wondered if they had all travelled the same path she had to stand in that circle. She saw Fran, black velvet midriff top with a skirt that swayed with her as she chanted, and Cord, nude and glorious, his toned body glinting as he moved. Bree stood near her in the middle with a wizened cane, decorated with beads and shiny metal, that seemed so much a part of her that Sidney tried to remember if she’d had it with her earlier. All three looked transcendent in the moment, rapt eyes upon her.
