I hadn’t realized how much time that I had spent staring at the creature in front of me until he raised his voice at me to tell me to snap out of it. “Come on, now. You can’t just leave me hanging like this!” The blood-red hunchbacked imp snarled at me. He was beginning to lose his patience with me. He had asked question after question after question since I arrived in this void, with him as my only companion. It had happened so quickly, as well. A flash of light, an extraordinary feeling of pain washing over me for the briefest of moments, and then nothing. It had taken a while for me to realize that I hadn’t exactly succumbed to the type of ending that the “cessation of existence” school of thought had led me to expect. “I-I’m sorry.” I managed to utter, my tongue trying desperately to untie the knot that it had found itself in upon my arrival. The demon’s face, or what was left of it, lit up. “So! You can talk! Honestly, I was beginning to worry that you died a mute or some bullshit like that. Not that I hate lame people by any means, but it makes the questioning so much less fun!” “The… the questioning?” The demon raised a long, crooked finger at me, each fingernail at least twice as long as mine. “You’ve been a bad man, Jacob. A very bad man who did very bad things.” I was shocked to my core. How the hell did this thing know my name? “Oh, I know lots of things!” he exclaimed, startling me to near death, or whatever this realm’s equivalent is. “I can do lots of things as well, including reading minds, and I’ve been reading yours like a book! Quite the page-turner, really. The first few chapters are a little slow, I’ll admit, but god damn do things get juicy towards the middle!” I felt a little of my courage return to me. This gangly, monstrous freak didn’t know shit about me. For all I knew, in this world, I had all of the power. “If you know everything about me,” I exclaimed as confidently as I could, “then why bother with an interrogation at all?” The demon’s face fell, his confident smirk turning into an open-mouthed frown. Rows of sharp, uneven teeth filled the mouth that took up almost half of his face. “Because then, it wouldn’t be fun”. As he said that, his eyes looked straight into mine. Two black eyes with yellow irises and no pupils bore a hole into very being. Feelings of shame and guilt washed over me like waves on a beach. Any gumption that I had in me was gone. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. All I could do was meet his gaze, internally begging him stop whatever it was that he was doing to me. “Let’s begin shall we?” The demon stated, the wide, wicked smile returning to his face as my tongue loosened from whatever grip he had it in. “October 7th, 1997. University of Texas. Beginning Chemistry. Ring any bells?” After everything that the demon had put me through, my mind was still hazy. I could barely remember my own name. How the hell was I supposed to remember one specific day decades ago? “I thought that you’d struggle. Here’s a little hint for you.” All of a sudden, my mind was filled with a sentence that was being repeated over and over again. “I’d love to go with you. I’ll see you then!” The voice was a young woman’s. Soft yet energetic. It filled me with a warmth that I hadn’t felt in a long time. Then, I heard something else. It was almost drowned out by the first voice repeating itself, but I could still barely make it out. It was the same voice as the first one, but louder and more panicked. “No! Stay the hell away from me!” “Don’t hurt me please!” The warmth that I felt was replaced with ice running through me. A name slowly came to my mind, escaping my mouth before I even had a chance to process it. “Sa..Sa...Samantha...Samantha! Her name was…” Then I remembered. I remembered everything. I remembered what I had done before I blacked out and landed here with this monster and I started to weakly cry. “No..no, God! No!” The demon feigned apathy, patting my back in a mock gesture of support before whispering, “God’s not going to save you, Jacob.” Quicker than I could process, he drove his fingers into shoulder and pulled me. He was easily a foot and a half taller than I was, and I dangled in the air for a few seconds before I was dropped down standing. He resumed his normal speaking voice as if nothing had happened. “October 7th, 1997, University of Texas, Beginning Chemistry. That’s where the trouble started. You asking Samantha Green, the cute freshman who sat two seats to your left, out on a date right after class. Personally, I don’t know what she saw in you. 2.5 GPA, heavy drinker. I guess that she had a thing for taking on projects…” He said the last part with relish, reveling in the guilt that had taken over me. He then recoiled and put his hands up to his mouth in fake mortification. “Oh, wait. This is about you, isn’t it? Well, go on! Tell me the story!” My mouth wouldn’t stop quivering. Slowly, but surely, I managed to stifle my sobs long enough to form coherent sentences. “We... went out on a few dates together afterwards and eventually… became a couple. She was...she was far more eager to pursue the relationship than I was. I guess that she saw a spark there that I didn’t.” The demon gasped. “Fascinating! A relationship born out of convenience! And here I thought that the youth were supposed to try to avoid becoming their parents!” “I wasn’t exactly a role model student, so having her around gave me a better image. She was such a hardworking student, so capable of… of doing anything and…” I started to choke on my words. “I...I’m sorry, I...can’t...” “You can and you will.” The demon’s voice sent shockwaves through my body, causing some sort of pressure to build up my chest. I felt the pressure rising and rising until it hit my head. It then exploded like a balloon with too much air, and with it, a stream of words rushed to my tongue as I began to speak. “I needed to have her by my side, so I began telling her about how I was the only one that loved her, that I’d be nothing without her and that no one could ever understand her the way that I did. She became more and more attached to me, and after college, we got an apartment together a city over. She was the one who got a job and earned the money. I managed the finances and decided what we would spend money on.” My face got hot and red as I spouted sentence after sentence, my soul being set aflame with shame and embarrassment. “I never stopped drinking during college. In fact, my problems only got worse after graduation. I would take a small amount of Samantha’s money and spend it on booze and drugs. Whenever she’d question me about it, I…” I winced, preparing myself for what was to come next. “I’d hit her across the face and tell her to shut her mouth.” The demon nodded excitedly and giggled to himself, taking immense pleasure in my suffering. “Such a charmer, Jacob! A drunk and an abusive piece of shit! I’m surprised that you weren’t hooking up with broads on the daily!” His smile narrowed ever so slightly. “Do you remember Christmas Eve, Jacob?” I nodded, the lump in my throat getting larger by the second. The demon leaned in and cupped his hand around his large, pointed ear. “What happened on Christmas Eve, Jacob?” “I...I don’t want t…” The demon grabbed my throat with such speed and force that it surely would’ve snapped if I were still alive. “WHAT HAPPENED?!?!” I broke down sobbing harder than I had before. “I was drunk, and I… chased her into her room with a hammer! She screamed for me to stop but I didn’t. I got her into a corner, and I slammed the hammer into her skull over and over and over! When I was done I… couldn’t even recognize her. Jesus Christ, I don’t even remember what I was upset about!” “And there it is! The demon exclaimed triumphantly, dropping me to the floor and cackling to himself. “It’s a good thing that Ms. Whitemore next door had her windows open, although I highly doubt that the sound of someone’s skull and brain getting turned into mashed potatoes makes for good Yuletide ambience.” I returned to what was left of my senses while huddled up on the floor. “She...she called the police…” The demon giggled. “Yeah?” “The house was surrounded in minutes” “YEAH?” “I...I went for the gun under my bed and” “BLAM! SPLAT!” The demon yelled while punching the air. “Admittedly, not a bad way to go. Suicide by cop would’ve been way cooler, though.” I was done. My energy was sapped and all that I could do was cry. He’d won. He’d broken me. Again, he lurched over to where I was and grabbed me by the chin, forcing me to look into his eyes. “Don’t waste all of your tears now!” he said, eyes glowing, his tongue wriggling behind his jagged teeth. “This is where things get really crazy!”
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