Ladies and gentlemen... the WrongPlanet writing showcase

Post Reply New Topic

https://www.amazon.com/Youre-Always-Me- ... ble&sr=1-1

My latest book, You're Always With Me And Other Stories, is now available as an audiobook! Huzzahs!

I am a Demon.

That's right a demon. Not a devil. Those red guys with pointy tails and horns and pitchforks are devil's, and I'm not one. What's the difference? Devils aren't native to Hell. They were once Angels and were cast down here with Lucifer. They are the ones who are all about tempting mortals, damning souls, destroying Heaven. I don't care about any of that. I am a Demon, and we have ALWAYS existed in Hell.

My appearance would be most grotesque to mortal eyes. I stand nine feet tall, with a massive chest covered in wirrey brown hair. I have two heads. One is more or less human, the other is that of a snarling dog. My dogs head has a mind of its own and is always snarling and drooling and ripping things open. My legs are like massive vulture legs with claws. My arms are massive and ape like. My eyes a disquieting shade of red.

Today is like any other in the Malebolge, essentially a massive lake of boiling human excrement in Hells fifth level. I swim up chest deep in frothing crap up to one of the newly damned. I grab and tear his arms off while my dogs head rips his face to shreds. I enjoy the Malebolge. The stench is agreeable, the trapped souls can't get away too quickly, and Lucifer's Devil's don't visit here too often. It's just us demons and the damned as it should be.

Just any other day in the Malebolge, when suddenly I hear it. It's a summons in Latin. I scry upwards and see a vision. Five teenagers all in black clothes in a crypt in the middle of a pentagram. They have black candles around the ends of the pentagram. And a book. A very old book with a black cover. I can smell it even down here. Somehow these kids got their hands on.a for real spell book, genuine King Solomon old Enochian stuff. It's Halloween night there and the veil is thin. I scry some more....the book is powerful stuff but they don't really know what they are doing. I see imperfections in a magic circle that can not afford to be less than perfect. Runes of protection meant to control a creature like me. Oh yes time for some fun.

I manifest myself in the crypt in a hail of hell fire and a stench of brimstone. The kids are terrified, they didn't really expect anything like this. I grab the nearest immediately and rub him all over my wirey brown hair. The ends are sharp and tear his skin right off. My dogs head rips out his throat and blood sprays everywhere. I drop the corpse and pin the next under my vulture leg. He's a fat marshmallow of a human and I tear my claw through his back and out his chest. My foot comes up with his heart gripped inside it. The girl is frantically paging through the book. Probably looking for a spell to stop me. I stomp over the corpse, grab her, and rip her bodily in half. One of the remaining boys shoots me with a shotgun. It's shells were loaded with rock salt! Did he really think that would work? I turn around, grab the gun, and ram it through his head. The fifth is heading for the door and I pin his body to the wall. My dogs head goes into a frenzy of bites, turning him into a raw and bleeding carcass.

And then I smell it. Priests. Probably looking to get that spell book back. They are carrying blessed artifacts and I'm not messing with that. I open a portal and beat a hasty retreat back to the Malebolge where the souls of the days five are waiting for me.

It isn’t often that inspiration and my infrequent moments of eloquence coincide, but when they do, I actually don’t think I’m too shabby. But only rarely and for a few paragraphs at most, so really, it mostly just emphasizes how bad the rest is. I write in scenes, I’m terrible at joining them even when they neatly follow a storyline. This time I got what might be the start of a short story that doesn’t fit into any of my other stuff.

“The creature sat crouched at the top of a tree in the heart of the forest, one arm around the slender trunk as it leaned forward and sniffed the air. The afternoon sunlight hurt its eyes and the warmth made it sluggish, but earlier that day the leader of one of the forest’s wolf packs had awakened it from its torpor. The creature did not force the animals to do anything for it, but they recognized it as the utmost apex predator it was, and knew that pleasing it meant that it would let them live. This was not a spoken vow, but a vow nonetheless, and though it was ravenous, the creature always held true to its vows - a vestige of the human it had once been. And so the wolf had alerted the creature when it had found signs of the creature’s favorite prey, the one thing it truly craved. The forest was remote enough that humans didn’t enter it for leisure, so it knew it had time. It would track them while it was weak and take them when night fell, when it truly reigned supreme. But now, the light and warmth confused its senses, and so it would borrow those of another. The creature found the wolf that had awakened it (which wasn’t hard even during the day since it had its scent and heat signature fresh in its mind), then took a piece of its mind and sent it into the wolf. This intrusion did not allow it to control or impel the wolf - in fact, the wolf was barely aware of its presence, consciously or subconsciously. What it did was allow the creature to become a passenger in the wolf’s mind, seeing through its eyes, hearing through its ears, smelling through its nose.”

…and that’s all I have.