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he demon whispers were strong in her head tonight. They always were at night time, but this night seemed different. Sharon had been quietly eating dinner when the inevitable evening taunting started. The malignant spirits were relatively quiet during the daytime hours but as evening drew closer they became restless. She finished her meager supper and threw the dishes into the corner of her small kitchen. Maggots crawled on the pile of leftovers which had built up there. She watched them writhe on the scattered plates with little interest. Gelatinous reminders of birth and death. She stepped on the two fattest larvae within her reach and heard them shriek in the back of her head. That was four hours ago and the voices were just as loud, if not louder than when they first started.
She sat in her living room chair and stared at the blank wall in front of her. Fixated on the clean patch in the center where a mirror once hung. The beasts could not be seen in that mirror, but their black-green glowing eyes could. The eyes would follow her around the room and she knew for a fact there were grinning mouths beneath. Outlined in smoke. No mirrored surfaces existed anywhere in the house now. It did not frighten her to see the eyes; she thought the demons liked to see themselves and she denied them this simple pleasure. The water taps in the bathroom down the hall squeaked, and she heard the familiar sound of a sink filling.
She opened the drawer in the small end table and took out her Bible. It was a recent gift from her sister Ellen. She remembered all the Sunday mornings when, as children, she and Ellen would be sent off to church for classes. How as she grew closer to becoming a teen she would fight with her parents, offering any excuse to relieve herself of Sunday school duties while Ellen sat quietly waiting in the living room. As the empty prescription bottles started to fill her waste basket, and the list of head doctors grew longer, she found herself turning to the book, and her old forgotten lessons, more and more. She held it up to the dim light from the kitchen, examining its fullness. Absorbing the reality of the book. Sometimes the demons would hide it from her and she would search for it. Once, it was torn apart page by page and plastered to the floor like a holy rug. Glued down with the vilest fluid she had ever seen. But it always came back to her. She let a small grin turn up the corner of her mouth and was quickly deterred by a shrill screech. A piercing call to mind of her current situation. She put the book down and retrieved the black-handled pistol she kept beside it.
She was not a fool. The pistol was an earthly show of aggression. A makeshift backbone that held no real power over her captors. The intimate weight of the revolver gave her courage. These invaders, unwanted filth, would not be brought down by such tools. As if in agreement, the earlier shrieks quieted to loathsome tittering. She was tired of it all and had promised herself this was it. It would end tonight. The good book was her solace, the pistol, bravado.
Light from the washroom cast bland yellow shafts in the littered hall. She thought cleaning for bed a trite ritual now. As she passed the bathroom the tap slowed to a trickle, and the drain belched its annoyance. She could see the shattered television on the bureau in the bedroom. Blue-white sparks arched at her bed linen. Some nights Ellen would visit and they would watch in silence. Ellen would ask how she was doing and she would mutter “Better,” and they would both accept the lie. The cardboard covering the window was dark and swollen with rot.
A stench of rancid piss turned her stomach as she entered. She spat loose saliva in a mist and held back her vomit. Glass from the shattered television screen dug into her heel. The blood from the cut drew hungry vermin from beneath her bed. She cursed the cowardly demons, and dared their solidified forms to appear so she could direct a bullet into a green eye-socket. They would not take her bait. She stomped a swollen rat with her bloody heel and was content with the crunch of spine and skull.
The ceiling above her bed cracked, and she felt the stale attic air on her face. Above the drywall she could see the geometry of the roof. Black background highlighted the stained wood girders that held it in place. A small fissure appeared in the shingles and slowly widened, exposing the pinpoint twinkle of bone-yellow stars.
She searched for the Bible now and felt its reassuring form in her sweater pocket. The amassed worry and self doubt of the last few weeks faded quickly. Maybe she could beat the Devil. She never let that thought voice itself before, for fear it would weaken whatever magic it might hold. She spat towards the floor. Her spittle landed on the crushed body of the rat and brought sudden life to the beast. Its flattened head lifted into the air and caught her bleary eyes. A small black forked tongue shot out and tasted her fear. All her tired brain could articulate at the abomination was Fuck.
The pulverized rat sprang forth and fastened itself to her calf. The defiant body started to swell, and then flatten like a billows. Intense pain crept up her calf to her kneecap. She could almost see the putrid venom as it rose up her veins and pooled behind her knee. The air in the room became hotter; heavier somehow. Her breath clogged her chest instead of filling her lungs. The empty howls of the dammed filled her skull and she forgot the pain in her leg.
The air rippled, and through the crack in the roof she saw her Tormentor for the first time. Huge black wings affixed to muscular shoulders directed the form smoothly down and into the bedroom. Warm urine ran down her leg and stained the littered carpet. She raised the pistol and pumped useless rounds into the Demon’s large chest. The wounds that opened there sprayed black ichor which froze her hands as gun smoke filled her nostrils.
Firing the weapon jarred the Bible from her pocket and it fell to the floor. She watched it fall, then looked up to see that her invader’s black eyes had also followed its progress to the floor. Exposed, the book looked naked and weak. Sharon blinked, and faltered back from it like it was a mere prop in a miserable play. The Devil pointed at the book with a long mangled finger and dark green fire exploded from the blackened nail at the tip. The remnants of the book smoldered by her right foot. The mutant rat dislodged itself from her calf and jumped into the smoking white embers which remained. It languished there for a minute, and then ceased to exist.
With her talisman gone, and its questionable power spent, Sharon felt drained. What she had suspected all along finally registered. She scolded herself for allowing this situation to go on as long as it had. She was not a slayer of demons, she was a doomed woman. This realization calmed her. It was now clear what she must do—why she had kept the revolver.
She looked at the Devil in her small trashed bedroom and grinned. She wanted to believe that the Devil flinched at that grin—taken aback by the stark certainty in her eyes. She raised the barrel of the gun and directed it into her mouth. The hot steel singed the soft palate at the back. As she squeezed the trigger, her mind focused intently. She heard the hammer click on its target at the back of the primer cap. She heard the sizzle of the gun powder catching the spark from the impact of the hammer. And she heard laughter. She heard the Devil laughing. Time fell to pieces and she was back in the church basement. The laughter was echoing through the deserted halls and the empty classroom where she now found herself standing. It was over, she knew that now. She also came to understand that there are far worse fates than facing down the Devil. Fates that last for eternity. |
