Topic: The Demon Redux

[bluewpc]

Seems such a long time ago...


The Demon


Child in the Sewers

Nude stood this child on a floor of concrete open to the frigid holocaust elements. Not alone yet solitary in the center of an enormous expanse enclosed by rough walls of seccotine rising up for as far the eye might see. In this unadorned cubicle two manhole covers of identical proportions on either side of the room. They were raised several feet off the ground in squared prominences and they were snorting gusts of steam like bull smoke out of their holes. A cold wind blew from no place at all and the chill shivered her terribly and she wrapped her arms about her nakedness though it was no help. She looked about. Everything gray around her save for a maddening labyrinth of red rusted pipes leaking a viscous fluid black as coal onto the ground like tar.  What lay beyond was a mystery for a thick mix blocked everything that might have been behind wisping noxious clouds.

   In her strange manner she watched the steady dripping until a sudden movement from her left snatched away her attention from those sweating pipes above. Beside her where there had been no thing before stood a boy likewise unclothed whom she’d never seen before. He was layered in grime that hid the paleness of his complexion. This boy who stood almost five feet tall was near as tall as her and his face was a mask of rage directed as something across the room. Catherine followed his gaze across the room where before eyes another man was in the process of coalescing out of a crimson mist who once fully formed leaned against an ivory chair conjured by who knew what devilish magics. This new arrivals appearance: an abject terror. He broke no precedence in his chosen wardrobe for he wore no clothes. His skin a tattered hide played upon by lunatic vivisectionists. His face hidden behind locks of pure black hung like dead snakes about his head.

   This unholy being who noticed her noticing raised himself upright and beckoned with a nubby claw. An unseen force what next ripped her and the boy from their bare feet onto their backsides. Catherine with ragged breath looked in time to see her male counterpart dragged off screaming into the manhole now uncovered behind her. Suddenly as if on cue whatever force had thieved away the boy now hauled upon her own legs and sent her flying down to her own hole, the skin on her back peeling back in a bloody streak along the unhewn floor.


An incorrigible doppelganger

At that disheveled visage did Catherine stare in disbelief and horror. A being contained within a mercurial mirror. In this epigonic image her hair was shorn to an inch of her scalp and lice roamed free over that scabbed dome. Her dress a tattered wife beater stained in urinous hues. Blue black sweat shorts what hung loosely from her emaciated frame. She was covered in filth yet insufficient to mask the discolored contusions on her exposed being and her feet were bleeding from cuts incurred on a fractured tiling floor miles behind her and even to here on the rough floor below. A dilapidated sink was installed below the mirror as such utilities often are and piping too that porcelain bowl was there and neither was in fair condition and the latter suppurated a raw sewage that stung her butchered feet. On the edge of the sink lay precariously a blade of glass who knew from whence it came? She picked it up the shimmering blade and in one brutal movement plunged it into her bare neck and sawed through her throat. The unseamed veins jetting blood black into that maniacal countenance, the face of that demented twin.

[The Nightwalker]

That was fairly disturbing. But I will look forward to seeing the story continue. Very well written. Good job.

[bluewpc]

Thanks Nightwalker. This is as some of the older members will know a rewrite of an archaic little piece I wrote back when the moon loomed large in some cenozoic era long forgotten. I've been writing a lot lately and needed a break so I figured this would be a good exercise and hell I may just finish it this time 

The Librarian

   The child bursting through the doubled ochre doors ragged breath clouding afore her. The cable yet coiled about her left arm so tight her veins bulged out of her skin like roadways imprinted on a map of flesh. She turned and slammed the doors behind her and no sooner than they were shut the cable snapped taut and wrenched her back. Hurled into the doors with a force that shattered her ulna in a sound like jaws clamping bone and then the cable went limp and drooped to the cold floor as she herself slumped down like a stringless marionette. Interlude now of  precious seconds few in which she sat up and looked about surprised to find in a corner of the room an elder treasure hunter asleep at a desk in a plastic chair wizened head rested on mahogany in the likeness of professors at eve’s end in secluded studies. This one wore slacks of wool and a brown vest over a white shirt stained brown by coffee. New hunter old man.

   Rising she felt a feeling such as could be called relief wash over her and she broke out into a spring over to him. As she ran she called hoarsely for him to wake but he did not and she could not know why and inches from him the cable shot up again and yanked her off her feet. A pain excruciating like no other she had endured sang up her arm but she ignored it, instead she slung round grabbing the cable with her free hand and bracing herself against in an untiled space in the floor. Yet such was the force hauling upon her that despite her exertions she began to slide towards the doors.

   Wake up. She cried and cried again. Wake up and help me. But he would not wake and he would not wake and soon her howling devolved into sobbing pleas while the blood in her arms was squeezed into the ends of her fingers where the skin burst and thin ropes of blood spurted out against the cold metal of the doors. Catherine screamed as the splotches grew in time with the beating of her heart. A terrible agony that nonetheless worked in her favor. This revenant’s scream what jolted the old man from slumber and as he rose his eyes darted frantically about the room for the origin of this curdling noise. Vision received of gray room of gray walls and gray dust and motes that drifted in a gray light. He was a decent man and when he saw Catherine he leapt to his feet and rushed to her side.

   She was still straining at the cable and as he slid next to her he called for her to let it go and he took hold of it himself.
   Don’t look at it. He said. Don’t look.

   He drew a long serrated blade bereft of hilt and went to shearing the cable with a terrible urgency. The blade was honed and tempered but the cable was no so easily cut and for a long minute he worked frantically while the child writhed as if held in seizure sawing and hacking and stabbing until finally, with a whip’s crack, it shot free and disappeared through the doors.   

[bluewpc]

Bathtub, Elevator; Grill

   Sam felt his body squeeze through the tub’s drain, the sheer impossibility of the feat no impasse to its happening. Agony wracked his body in that horrid compression the crumpling of  bones and wrinkling of skin unformed then reconstituted as he passed through that unlikely entrance. The rusty drain where pains swirled below not to resurface and yet here he was. Long minutes he was in his reformation but there at the end he was. When he was of mind enough from that pain he took in his surroundings. Another enclosed room what he found; walls of seccotine save the wall before him which was of metal wherein the sounds of gears could be heard grinding metal on metal, an ancient screech like some banshee out of who knew what horror. And here stood the butchered man. Leaned against a doorway to whatever hell he held domain over or what awaited him. Standing beside him a child in loin cloth shaking fearfully. He judged him not six.

   The bloody one beckoned at him with his finger and he stepped out of the tub and onto the rough floor. As he walked towards the beckoner her heard a blaring noise from within that metallic wall and he stopped dead in his tracks. The screeching noise continued to ring until finally the elevator locked into place on the floor with a hydraulic hiss. The elevator now risen the doors parted revealing a space just enough to fit a child. Inside however, as complication, there were several octagonal slabs which rotated around that empty compartment like pieces from a puzzle where one would stand. It did not escape the boy that should he be impressed inside that if he were to stay inside he would, if he remained still, would soon be crushed beyond recognition. No sooner had the door opened that the butchered man stuck his head inside and looked around. He looked back at Sam seemingly satisfied that all was well with his motorized contraption and he motioned to him and again despite his fear he drew closer.

   One of you two going to get in? Said the man with a hint of a smile behind the winding locks of his hair. Pure black. Perhaps as his soul. He spoke with a voice sickly wet as if clotted with phlegm and yet entranced either child. The two boys exchanged glances of dread but it was Sam who had the dreader look and he seized the smaller one by the blades of his shoulders and forced him half-stepping and sobbing into the death trap himself with a terrible howl. This younger one committed to who knew what horror and once so Sam quickly withdrew as the steel slabs locked in place trapping the boy for what would prove to be forever. His one arm protruding outside.
 
   A wet laugh with which he addressed this stronger child: You’ll be glad to know that the first one down there will find themself very…deserted. The man leaned against the wall and with a finger depressed a crimson rune what sent the elevator down into who knew what hell speculated by saints Imperial or Christian into those depths of fire and brimstone. He could hear the boy whimpering in the descent. As it got closer he could see the trapped arm flailing in a desperate attempt to withdraw it inside but it such struggles were vain and in those slow moments next his arm was shorn slowly off accompanied by a wicked scream and Sam felt blood hot as burning coal splash against his legs and when the elevator had gone from sight he turned to regard that mutant form taken the form of man.

   It was Cesar committed to the loam who desired revenge and can you guess who wrought it for him? I got power son and I ain’t care for its dispensing cause what I got I got to spare. Remember that always boy. All you want I got and it’s a small price to pay for my kinship. Tell me son, what’s on your mind.

   He spoke with a devilish grin and the child Sam who had his rage spoke back. You know my heart.

He smiled. That’s a dark place but aye I know it all right and I’ll bring it right out. Right to fruition and down the world and all the souls on it. Let em fly.

[Mithami]

Hey I remember this , it was a while ago, but I wouldn't mind seeing a new revision of the story. I remember how good and awesome it was, are you still planning on continuing this?

Awesome work, it has your usual quirks(lack of punctuation for me), but it's all good, would definitely like to see more!