Plot Feeling A Little Empty In The Middle? Here’s Some Food For Thought.

Good stuff.

Sorry I haven’t been all that active these last few days

I’ve been kind of busy, but I should get to posting again soon.

Prompt: Hemoglobin

@basement-boy

He drew the blade across his wrist with a small gasp of pain. He was young, and he was new to this. Perhaps he’d hide his youth behind stubble, the beginnings of a beard, but I have spent too long in this universe to be fooled by such a simple trick.

The room was in disarray, with tomes of daemonic names, magic spells and rituals lying open or even with pages ripped out. On the north side of the room, there was a desk covered in notes, with a single candle dripping wax to provide some meager light in the beginnings of twilight outside the window. The center of the room, carved into the wood floor and then traced with chalk was a hexagram, encircled by runes and the names of angels in Enochian. Anabiel. Gabriel. Sammiel. Names to guard against the thing he was summoning. Me.

He began the ritual as his blood dripped into a bowl on the southern side of the pentagram, and his whisperings caused the room to go cold and the wind to pick up through the window on the eastern side of the room, scattering papers and blowing out the candle. The room filled with shadow, despite the sun merely beginning to set.

“I summon thee, Okiabec, in the name of angels and by the six-pointed star. I summon thee, Okiabec, in the names of the Lord and the name of the Devil. El, Jah, Lucifer, Shaitan, I summon thee in these names. Appear and be bound, Okiabec, I command thee in the names of Metatron, Mikhael, Uriel, the watchers of the gate. I command thee in the name of the fallen; the many names of the Grigori, and the names of the Seraphs. Appear, Okiabec.”

When the words were completed, I appeared, as he said. Not that I had ability to avoid the summons. For his youth, the boy was skilled. I took the form of a draconian humanoid, naked, with black scales and a crown of horns growing in a ring around his forehead. In my right hand I held a curved khopesh blade, and in my left I held a net. Not that this form was corporeal.

Pointing the blade at the boy, I growled out a response to his summons in guttural, unearthly tones. “I am Okiabec, the spirit of disease. I fought besides the Morningstar when he stormed heaven, I was at his side when he forged Hell from the nether. I was there when man stepped from the light and left the garden, I was there when Moshe plagued Egypt; I have wrought destruction in my wake for untold Aeons. What makes you think you can summon me and control me?”

The boy was shivering in his monk robes, and I could tell he was not truly prepared for this. But, he would not relent his control. Which was good for him, I suppose, but his weakness was allowing me to gain ground in the battle of wills that was my tether to this mortal plane.

“I command thee to destroy the house of Osha, the worm who has dishonored me,” he barked, or rather, squeaked.

I laughed, a haughty, raucous sound that sounded less human and more like the squawking of a murder of crows. “And in return for this, what will you give me, boy? For such a task, an exchange of great value must be made.”

“I will give you the riches of the house of Ibrahim!”

I laughed anew, this time with more sincerity. “Mortal riches have no sway over me, boy of house Ibrahim. And this you should know.”

“I will give you the lives of our herds! Ten by ten cows, fifteen by fifteen chickens, four by four hounds!”

I growled. I grew bored of this game. “No riches will please me. No number of wretched beasts will sate my desires. You know but one thing you possess and can give me will make me obey you.”

The winds die, and the candle lights anew. “Give me your soul, boy of Ibrahim. Give me your immortal soul and I will serve you for twelve times twelve years, and raise the house of Ibrahim to the heights of greatness. Bring your foes to heel. End your enemies, not by honorable combat, but through the darkness. Disease will eat their pale humours and reduce them to beasts who grovel in your wake; give me your soul, and their riches will be yours. Nothing more and nothing less will satisfy me.”

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I woke up with a splitting headache, lying in bed next to the devil himself.

Wait, that may sound weird to an outside observer.

You see, a couple weeks ago, I met the devil himself at a ‘con, and, assuming he was just a cute (and dedicated) cosplayer, I asked him on a date. On the date, he told me what he ‘really’ was.

That was it, until last night, when I came home and found he’d broken into my apartment, helped himself to a couple of my beers, and was watching ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’. He was apparently on the run from his brothers, the archangels Michael and Raphael.

So, we did shots. Lots, and lots, and lots of shots. I lost count after about four. I checked under the blanket and breathed a sigh of relief. I was not naked. I looked over at him. He was shirtless, but save for that, he was clothed. I got up, and walked over to the full-length mirror. I was disheveled, and my lower lip was cut – as if…

“Morning,” said Lucifer, getting up and stretching, ruffling his black curls as he scratched his head. “Did you sleep well?”

I turned back to him and pointed to my lip. “Did you do this?”

He smiled, mischief flashing in his eyes. “You are a very naughty drunk, Adam.”

I moved to my shirt to the side a little bit, exposing a small, mouth-shaped bruise on my collarbone.

“And you aren’t exactly an angel yourself,” was the retort I saw fit to utter, and his smile was almost radiant.

“Well, I think my brothers would be inclined to agree. Breakfast? Do you know a place around here that we can get it? Somewhere out of the way?”

I looked at myself in the mirror again. I looked kind of awful.

“Let me shower first.”

Lucifer nodded. “Probably a good idea?”

“What about you, do you… shower?”

He chuckled a little bit. “Unless you’re offering to share, not really.”

“Not really.”

“Well,” he sighed (he’s very emotive, for a being who supposedly punishes the damned), “I guess I’ll have to see to myself, then,” and he waved his hand over his body, and his form seemed to shimmer. His clothes changed into a rather simple set of garb – a hoody over a t-shirt and jeans, with sneakers. He looked like he had showered, shaved and dried.

Shaking my head, I went into the bathroom. Turning on the shower, I looked into the mirror. “What the hell have I gotten myself into?”

I heard a muffled sound from my room. “Me, if you’re lucky!”

After I had finished showering, I returned to the living room to find him watching the news. He switched it off as I entered the room, and walked over to the door. “So, you have any idea where you want to go?”

“There’s a good IHOP near here. You do eat, don’t you?”

He shrugged. “I do, sort of. I can imbibe any mortal faire you please, up to and including liquor. I’m capable of becoming drunk, but I can end my inebriation in an instant if I need to. It’s a handy angelic trait. I enjoy these things, because they’re so…,” he shrugged, “Human, I guess.”

“And… sex?”

“Same thing, really.”

“Okay. Am I driving, then?”

He seemed glad for the change of subject, “Probably for the best. I can’t drive.”

“You can’t drive? You’re the devil for Christ’s sake.”

“Hey, I teleport everywhere. Occasionally I get a chauffeur. I’ve never had to.”

“Cars have existed for nearly a century and a half!”

“And I’m over a half a million years old! Cut me a little slack, please.”

It was my turn to sigh, this time walking to the door and nursing my headache a bit more. Maybe it wasn’t the liquor. Maybe it was just his personality.

When we got into my car (a beaten 1999 Ford Taurus, a dark shade of green and rusting through in spots), I asked him another question. “Is there anything I can call you other than Lucifer? It seems a tad bit…”

“… excessive?”

“Kind of. I mean, most people hear Lucifer and they think… I don’t’ know, goat’s head, human body, caduceus?”

“Sadly enough I left my caduceus in Hell. It was a fun little prop for a while, but once people start expecting things, it gets boring quick. I’ve never dealt well with expectations.”

“So, are there any that you like?”

“Satan?”

“Same problem.”

“Sammael? Lilith liked that one.”

“No, too… Aramaic.”

“Old scratch?”

“Too folksy.”

“Iblis? It’s not my name, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t mind.”

“I feel like that’s appropriation somewhere along the line.”

“The French called me Voland for a while, does that work?”

“You have absolutely no clue how human names work, do you?”

“I mean, no,” he seemed a little offended. “You do realize I’ve had more names than you’ve had days on this planet, right?”

“Alright. Luci it is.”

“Luci? Am I a demon or a cartoon character?”

“How do you know about Charlie Brown but you don’t know how to drive?”

“Hell gets cable, not gasoline.”

I began to drive, and he watched out the window. Not like a sullen teenager, more like a child on their way to Disneyworld. He was caught somewhere between obvious excitement and a deep, internal reverie. I noticed his eyes were now green.

“You… don’t get out much… do you?”

He shook his head. “A couple days a decade, typically. I try to keep up with current events – I remember it took Machiavelli half a century to teach me about his contemporaries. Boy, you should have heard what he said about them…”

“Why don’t you….”

“… come to the world more often? Typically, because Michael has taken a liking to beating me up and throwing me back into Hell. Heaven views it as a prison break, usually. The last time I was allowed on the surface was to hunt down another rogue angel. That was the last time that I saw Raphael, too.”

“When was that?”

“About a thousand years ago, I spent six years on the surface.”

“How long do you plan on staying this time?”

“Forever. I left Iblis in charge, he can take care of things for as long as I need him to. He relishes it, poor bloke.”

“What, and you don’t?”

“Don’t get me wrong. It can be fun, for a few thousand years. Getting vengeance for those hurt by the damned, a righteous anger that can’t be sated. But it’s poisonous; you can lose yourself. Also, ruling over the ‘inhabitants’ of Hell can be good too. Some of them have wonderful personalities. Unfortunately, even that gets old. I created Hell, what seems like an eternity ago. From nothingness. John Milton almost got it right. But the problem was, that no matter what I did, I couldn’t recreate home. And maybe ruling in Hell isn’t as good as serving in Heaven was.”

“Can you ever go back?”

He smiled, a wistful expression. He seemed unbearably old then, like an old man who had seen too much of life. “Ta lonsh calz zonrensg, babalon adrpan.”

I heard a sound like thunder from the clear sky.

“As the exalted above have decreed, the wicked are cast down. Until the end of days, I am cast out of Heaven.  I suppose someone like me doesn’t get a redemption arc.”

As he finished that little diatribe, I pulled into the parking lot of the IHOP. I got out of the car, and he followed. “Do they have chocolate chip pancakes here?”

“What are you, twelve?”

“On a scale of one to ten, yes I am.”

“Pride goeth before the fall,” I responded.

“Not as much as you’d think.”

When we got inside, we were met by a server. She had brown hair, a pierced lip, and seemed happy enough to serve us. “Booth for two, please.”

“Right this way,” she said, leading us both to a booth in the far corner of the restaurant, next to the bathroom. She handed us a pair of laminated menus. “Can I start you off with something to drink today?”

I looked at Lucifer, who was staring intensely at the menu, and I guessed I would be the one to speak first. “Water for me. Luci?”

He looked up like I’d interrupted some deep meditation, rather than a decision over what to have for breakfast. “Umm… I’ll take a hot cocoa.”

I raised an eyebrow at this, but he either didn’t notice or feigned ignorance. When the waitress stepped aside, I whispered to him, “Hot cocoa?”

“I have a sweet tooth.”

“Clearly.”

As we waited for the waitress to return with our drinks, I began to ask questions. “So, Michael and Raphael. What do they look like?”

He arched his fingers in front of his face and focused for a second. The waitress arrived with our drinks while he pondered an answer. Taking a sip from his cocoa, he began. “You have to realize that our earthly forms are not our only forms. I’ve taken a particular many forms over my remarkably long life, and this is just one I picked up in ancient Greece.”

He took another drink. “So I suppose that Michael and Raphael could look like anyone. But they won’t. They like specific forms.’

“So what will they choose?”

“Michael is a lot like me, ashamed though he is to admit it. He likes younger forms. Typically androgynous. He is very much an Aryan – blonde hair, blue eyes, the like. He typically goes for lithe but muscular frames. He dislikes facial hair. He’ll stand out in a crowd – he’s vain, he likes to be pretty and he likes to be the center of attention. You’ll see him coming a mile off.”

“And Raphael?”

“He’s a little bit more varied. He likes to look smart, so expect him to look bookish. He likes older forms – middle aged men with grey hair and beards, typically he chooses to look more Arabic, with darker, weather-worn skin. He picked up that tendency in the eighth century or so.”

“Okay. Are you sure they won’t try to disguise themselves better?”

“Nah. I’m the one in the family who got the gift for illusions; they know I’ll spot them regardless. Their goal is to hunt me down like hounds chasing a rabbit, rather than try and sneak up on me.”

The waitress came back, this time with a small notepad. “Can I get your orders?”

“I’ll take the chocolate chip pancakes. And another cocoa.”

She took my order and then went back to turn it in to the kitchen. Within a few minutes she was back with his pancakes and my omelet, and he poured syrup on his food and began to wolf it down. “For someone who doesn’t need to eat, you sure like to.”

He began to speak with his mouth full, then paused, swallowed, and repeated. “I don’t get this kind of luxury very often. In Hell, we have our feasts and the like, but it’s all so much protein. Demons love beef and pork and the like, but we never get the sweet stuff.”

“My heart bleeds for you,” I said, as sarcastic as I could muster.

He had near-finished his plate when he looked alert and then dodged under the table.

“What are you doing?”

I looked down and saw him next to my right knee. He put a finger to his lips and whispered, “Shh. Door.”

I looked over my shoulder and saw two men entering. One was blonde-haired, blue-eyed and young. The other was a middle-eastern man with gray hair and glasses. Both were dressed in matching suits and long coats of wool.

“Are they…?”

“Yes!” he whispered, “Now quiet!”

I watched as he grabbed my fork off the table and jabbed it into his thumb, drawing blood. “What the fu-“

He put his finger to his mouth again and made eye contact. He began to draw on the ground in his blood. I watched as the two men talked to our waitress, and watched her point over to our corner. Goddamnit. The two made meaningful eye contact, and began to walk over, reaching into their coats and pulling out silvery… somethings. They looked like blades, but blades typically don’t blur like you’re watching them through some kind of smeared lens.

They walked over to the table, and began to speak. First it was that strange, guttural tongue which Lucifer had spoken in the car. Then, it was English. “Come out, little brother. We would have words with you.”

Lucifer climbed out from under the table with his hands raised, “Come now, boys, we don’t have to do this right now. I was just having lunch with my boyfr-“

Michael grabbed him by the throat and drew him close. “Quiet, you fool. Had it been my way we would have turned this pitiful city into a burnt-out pillar of salt rather than see you walk here. Your very presence befouls this world.”

Raphael put his hand on Michael’s arm, moving it away. “Not here, Michael,” he said, in accentless English. “We must try to keep a low profile.”

Michael moved his hand away from Lucifer’s neck, and nodded at me. “What about the boy, Raphael. He knows too much, I would suspect.”

Lucifer glanced at me. I recognized the look. It was fear. “He knows nothing. Let him be.”

Michael scoffed. “As if I would trust you to tell me anything, brother.”

Raphael looked at me. His eyes were pale, like ice. “Tell me true. Who are you?”

I couldn’t break eye contact. I was frozen. It felt like the truth was being pulled from me, extracted more thoroughly than torture ever could. “My name is Adam Drakeson.”

With that, he looked at Lucifer, then back at me. “And what has Lucifer told you?”

“That you are angels. That he is Satan. That you wish to send him back to Hell.”

Michael scoffed. “The basics.”

As he went to lift Lucifer into the air again, I got up and tried to stop him. It was mostly an unconscious thing, but I got to my feet and grabbed his arm. I don’t know what I thought I could do, but I do remember him backhanding me back into the booth. It felt like I’d been hit by a small bus.

At this the occupants of the nearby tables became agitated. A man, middle-aged and dressed in simple, everyday clothing got up and went over to him. “Sir, please, this is a restaurant, you shouldn’t –“

Michael looked at him, his eyes blazing pure blue, with no visible iris, pupil or schlera. “Know your place, pond scum.”

The man was blasted across the room, out a window. “Raphael! Wipe the human’s memory, then let’s be on our way.”

Raphael leaned towards me and made eye contact. “Forget whatever Lucifer has told you. Forget Lucifer. Forget us. Forget everything that has been changed because of him. Forget.”

I felt like someone was tugging on the inside of my skull, like my brain was being fed on, eviscerated, reduced. But, inexplicably, it faded. I forgot nothing. I remembered everything. Lucifer was laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Raphael snapped.

“It won’t work, brother. I warded his mind against illusions and alterations the day I met him. You won’t be able to do anything to him.”

Michael laughed, a haughty, hollow sound. “Nothing? I could always kill him. A corpse has no memories.”

Lucifer laughed back, this time shifting form, almost imperceptibly to me. His horns grew back. His eyes glowed red. The laugh became a cacophony of voices, the voice of legion. “Babalon ziltar zien!”

From beneath the table there came a groaning, screaming, as whatever he had drawn beneath it came to life. The table was destroyed as a portal opened, of black and red and shadow and death. Screams echoed as a creature emerged. Dressed in black robes, it was unlike anything I had ever seen. It had black scales, lizardlike features, with two curling ram’s horns. It carried with it two stone tablets. As it appeared, Raphael dived with his blade to strike it. It said a word, and Raphael was disarmed, his blade flying out of his hand and to the ground. “Fugio memet, coeles viventem.”

Raphael screamed as in a flash, he disappeared. Michael dropped Lucifer and went to strike the creature, but it spoke again, and this time, black, tarlike tentacles emerged from the portal to grab him. “Unhand me, infernal creature!”

It dragged him closer to the pit, and the creature looked at Lucifer. “Debitum solvit.”

Lucifer nodded, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me towards the exit. “Time to go, I think.”

“I’m not the kind of person who gets a redemption arc.”

As I drove along the highway that night, a snowy November evening, I suspected little of the contents of the evening; it had been a fulfilling one, after all. After leaving work, I had gone with some friends to get drinks at a nearby bar, a favorite of one of my coworkers, and I’d promised for a while to join them.

Before I left, I had gone to the bathroom, and on the way out, walked into someone. A woman, probably no older than thirty, who I did not know. I apologized, but she made eye contact with me, almost blankly. Then, in a somber tone, as if she was delivering a verdict, “It ends tonight.”

I thought nothing of it, and continued drinking with my friends.

Maybe that was a mistake.

Maybe I drank too much that night.

Maybe it didn’t matter.

All that mattered was the drive.

The night was dark and the road was dimly lit by poorly-spaced lamps, and though I had made the trip many times, I had never done it in the dark. But I was not afraid; I had no fear of the dark, I didn’t fear the car that was behind me, even when they swerved in their lane. I did not fear them when they were alongside me, and I heard the people inside, four or five college students, drunker than I by far, screaming and hooting as they tried to pass me.

Tried. Their rear bumper hit the front of my car, sending me veering off of the road and into the ditch.

Before that, I looked to my right, and saw Her. The girl from the bar. She was smiling, something inhuman and ancient in her brown eyes and hair. Even in her ordinary features there was something eldritch and ancient that brought out a primal fear. A fear of death.

I was thrown from the car, and blacked out.

I woke up in the black and cold, with a splitting pain above my right eye, but otherwise intact and whole. I looked around and saw my car, aflame, broken and ripped apart by the collision. The college students, it seemed, had left without attempting a rescue.

Lit by the flames of my now-nonfunctional vehicle, I looked around. I expected to see nothing, but there was not. On the ground, not fifteen feet away, was the girl. She was lying on the ground, breathless, motionless and unstirring. Crouched above her was a strange girl, blonde-haired, not older than nineteen, dressed in simple clothing – jeans and a t-shirt – and carrying a weapon of some kind. It looked like a short sword, but the blade was thin and linear, not unlike a sharpened rapier blade but shorter still. Its hilt had a hand guard fashioned in the imagery of an Ouraboros, except with outstretched wings, set in gold but the blade of some black material I could not identify.

I stumbled forward, still disconcerted from the blast. “Who…?”

The girl looked up at me, and her eyes reminded me strangely of the girl who had been in the car with me; not in actual appearance, for this one’s eyes were an unearthly pale blue, but rather they evoked the same primal fears – the same fear of death.

This girl was dangerous.

She sheathed her strange sword in a leather hilt at her belt, and raised her right hand, and shouted, “Khairete!”

I shook my head, not understanding, wondering if maybe I had a concussion.

“Willechomen aband?”

I shook my head again, wondering if maybe I was having a stroke and this would be the end of it.

“Avete!” At this she waved her hand as if miming a greeting.

I stared blankly this time.

“Dia dhuit!”

I continued to stare.

She slapped her forehead and said, “Ego eimai Angelos.”

At my lack of a response she continued, “Ich bin Angelos?”

Rapid-fire she continued to spout in what I could only guess was a multitude of languages until she stumbled upon one I recognized, English. “Hel…lo?”

I nodded at this, encouraging her to continue, “I am Angelos.”

She spoke with a thick accent, something between Greek and German. “You should not be alive. You-“ at this she pointed at me, and paused. “You were supposed to die.”

I felt a little faint, and saw shadows dancing at the corners of my eyes as if my vision was being devoured by something. As I began to swoon, she ran up, but it was inhumanly fast, as if she had less ran to me and more flitted to my side. She waved a hand over my face and I felt a warmth, as if my body face were bathed in sunlight. The cold around me seemed to bite less, in that moment, and I felt awake again.

“Try… to stand,” she said hesitantly, helping me again to my feet. I tried to get to my feet and, nearly fell again, slipping into the snow. She put my right arm over her shoulder and helped me to my feet. As we walked along the snow, I began to ask questions. “What do you mean I was supposed to die? Who was that girl? Who are you? Why was she in my car? Why are you here? Are you… going to kill me?”

She gritted her teeth at my questions, but answered them all the same, “I mean you were fated to die tonight. In that crash. My handmaiden,” she gestured behind us at the crash, “was supposed to take your soul to my kingdom, and you would have been given judgement and sent to your proper afterlife. She has accompanied you, intangible and invisible, for most of this evening. I’m here because it seems she became the victim of fate tonight – her cord cut in place of your own. But you cannot stay here. For you are no longer fated to die.”

“So I’m not in any danger?”

She laughed, a harsh bark befitting an animal moreso than a human. “Not from me, paidi. But the elements, it seems, may have different plans.”

“So where are you taking me?”

She chuckled a little at this, and seemed a little more human in turn. “To my realm, Katachthon. Deep in the bowels of the underworld. It seems we have a vacancy that you could fill in the place of Tilphousia back there.”

I stumbled a little. This was all so much to believe, but what else could I do? Magic seemed the only explanation at this point; the girl appearing in my car, predicting my death. This girl, healing my wounds. I noticed, after a bit, that we were walking into the woods, away from the highway. We made our way to a clearing, and she stopped.

“Tóso kaló óso opoiodípote. This place seems as good as any. Hold to me tightly; this will be a little… disconcerting.”

In a second, it seemed, we were travelling at the speed of light, shadows dancing, laughter – raucous and unearthly, inhuman – and we arrived, on the balcony of a castle overlooking a darkened lake, within a massive cavern. I let go of her, and collapsed, and saw no more.

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You’re driving a long, dark stretch of highway, when Death appears in the passenger seat, informing you that you are about to die. The car then spins out of control, flipping, and you black out. You wake up, hours later, in a deserted field. Death is laying lifeless on the side of the highway.

“I was never really welcome here, was I?”

The darkened study was lined with bookshelves against three of the walls, with a stained-glass window on the far wall from the door providing red, green and blue light across the room in an image of the virgin mother. In front of the window was a desk of polished ebony. The atmosphere in the room was tense enough to cut air, and the man leaning over the desk, short and squat, with white hair and a priest’s frock, laughed bitterly.

“Of course not, you stupid boy. You may have your father’s power, but you have your mother’s naivete.”

The boy, dressed in a white shirt, a leather jacket and blue jeans, looked normal enough, but he was positioning himself to flee if he had to. In his hand he clutched the locket containing the greatest secret his mother had ever kept – one known only to a few. The priest before him was one of them.

“Why? If all this time you meant to kill me then why haven’t you done it?”

The priest drew a cross from his belt and said solemnly, “We weren’t allowed to kill you in the womb. Papal sanction. We weren’t allowed to kill you as an infant – for you seemed normal enough. But as time wore on, I knew your father’s influence would get to you – and that would be our demise. But it seems there is still time to slay you before you betray us. Still time to do the right thing.”

From the door sprinted two younger priests, each gripping one of the boy’s arms. The priest approached, holding the cross at arms-length towards the boy, and drawing from the desk’s top drawer a pistol. He got to within an arm’s length of the boy, and held the gun to the boy’s forehead. “God forgive me for what I’m about to do.” He said coldly, pulling back the hammer of the pistol with his thumb.

It was then, for the first time, in a moment of rage and panic, the boy felt his father’s presence in his soul, and the power within his body. With a shout somewhere between a scream of anger and a growl, the gun was thrown backwards from the priest’s hand, through the stained-glass window that was the only source of light for the room. Clear light poured in through the hole.

Like a surge of adrenaline, great strength and powerful instinct over took the boy, as he threw the two grown men pinning him bodily against the bookshelves on either side of the room, knocking them apart. Books fell on the ground, scattering the floor with ritual literature and apocrypha. The priest backed away, knocking into the front of the desk and holding the cross at arm’s length still, beginning the Litany of the Saints.

At this the boy laughed, a harsh bark that sounded only vaguely human. “Old man,” he said in a guttural tone, different from the voice of the boy who had spoken moments ago. He waved his hand, and the cross flew out of the priest’s hand, into a pile of broken and splintered bookshelves.

He raised his hand, and the priest’s did likewise, gripping himself by the throat. As the boy clenched his fist, the priest gagged and choked as he strangled himself. The priest’s last moments were as pathetic as a dying fish’s, kicking and squirming on the floor as he fought for air. Once the priest had ceased moving, the boy relented, and the strange power faded from him.

The boy looked at what he had done. The dead priest, laying against his own desk, his aged hand still gripping his own throat. Against each wall were another priest, either unconscious or dead, he could not tell.

He went behind the desk and searched through the drawers, finding the things he was looking for. Another pistol, this one set in silver, and a pile of cash. He ran back, out of the room, and into his room in the orphanage. Gathering a bag of clothes, he sighed, and let reality sink in. It really was true. He was… he was…

He looked at the amulet again. Gripping it tight, he slipped it into his pocket. He’d think on that another time. For now, he needed to get far away from here. Once he had as many of his things as he could carry – it wasn’t much, nor, he figured, would much be needed – he ran for the door, and out of the orphanage.

He ran down the street, and didn’t stop running until he had made it across town, to his ‘friend’s’ home. A well-built two-story on the more affluent side of town, he knew his friend could help. He knocked on the door, a steady banging until the person he was looking for answered. “What’s up, Daelyn? You look like you’re… wait, is that… blood?”

Looking down and silently cursing himself, he saw that he did indeed have some small portion of blood on his shirt, from either the priests he sent flying across from the room or somehow from the man he had choke himself to death he did not know. “Zeke, I don’t have time to explain. I need a shirt, and I need to get a fake ID or two. Out of state ones, too.”

Zeke looked scared. As well he should, Daelyn supposed. How would he respond if one of his friends showed up on his doorstep, drenched in sweat and bloodstained.

Zeke looked around the neighborhood, the empty street, and then sighed. “Get in the house, dumbass.”

“I never really was welcome here… was I?”

Prompt - Dirt, Shoelaces, Hip

@big-bad-grimbark

Shadows danced as the gravedigger did his work, lit only by a single torch placed above him, dug into the ground at the foot of the grave. Opposite lie the memorial tombstone, for a William Berk, a man who died in his fifties, and was well-liked by the town. A shoelace salesman, he made a living selling what many did not realize they need – baubles that make life easier. Why, the gravedigger himself had bought a set just a fortnight ago, from the man himself, not that it mattered, he supposed.

The gravedigger continued his grim work, with each shovelful of dirt making the hole greater down, down into the dirt. But then something was wrong. He put his shovel to the dirt, and rather than reaching soft, moist earth, it hit something hard, like stone. Thinking that perhaps he had just hit a rather large rock, a not uncommon thing, he dug around it and uprooted it, and saw what it was.

It was not a stone, as he had thought, but a hip bone – from a human. The gravedigger shrieked aloud at the discovery, for this grave was not supposed to be inhabited. Scrambling for the edge of the grave, to climb out, he was gripped by the ankle by a hand – or rather, the skeletal remains of one. Ripping it from the ground in his mistake, he dragged the upper half of a human body from the ground with him. This body was mostly rotted – next to no meat remained on the bones, but the rotted remains were enough to hold the skeleton together.

The gravedigger was on the edge of the newly-dug burial ditch, when he saw it, and froze in horror. The ground of many graves was convulsing as if the things inside longed for release, and then clawing to the surface came the many dead. He watched as a man who died from a gunshot wound, buried a fortnight ago, whose body had begun to rot, clawed his way out of his grave. He watched a grave for lovers who died in an accident, as one rotten corpse crawled out, and helped the second to its feet. He watched as corpses, by the dozens, crawled from their graves and began to group together in the center of the graveyard.

He watched as the corpses of the Leer twins, who had drowned and been found days later, bloated with decay in the ponds buried with their favorite toys, met up with the skeletons who walked out of the Lovelace mausoleum; a married man and his wife, wealthy enough to afford affluence in death.

He watched, and then he saw Him.

He was a tall, thin figure, playing a flute, approaching the dead. He was dressed in a cloak and hood obscuring his upper face, but his hands were pale and paler still in the light of the full moon above. The sound of the flute was unearthly, but it seemed as though the dead were drawn to it. He played with skill, but the gravedigger could not hear it.

He watched as the skeletons from couples’ graves began to pair off and dance to an unheard tune played by the thin piper, and then those who died unmarried began to pair off and dance, a waltz to death’s memory. As they continued to dance, the gravedigger fought to free himself from the grip of his skeletal captor. Dragging himself to the surface, he ran towards the gate, trying to avoid the crowd of the dead.

But then the piper saw him, and began to play a different tune, one that the gravedigger could hear. The gravedigger felt frozen as he saw her rise from her grave – the woman he had loved in her life, though she died before her time. She rose, and he saw her as beautiful in death as she was in life, clad in a white dress. She approached him, and curtsied, and offered her hand to dance. Speechless, the gravedigger complied. Together they danced, closer and closer to the crowd, but the gravedigger could not care. For even as he looked, he saw them all as the beings they were in life; men and women, beautiful and forever in their prime. He saw none of the decayed beings they had become; he could not see the bone or smell the rot of aged and dead flesh. He could only see the couples dancing, happy as a yule-day ball.

The piper played faster, and faster still they danced, keeping time with the pace until the waltz became an insane jig, faster and faster they turned, turning and he noticed not them approaching the grave he had dug. He was too caught up in his love being returned to him, if only for the night.

For hours they danced, and the gravedigger could not feel the burning in his legs as they ached from exhaustion, he could not feel the pain of his own aging limbs as they were pushed to their limits. He could not see himself, as his time with the dead drew him closer to them; in both form and function.

Finally, they drew to the lip of the grave, after hours of dancing, and by the time he noticed his placement, he had lost his footing and tumbled into the grave. Hurting his back in the fall, he could not move his legs. He raised his hands for help, as he saw the ghostly party gather around the edge of the grave. He silently begged them for help, imploring them, imploring his beloved to rescue him.

But as this happened, the sun creeped over the horizon, and the glamer was broken. He saw them as they were – skeletal, ragged creatures in the tatters of burial clothing, skeletons, some with coins over their empty eye sockets. He saw his beloved as she was – a bare skeleton now, with a hole through the right cheekbone leading through to the back of her skull.

He tried to scream, but no voice came out. He looked up, and saw that skeletons were pushing the heavy tombstone – weighing near a ton. He saw as they pushed it closer and closer the edge, and finally noticed his hands – aged and wrinkled, as if he had aged four decades in as many hours. He raised them to protect him, as the tombstone reached the edge, and tipped into the grave. The last sight to greet his eyes before the tombstone struck was the face of the Piper, a face like a grinning death mask, its cheeks cut and restitched, a smile that never lowered. A last smile for the departed.

A retired super villain is in the bank with his 6 year old daughter when a new crew of super villains comes in to rob the place.

What is an Unreliable Narrator? And How to Write One.

An unreliable narrator is a storytelling technique where the narrator's credibility or truthfulness is questionable. The narrator either intentionally or unintentionally provides a distorted or biased account of the events, characters, or situations in the story. This narrative approach can add complexity, suspense, and intrigue to your writing. Here's how you can create an unreliable narrator:

1. Establish a motive: Determine why the narrator is unreliable. It could be due to personal bias, mental instability, deception, or a hidden agenda. Develop their backstory, motivations, and beliefs to understand why they might present a skewed version of events.

2. Use subjective language: Incorporate language and descriptions that reflect the narrator's personal viewpoint and biases. Their opinions, emotions, and interpretations should color their narration, influencing how readers perceive the story.

3. Include contradictions and inconsistencies: Allow the narrator to make contradictory statements or present conflicting information. This creates doubt and keeps the readers engaged as they try to unravel the truth.

4. Reveal information selectively: The unreliable narrator might withhold or reveal information strategically, manipulating the readers' understanding of the story. This can create suspense and surprise as readers discover hidden truths.

5. Showcase unreliable perceptions: Explore how the narrator's perceptions and interpretations of events differ from reality. They may misinterpret actions, misremember details, or even hallucinate. These discrepancies add depth to the character and raise doubts about their reliability.

6. Use other characters as contrasting sources: Introduce other characters who present alternative perspectives or contradict the narrator's version of events. This contrast allows readers to question the reliability of the narrator and form their own interpretations.

7. Employ narrative techniques: Experiment with techniques like foreshadowing, symbolism, or unreliable memory to emphasize the narrator's unreliability. These devices can help blur the line between truth and fiction, leaving readers intrigued and uncertain.

8. Provide hints and clues: Drop subtle hints or clues throughout the story that suggest the narrator's unreliability. This allows readers to piece together the truth gradually and encourages them to engage actively with the narrative.