Darkness

I knew who the man was before the chaos begun, before he pulled out the gun, before he even spoke, by his very walk, his demeanour and even in the way he held his face, I knew without a doubt that he was here for me. It was the stupidest action he could have ever taken. The only thing he would get out of it was to be the opposite of what he wanted. I could have laughed at the irony, but right now the only thoughts in my mind were of vengeance and rage at his audacity and even these weren’t mine completely.

The girls pink g-string was showing over the back of her pants and I was lost in the fantasy of ripping through it with my teeth. The lecturer was prattling on about impossible number systems that could solve quantitative theoretical problems and the blonde girl was infinitely more worthy of attention. A few other males around me had also gotten bored with the lecture and had locked onto my distraction, eagerly nudging their friends to point her out.

Blondie was chatting to her friend in that inane way vapid girls tend to, talking incessantly about nothing as fast as possible. The lowered mummers of their conversation were far enough back from the lecturer to be masked and I was sitting even farther behind, almost in the darkness, where the lights were very dim. Her obliviousness to the rising anger in the students around her showed that she was far too immersed in her own self sense of importance to care about other people. It quickly put me off her and destroyed all fantasies forming in my mind. Scanning the room, I located another potential female, a more quiet and attentive one to fantasise upon when the man walked in.

In that very second the foreknowledge of how it would unfold flashed into my mind. I considered leaving discretely, before the chaos begun but all the entrances were located at the front of the theatre, easily within sight of the man.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for a student here, his name is Carson Danielson.” He said to the lecturer. It wasn’t my real name, but it was what people here knew me by. “I’m sorry to interrupt your class,” he continued, putting his hands up in a gesture of supplication, “but it is an emergency and I was told he is in here.”

The lecturer glanced at the man in annoyance over the interruption. “Carson Danielson, please get up and leave the theatre as you are required elsewhere by,” he motioned his head towards the man and looked at him expectantly.

“Um, my name is Simon Stanton.”

“By a Mr. Stanton. Apparently, it is some kind of emergency,” he paused, looking around the lecture hall for me. I wasn’t sure if he would be able to recognise me in the crowd as I had never really stood out of the class or made any attempt to ingrain myself to him. “Please make a move now as this is costing all of us time.”

I didn’t move. A few of my friends in the theatre hall looked back towards me questioningly, while I did my best to sink into my chair and disappear from view. At the sight of my face, they quickly turned around, trying to not give me away.

“He’s not in here,” announced the lecturer after a few seconds that felt more like minutes had elapsed.

“Yes he is,” countered the man getting angry, “he just doesn’t want to face me because he is a coward.” My blood began to hammer in my ears; the nerve of this idiot was astonishing.

The lecturer finally began to sense that something was amiss with the situation. He examined the man more closely and noticed the wild look of someone too strung out for it to be normal. The greasy hair indicated that the man hadn’t had a shower in a long time and the clothes were all rumbled and dishevelled. He didn’t quite look like he was on any drugs, but he did seem to be on the brink of collapse.

“Okay, this really isn’t an appropriate time for this. If you would like to come back at the end of the lecture, we can deal with whatever problem you have with my student then. But please,” he motioned towards the exit, “be so kind as to leave so I may finish my class.”

Simon Stanton shook his head in a quick jerking motion, as though trying to clear his head of dizziness. “No. You’re going to make him come down and leave with me.” He said through clenched teeth. His face had drained of blood and when the lecturer noticed how badly Stantons’ hands were shaking, he begun to get nervous. He tried to move his hands towards the phone located at the side of the table, probably to alert security.

“Stop!” Commanded Stanton, without warning he reached into his jacket and pulled something out, his arm shaking he pointed it at the lecturer.

I didn’t need to hear the alarmed gasps and yells from the front students to know that he had pulled out a gun. Stanton was on the threshold of collapse considering his situation, but I hadn’t expected him to react as badly as this. He had been told to wait, he should have waited. Now, if he didn’t end up being killed, he would have to wait even longer. The idiot had screwed himself over.

“You stupid fucking idiot!” I stood and yelled at him, the rage in my entire body over powering my patience. “You were told to wait. How fucking hard is it to do that?!”

Both the lecturer and Stanton looked up at me in surprise while a deathly hush came over the audience. I began to make my way down towards them, my jaw clenched in rage. “You were told two weeks. Two weeks and your problem would be dealt with. But now,” I laughed scornfully, holding my hands back, “now, you’ll be lucky if I do it within a month.” The rage inside me began to boil over. I focused on Stanton as the rest of the hall faded from perception.

Stanton shook his head erratically again. “No, you little shit,” he pointed the gun directly at me, “now you’re going to come with me and you’re going to do it right now. Today. No more waiting. You’re going to fix her, you’re going to get that thing out of her or I’ll kill you right here and now.”

“And where will that leave your precious daughter?” I spat, putting as much venom into the words. The anger had begun to take control; I could feel the voices behind my eyes rising. They had been watching and they had known the best time to strike, the best time to whisper their insidious temptations.

“I’ll find someone else and you’ll be dead.” he said finally. His tone told me the thread was genuine. He utterly hated me and blamed me for his daughters suffering.

“I won’t even begin to point out how none of this is my fault because you’re too much of an idiot to realise the truth. I didn’t do anything to your daughter.” The word itself conjured up an image of the child in my mind, twisting in torment. Her screams and pain, thrashing against a horror that very few people in this world could comprehend.

Unbidden into that image, a picture of me emerged. I was standing over her with a knife, raising it slowly, the lights from the lamps in the room glimmering off the steel, reflections circling like a disco ball. The twinkling of the shimmering light, turning red in an instant as I brought the blade down into the little girl’s torso multiple times, my face a supplication of bliss and joyous rage.

I stopped and closed my eyes. The mental image wasn’t of my own creation. It was theirs. The bastard voices in my head had become stronger in anticipation. I swallowed quickly, my heart hammering in my chest. Time slowed as I dealt with the turmoil raging inside my mind. The rage was ever present, once theirs but now mine by association. I used it against them by showing them what I would do if they ever tried to take control.

Breathing in deeply, the voices begun to recede, angrily, grudgingly, but they did not disappear completely. I opened my eyes when I was sure they were under control again, but the rage inside me had intensified. This was his fault. My hands wouldn’t unclench; they remained balled up fists, ready and willing for a target.

“You’re a monster. Why won’t you help her? You have the power to help her, but instead,” Stanton waved the gun around, “you spend your time here, kicking back and enjoying it all. You leave her to suffer.” His voice cracked. “We hear her dying while you sit here doing nothing.”

“Do you know what I am?” I asked him dangerously.

“A monster.”

“No!” I yelled back lightning fast like a viper strike. “What do I do?”

“You’re a fucking exorcist, okay!” He shot back.

“So, what do I do?”

“You exorcise people. You take monsters out of them.”
“And where do they go?”

“Huh?” He was confused. I needed to enlighten him.

“Where do they go once they are out, you fuck-head?!” I screamed at him.

“I don’t know, back to hell?” He replied, wary.

“Wrong.” I yelled again, rage infecting my voice. “Hell doesn’t exist. Where do they go?”

For the first time, Stanton began to look unsure.

“I…I don’t know. If not back to hell, then somewhere else.”

The people in the lecture theatre were forgotten, it was just Stanton and I alone in the blackness. This was between me and him, the rest didn’t matter anymore. I assumed that they were watching as mute witnesses, but to be honest, they didn’t even register in my perception.

“Why not back into the person they were originally in?” I shot back.

“Because they can’t go back there.” He stammered. The people that I worked for had already explained this to him. But fear and anxiety had twisted his mind and he hadn’t heard them correctly. Or maybe he had and just couldn’t remember correctly. I didn’t care either way.

“Wrong. Where do they go?” I hammered at him. He wouldn’t believe me if I told him the answers outright. He had to come to the knowledge himself.
“I don’t know,” he said.

“Yes you do, it was explained to you. Where do they go, why don’t they simply go into another person?”

“Because they can’t, you stop them,” he stammered. His hand was shaking so badly that it looked like he was in danger of dropping it.
“How do I stop them?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do I stop them?” I repeated louder and more demanding.

“I don’t know or care!” He screamed back. “It doesn’t matter anyway, you’re coming with me right now and you’re going to help her or I will kill you!”

“Oh but it does matter dickhead!” I spat at him. “See they have to go somewhere, they don’t just disappear into thin air. Where do you think they go?”

Stanton didn’t say anything, he had already been told once but the mental strain he had been under had twisted the words. The truth was slowly coming back to him.

“They…they go into you,” he said, unsure of himself.

“That’s right. They go into me. I contain them. I hold them inside me. I am a prison for them. That is why I can do what I do,” I snarled, my teeth clenched.

They were gathering strength, inside of me a torrent of rage and hatred was boiling over. They showed me a vision of me darting forwards, lightning fast. Too fast for Stanton to react before I disarmed him. The next flash had me ramming the gun down his throat and pulling the trigger, emptying the clip into his belly. The blood would cover me like a wonderful paint, all warm and the metallic scent of blood filled my nostrils.

I knew that they could give me their power. They wanted to give me their power. But once I took it, there would be a trade. They would have another connection to exploit. I smiled at the vision, tempted by its finality, the vision itself worked as a warning to me.

“Right now, they showed me how to kill you. They are all inside me right now, whispering to me, showing me what power they can give me, if I need it,” I whispered.

Stanton visibly paled. “You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not,” I returned evenly. “Each exorcism changes me. You see; this isn’t the first vision they’ve given me. I got my first one after my third exorcism. I vomited afterwards, I was that sickened by the vision. The violence of it, the blood and worse of all, the enjoyment that wasn’t at all my own.”

“So you get visions big deal. My daughter is being ripped apart, she is going through so much worse while you stand there,” he indicated towards me with the gun, “jabbering away.”

I chuckled, “You just don’t get it.” I opened my arms to him and looked down, addressing myself. “Did I vomit just now? Do I look like I’m upset in even the slightest way from the vision?”

“No,” he answered, “you were smiling.”

“That’s right. I was enjoying it. You see; I’m changing. Each exorcism adds another voice to the collective. Where one vision used to sicken me to the bone, I’ve now gotten used to them. I’ve started to expect it. I’ve begun to enjoy them, even though I can still fight them, my desire to fight them visions is starting to erode away. They amuse me now”

“So you’re becoming a monster yourself,” Stanton said, revelation finally beginning to dawn on him.

“That’s why I need time between exorcisms,” I returned, draining away as much of the rage as possible through the confession. “Whereas once I could do one straight after another, now I need time to return myself to normal. Each one I do is another addition to the collective darkness inside me. Therefore, more time is required for me to recover.”

The others inside my mind flashed another bloody vision, almost pleadingly. It was stronger in power than the last, more urgent and wanting, beckoning and calling to me.

“That’s why you were told to wait. If I went to her now, I might not come back.” How many more could I save before they overwhelmed me, I wondered. There was a number out there, floating around in the ether. Each time I took a job, that number always got closer. It was inevitable.

“But she’s dying,” Stanton pleaded pathetically. “She doesn’t have time.”

“She’s got more time than you realise. I know a few things about what you call monsters. They fear the ether, so what ever has control of your daughter will keep her alive as long as possible. At the same time, it is killing her, that is true, but it will take as much time as it can.” I didn’t tell him that she could die before I was ready. He didn’t need to know that.

I looked around the lecture hall; the people coming back into existence. Everyone was focused on Stanton and his gun. I wasn’t sure if they had even heard all the conversation. I would have to change my name and school or face some uncomfortable scrutiny. It was best that I disappear for a while, school would have to wait. At the thought of the inconvenience that Stanton had caused me, the irritation caused my rage to begin rising again. Like a tide, it ebbed and wanned sometimes at unpredictable moments.

My fists clenched again and I could feel my jaw locking up. It would be a while before the rage inside me had died down enough to take on another monster. They used the rage; it was the true medium of their power. Everyone thought it was fear, but fear just gave them a window into the soul. I didn’t want to point out to Stanton that this was his entire fault to begin with.

These demons weren’t really demons. The fear that was instilled into people by dogmatic religion was their doorway into our lives. It was fear that attracted them and allowed them a grip on our species. I didn’t know exactly what they were, but they weren’t demons. Heaven and Hell, God and the Devil didn’t exist. It’s the truth, how could any merciful and enlightened god turn a blind eye to the destruction and perversion of the human soul from an evil that had nothing to do with mans own making, but rather it’s own. If demons were fallen angels, then god made them. Yet god allows them to destroy the innocent within mankind. It was a logical fallacy that disproved the existence of god entirely.

It was also this destruction of faith that gave me my power over them. They had no power over me because I did not allow them any. They were ethereal beings, maybe even the remnants of what used to be men, scratching around in the dark, searching blindly for something other than the emptiness that they existed in.

When they found something that allowed them to escape, they would force their way in. That something was usually a child or someone innocent that had recently been indoctrinated with religious fear. Children were especially vulnerable because they are psychologically wired to believe what adults tell them as truth. Once they are indoctrinated with the religious fears of hell and damnation, the dark bumps in the night suddenly became more than what they were and the children themselves became beacons to the pathetic creatures lingering in the darkness in search of light.

I had done my research on Stanton and his family. He was a devout Christian and had started his daughter in a class dealing specifically with avoiding hell and damnation in preparation of her becoming a teenager. He wanted to start her off early so she would be sufficiently brainwashed to resist the temptations of the flesh when it arrived.

In a way, I pitied him. If he were told the truth, he would either refuse to acknowledge it and bury himself in ignorance, or if intelligent enough to accept the truth, it would destroy him from within. Knowing that he had been the cause of all the suffering his family had endured would be a burden that any good man wouldn’t be able to live with.

And I knew that in his heart, Stanton was a good man. I could sense it within him, despite his desperate and reckless actions; he was here to help his family with no thought to his own personal safety. The prisoners inside me also knew and that’s why they were so insistent with their offers and visions. They detested everything that this man was.

It was strange that within these lost souls, there was no goodness. No qualities that one would ever even recognise as human except the fear of death and a return to the hell of the ether. I knew my theory had some holes in it, but it still worked and held true when it came to practice. Eventually, I would fill those holes and maybe when I knew the complete picture, I might be able to find salvation for myself.

“You have two choices now Simon.” I told him, shaking off the visions and voices in my head. I knew the rage would come again and I had to leave soon before the situation got out of control. I was tired, the fight with them had taken more then I wanted to admit. “You can either go back home and wait for me to come by and help you, or you could shoot me in the back of the head and damn your daughter to eternal torment.” I slung my bag on my shoulder and started walking towards the door.

“I’ll kill you if you don’t help her.” He sounded weak, pathetic and already defeated.

I paused, not looking back. Every response in my mind had been an insult, a parting shot, an expression of the rage that Stanton had caused me. But that wasn’t what was needed. He was already defeated; he would go back home and wait. I sighed at the predictability of it all and walked out of the lecture hall without looking back. I would have to change schools, change friends, change my life again and wasn’t happy about that.