At that moment, I wanted to die.
I wanted to die so that I could no longer feel pain; I wanted to die so that I no longer had to suffer through this torture.
Please let me die, I willed my body, telling it to stop fighting so that I could be relieved from all this misery. Please let me die.
My vision became hazier as the blood continued to seep from my body. From this, I knew that death was coming for me soon.
Boom!
As I began to feel my own life drift away from me, a loud clap of thunder suddenly resonated from the dark skies. At that same second, I could feel the earth beneath me begin to shake subtly. From the corner of my eye, I vaguely saw my blood mixing with rainwater. It streaked across the cement and dripped into the drain storms. Above us, rain continued to torrent down like a monsoon. I looked around and I could feel terror creep into me because even in my dying state, I could have sworn that my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me.
The ground . . . it was really beginning to shake.
Unbeknownst to him about what was happening, Sony’s dad came into view, his shirt and face completely covered with splatters of my blood. Even the rain wasn’t powerful enough to wash it down.
With a vicious smile, as if to silently say, “You should’ve minded your own business,” he lifted my left hand up. I knew that before leaving me for dead, he wanted to take my gold bangles away from me. When he saw that there was no clasp to release the bangles from my possession, he lifted the bloodied butcher knife with his other hand. Without any regard to the fact that I was still breathing beneath him, he began to saw the knife over my wrist, hell-bent on cutting my entire hand off just to get my bangles.
“Auuuuugh . . .”
I heaved painfully for air, trembling when the merciless knife began sawing my flesh and bone. I could feel the darkness begin to shroud over me, to finally take me away from all this despair. Peace was just on the horizon until I heard something that had me feeling more awake than I’d like to feel.
Sounds of water bubbling.
Sounds of water . . . boiling?
Clearly hearing the same sound, Sony’s dad ceased his sawing. His focused shifted to the side where the boiling sound originated. Whatever he saw unnerved him greatly because I could see his pupils enlarge in utter panic.
Shadowing after his gaze, I tilted my head slightly over the rain-strewn road. Bewilderment greeted my eyes when I saw that in the large circumference area around us—all the area that was mixed with my blood—there was steam rising out of it. Yet, what baffled me more was what occurred beneath the steam: boiling water.
It wasn’t my imagination.
The water was actually boiling.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
It first started off in the far border of the circle, then the boiling began to move in closer—the sound becoming stronger and the boiling becoming more potent.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
As if the heat had been turned up in the earth’s furnace, the big circular puddle around us was now bubbling like volcanic lava. All the while as this took place, the streetlights started flickering ominously.
I had never seen anything like this in my life.
The massive boiling water moved in closer and closer to my body until—
“Ahhhhhhh!”
I whipped my head towards Sony’s dad after I heard him scream.
The shock left me stupefied when I saw that steam had started to ascend from the splatters of blood on his face.
I gasped, absolutely horrified.
After that, in a sequential order, just as the ground continued to rumble faintly, the blood on his face began to sizzle and burn into his skin. In perfect harmony, the lava-like boiling increased violently while the streetlights continued to flicker furiously.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
Rainwater inflated into bubbles as huge as rhinos before it dissolved and another took its place. Oh God. No matter how afraid I was of what was happening around me, all I could do was look up in horror as Sony’s dad’s screams became more prominent and earsplitting.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”
Sizzling mercilessly, the splatters of blood on his face started eating away at the skin. Unable to withstand the pain, he dropped my hand and stumbled backwards. The skin on his face started melting away like he had been splashed with industrial strength acid. The whole time he screamed, all I could do was shake in fear because I could feel the blistering water bubble beneath me, searing into the wounds of my own skin.
His screams stopped, and when I heard his lifeless body fall on the ground across from mine, I knew that he was either dead, unconscious, or very close to being dead.
I quivered under the rainstorm. My heart palpitated relentlessly, and as a result, my blood started to seep further into the ground.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
The lava-like boiling grew worse in the deserted street around me. It continued to fight against the pouring rain while the popping sounds inundated my hearing. It became so powerful that the fumes from the boiling water, which was mixed with my blood, began to ascend into the air. The fumes maneuvered around each droplet of rain and rose towards the skies like burning incense. Once it appeared as though the strings of smoke had penetrated the clouds in the sky and my boiling blood had trickled into the pits of the earth, something astronomical happened.
Boooooom!
Violent claps of thunder shook the earth and caused everything around me to vibrate. It felt as though the sky was bellowing in agony while the rumbles from the earth beneath me felt as though it was cheering in excitement.
At the same time as all this chaos took place, I couldn’t help but cry because I was so afraid. I could no longer feel my body. All I felt was pain. All I felt was fear.
What . . . what was happening?
It was only when the thundering became more violent and when the rumbling of the world beneath me became stronger that another strange anomaly occurred.
My blood. It all started to stream back to me.
In the far distance of the road, from beneath the soils of the earth, from the pools around me, and from the blood on the man’s body . . . my blood, akin to having a life of its own, moved together in various sequential lines like snakes. A sense of single-mindedness clouded my blood as each string of steaming blood fought rain and wind to return to me.
“No . . . no . . .”
I was so afraid that I tried my best to move, to escape from all of this. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t control any part of my paralyzed body.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
Utterly helpless, I could do nothing but lay there as I felt the heat of my own blood begin to slowly rake itself over me. The snake-like crimson liquid slithered beneath me, bubbling powerfully underneath the first stab wound on my back.
I shook harder, wincing as I felt the sensation of the boiling blood enter my body. Yet, what took me by surprise was that instead of feeling pain, I began to realize that the agony was beginning to dissipate.
Slowly but surely, as I felt my own blood filter back into my body like elixirs of life, the pain started to numb itself to the point where it became nonexistent. While this transpired, the boiling around me began to die down in concurrence to the “healing” that was taking place within me—hell, even the flickering lights started to become more stable. It reached the point where as soon as all semblance of pain left me, the lights stopped flickering and the boiling stopped completely. The only thing left behind as evidence of its cataclysmic presence was the condensation from the steam.
The light slowly returned to my once dimmed eyes.
Rain was still pouring heavily, but after the massive lava-like boiling disappeared, the skies stopped screaming as well. And just like the sky, the earth beneath me had stopped rumbling.
Pretty soon, n
othing but silence hung over the world around me.
There were no more sounds of thunder, of water boiling, or of the earth shaking. All I could hear was the howling wind and the falling rain. The desolate street sat quietly in the darkness, behaving as though nothing out of the ordinary had taken place.
I instinctively raised my left hand up. I looked at my left wrist and felt my eyes expand when I observed that the flesh on my wrist was no longer cut open. The gold bangles glinted under the rain and the moon, proudly displaying itself on my wrist as if nothing had injured it.
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
What the hell just happened?
"With a crown of the beginning on his head . . ."
30: Source of Evil
Bewildered, I began to frantically touch myself. I touched all the areas where I had been stabbed and with each touch, I felt my heart palpitate in awe because my body felt as good as new. There were no stab wounds, there was no blood, and there was no more pain. I was no longer in agony.
I was fine.
I was absolutely fine.
“Arf! Arf!”
Before I could think of anything else in that stupefied state, I heard familiar whimpering and barking. I caught movements out of the corner of my eye and there OinkOink was, looking just like an innocent white ball of fluff as he bounced over to me.
He whimpered in concern once he reached me and buried his small face close to my neck. When he wheeled around, I could hear a small growl emit from the little puppy.
“Arf! Arf! Grrrr . . .”
He barked ferociously, and I knew he was barking at Mr. Lee, whose face was marred beyond recognition. Mr. Lee lay unconscious beside me. He was still breathing, but barely alive.
Splash.
Splash.
Splash.
No later after OinkOink appeared, I heard soft footsteps approach me.
Then, I saw him.
Standing before me looking like the Angel of Death in his impeccable Italian black suit, Eclipse stood tall, dwarfing the gargantuan block with his mere presence. Though his powerful stature appeared larger than life, his expression was anything but. The look on his face was pure exhaustion. I suspected that he looked exhausted because he had been looking for me, that he had been trying to get to me.
His fatigued and troubled eyes locked with mine for a fleeting second before he focused his attention on the haze of condensation that was dying out around me.
Amazement swelled in his eyes when he took in the sight of everything around us. Though the volcanic-like lavas were gone, the steam was still indicative of its once powerful presence. Eclipse’s observant eyes followed that fog of warm steam as it slowly evaporated into thin air. His gaze then rested carefully on the soils beneath us before his eyes returned to the Heavens above where lightning and thunder continued to clap over the world in anger. The wrath wasn’t as potent as before, but the thunder was still loud and seemingly furious nonetheless.
After a long, pondering silence, he returned his gaze to me. In a simple and quiet voice, he said, “It seems that converting you into a Demon may be a much more difficult task than I could’ve ever dreamed it to be.”
“You . . . you did this, didn’t you?” I mindlessly accused in my weakened state. I was still feeling discombobulated and still trying to gather my bearings. “You sent him to hurt me so I’d give you my soul . . .”
Offended, his eyes rapidly shifted to anger at my accusation. “Do you really think I could do something like this to you?”
I mulled over what he said and shook my head after analytically assessing the situation. Though I wouldn’t trust Eclipse as far as I could throw him, one of the things I understood in the short amount of time I had known him was that he was extremely possessive and very protective.
So far, his attempts at forcing me to give up my soul had been under the realm of pranks and nothing life-threatening. Though it disturbed me that I would use this as a defense for him, I doubted he would take part in anything that would lead to the mutilation of my body. I still remembered how fond he was at the prospect of getting me into bed. I highly doubted he would allow another man to touch me, much less stab me countless times with a butcher knife.
“Where were you then?” I went on for the sole purpose of weeding him out as a suspect. I had already reached the conclusion that it wasn’t him who caused this, but one couldn’t be too careful with their questions, especially when in the face of the supernatural occurrence I just experienced. “You came right in time when everything ended.”
At my prompt, he simply sighed before bending down beside me.
Mindful of my fragile state, he slid his arms underneath my back and scooped me up into his arms. I tried to fight him to get out of the precarious position because it felt like the proper thing to do, but he wouldn’t have any of it. And to be honest, in my current state, I didn’t mind resting against his strong body as rain continued to fall around us. I felt so tired and it felt so nice to be in his arms . . .
“I am a Dimmed Demon, Gracie, not an all-powerful one,” he reminded me softly, tucking me closer to his body. He began to step onto the rain-strewn road and made his way over to one of the buildings to place me under for shelter. “I do not have the power to materialize at will wherever you are at. When I am back in Hell, I cannot hear you. I came back and tried to find you at work, and you weren’t there. I went to your apartment—you also weren’t there. I tried all the places you frequented, but I couldn’t find you.”
He gingerly placed me down on the steps of an out-of-business building. Once I settled underneath the newfound shelter, Eclipse’s eyes further took in my weakened appearance. His gaze reflected a mixture of concern and anger.
“Did I not tell you to only stay in places where I can find you, Teacup?”
I bit my lower lip, shivering as I rested my head against the cold brick wall. I thoughtlessly nodded. Sloth’s previous words of admonishment began to make their way through my mind. Words that once sounded like bullshit now sounded like pearls of wisdom that I wish I took more seriously.
“This is what your older brother meant, isn’t it?” I prompted wearily, still reeling from my terrifying near-death experience. I recalled the anger that resonated from the skies and the rumbles of cheers that emanated from the ground when I bled out on the street. I knew that all of this wasn’t normal, and in the deepest core of me, I knew it had everything to do with whatever Sloth was trying to warn me about. “This is what you needed to protect me from?”
A small smirk touched Eclipse’s lips. His gentle fingers stroked over my shivering cheek. “No. This specific event isn’t what he meant. If I knew that this was going to happen tonight, then I would’ve burned this city alive before that bastard got a hold of you.”
There was a bitter smile on his face.
If I thought that Eclipse was the mastermind behind this before, then this assumption would’ve gone straight to Hell the moment I saw the fury hit his face. He looked over his shoulder and rested his wrathful eyes on my attacker.
Bam!
Before I could register what had just happened, Sony’s dad’s unconscious body was flung into the air. With the velocity of a speeding bullet, it flew across the length of the vast road, only stopping once it roughly collided with an abandoned car on the other side of the street. The faint sound of cracking bones and soft moans came from his unconscious state. The man’s body fell back to the unforgiving ground with a loud thud.
He lay there facedown, still unconscious and barely alive. He was simply at the mercy of a Demon who looked so angry that if looks could kill, the world would burn under his wrath.
“Wait! Wait! What are you planning to do?!” I breathed out in a panic, still trying to adjust to being fully conscious again. I instinctively grabbed Eclipse by the arm once he began to move towards Sony’s dad.
“Rip him to pieces and then feed him to my hellhounds.”
I had no idea whether or not he was serious
about the hellhounds, but I was pretty sure he was serious about ripping Sony’s father to pieces. It was enough for me to use all my newfound energy to try and stop him. Tightening my grip on his arm, I was surprised when I felt myself being lifted off my seat and suddenly dragged like a lifeless doll in his pursuit for Sony’s dad. So much for stopping him . . .
“No, don’t!” I screamed, coughing once my body hit the ground on impact. “He’s Sony’s dad!”
“I don’t give a fuck who he is!”
Before I knew it, we were at the end of the street, right beside Sony’s dad.
“Eclipse, stop!”
As if my voice was the only thing that extracted him from his angry state, Eclipse turned to me. Concern assailed his face when he saw that I was on the floor, still trying to “stop” him. Instead of continuing with his bloodlust pursuit, he abruptly stopped his vengeful efforts and bent down to help me up.
Helping me stand beside him, he gently wrapped his arms around me. He was prepping to move me back to the stairs when I announced to him that I was beginning to feel nauseous with all the movements. Eclipse paused, looking conflicted with allowing me to stay in an area where I couldn’t be sheltered from the rain. He peered up. When he noted that the rain had stopped falling for the time being, he relented and helped me sit on the ground in the middle of the damp road. Once I was seated under the glow of the traffic lights, Eclipse took off his jacket, covered it over me, and sat across from me.
I stared at him, taking a long moment to replay everything that occurred. I couldn’t help but tremble because I had never experienced anything more strange or terrifying. No matter how frayed my thoughts were, I was still lucid enough to remember everything that had taken place.
“Did you see everything that happened?” I asked, wondering if he was there to witness me getting stabbed multiple times as I bled out on the streets.
Eclipse shook his head. His face was grim, regretful as he assessed the holes in my hoodie that were indicative of where I was stabbed. He eyed Sony’s dad. His body laid several feet away from us. Rage blazed in Eclipse’s eyes before he controlled it and rested his soft gaze on me.