Looser
I’ve never been in a deeper shit than I am now.
A dark living room. My heart was pounding somewhere in my throat. A dim table lamp barely lit the space around us, outlining our dark silhouettes.
Three of us.
In the middle of the room, on a light-colored carpet, there was a chair. I was tightly tied to it. And next to me were two men who, essentially, had arranged all of this. In my own home. A charming way to end the day, if you’re into that sort of crap. Though it gets even more fun when one of them is your best friend and the other is a demon. Yes. A real one.
My head was splitting, my vision was double, my face hurt like one massive bruise. The ringing in my ears grew louder with every second. The skin on my wrists burned from the tight rope. My hands were numb. The space around me blurred, then snapped back into focus. The taste of my own blood had stopped surprising me a long time ago, but today I had to spit it out more often than usual.
How did I end up in this situation, you ask? Very simply: this is what happens when you cross people you should never mess with.
Was I scared?
As the great Aesop once said, “Even fear is softened by habit.” Yes, I had grown used to pain, to the constant chase after my lucky ass, and to those wonderful creatures who dreamed of spilling my guts. Though it had never gone further than stalking and attempts to catch me. It was as if they were playing – scaring me, letting me go, and repeating it again once they got bored.
And honestly, it was my own fault. Everything would’ve been fine if I hadn’t stolen something from them. I don’t even know why. It just happened. I can’t explain it. It all unfolded on its own.
It’s mine. I’m not giving it back.
Whatever. Long story short – I’m a thief. And who, if not a thief, would know where the stolen thing is? Maybe that’s why I wasn’t killed yet?
Habit or not, this time everything was different. It wasn’t just about me anymore. I fucked up.
“Where is it?” asked a tall, thin, wrinkled man with sparse gray fluff on his head.
Let me to introduce you. Asmodeus. A real ray of sunshine.
Why did I think right then about whether that was even his real face? Some demons possess humans, others create their own appearance. If this shriveled horse-shit-looking thing was the product of his imagination, I almost felt sorry for him. Guy’s got serious problems with creativity. If I were him, I’d pick something more presentable.
“Fantastic… I’m being tortured, and this is what I’m thinking about?”
I stayed silent the entire time, staring at him from under my brows.
“Not a single word, you stinking piece of shit. Do whatever you want. Ask the same questions a billiontimes. Beat me. Cut me. Tear me apart. I. Don’t. Give. A. Fuck.”
“Where is the Key?” he repeated.
The Lesser Key of Solomon. A decrepit little book full of symbols, scribbles, and images of monsters, written in some strange language. It looked creepy as hell. I had no idea what was written in it. The internet and books from the library where I’d been working for years suggested it was an artifact that granted power over seventy-two high-ranking demons, each commanding their own legions. After learning that, I was honestly surprised. Why would demons need it? To break free from their creator’s chains, take control of those legions, and turn the army against him? What kind of deranged idiot would do that? And that’s coming from me? An even more deranged thief? One who probably stole the book from him?
I stayed silent.
Asmodeus’s chin trembled.
“Oh yeah, I can see how much it pisses you off that I’m not saying a word. I wonder what’ll happen to you if you come back empty-handed. Someone sent you, right? Yeah? Or was it your Daddy? Bet he’s waiting for you with a bucket of Vaseline and a fire hose.”
He pressed his already thin lips together, turned away, sighed, ran a hand over his stubbled cheek, then swung and landed a hard slap across my face.
I gasped. Another wave of pain shot into my head and spread across the back of my skull.
Asmodeus grabbed my chin with icy fingers, leaned in, and hissed into my face:
“You think I’m playing with you here?”
His grip was strong.
“I don’t give a fuck,” I replied flatly.
He released me, straightened his light-colored shirt smeared with my blood, and muttered something indistinct.
I spat blood – either onto the carpet or the floor – and called out to my friend. Yes. That very best one, who had been silently standing aside the whole time, watching.
“Hey, Frankie. What did he promise you?”
It was a shame it was so hard to see his face in the dark. Once so familiar. Those big gray eyes behind thin round lenses. Because of the thick black frames, you could almost never see his light, thin eyebrows.
Honestly? It hurt. Like hell. Not so much physically – strange, considering I’d been talking to my guests for over an hour – but emotionally.
I went to prep classes with this guy, then school. Our peers often picked on him, and then got their asses kicked by me. He always looked too much like a stereotypical nerd in those stupid turtlenecks or sweaters – winter and summer alike. And he was a nerd. The best one. No one knew him like me and our mutual friend May did. There were always three of us. Different from each other, and that’s what made us fit perfectly. Together we were one whole: almost doll-like Eastern beauty from May, brains from Frankie, and my fists always protecting the first two. I thought that even if the world collapsed, that would remain unchanged.
How wrong I was.
He turned away shamefully. I smiled bitterly.
I had no one except my mother, my stepfather, and the two of them. All my life I protected them as best as I could. None of them knew that I never stopped looking for the ones responsible for my older brother’s death. No one saw what I sometimes had to deal with, what kind of shit I was neck-deep in to get justice. I didn’t want someone like Asmodeus to ever get to them. I dropped everything and left. Forbade myself from even seeing my mom and stepdad – just so demons wouldn’t find out where my family was. I lived wherever I could, lied, avoided people, came close to death a hundred times, but protected those four. Where did I mess up? What did I do wrong?
Then why did they kill my older brother? He was an innocent child. Why?
“Maybe your mommy will be more talkative?” Asmodeus’s thin lips curled into a vile smirk.
“Touch her and I swear to God, you bitch—” my body jerked toward him, ready to tear him apart.
I didn’t recognize my own voice. It trembled, broke. Fear. It would’ve been easier if it were just me. If this wasn’t my parents’ house. These sensations felt like a living thing. Clamped onto my throat and strangled me.
Let this thing do whatever it wants to me – just don’t touch them.
I couldn’t breathe.
“God?” Asmodeus laughed and cut me off irritably. “Do you seriously believe He gives a shit about any of you? About you? Seriously?”
His eyes flared with a fiery yellow glow in the darkness.
“If that were true, would He let His children suffer? What do you say, sweetheart?” he hissed, grabbing my hair at the back of my head.
I squeaked from the sudden pulling pain. My numb fingers clenched the armrests of the creaking chair. Tears surfaced.
“Hey!” Frankie intervened. “Stop!” His voice trembled, almost breaking into a scream.
“Shut your mouth!” Asmodeus barked.
A loud crack echoed through the half-empty, gloomy living room. It went straight to the bone. The next second, the guy collapsed face-first onto the floor.
My heart skipped a beat and dropped into my stomach. Asmodeus let go of my hair.
“Frankie?” I mouthed soundlessly. My body locked up.
“This is impossible. No.”
“Frankie! No!” I screamed.
I barely remember what happened next. Just my own hysterical screaming, as if coming from far away. I think I even tried to tear the rope with my wrists rubbed raw, tried to lunge forward and rip the throat out of that red-eyed bastard.
“No! Noooo!” I howled, choking on tears.
I went limp in the chair. Helpless. Useless. Piece. Of shit.
My Frankie was gone. His lifeless body lay on the floor.
Asmodeus grabbed me by the neck and said inches from my face:
“See? Just like I said. He doesn’t give a shit about you.”
His cold fingers tightened around my throat. I choked on bitter tears, greedily gulping air. For the first time in a long while, I fully felt that abyss of hellish pain I’d kept locked away behind seven seals.
A weak nothing. A girl who lost someone close again.
“You know what? I’m tired. I’m done,” the demon said irritably. “I don’t need you anymore. I’ll handle it myself.”
A reddish glow enveloped Asmodeus’s skin from within. The air filled with the acrid stench of rotten eggs. The next few minutes became a nightmare.
I was suffocating. I jerked. Again. And again. He squeezed my neck like a vise. And that wasn’t all – Asmodeus used his second hand.
A touch to my ribcage. Fingers. Right in the center, just above the solar plexus. Pressure. Eye contact. Crack. And pain.
Pain? What did I know about pain? What does it feel like when a demon’s fingers pass through flesh and ribs? Crush, tear, crumple, and reach the heart? And it was beating faster and faster.
I stared into Asmodeus’s eyes. I had never seen them so close: bright orange with fiery red veins. And no, not the iris – the whites were like that. As if thick lava filled his eyes. They were lava, flickering with tiny tongues of flame.
Nothing else existed – only pain and those eyes, full of greed and undisguised pleasure. He watched with rapture as I suffocated. As I tried to scream, choking on blood pouring from my mouth.
I wanted just one thing: for his fingers to stop squeezing my heart. I was even ready to believe in a miracle.
“Help.”
A dull darkness crept in. It rolled in from all sides, wrapping everything in a dense veil. Sounds dissolved. The room’s outlines and that bastard’s face vanished. The pain receded. Cold, foreign emptiness took over.
If I was dead, where was the promised tunnel with white light at the end? I dared hope I deserved it.
“Hey! Somebody!” My voice dissolved into nothing.
There was no echo, though I expected one. Was this place infinite?
Pitch blackness. But strangely, it wasn’t dark – because I could see myself, dressed in my old but comfortable clothes. How was that even possible? I didn’t know if I was standing on something or floating. I even stomped my foot to be sure. No sound.
Normally, I’d panic. But I wasn’t scared. Inside was empty, just like outside. I felt nothing. So this is what happened to people when they died? They ended up here? And where is “here”? What kind of in-between world is this? In-between world. Stupid word. And if so, where are the others? Or does everyone get their own? Or maybe this isn’t real at all? Just another burst of my unhealthy imagination?
Okay. Stop. Trying to figure it out only made things worse. More questions, more doubts. I had to focus and understand what was next. I wasn’t staying here.
Yes.
If I couldn’t figure out where I was, I had to think about how to get out. And if that was even possible.
I started walking forward. Froze.
“Where exactly am I going?”
I glanced at the “not-floor” again.
“Am I even going anywhere?”
Even now, it wasn’t anxiety speaking. No. It was habit. I was used to worrying about everything. And now I thought of my mom. Also out of habit. Like blinking or breathing.
“Mom,” I exhaled and sank onto that strange black surface.
Her image appeared in my mind. So pure and warm. Big hazel eyes always looking at me with care and love. But even they couldn’t hide the gray sadness of loss. Her laugh — the most ringing and contagious. And those light curls I always envied.
I said how much I loved her so often, but those words were nothing compared to what I felt every time I said them.
I squeezed my eyes shut, pulling my knees to my chest. I abandoned her. Broke her heart.
“I’m so sorry,” barely escaped my lips and dissolved into the void.
“Sam?” a voice came from somewhere.
I jumped up and frantically looked around. Calm vanished instantly.
“Can you hear me?” the unfamiliar male voice called again.
It trembled.
At that same second, I felt a touch on my cheek. It responded with a light tingling. I flinched.
“What the…? Who’s here? Who’s touching me? I don’t care!”
“I’m here! I hear you!” I shouted, spinning wildly, searching for the source.
“Whoever you are, please, get me outta here.”
“Sam!”
“I’m here! Here! Get me out! Please!”
“Sam!”
The voice grew clearer and closer. I broke into a run toward it. As if I knew where I was running. What did it matter? Forward! I had no idea whose voice it was. I’d never heard it before, yet it felt familiar.
“I’m here! Hey! I hear you!”
I stopped and scanned the empty, pitch-black space again – nothing. I was ready to burst into tears from rage and helplessness.
“Fuck!”
But moments later, the darkness receded and revealed a heavily blurred silhouette. That someone seemed to see me through it. I froze.
“Light.”
“Look at me, do you hear me? Sam?” His voice sounded distant, as if drifting away.
I started sinking back into the blackness.
“No. Not this.”
I ran forward with all my strength. Stretched both hands out. Tried to catch the light. To grab onto anything.
And it vanished. Everything vanished.
My legs gave out.
“No! No!”
I fell to my knees with that cry.
“Goddamn it!” I slammed my fists into the black surface, tears in my eyes.
Damn it, there wasn’t even a sound of the impact!
“I hate this place!”
As if by a snap, I found myself in the dimness of a dirty corridor.
“What the hell?”
I cautiously rose, brushed dust and sand off my hands and jeans, and looked around.
A corridor. In the upper right corner, a simple dusty lamp flickered and crackled. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling, trembling in a draft. Under my feet – damp concrete with strange stains. Dirty green, battered walls were covered with black mold in places. The heavy stench of rotten eggs filled the air, so nauseating my stomach begged to empty itself.
“Looks familiar.”
Everything inside me clenched. A burning pain appeared behind my ribs. I knew I had to walk, but I was scared. I couldn’t force myself to move. As if my feet were frozen to the floor. And the corridor seemed to stop being a corridor. More like the maw of a giant monster. The farther – the blacker.
I swallowed hard and moved forward.
“Breathe less. Then the stench won’t be so strong.”
My ears rang. In the grave-like silence, I heard only my footsteps. My heart felt like it was beating in my throat.
I walked, and the damn corridor never ended. The lamp stayed behind. Ahead – darkness. I swallowed again. My pace slowed.
“Oh, I really don’t want to go there.”
I felt like a dumb girl from a second-rate horror movie. Any second now I’d say:
“Hello? Is anybody there?”
Why not? That’s how movie characters lure villains. How else would the poor bastard find a victim?
Fine. At least I had an excuse for going there: I had no choice. Standing still wasn’t an option. I had to find a way out.
With every step, the smell grew sharper. As if I was nearing its source.
“Someday I’ll find out why it’s this smell. Why evil can’t smell like food. Or flowers. Why rot? Got it! Stench. Evil stinks. Evil stinks because it’s bad. Good job, Sam. Have an A.”
Once my eyes adjusted, I saw the outline of a door a few meters ahead.
My vision didn’t deceive me.
I was shaking with fear.
I felt for the handle – rusty and cold. Carefully pulled it toward me. It didn’t budge. I tried again with both hands, harder.
“Shit,” I muttered.
I had to push, not pull.
“No words, Holloway.”
Only I could trip over my own foot, step on the same rake twice, and pull a door that opens the other way.
I stepped back half a step. Exhaled. Threw my weight against it and pushed.
The smell of years-old dampness, rotten eggs, and blood hit me in the face. I covered my mouth, coughing so hard I thought I’d suffocate.
“Okay, pull yourself together.”
When I finally dared to look around, I realized the smell was the least of my problems.
Now I knew why this place felt familiar.
My heart dropped into my stomach.
I didn’t blink. I stared at three men dressed in black. My eyes darted from one face to another. Theirs flared lava-bright in response. They stood on either side of a long metal table, on which lay a bound boy. About fifteen. Blood dripped from the rusty legs, pooling on the filthy floor. Beside him stood a small medical cart – but instead of instruments, there was a deep copper bowl and a claw-like knife.
The boy’s body was mutilated. He was still alive. Trying to breathe. Looking straight at me.
My older brother. Michael.
“Sammy,” he rasped softly. “Go.”
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head fiercely.
My brain started throwing up fragments of memories. One after another. I couldn’t breathe. My head throbbed.
“Please, not again. This can’t be real.”
“Mikey, no,” I said without meaning to.
“Go,” he insisted.
My legs felt like cotton. I stumbled backward.
Some unseen force stopped me. Someone approached from behind. Cold fingers clamped around my wrists.
Bastards. There weren’t three of them.
“Don’t move,” the fourth said.
“Bitches!” I tried to break free. “Don’t,” I begged through tears. “Stop! Take me, please! Take me instead!”
I knew exactly what would happen next.
“Stop rocking the boat!”
The fourth tightened his grip, grabbed the back of my head so I couldn’t move, pressed me against himself, and whispered in my ear:
“Enjoy the view.”
I felt like that little five-year-old girl again. Just like back then, they forced me to watch him suffer. I couldn’t move, no matter how much I wanted to.
Why did they let me go? Why didn’t they kill me? Why leave me alive? Why did I deserve life more than him?
In response to my pathetic pleas, they only cast sidelong glances and continued the bloody ritual.
One of them took the claw-knife, closed his eyes, and began murmuring something. He made a deep cut along his left arm, from wrist to elbow. Set the blade aside and let the blood drip into the copper bowl. The wound closed quickly. He fell silent. Nothing remained. He exhaled and opened his glowing eyes. Looked at me again. Smirked.
“No! Please! I’m begging you!” I screamed. “I’ll take his place! Take me, you son of a bitch!”
He pretended not to hear. Took the bowl in one hand, dipped the fingers of the other into the blood, and began drawing something on Mike’s forehead.
“No, no, no! Please!”
I sobbed, thrashed, screamed, cursed foaming at the mouth – useless.
“Bastards! Let him go! Mikey!”
The demon passed his hand over my brother’s head.
“Your Majesty, accept this sacrifice – a pure child of Adam,” he whispered near the boy’s ear. “We await your return.”
They froze. The fourth covered my mouth. Silence fell, except for my muffled sobbing. The burning in my chest became unbearable.
The next moment, Mike’s back arched with a horrific crack, and a womb-deep roar tore from his throat.
Blackness.
A second.
And suddenly I was sitting on a pristine white bed, trying to come to my senses. Gasping. I pushed damp strands of hair off my face, soaked with tears and cold sweat. I realized I had no idea where I was.
“What the fuck?”
Soundtracks:
Дарья Виардо – Ангел-похоронитель
Passive – A perfect circle
Neoni – Loser
Malia J – Smells like teen spirit
