Soulless Monsters

The walls shook all around me. My eyes scanned the horizon, as I sat down in the fetal position, cradling my head in my hands.

There were screams all around me.

I needed to get out of here.

I was fine. My phone’s Blue Alert sounded. I laughed quietly, removing my hands.

Blood was surrounding me, dredging me into the ground.

“Kyler?” Someone whispered. No one should’ve been alive still.

I killed them all. Like I always did.

Hazel eyes peered at me. So frightened. The beeping was ecstatic, trying to get our attention.

“Shh… Everything will be fine.” The knife was bloody in my hands.

“Kyler…? KYLER! PLEASE STOP!”

Knives shattered in my hands.

Shattering into her stomach.

Pulling guts and innards out.

Curling around my fingers as she died in my hands.

Because of me.

I laughed softly.

The Blue Alert stopped instantly. My phone must’ve died.

I got up from the floor, propping myself up against the wall. I kept laughing. I vomited onto the floor, green and brown, mixing with the red of her blood.

I walked the streets, seeing people scream at me, covered in the blood of innocents. I leered at them, grinning like a madman.

“Mr. Lopez…” I heard a voice behind me say. My hands were no longer coated in blood and guts, making it easy to deny my involvement in anything violent.

It was a cop. I wanted to punch his face in, until his skull bashed and his brain was filthy, coating my hands.

I smiled at him, forcing a mask of sanity onto my heavily scarred face.

Warrant for my arrest? I wouldn’t let them take me alive.

“You… You dropped your wallet, sir.” The cop said. It was a female, the haze cleared from my eyes. I could see her.

I could see the blood pounding in her veins and she stared up at me, and I wanted to rip those veins out, to feel them beat in my hands.

“Thank you so much!” I grinned at her, trying for a flirtatious smile. I took my wallet from her outstretched hand.

I felt warmth instead of ice. I like my women cold only.

I stood over the ledge, not remembering how i got there.

I would jump. So many dead.

Because of me.

I burst into laughter, seeing the monsters swirl around me like a tornado, and I was within the eye of the storm.

Tears slid down both my cheeks, and I fell over the edge, again and again, not getting up ever again.

The world was better without me in it.

No one would feel pain.

Are… Am I dead?

Why doesn’t it feel good…?This isn’t heaven, or hell… Is it…?

“Wake up,” A grumbling voice commanded of me. I was being dragged up by my brown hair.

Nothing stayed the same. I regretted everything, but also nothing.

I should’ve died.

WHY AM I NOT DEAD?!

“Kyler Lopez. Get the hell up.” Something kicked me in the shin, pulling me upwards. My eyes were slammed shut, tightly closed. I couldn’t open them.

Wait… No. My eyes were open. The world around me was black as night.

“Is this my own personal hell?” I asked. “Did God feel to punish me so…?”

“If you pretend to be something you’re not,” Said the dark voice that was dragging me. I could see bat wings, huge, protruding from a back like porcelain. “Then you get exactly what He feels like you deserve.”

I snorted. “My ambition…”

“Your ambition means nothing to me, coward.” A deeper voice said, using the mouth of the demon before me. “Your aim is pathetic. Suicide was not the only option, right?”

I went silent. I was not…. I was not.

Screams pierced my throat, and I collapsed, writhing on the floor in agony.

Lightning arced through my body.

Please.. Please stop.

… I… I don’t deserve this… do I?

“Get up. I don’t have time for this.” The demon lord said, the one still dragging me.

Talons scratched on the gravel, then concrete, as we kept moving. The world around me shook, and I saw purple, blue, and red, all in different shapes, all around me.

I covered my head, shielding it from falling rocks that never made contact.

Violence was all that I was used to. But it hurt like hell when it was turned onto me.

“You kill people for fun?” A soft voice asked. I whimpered, tears sliding down.

There was no cliff to slip off of. My vocal cords tingled, strung too tight like a guitar’s strings.

“Please…”

“You’re Tyler Lopez-Andersen. The man who everyone fears down here… Begging for mercy?” Someone grinned down at me, their face distorted by hues of purple and red. Those eyes were shallow, shining crimson. No one knew me as Tyler anymore. The people I loved long ago were already dead, forgotten except by me.

I swung my hands out before me, clawing at the faces before me, which spun like a kalediscope attempting to find the perfect angles.

Nothing made contact with my fingers, and I swung at air.

“We fear a mortal?” Someone else chuckled.

Too many.

I couldn’t-

“I will set the entirety of Hell upon you,” I breathed. “I can make even God scared of me.”

“Confident, are we?” Someone said. A blonde-haired man who stood six feet tall. I saw statues of him back above.

My mouth went agape.

“Lucifer Morningstar?” I said, bringing myself to my feet finally. The demon near me dragged me to the ground once more, and I had the taste of hellish gravel.

“No, no. Let him stand, Bores.” Lucifer nodded, his pretty eyes a gold. He was so… angelic. It was hard to imagine this man as the ruler of Hell, when he was the perfect embodiment of Heaven’s love and grace.

“Am I dead, truly?” I asked quietly. I was allowed to be upright completely, body extended to my full height. Still, I was no match for the beauty of the man before me.

Lucifer Morningstar was a man that coulld make even the most pious woman sin.

“You can’t tell me you’d believe that?” His scepter was grasped in perfect, uncallused hands. They were pale and spindly, like handsome porcelain spiders.

Bores, the man with the bat wings and bareback, grumbled, standing off to the side. He seemed weak, helpless, in the eyes of the monarch.

“Absolutely not,” I fixed my gaze forward, not bothering to give Lucifer my full attention. Instead, I stared past him, into the dark hellscape that was his domain.

He gripped my chin tightly, gently pulling my eyes back to him. I hadn’t seen or heard him move towards me.

I flushed. “When the immortal of hell speaks to you, you answer.” He said quietly. “I can make you plead for mercy, after I am through with you.”

I backstepped out of his grasp, bombarded by visions.

Myself on a pike, thrashing in agony as he looked on.

Assaulted by my dad once more, allowed to feel naked and helpless as-

I never wanted any of that.

I didn’t deserve it.

I saw my first kill, writhing as the knife pierced his crotch, allowing myself to relish in the blood draining from the intimate spot.

“You can’t touch me anymore,” I had said, little older than fourteen. “The misery is over, finally.”

But it wasn’t. It never was, was it? You may have changed your name, but you’re still Daymarian deep down. You’re Tyler as well, fighting for his soul.

I’ll just be a soulless monster for ever, I guess.

I tried not to laugh.

I had pretended to be something for so long, I started to believe all my own lies. My life spun before my eyes, revealing murder and deceit, long red hair and misery wrought upon my enemies, on the people I had loved and cared about, long ago.

“You said you can make God scared of you?” Lucifer smirked down at me. “I can use you like no one has ever. I can hone your power.”

My eyes blinked; I was dazed, worse than drugs.

“Tell me you’re proud of me…”

I was tilting side to side, saliva swarming into my mouth like wild hornets. Those hornets wanted to kill me,

To draw blood. To pierce out my eyes.

My lungs were punctured, and I sat, floating down a river slowly, ever so slowly.

I need you to tell me everything’s fine. Even if it’s a lie.