Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26908800-20151005062647

I'll leave the questions after the body of the work. -Seamus

The first real night of autumn, cold, wet, a dangerous time for souls in the old days. It is that special time, three days before All Hallow’s Eve, four days after, that I get to work. I have had many nights like this, one thousand and twenty four to be exact. I take it in, cruising along in a jacked ride, the owner screams in despair from somewhere way down there.

Always the same.

“Oh please, please release me.”

My answer, “You opened the door. You let me in, buddy.”

I have work to do, and my master, he is neither kind, nor justice, nor merciful, nor magnanimous.

And I do so love these “rides.” I slow to a stop at a light, the raindrops patter against the windshield, it feels like an eternity since I last saw rain. An angry red glow scatters through the glass. I close my eyes and breathe deep, clean air, unstifled. A green light now floods the interior of the car, I stomp the gas pedal.

“Please, please, I can’t see anything, let me out. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!” The owner pleads.

I chuckle, “You can scream all you want peckerhead. But I am in control.”

He sent the invitation, my boss Asmodaios opened it, like it or not. Dumb shit fleshpot should’ve know better.

Tires slash through waterlogged streets, the wipers’ steady beat sooth my throbbing head. It feels good to be back. The owner is lucky it is me taking this ride and not the boss. I at least understand the pains and yearnings of the flesh, yearning, loss, missed opportunities, the unsatisfying grapplings between sweat soaked sheets, forbidden fruit. All of it, my master though thinks it is funny, comical, the way people don’t learn always reaching for temptation that only results in an ephemeral paltry reward.

The owner was an idiot, opening Pandora’s Box on the Deep Web. Click, click, jerk that dick.

Pictures of barely adolescent girls is what he sought, and he got more than he bargained for. That is when we came to play, the boss and me. It makes me chuckle when I remember that first night, rapping on the walls, tapping at windows, murmurings in the dark. Incessant we worked around the edges before upping the ante. Major mindfucking is always fun.

One week before All Hallow’s Eve I screwed with his computer, taking his hidden stash of kiddy porn pictures and making a cute little screen saver. I mean, what would his wife think? Then she would understand why he got his most turgid hard ons when she did the school girl thing, uniform and all.

Watching the ensuing panic and paranoia building was like a vacation. A vacation from the normal dreck and hell of my existence.

Then we got the hooks in and bagged him. Bagged him, locked the door and let him watch as we go for a ride. We possessed him, total, and in full control.

Even if the world knew we exist, me and my associates, very few have the tools to stop us. Most of the time everyone acts as if we could not exist, we travel on the currents of air, slip through the cracks, and move with the speed of darkness when the lights go out.

I think of all the horror and terror I have indulged in, participated, and precipitated through my actions and it is sooooo sweet. One last bit of the human condition left to me I can enjoy anymore.

The Ancients believed at the time of the last harvest the veil between the spirit world and the physical wore thin. The time of darkness overtaking the light, long nights, biting cold.

I sometimes still dream of that cold hut I grew up in, huddling near a meager fire, near starvation, wondering if I would die. Then grew older and stronger, and took what I wanted.

People these days when they want a bit of violence done they got to the gun. Not like I did, plunging a dagger into a man’s guts and ripping his guts out.

Or the internet, yeah, jump on the web, fire up your Tor browser and off you go into the cyberhalls of human sickness and degradation.

This man is nothing but a vessel, a pathetic weakling.

I finally reach my destination. Rain soaks the filthy alley I pull into behind a nondescript brick apartment building unfit for rats. A Snakehead operation, a bordello filled with hope young village women from mainland China who got hustled into a life of heroin and turning tricks. I pause and reminisce, how many lives have I taken over these many years. Dozens, maybe hundreds.

At first when I did the deed the high lasted weeks, each time, each new kill, each new level of violence shortened the refractory period until I burned with a hollow fire, not lust, not anger, just abandon.

We exit the car, I drag the man with me, my pockets stuffed with his cash. I come up to a back door rust showing through the flaking black and grey graffiti job. I knock three times, the first knock ham-handed followed by two quick taps. At that signal the muscle opens the door, a heavily tattooed Tong, I wave two hundreds, he takes the cash and looks me over.

We’re in.

The Snakehead honcho sits at a desk, of all things a desk like at a bank.

The honcho indicates to sit, so we do. “It’s two more hundred dollars, for that you get an hour to do whatever you want. If you damage the goods, I damage your punk gweilo ass with interest. Do you have any preference?”

I smile, “Yeah, young, petite, submissive, quiet kinda like.”

Honcho gets a hard look in eye, “Typical, looking to get your rocks off with a China doll, come down here for the little village girls.”

I say, “Sure, unless you’ve got them big, beefy, and stacked like a volleyball chick.”

Honcho takes the money and sticks it in a cash box, “Four doors down, on your left. One hour, nothing too rough.”

We go down a hallway, lights flicker and play, trash is strewn everywhere, used condoms and needles. The air redolent with must that comes from dry rot and rat shit. I’ve seen worse, much worse.

I go through the fourth door on the left. Inside is lit by christmas tree lights, a few joss sticks fill the air with a pungent smoke, just like home.

A girl sits on the bed, she puts aside a book, open, face down like she’ll pick it up soon again. Her hair is long, glossy dark, and she can’t be more than five feet tall.

I peel off my shirt making sure my captive can see it all.

“Watch,” I whisper.

I seize her by her mouth. I will finger to clamp down iron hard. I pull a tactical folding knife and plunge it up to the hilt in her belly. I rip up to her breast bone then across, side to side, and pull out a fist full of intestine.

I loose all restraint and burry my face in the open cavity and get a mouth full of offal and slippery innards.

I bite, I tear my head back pulling loop after loop out of her stomach. She struggles no more. Amazing how good you can get. Send them into shock as soon as possible, massive blood loss works best and is the most sure.

I bath my hands in her blood and smear it all over my naked torso, over his naked torso.

Baptism of blood.

I cut, I slash, I rip, I flay, I skin, I splatter, I gnash, I excise to the bone. So good, so great, so glorious.

Twin voices rip out of our vocal cords a beastial bellow, “Ad majorem gloriam Asmodeum! Vivo, vixi, vixero posthac! Regno in Tartarum! Exaudi me, O Domine Inferni!”

I spew forth, separate from the man, the vessel, free and loose on the ether. I leave his body. He has served his purpose on this All Hallows Eve.

I leave him holding the knife, covered in blood.

The Snakeheads will probably kill him and dump his corpse in the river.

Another sacrifice, more blood to fill the gutters of Hell.

It felt good to be free of Abaddon, that sulfurous pit, even if for one night.

I am pulled back, down into the never ending darkness. It feels good to have the reprieve of being in the flesh, even borrowed flesh. Though I can always smell it, feel it, Sheol waiting to receive my being again, and again.

The way it always does promising and delivering never ending pain.

Asmodaios waits to greet me, with his hatred, his rage. I smell blood, feces, sulphur, I can hear the screams. I am home.

Questions:

1) I am attempting to mislead/misdirect the reader yet not confuse them. I am trying to bait an switch as if this is just a serial killer type story before the 'reveal' that it is a possession story. Does this work?

2) I make a few oblique references to theology and demonology, does this add to the tone of the story or detract?

3) Clarity of action. Is the sequence of actions clear enough (i.e. flow) from the car to the bordello?

4) Any punctuation and grammar flubs?

Thanks 