#aoextober

Though, he supposes it’s not too implausible – their ability to ignore things is quite remarkable. One time they pretended he didn’t exist for a whole week – and honestly, he’d been questioning his existence himself by the end of it.

But the problem is these… demons. These ghosts and spectres that follow him and distract him and terrify him.

Saburota tries to focus on the page in front of him – a test in maths that he’s writing in pencil because his pen is bleeding red blood – an ever-growing puddle over the surface of his desk that never reaches his papers and drips over the edge with quiet plips.

The numbers in the problems tilt and tumble and his hands are tingling. But if he focuses just so- if he can keep them in his mind long enough, he can do this.

Pit-pat… Pit-pat…

The blood drips steadily down onto the floor. No one else notices it.

–

“Oh, come now! You’ll get used to it,” his aunt says when she sees him flinch back from a dark mass that covers the floor like a living carpet, undulating and scintillating and breathing.

She walks right over it, and the black sticks to the heels of her shiny beige pumps like tar – but she doesn’t even seem to notice-

“Come on, Saburota, let’s go,” she pulls him by the arm, stronger than he can dig his heels into the ground. The black thing is unpleasantly soft under his feet. He feels it writhe.

“Don’t be so obstinate, we’ll be late to the opera!” she huffs, exasperated, “Honestly, you’d think a boy your age would have some manners.”

The black clings to the bottom of their soles without end even after they’ve crossed all of it and are out on the street, spreading out from every point of contact their shoes make with the ground, melting together to form a winding, snakelike path.

“What show are we going to see?” he asks cautiously, trying to distract himself.

“Three dead men and the devil, of course” she answers haughtily, “Why, Saburota, it’s as if you’re trying to irritate me on purpose! You’re the one who wanted to go!”

He did?

“Oh, I remember now!” he says, but it’s a lie, it’s his mouth moving on its own, “I hope it’s as good as the reviews promise!” he says again, a giddy edge to the words- but they’re not his words.

“It will be,” his aunt answers with a mysterious sort of smile, her hand tightening around his wrist.

–

Saburota’s hiding under the bed, curled up in the dark. It seems like no matter how much he shrinks down; he still feels watched, still feels threatened. Feels like he’s not alone, like there’s something else inside him.

The door opens and footsteps make their way over to the bed – but they’re sharp, like knocking wood on wood, and so loud.

Saburota holds his breath when hooves come into view right in front of him. Fear is like a bird trapped in his chest, raging desperately against the bars of his ribs.

Whatever it is climbs up on his bed with an ominous sqeak of the springs and a decidedly animal huff.

“Oh, you’re already in bed, honey?” the voice of his mother speaks from the doorway. She all but floats over soundlessly. Her skin is deathly pale and dry beneath the hem of her nightgown.

“I’m scared, mommy,” the thing says in a voice that’s nowhere near Saburota’s own. “I think there’s a monster under my bed.”

“Monsters don’t exist, silly,” she coos, “but I’ll look and make sure for you, alright?”

She gets down on all fours and peers beneath the bed. Her unseeing eyes look straight at and through Saburota. Her face is as pale and bloodless as her feet and hands, a greenish-blueish tinge to her lips and eyelids.

“There’s nothing here, honey,” she says in her beautiful, sonorous voice. Her smile reveals her teeth that look much longer and sharper now that the gums have dried out and shrunk back.

Then she rises again and says, “Now, will you be a good boy and sleep? We have a busy day tomorrow. You need to be ready to do what has to be done.” She kisses the thing sweetly goodnight before leaving, footsteps as soundless as when she entered. The door closes behind her, and so disappears that last bit of illumination the room had.

The darkness left behind feels like it’s eating Saburota whole, encompassing him in a tight and claustrophobic space. He reaches out to prove the feeling wrong, but the darkness is smooth and solid against his hand, pushing up against it with incrementally increasing force.

“You don’t have much time left down there, do you?” the thing up on the bed asks, soft and sleepy. It yawns. “You know, God can’t see you anymore, and neither can most other things.”

The darkness pushes up against his skin, too tight to move, too tight to breathe.

–

They’re in the main hall. A soft record plays in the background, a gentle but somber croon accompanied by a saxophone and a cello.

“You know they don’t exist,” the shadow sitting across from Saburota at the dinner table says, “right?”

It’s gesturing at his family, where they’re chatting amongst themselves as they eat. At the other, farther end of the table – it’s farther than usual. The table is as long as the room as opposed to taking up just the center.

There are so many empty seats. So many set plates, untouched. Like there’s supposed to be a banquet, but no one’s shown up.

Saburota stares down at his plate. The soup is black and thick, and there’s the smooth off-white surface of a bone peeking out from beneath the surface.

He’s not particularly hungry.

“You’re wrong,” he tells the shadow quietly ad he pushes the plate away, and the damn thing laughs in response. It’s fuzzy and translucent, and smears in Saburota’s vision when it moves.

“Oh, my bad!” the shadow chortles and picks up a knife, and twirls it around the fingers of its hand; the gleaming facets of the blade catch red and orange lights from some strange and unknown source, “You’re the one who doesn’t exist, I meant to say. Easy mistake to make.”

Saburota feels goose bumps break out over his body. A cold gust of wind whistles over the edge of his collar, ruffling the back of his hair. He places one of his palms protectively over his nape, feeling unsafe.

The room is colourless now, and his family sounds all muffled - and the shadow is gone. He shivers, then takes a fortifying breath and reaches for the spoon again, hand trembling minutely.

Saburota lifts a spoonful of the simple noodle soup to his mouth hesitantly. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything wrong with it, but… he’s just got this nagging worry that something isn’t right.

–

“I see right through you,” the creature says hotly in his ear, “you’re little more than smoke - a miasma leaking through the cracks of the skin you wear.”

Saburota stares at it through the mirror. It’s taller than him, wider than him, has horns like an ibex and hands like eagle claws, poised up in the air, talons glinting menacingly.

“Poor little Saburota,” it hisses, leaning in even closer, snake tongue peeking through its teeth on the ‘s’. “So damaged and twisted that no one could ever like you. You empty little puppet, you pathetic fucking piece of shit.”

Saburota shrugs at its words. They sound about right. It’s what he’s heard all his life, what he’s thought all his life. A truth confirmed over and over.

“You should bite them back for making you,” it says with a beastly leer, talons wrapping around his shoulders and digging in, drawing blood in small beads, “Make them regret your existence. Teach them what it means to hurt. You want to. You need to. I’ll help you. I’ll make you strong, I’ll make you dangerous.”

There’s a certain desperation to the thing’s words.

“Maybe someday,” Saburota murmurs, stepping forwards - out of the creature’s embrace towards the sink, heedless of the shallow wounds left behind by the drag of its talons. He needs to brush his teeth and get to bed.

The bathroom darkens and the walls and floor wobble dangerously, like light broken on the edge of water, like matter passing through the planes of a prism and coming out wrong.

“You’re ready,” the creature wails, upset at his coy evasions of what needs to be done.

“No, I’m-“ he stammers. God, everything here looks so fake it makes him nauseous. He needs to- he needs to set himself straight. Needs to recalibrate.

”I’m not ripe yet,” Saburota says gently, cautiously - looking at the beast without turning, eyes dark like the sky on the night of a new moon.

–

Father’s saying something to him. He looks angry. He’s gesticulating like crazy.

Saburota can’t hear it. The sound’s muted. Pure silence.

No, not pure… there’s something whispering in his ear. It takes a moment for him to understand what it’s saying…

Saburota feels a smile spread out over his face at the promises of violence, bloodshed, nasty ugly retribution-

The world seems sharper somehow. Like it’s come into focus after being blurry and vague for his entire life.

Saburota looks at his hands. He’s got claws – mean, nasty looking things, the kind that maim and rip and rend. When did that happen?

The little whispering voice giggles in his ear. I’ll give you this. I’ll give you this if you just let me-

–

“I’ve been cultivating you for years,” the thing says, looking down at him from its full height. The creature is menacing, attention catching, terrifying. “You’d be nothing without me. You’d be small and powerless and pathetic.”

Its arms wrap around his shoulders covetously, possessively. The talons sink into the flesh of Saburota’s deltoids like a butcher’s knife sinks into a hunk of meat.

“You’re all mine,” the thing whispers, opening its maw to reveal row upon dizzying row of teeth arranged in a beautiful rosette. Saburota touches a tooth and pricks his finger.

Blood red. Drops on the floor. He smears them with the toe of his shoe and suddenly realises.

Oh, what a clever thing. Had him really going for a while.

“No, I’m not,” Saburota says, something in his voice dark but… whistful and dreamy. “You did nice this time, I’ll give you that. Too bad you’re so slow with it all,” he says, and reality shifts.

Well, the not-reality shifts. Saburota’s holding the thing – a squirming little creature with a long leathery tail, smaller than ever and…

And perfect for eating.

–

He’s not afraid anymore. Despite the thing’s attempts – this particular memory remains unchanged, remains his fully. So far.

There’s carnage all around – his family, the house staff – mutilated sacks of meat, strewn about carelessly, all carved up and bled out.

Saburota can taste it – the metallic tang of something raw clinging to his palate, the edges of his teeth.

He knows what he did. He knows how he did it. But… he’d been too excited, too in-the-moment about it. It’s all a red haze in hindsight.

“Well, this was easier than expected,” he says, all light and happy and unburdened.

“You finally did it,” Homare says as she watches him from the top of the stairs, her face a blank mask.

“You’re free now,” Saburota says with a wide grin, “This power could be yours too, Homare.”

It slips off his tongue like a well-oiled phrase. This isn’t the first time he’s said this.

“Why won’t you let me out, Saburota?” she says in someone else’s voice. Shadows cling to her, making her larger and darker than what she is. The beast is here again, messing with his mind and senses. “Why must you deny me so? You can’t hold me down forever. I will claw my way out.”

The house is dark and crawling with black shapes and bugs the size of rats. Saburota feels his mood sour. That’s not right, that’s not what she really said.

Homare’s walking down the stairs towards him, heedless of the gore she steps in, looking at him like she wants him to burst open like an over-tense bulla.

“Kill yourself, Saburota, you worthless fucking heap,” the thing says, even if it’s Homare’s lips that move, “Getting all cocky and full of yourself. You will regret it. I will make you regret it.”

Saburota smiles lazily, “You’re just throwing a tantrum because I’m stronger than you. Tsk-tsk. You’d think that demons had more class than that.”

Saburota flicks open the zippo in his hand, and the smell of buthane hits him above the wet smell of fresh guts. His hands are shaking, his heart is racing. There’s a cacophonous screaming in his head above it all.

“Let me out, Saburota,” the thing says through Homare’s lips, low and thunderous and so angry, “Let me out and let me in for real.”

Saburota flicks the wheel and sparks the flame, looking right into Homare’s eyes where he sees it looking at him.

He drops the zippo carelessly, ignoring the beast’s words. This – all of this is his.

And he’s going to burn it all down.

–

Saburota wakes with a jolt that has the water sloshing against the sides of the tub. He’d dozed off again.

The nightmarish pictures of his dream fizzle out into the subconscious part of his brain. The phantasms are creeping upwards again, seeking to dig their claws into his more recent memories.

He sighs tiredly, rubbing a palm over his face. It had taken him too long to notice. Next time the demon might get him for good. He rests a palm over his stomach where he feels it like a hot, familiar weight in his gut. So small, so stubborn, so bothersome.

Saburota can’t remember his childhood clearly anymore, not the way it really was. His recollections are all twisted and maimed, cut up and pasted together into tid-bit horror stories and fantastical exaggerations, much like the dream had been.

It comes with being a demon eater. There’s a certain cost, a sacrifice he has to make in the form of his memories and occasionally, his personality. One can only hold on to darkness for so long until it grabs back.

Saburota barely ever sleeps anymore. Whenever he dreams, the distortions get worse and feel more real.

Realistically, he knows there wasn’t a dead man lying on the table and singing at Homare’s tenth birthday party… he knows that his mother died in childbirth when she had her last pregnancy, that he’d never heard her voice and had only ever seen her in pictures… but he can remember these delusions so very vividly it’s kind of scary.

“Your brain’s rotting…” He tells himself in a low voice. Then, he chuckles,” Heh, who knows if what’s left is even you anymore…” He pauses, moving his hand through the water, watching it slosh against the sides of the tub.

He’s awake, sure, but he still feels like he’s dreaming, like this isn’t reality. Another chuckle, a little more self-deprecating, “Good thing that won’t matter soon enough.”

Saburota sinks lower into the water so that his nose just above the surface. The water’s lukewarm now, so it doesn’t seep into his bones and muscles the way he wishes it would.

He’ll get out in a minute and get dressed and do things, but for now he just… ruminates. On what he is. On what he’s done.

He doesn’t regret his choices, but… sometimes he wonders what life would be like if he was… more normal. If he’d never clashed with his family the way he had… if he’d just…

Well, whatever. Those thoughts don’t lead anywhere.

He’s made it this far – that’s the only thing that matters. He just needs to pull through and do his part in getting the phoenix for the Illuminati. He’s been planning it for years now, sowing doubt and trust in the right places, and it’s finally so close he can taste it.

That’s his purpose now. That’s what’s important. He has a goal and a purpose, and he is needed. With that much, he’s satisfied.