Assumption Ch. 12

Chapter Twelve

Sleep didn't find me, but it wasn't due to racing thoughts or haunting imagery. That night I chose not to close my eyes and dream. Even though I hadn't gotten a decent night's rest in the last eight days, when I returned from being summoned that night, I was as wide awake and alert as if I had just spent a full night in bed. It was more than just the excitement brought on by my conversation with Ambree or the effect of my physical contact with her. Some instinct was telling me that I don't need sleep at all, and I wanted to trust it.

Instead, I sat on the couch, watching television, and analyzing the events of the last day during commercial breaks. Several times I found myself bored but not once drowsy.

When the sun came up, I was so full of energy I decided to take a walk around the block to burn some of it off and pass the time before work. Until that day, exploring outside my home beyond what was required for my livelihood had never been very appealing. Nature seemed to me to be nothing more than a repeating pattern. Take a tree for example. Every plant is unique but none of them are special. I could see exactly one in my entire life and have all the context I would ever need to understand any reference made to them. Animals aren't much different. There are ten thousand species of birds, all different in some way, but a bird is a bird. Just add a size and a color and that's about as much description as I would need.

But lately, I had been becoming more and more aware of what was going on around me. Trees were still trees, and birds were still birds, but their presence suddenly became more interesting, if not in appearance than in operation. A flock above me screamed about where they had just been, and a thousand fluttering leaves revealed their contents with the sound of their rattling. I didn't understand what it all meant or exactly where it was coming from, but I had the undeniable urge to immerse myself in it.

As I was returning to my apartment building, I stumbled but not because I tripped or lost my balance. A feeling of weightlessness came over me like I was standing in an elevator that had just begun to move. What came next was the most unsettling summoning yet.

The world froze for just an instant before it shattered and flew past me. Instinctively, I turned, looking to see where it went, but the image I had just stepped out of was already gone. I faced back to my original direction in time for a wall of fire to slam into me, and on the other side, the darkness was replaced by moving scenery.

I was in a car being driven down the highway.

The Matron, to my left, snapped her fingers. When I looked, I was rewarded with a view of the circle drawn on her palm and the numbing of my emotions.

"Pay attention. I can't wait around here forever. You will have ten minutes, and then I'm dismissing you whether you've done what you're supposed to or not, and if you didn't, there will be consequences."

There was only one way for me to answer. "How may I serve you?" I asked.

"You're going to pay a visit to an old friend. Do you remember my husband?"

I assumed she meant the man that came into the pool shed after I killed her lover. "Yes," I answered.

She ground her teeth. "Well, he just can't admit defeat. He knows he can't beat the murder charge, but he thinks he found a way to get back at me. It appears he's dedicating all of his resources to change his will and sue for divorce. He's trying to take everything from me, but he doesn't know that I didn't just hire some goon to frame him. I summoned a monster that can reach him anywhere."

The human me would need to overcome the urge to cast judgment on the selfish desires of the Matron by attempting to come up with reasons to explain why her husband might deserve what she was doing to him, but in my muted demon state, it wasn't necessary. Even if I took the time to consider it, none of it mattered. The only relevant detail was who was holding my leash. I would do as I was told.

"Do you remember how scared and pathetic you looked when we threatened to cut your balls off? That's what I want him to feel. Then, I want you to cut off his balls so he bleeds out in his cell." She became lost in her head for a moment and I watched a smirk develop across her lips as she pictured it. "No. Never mind. That's too slow. They might be able to save him if you do that. Kill him quickly, but try and make sure he is terrified first."

She slammed on the brakes and the car came to an abrupt stop. I had to catch the dashboard to steady myself.

"Eat this." The Matron reached out her hand to me. Between her thumb and first finger was a hair. It looked human and was just the right shade of brown to be her own.

I took it and put it into my mouth. Many times, I have tried not to swallow a hair that has somehow passed my lips, but that was my first attempt to let one in and I found it to be considerably harder. The hair did not want to go down my throat.

"Drink this," she said, handing me a flask.

I unscrewed the bottle and pressed it to my lips. Before my tongue even made contact with what was inside, I was overwhelmed with the sweetness of it.

Once I had a seal, the Matron reached over and tipped the bottom up. "I told you we don't have time."

The liquid poured down my throat almost faster than I could swallow and when it was empty, I searched my mouth for the hair but couldn't find it.

"Kill him. You have ten minutes." She pressed on my forehead and the scene from the car fell away into blackness.

I woke up, and I do mean woke up, lying on a thin mattress atop a steel-framed bed. The walls of the room I had been sent to were constructed of linen-colored cinderblock and the only exit was a large door crafted out of steel bars. I had never been in jail before, but the sight of a cell was unmistakable.

With large, strong hands that were not my own, I rubbed my eyes. Looking down, I confirmed that I was in someone else's body. This man was two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle wrapped in an orange jumpsuit.

I climbed out of bed and took a look around. The room was tiny, only ten feet by eight feet wide, so it didn't take long to locate my target. In the red-tinted cell, he was the green-tinted man reading a book on the bunk above where I had been sleeping.

"The nap didn't work, did it?" He asked me.

My first instinct was to look for a weapon, but I didn't know where a proper convict would keep his shank and I didn't have much time to search. Next, I considered simply pulling him off the bunk and beating him to death. This new body seemed fully capable, but that would create a lot of noise and I didn't want to draw any attention until I was sure my victim was beyond the help of modern medicine. There was no telling how long it would take the detention deputies to get into the cell with us and if they responded too quickly, they might be able to stop me before my work was done. I had to assume if they had tools capable of handling a riot, they must have something that could be effective even against a giant man possessed with the strength of a demon.

I watched the Matron's husband for a moment as I evaluated the situation, formulating a third plan.

He must have noticed the disorganized state I was in. "Hey, Danny. Are you okay? Is your head still pounding? Do you need me to call the guard?"

Crushing his windpipe seemed like the most effective option. Cutting off his airway would silence him before ultimately depriving him of the air he needed to live. I jumped up onto the bunk and grabbed for his throat.

My target had better reflexes than I would have guessed. Before I could take hold of his neck, he grabbed his pillow and shoved it under his chin. Even with larger-than-normal hands, it was hard to wrap them around it, but the job had only been made harder, not impossible. I squeezed with all my might, and the gurgling sound he emitted suggested that I was still succeeding in strangling him.

He pulled at my fingers, trying desperately to peel them off, but he was no match for me. "Danny, what the fuck are you doing, man?" He gasped with what I thought must have been the last of the air in his lungs.

It wasn't. His foot found my testicles and human weakness exploded from between my legs. The impact knocked the wind out of me, and I instinctively curled in on myself.

He slipped out of my hands and pushed himself back against the wall. With nowhere to go, he cowered there. I would have lunged at him again if it wasn't for what he said next. "Holy shit, it's you! You were outside the pool shed."

The shock of his recognition made me freeze in place.

"Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?" He asked.

I was more concerned with getting my own questions answered. "You saw me?" and more importantly, "You recognize me?" After all, I was possessing someone else's body.

"Yeah, I mean, yeah, man." He rubbed his throat as he spoke. "You look different, but those eyes. I saw you looking through the window. I told the cops about you. Is that what this is about? They can't identify you by what I told them. All I saw was those fucking eyes of yours. I couldn't even tell them what color you are. They thought I was crazy. What the hell are you?"

Between the ticking clock and the fact that I owed this man no explanation, the logical thing to do was to resume murdering him, but my master had clearly stated a preference that he should be terrified when he died. Knowing what I was would scare him more, or so I thought, and that compelled me to reveal my true nature to him. "I'm a demon. Your wife summoned me to frame you. Now, she's sent me here to kill you."

He didn't look remotely scared. Instead, he let out a sigh and lowered his shoulders, relaxing into the wall behind him. "You'd be surprised, but that explains a lot. Lately, and I mean the last couple of years, weird things have been happening. Every time I try to climb a ladder the steps at the top break. Heavy objects I walk under, fall, and if I had a dime for every time I went to a restaurant and got served undercooked meat." He looked down at the bed. "I knew she was getting into this occult stuff and I didn't believe any of it at the start, but there have just been so many coincidences. It even got to the point that I had to tell somebody about it. I asked them if they thought I was crazy. They thought I was crazy. I'm not crazy." He sucked in a deep breath. "I'd rather be crazy."

This man had a lot of information that probably would have been helpful to me, but I still had a strict time limit and no will to disobey the instructions I had been given. "I don't have much time," I told him

"You mean I don't have much time. Look, I'd be lying if I claimed to understand all of what's going on here, but I'm smart enough to know that it's not going to end well for me no matter what you do here. But you guys are tricky right? When you're done with this, I've got a job for you, man. Even if it costs me my immortal soul or whatever it is you want. I want you to fucking kill that bitch. Can you do that for me, at least?"

Still being a novice demon, I didn't know the rules. Despite Ambree's hopes, there was a good chance I would be a servant to the Matron forever, and even if I wasn't, I didn't know if I could accept a deal like that. If he was already dead, would killing his widow mean anything?

He gave up waiting for an answer. "Just get it over with, but remember, whatever a dead man has to give, it's all yours. I don't even care. I just want her to get what's coming to her." He tilted his head up and away, exposing his neck before tensing every muscle in his face to force his eyes closed. With his left hand, he waved me in.

I crawled towards him. Even without sight, he could feel my lumbering weight coming and flinched but didn't take any deliberate action to get away from me. My hands wrapped around his throat again, and without the pillow in place, my fingers laced over each other. As soon as I started to squeeze, I felt something pop. His eyes opened and he thrashed, either from instinct or out of a last-minute change of heart. It didn't matter. It was too late.

When he finally stilled, I climbed back down to the bottom bunk, curled up under the thin blanket, and closed my eyes. Despite the certainty that he would be blamed for the death of his cellmate, I wanted some continuity for Danny.

As soon as I was in position, a cloud of smoke poured off the top bunk towards me and forced its way into my lungs. This time the rush didn't catch me by surprise, I leaned into it, trying to measure just how much this would add to the foundation of demonic power that had already been built.

Suddenly, I screamed in rage but not because I wanted to. My demon form swelled around the piece of soul I had just inherited, but the body I was in was trying to reject it. I stood up, again not by my own decision, and threw myself against the wall. I was not alone. Danny was still there.

We bounced off the concrete together, but he reacted more quickly than I did, rearing back and slamming into the wall again, harder. I became dizzy as the world spun around me. Before I could figure out which way was up, I was watching the corner of a combination toilet and sink fly towards my head, although I knew the opposite was true. I fell, staring up at the ceiling in a daze.

Only seconds more passed before I heard the Matron whisper. Suddenly, I was outside again, walking towards my apartment building.

I thought briefly about Danny. The Matron took joy in sacrificing the lives of innocent bystanders to get what she wanted. I just hoped he didn't have much to lose. I know I didn't when she took mine.