-Prologue-
RESURRECTED
♪ Billie Eilish - Six Feet Under
Corrick’s Ford, West Virginia. 1861, July 13th. The day I died. Literally.
Something tells me you already know where this is going, so truth is, someone must be writing these lines you’re reading, right? Well yeah, you’ve guessed right. This is a fantasy story, you’d say. I’d reconsider.
It may be considered a fantasy story, but the only fantastical elements you’ll find in it, are two names, which you’re all so familiar with. Heaven and Hell. Oh yeah, I’ve written Hell with a capital H, because it is just as important as its counterpart.
And no, this time, it isn’t all about battles between angels and demons. The good guys going against the bad guys. It never was actually. There’s no bad or evil. There’s no chaos and order. Humans are foolish to believe such things exist.
There’s just balance. And balance can never be achieved without two opposing sides, can it?
I hope we’re on the same page now, and we can go on further.
I’ve got much to tell you, and I hope you’re ready to listen. Otherwise, we’re both wasting our time, and none of us should be trying to give much attention to each other. So, take your leave, if you aren’t ready for a spin and turn which will eventually lead to a tangled story. But if you’ve already taken in consideration the main reasons why should you say, which I’ve already pointed out above; yes, those were the ingredients to catch your attention. Be my guest. I’ll do my best not to bore you to death.
As I’ve mentioned before, I kind of died in 1861. But then, you may ask, how is he writing all this? Did he do this before his death? Well, yeah, I could have. But we’re in 2020, so no I didn’t.
Before we dig deeper, no. You’re not reading my journal. I don’t own such a thing, never have. You’re just taking a look, an eye behind the curtain, of what happened in the last 159 years of my, “2nd life”.
You see, when I died, I didn’t go to Heaven, nor to Hell. There weren’t any shining stairs leading to the kingdom of light, nor was there a pit of fire waiting to engulf me. There was nothing, to be honest. I’ve seen other people just staring at each other in the distance, stuck in the same colorless limbo. There wasn’t much sound there. The wind wasn’t blowing, no chirping birds or gunfire; just muffled sounds, made by those lost in this place, just like myself.
Imagine a video game. Your character dies, you’re sent to a loading screen in order to restore your last position where you previously were. While you wait, you see yourself stuck in an endless white plane of nothingness. Something like that anyhow. Not quite accurate. But close.
And as I stood there, not having any idea what I should do next; not even realizing by that point where I were or how I got there. Yes, I had no clue I was dead, struck by a tank’s projectile while I tried to defend a point that was already lost. But I didn’t actually care to recreate the moment, considering I was breathing again, only this time not on the battlefield, but in a totally different place.
Someone, or something reached out to me. I didn’t see anyone. But I heard their voices. They were vivid at first, almost inaudible. But as I listened closer and closer, trying to shut out everyone around me. I heard what they were saying.
“The Devils” themselves were inviting me to join them, in this big bad place every religious or non-religious individual knows about. The big red, horned, ugly motherfucker was speaking to me. Little, insignificant me.
Was this real? I didn’t know then. Hell, I didn’t even know if I was dreaming or not. But as their voices got closer and closer. I saw shapes taking form around me. He was speaking through them. Using them as beacons to relay his message. And on the bright side for us both, it managed to reach me.
I cannot really remember what happened after; but the last vague moment which I do remember; it was my transition. From a mere mortal, who died on the battlefield, to a full-fledged demon. A warrior of Hell. A messenger and bringer of doom. Someone who spreads chaos, fear, and death. Yeah, yeah. You hear and see those words in every book and church you read or go to. But, let me tell you the truth. Humans tend to have a wild imagination. And what they cannot see or touch, it baffles their minds. It makes them believe they can see the world which is unseen. It makes them see what they think they don’t want to see. And it makes them imagine things which aren’t really there. Where do you think angels and demons come from? Light vs Darkness? Good vs evil? Ever heard of them?
Yeah. All these things were made up four or five thousand years ago. Someone had too much time on his hands, and decided to sit down and write fictional stories. I am still surprised that back then, they even had something to write on, and the imagination to write with.
But anyhow. This is how, the Holy Scripture, aka the Bible came to being. Not that someone else couldn’t write it better. But let’s leave that to history. It should be the time by now to embrace the facts. The truth behind fictional stories. They aren’t real. But if believed in with strong passion, they can become a plague. And plagues do spread fast.
The Hell I’ve been taken to, and the Hell I’ve been living in for all these years, as a bad monster as I might get described as, doesn’t even compare to the stories humans tell their children to scare them off and teach them, that Lucifer is the big bad wolf in the fairytale.
Imagine, futureish Earth. Mix that with a little darkness, cold, and nightmarish creatures that roam it in unpopulated areas. There’s no sun, or at least not anymore. Something smaller, a White Dwarf had taken the big star’s place. And from what light and heat the planet gets from all that, isn’t fairly enough.
Is this a parallel dimension? No. It isn’t. It’s a copycat of the real solar system, minus the neighboring planets and the big red block of exploding hydrogen.
Who lives on this planet? Pretty much every supernatural thing that you cannot even think of. Ever heard of an ephreti? Probably. Ever saw one? Probably not. But all of this doesn’t matter. You know why? Because the big bad me, doesn’t live there anymore.
Someone managed to fuck up everything and send me spinning down the spiral of “you’re prepared for this, you should go”, and so, I’ve been stripped of my very own wings and sent through a magical portal back to the mortal world. With a mission.
That’s all good and glitter right? Well. NO. It isn’t. Taken from a supernatural creature who could fly, and do things no being could dream of, transformed into an invisible cloud of gas, doesn’t sound much does it?
Earth was again back in my grasp, not that I so much lunged for it. The only problem was that I wasn’t myself. Nothing was much of myself anymore honestly.
I had no physical form anymore, and the bigger problem was that I was about to die off, and eventually disappear into nothingness without a body to inhabit.
I had no intention of dying, but I had no intention of killing to get my chance either. Told you, I may have been a demon, but I wasn’t the bad guy here. I was just a traveler, lost on its path, left without a chance to survive in the middle of the desert.
Time to live? Probably a couple of days.
I wasn’t ready to die. Not yet. I had a mission to fulfill, and in order to do that, I had to stay alive, somehow one way or another.
§ Present day 2020 November 15th
A car was running down the main artery through heavy rain. There weren’t many other ones around it, but I could clearly see the blur that it was leaving behind. Like a comet through the dark sky.
There wasn’t anything special about it, exception the one who had been driving it for the past 20 minutes.
In very special cases, not that I ever had the chance nor the need to find one. A demon without a physical body, could sense a suitable vessel from thousands of miles away. They say it used to pulse, like a pinpointing location on a digital map. But it didn’t. Truth is, I just felt a keen attraction toward this guy, whom at this point was way too drunk to keep the car steady on the freeway for much longer.
As I told you before, I never had any intention of killing someone in order to recover my physical form and live again, but I’d never let opportunity pass me by. And in this case, a suitable vessel, probably on the brink of death. I couldn’t just let it pass by.
The only problem was, if he would have crashed the car and instantly pulverized his meat bag into pieces. Then…things might have changed. And I was praying to whatever dark gods ruled the realm of Edom, aka Hell, to help him die in a swift way, but not in a very bloody one. I still needed his suit, and I would have felt every inch of his body if I would have taken possession of it while completely trashed.
If you would have asked me about humans and the ways they usually die, like, let’s say a month ago. I wouldn’t have cared too much. I’ve killed humans before, but not without a purpose. But in this particular case I couldn’t touch him. I wasn’t allowed to.
One of the main rules of permanent possession, which I was planning on doing, was that a demon could attack, nor pre-possess its future vessel, in any way. In short, I was no allowed to influence the way my future meat suit would die. But I sure as hell wanted to see him do so.
You see, I might not have been able to influence his death, but I didn’t care much about their lives either. Once dead, they would go to Limbo, and from there. Wherever their train ticket would take them. Not my concern.
As the rain storm worsened, the car slowed down a bit, but without a sign of letting the gas pedal go.
I could hear his friends cheering and laughing along with him. They were all drunk, completely smashed, and it didn’t seem like they were realizing where and with how much speed they were going. Up until the moment I’ve desired so much for, came.
In a blink of an eye, the driver lost control of the wheels, and with a swift turn to the left and another to the right, the car jumped to the side and without a chance to recover from the velocity and its speed it crashed into a metallic fence, turned upside down a few times, shuffled through more fences, and with a screeching echo it slid down the main highway almost hitting a few cars on its way before stopping in a bloody pool mixed with gasoline.
The moment was nigh, but I couldn’t touch the vessel yet. So I got closer.
The trail of destruction the car had left was… let’s say. A bit messy. There were broken pieces of metal, glass all over the road, and two bodies lying on the wet asphalt behind me. One of them wasn’t breathing, but the other one seemed to still have a pulse, considering blood was literally gorging out from his leg and broken neck.
Turning toward the smashed vehicle, my full and undivided attention now focused on the one that I cared for, I started closing in more and more, up until I reached the car, and looked inside.
My vessel wasn’t inside anymore. But a trail of shining blood gave up his possible position as I followed it. People started to gather, freaked out by the accident. Police and paramedic sirens were already echoing in the distance, red and blue flashes of light dancing through the darkened skies in the distance.
A few of the ones already on site, tried to close in on the victims which were left lying on the road, but they had no help to offer. The one who was dead, was about to stay that way anyhow, and the one with the broken neck already wet and covered by its own blood would shortly follow.
Following the trail, I stopped. I could hear his breathe. He was still alive. But his faint heart beat gave his chances to stay alive longer away. He didn’t have much, and neither did I.
As I got closer to him, I could now clearly see his face. He wasn’t the average type of guy I had expected. Young, handsome, way better looking than I could ever be.
But as I stopped above him, he opened his eyes. And at that moment, an unseen force; it pushed me away. It was strong, stronger than anything I’ve ever felt before. It didn’t hurt me in anyway, since I wasn’t physically there, but I felt the energy repulsing my presence, trying to keep me away from the one lying on the ground bleeding. I couldn’t see much from the distance I was covering between of us, but his side seemed to have been pierced by something, and probably one of his organs was fatally damaged as well. Considering the blackish bruise which was now spreading on his stomach’s left side.
With his sky like piercing blue eyes, he glanced in my direction, for a moment making me believe he could actually see the gust of metaphysical amalgam I was made of. But he shortly shifted his gaze toward the sky, grimacing in pain as he covered his bleeding stomach, a few short bruises running down his arms and legs.
He struggled. That I could see. There weren’t any signs of fear, but he was in pain. A lot of pain. He seemed to be willing to actually stand, but as soon as his muscles tensed, readying himself to get up he released a cry of pain and shortly fell down back on the bed of grass. Blood gushing out through his fingers as he kept pressure over the wound.
A few people noticed his presence, and shortly after started running with their phones as flashlights toward us. There weren’t many, but behind them, the police followed by the paramedics managed to just arrive on site. Some of them rushed for the boys lying in the middle of the road, while a few others were directed toward my dying future vessel.
Glancing back at him, I could almost feel his pain as his crystal clear eyes filled up in tears. His body was giving in, but help was coming. And I couldn’t let them reach him. Not now. I had to have him; my only chance to get my life back and get on with my task stood lying in a bed of blood right in front of my eyes. And he was a few minutes away from slipping right through my fingers.
You might think that being a big bad powerful demon, I could move things with my mind or kill humans while only looking at them. Truth is, I would have been able to do all that, but not in this state. I was literally a cloud of magical invisible dust, in the shape of a human. I couldn’t do many things, but what I could do, was take possession of weak minded people. I couldn’t do it for a long period of time, but just a little at this very given moment would have been enough to shift the tide in my favor.
Considering everyone around me was scared, their hearts throbbing wildly in their chests, and with their minds running wild, not really thinking clearly out of panic, they were easy targets. All I had to do was focus, focus over someone, and I should have been able to take over, theoretically.
Right behind me. A couple. A young woman, probably in her twenties, and a guy, early thirties. He seemed to keep his firm stance, but she wasn’t as close as him. Her hands were trembling as she looked horrified at the guy I was trying to “protect” from getting help. She was scared and I could see her weakness of heart in her eyes.
I got closer, and closer, almost as close to feel her staggered breathing over my inexistent face. I looked in her eyes, and almost instantly the connection between us was made. She stopped breathing chaotically at first, her heart beat stabilized and as soon as my grasp upon her grew stronger, she stopped shaking.
Releasing the full length of my not so big reserve of energy, I took over her, shoving her consciousness in a dark corner of her mind, making her believe she had blacked out. I only had a short window to react before her mind, although weak, but still active, would have realized someone else took over the wheels. And so I did.
Now seeing the world through her eyes, I could see everyone around me. I felt the rain touching her skin. I felt the panic building up inside her, but it didn’t have any effect on me.
Two paramedics were rushing through the shocked and scared crowd and the multitude of cars which started to stop all around the blockade set up by the cops. They had to be stopped before reaching the wounded. Shoving her hands in her pockets she didn’t have much, besides her phone, and an army knife.
An army knife in a woman’s pockets? One in a million. But it was just enough to create a diversion. Grabbing the knife, she opened it, tilting the blade upwards, and with a swift lunge she cut her boyfriend’s arm, forcing him to cry out in surprise in instant pain as blood burst out through his skin.
“Lisa! WHAT THE FUCK?!” He yelled out.
I ignored him, the medics were still heading for their objective. But as soon as the first one got close enough, she raised the knife again and with a swift lower cut, she managed to wound his legs. He crashed to the ground, dropping his first aid kit, while the one behind him stopped for a brief moment, assessing the situation.
I felt two strong arms grabbing the woman behind our backs. She wasn’t strong enough to break the hold, and I wasn’t strong enough to give her strength, so without a second thought, I released her.
With a swift glance, I looked back at the one lying in his death bed. He was still alive, but barely. His eyes started to become glassy, and his breathe although still present became staggered and slow. He made an expression, which forced me to stop for a moment.
Something in his eyes, and how he looked at the blackened skies, it made me feel something…. Somehow, I felt sorry. Not because I hurt the paramedic who tried to reach him, but for his death. Something inside of me, which in this case wasn’t much, felt something for him. That tiny and yet significant side felt remorse, and I almost felt sorry for wanting him dead.
But as soon as I heard footsteps hurrying behind me, I turned around and saw the other medic running toward us.
I didn’t have anyone around me close enough to possess, nor the time to do so. I couldn’t stop him from reaching my vessel, and I couldn’t possess the wounded either, for some reason I still couldn’t figure out. I had to do something, and I had to do it faster or I’d risk losing my only chance at life that I had left.
He burst through my inexistent self in a hurry, and I could literally see my life shattering into pieces as he neared the dying boy lying in front of him.
I’d risk losing my only chance at life, by doing something I’d never considered doing, but I had to take whatever options I had left. And they weren’t many. There was only one actually.
Relocating myself in front of the dying human, I used my last ounces of energy to push the medic aside. His body was shoved at a considerable distance, far enough from us to not be able to get up in time to give any help. He crashed down hitting his head, but didn’t fell unconscious, although he couldn’t grasp reality of what had happened with him.
And by the time he managed to get up, I felt a gust of wind rushing through me. And I knew I managed to fulfill my objective.
As I turned around, the lifeless gaze of the boy greeted me. His eyes, now turned grey were still staring at the clouds, but he was no longer breathing. His hand had also released the pressure he kept over his wound, and the blood which until now kept gushing out, started to slow down. His face became pale, and his lips turned purple.
I had fulfilled whatever crazy goal I’ve set. I’ve managed to kill the one lying lifeless at my feet, but I wasn’t sure if I was still able to do what I had planned to do. I felt weaker than ever, almost ready to disappear into nothingness. The force of expulsion which lingered around the boy had disappeared but I couldn’t feel any connection between his body and my astral form.
A few hours passed by, and by the time they’ve managed to confirm the death of two individuals, I still couldn’t do anything. I just stood there, absentmindedly, watching as my “victim’s” parents cried their hearts out watching their son being taken away by the paramedics to be driven to the morgue. It seemed one of his friends, managed to survive the accident; they managed to get to him fast enough in order to stabilize and transport him to the nearest hospital.
Not that it mattered anyway.
I followed them. What else I could do. I watched them cut his wound up, and pull out a piece of metal stuck inside him. I watched them stitch him back together and shove his lifeless corpse inside a refrigerator, tagging him for release for the next day.
Midnight passed, and I could feel myself slowly wasting away. I didn’t have much time left, and I was completely drained. I didn’t have anywhere to go to replenish my already wasted reserves of energy, but as I stood there, I heard footsteps outside the refrigerator.
Stopping in the middle of the large room. There he was. The boy, whom I managed to kill, now standing in his ghastly form. He was staring at his body. His eyes were emotionless, and he didn’t say a word. He continued staring at himself for a couple more minutes, up until when, we both saw a beautiful girl appearing out of nowhere. She was dressed in black simple clothing, and as soon as she appeared the two seemed to have known each other for a lifetime.
“It’s time to go love. Come, I am here to take you home.” She said reaching out to him.
A reaper. She was a reaper, disguised as probably someone he used to know.
“Katelin?” I heard his voice for the first time. It echoed through the metaphysical room. It was deep and strong, manly at its most. But beautiful.
“Yes, love. Come on. We have to go. They are waiting for you.”
It seemed not even a reaper could see through the veil of its own plane of existence. Since I was literally standing a few meters apart from them both.
And as soon as he finally grabbed her hand, they disappeared, leaving me alone once again. And then something happened. The pull, the strange feeling I had when I first caught trace of this young man; that weird energy entanglement returned.
I could feel his body, empty by the soul, calling out for me. It felt like a warm welcome, something I had long waited for.
And as I stopped above it, defying any physical wall the refrigerator had made out of. I touched his face.
I couldn’t see, nor feel much, but I felt my inexistent state disappearing like a thousand strikes of lighting and in a matter of moments it all turned to black. But then something unusual and something I hadn’t felt for a long time happened.
A strong ache around my stomach made me jolt. I could feel the freezing cold air around me, but I couldn’t open my eyes to see.
And then it clicked. The extreme cold, the unbearable pain which struck through my body at first. I was inside of his lifeless corpse. I’ve managed to take over his meat suit, and I was now… him.
I didn’t know how to feel. At first a rush of excitement flashed through my mind, but then I realized I had managed to possess a really wounded vessel, and if that wasn’t enough, I had used my last reserve of energy to cast the spirit aside, and shove the paramedic, reaching out through two metaphysical worlds at once.
Which only meant one thing. I was now…him. I completed that step. But the bigger problem was that, I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to leave this vessel ever again, or be doomed to die along with it . . .
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