Perhaps it was shock, or maybe the aftereffects of the half a handle of Jack Daniel's that I'd downed immediately after, but as the last drop of blood made its final splat in the ever growing pool on the kitchen floor, all I could think was, Wow. That escalated quickly.

My parents lay in various piles around the room. I say various because I wasn't sure at this point what piece originally belonged to whom. Once the hacking and slashing started, it kind of became a free for all.

Fuck. Listen to me. I just cut up my parents and I'm talking about it like I ordered a meat n' three. There has to be something wrong in your head if you can do that, right? Of course, when your once loving but quite boring parents suddenly turn into head spinning, violent prone, demon zombie things, I guess all common sense goes the way of that iPod shuffle you begged to have because "it's going to be the next big thing, dammit!"

Am I getting ahead of myself? Sorry. Things are still a little fuzzy. Probably shock. Or the Jack Daniels. I may have already said that.

Oh, well.

The day started out innocently enough. I had left my apartment with my newest boyfriend Devon in a mad dash to get over to my parents' place. It was one of those "introduce new boyfriend to mom and dad" awkward visits that everyone dreads. My father was going to ask all those ridiculously embarrassing questions that make you want to hide in a dark corner and slit your wrists. It didn't matter how many times I said, "I'm almost thirty, Dad. I don't need you to look out for me, Dad." He would embarrass me anyway. I'm going to miss that.

Crap. Here come the waterworks. Need more whiskey. Where the hell did I put it? Oh… there's a bit of mom on it. I don't think I can go over there. Shit… Now what am I supposed to do? There are all these kitchen knives lying around. I could take that route. I wonder if I did if I would see my parents in hell. If that was even where they were, if that was even where those things who became my parents were from. My mind was slowly trying to rationalize what had happened, which meant the shock was probably wearing off. That was no bueno. Maybe if I just didn't look at the piece of scalp on the bottle…

I heard a noise and vaguely realized Devon was talking to me. He was covered in blood, and his face was even more pale than usual. Is that what I looked like? His mouth was moving but I didn't hear any sound coming out. It made him look like a fish. Ha… fish are funny.

"Quinn!" he shouted, shaking me. I couldn't figure out why he was yelling that. Oh, wait… that was my name. I tried to push his hand away but I couldn't raise my arm. That was new.

"Quinn, you have to get up," Devon said, firmly. "Come on, snap out of it. We have to go!"

"I killed my parents," I blurted. Devon was pressing a towel against my shoulder. Seemed like an odd thing to do.

"Those weren't your parents," he said.

"How do you know? You never met them before."

He was looking at me with wide eyes, and I realized I must have sounded like a crazy person. Is that what was happening? Was I going nuts? Did I hallucinate this entire thing?

Ow. Whatever Devon was doing to my shoulder hurt. I noticed that the towel in his hand was red with blood. I wanted to shrug, but it hurt, so I laughed. There was so much blood everywhere, it was hard to tell whose it was. Maybe we could turn it into a game? Guess the body part, folks, and win a brand spanking new psychosis.

"Quinn, you're going into shock." He glanced around the kitchen and grabbed two of the nearest knives, stuffing them into his belt so the handles rested against his torso. "We have to go." He put one of my arms around his shoulder and hoisted me up. I slipped on the blood and we both almost went crashing back down to the floor. I looked down at my shoes. They were new, and way more than I could afford. There was no way I was going to be able to return them now. And I was going to get blood all over the carpet. Mom would have been livid.

Devon was trying to make me walk, so I obeyed, mostly because I couldn't think of anything better to do. I quickly grabbed the bottle of Jack as he lead me through the gloppy piles of bloody mush and out the front door. The sun hit my face and that's when I lost it. I started screaming that I couldn't leave them in there alone; my family was back in the house and the demons were going to get them, get their souls. They were going to take everyone's souls, we had to stop them, we had to save my family!

Devon wrenched the passenger side door of his shitty Jeep Wrangler open and literally threw me inside. The dull ache in my shoulder was swiftly becoming a fiery pain down my arm as my body started coming out of its haze of numbness. No, no, I don't want to feel anything, I want to stay numb! Why is this happening!? Where did my parents go? Why was there so much blood, oh my God, all the blood!

I heard a strange high pitched noise in my ears and I realized that it was me, that I was screaming uncontrollably, as Devon peeled out of the driveway at break neck speed and took off away from the house, away from what was left of life. And I just kept screaming and screaming and screaming…

I don't know how long we drove or how long I kept screaming, but the next thing I knew it was dark, and I was staring wide-eyed out the passenger side window, seemingly mesmerized by the flashes of scenery that whizzed by. My hands were sitting limply in my lap, the blood dried and flakey. I glanced at Devon out of the corner of my eye. He was staring straight ahead, gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles.

"Where are we going?" My throat hurt. Probably from all the screaming.

"Dunno yet," Devon answered. "I saw more of those things when we were leaving." He gulped. "I think… I think it's happening everywhere, like some sort of Walking Dead shit."

"So… we're just driving?"

"You have a better idea?"

I didn't. I had absolutely no idea what was going on or what to do. All I knew was that one-minute my parents were fine, and the next they were something else, and I had murdered them. Pretty sure that's frowned upon. I'll probably end up going to prison.

"Those things… " I began. "Have you seen anything like that before?"

"No. Just in movies. But, they definitely weren't human."

No shit, Sherlock. Man… I definitely don't pick the brightest crayons in the box.

"Are you okay?"

I gave Devon a look that clearly said the question was insane. Was he serious? "No, I'm not fucking okay."

"It was just a question."

He was acting weird. I guess I was, too.

"We need to get out of town," he muttered, glancing in the rear view mirror.

I narrowed my eyes. He was acting really weird, even for someone who had just come over for a nice family dinner and almost ended up being dinner. Devon was not usually the take-charge kind of guy. And he was acting like he thought someone was following us.

Probably cops, my mind rationalized. You did kill your family after all.

My head pounded and my chest hurt. My shoulder was throbbing. I couldn't remember what I had done to it.

I wanted to sleep, to forget about everything, to wake up and have it all be a horrible dream. I leaned my forehead against the window and let the dark come.

Devon woke me up. We were at a gas station.

"Do you want any chips?"

Is this what it feels like to be in shock? Does everyone else seem normal when they really shouldn't be?

"No, I don't want any chips."

Devon shrugged. "Okay," he said, and walked off into the Mini Mart. I watched him go, blinking rapidly. Maybe this was his way of dealing with it, acting like nothing had changed. I was jealous of how calm he was. Maybe there was something wrong with me.

My shoulder still hurt. I should probably be doing something about it. Why hadn't we gone to the hospital? Should I go in after him? Get some medical supplies?

Did I even care?

The next thing I knew, Devon was bolting out of the store and back into the car. "There's another one," he said, turning the key and speeding off.

I spun around in time to see the Mini Mart manager come flying – literally flying – out the doors, his face contorted into some weird version of a cheap Halloween mask. He snarled at us as we sped off but didn't chase us. I thought that was weird.

Out of everything, I thought that was weird. Where the hell did I throw that bottle of Jack?

Devon was acting increasingly strange. He did eventually ask me if I wanted to go take care of my arm. We stole some stuff from Wal-Mart instead and bandaged it ourselves, too afraid that the store clerks would turn into monstrous demons that wanted to suck out our souls.

I kept wanting to listen to the radio, see if they were reporting on any of what was happening, but he seemed annoyed by it. I said we should go find my brother, tell him what happened, but he thought that was a bad idea.

"What if he turns into one of them, too?" he asked.

I guess I couldn't argue with that. But he was acting like he had prepped for some sort of apocalypse his whole life. Devon was a gamer and a slacker; he didn't even have a real job. Why was I even with him? He was just some way to pass the time at first, but now… he knew what had happened, what I had done. We were in this together now. That didn't make me feel any better.

And he kept twitching. It was getting on my nerves.

My parents didn't act strange before it happened. We were talking, laughing, I was making coffee, and then there was a weird breeze. I had asked my mom if she'd left the door open.

A crash. I turned to look into the living room, thinking my dad had dropped something, and they were just standing there, hair blowing around them like they were an invisible storm. I crossed the threshold from the kitchen to the living room and that's when my dad turned on me. His eyes were black, his face was gray and deformed, his hands had somehow grown razor sharp nails in a matter of seconds…

I closed my eyes. I refused to think about that. I couldn't. My brain just wasn't accepting it. If I thought about it too long, I would start laughing hysterically, and Devon would have to pull over and make me calm down.

We didn't like to stop. If we stopped, we would run into people. People – nice, normal people walking their dogs and pushing baby strollers – turned into spitting, murderous demons. That was the new way of life it seemed. We'd run into two more of the things since the gas station incident. Devon had bought a shotgun, even though the closest he'd ever come to shooting anything was playing Halo all day. He gave it to me, and I had to shoot them. Were these someone's parents, too?

In the end, it didn't matter. Whoever they were, they were gone. Just like my parents. And if we let them go, they would just try and kill people.

Just like my parents.

Devon was looking pale. I think the stress is getting to him. We'd been on the run, fighting the demons, for almost a month now. They were showing up with more frequency. I didn't know if that was because they were after us or if we just had the dumbest luck ever.

I had pushed everything that had happened away somewhere, locked it up, and then threw away the metaphorical key for good measure. It was the only way I could cope. I had found out that the old myths about holy water were pretty legit. I broke into a Catholic church one night and filled some canteens with the stuff. Devon didn't seem too keen on going; he kept watch at the car. I carried the holy water with me all the time. It burned the things when I threw it on them. Seeing them sizzle gave me some kind of sick satisfaction.

Devon was opposed to it. He thought we should just kill them and get it over with, but I wanted them to suffer. I'll admit it. Whatever these things were, they took my parents. They had probably taken my brother by now, too, along with who knew how many others.

They had to go. And they had to go all painful like. That was just the way it was.

We heard rumors from people about some guy that had a fancy book that was supposed to destroy them. The Necronomicon. It also sounded like it was what let them in to our world in the first place. Whoever this guy was, he didn't seem very smart.

Devon wasn't very interested on going to join up with Book of the Dead Guy. He wanted us to just stick to ourselves. He was getting more and more agitated. And he looked sick.

The stress was definitely getting to him. He needs to learn to let it out. He wasn't a fan of the hacking and slashing, like I was. I think that's his problem. He was still trying to rationalize everything. And I didn't think he'd been sleeping very well, or eating. He never ate with me. He always claimed he ate when I wasn't around, but we were always together, so I don't know how he was eating or what he was eating.

There was one thing he always made time for. At least the sex had definitely gotten better since this whole thing started. I guess it was that end of the world mentality. Never know if this shag could be your last, yadda yadda.

He'd never been this good before. It was almost like he was turning into a different person. But, wasn't I? Weren't we all? Some people, quite literally, were turning into something else on a daily, almost hourly basis.

I was changing, too, into something hard and unrecognizable. Maybe Devon wasn't acting strangely at all. Maybe it was just me, not wanting to deal with his or anyone else's shit anymore. And I couldn't understand why some people were changing and not us. It couldn't be a virus… we'd been around so many of them that one of us would have gotten sick by now. So, why were some people turning or being possessed or whatever, but not us? I wouldn't have exactly categorized myself as a good person.

Asking these questions just got Devon more aggravated. He had become more and more angry the last few days. I told him it was probably because he was hungry, and the look he gave me was… I dunno how to describe it without sounding like an excerpt from one of Stephanie Myers' so-called books. Too bad he doesn't look more like that Rob Pattinson kid. It would have made the drives more esthetically pleasing.

I couldn't figure out what was going on with him. I thought about ditching him a few times, but somehow I would always change my mind before I had even brought it up. The thought would just disappear out of my head.

I really wanted to go find this "Ash" guy. But when I would bring it up, Devon would somehow talk me out of that, too. At the time, all his arguments seemed to make sense, and then later I would think about them and have no idea why I was still there.

There was something going on, and I was going to find out. But first, I really need to put a few holes through this demon's chest. He's been snarling and drooling on me for a while now, and it's pissing me off. And I didn't know where Devon had gone off to. Maybe he was dead. That would solve a lot of my problems.

What did I do with that bottle of holy water?