Bleeding Me
Author's Note 1: Bleeding Me is a revamp (ha ha) of Nobody Wants to Be Lonely,which I do not plan on continuing. I will, however, keep it posted on this site.
Author's Note 2: This portion of the story (The Prologue) was originally intended to be about 2-3 pages. I put pen to paper and 21 pages later... The Prologue is posted in three parts simply because I didn't think anyone could sit through one LONG page of it. Hopefully, more of this story will be posted... As soon as I write it... ^__^
Warning: Contains male/male interactions with an underage character (he's fifteen, but I had to put it in there)
Prologue
"There's a demon in the basement of the church!"
That's what Frankie had told Kevin earlier that afternoon. While the two of them were in the boys' bathroom during sixth period History class. Sharing a pack of cigarettes Frankie had "borrowed" from his older brother.
Having reached the peak of cynicism at the ripe age of fifteen, Kevin's immediate response was, "Bullshit."
Kevin knew about demons. His whole family was a bunch of goddamn demons. Demons dressed in their Sunday's best.
"It's true!" Frankie insisted.
He was always the excitable sort, Kevin thought. A constant diet of sugar and caffeine saw to that. Frankie's non-existent lips puckered around his cigarette, reminding Kevin of a Chihuahua. Eyes bulging out, brow hair plastered to his head with two heaping handfuls of gel, and the never-ending yapping. However, he was Kevin's only reliable source for cigarettes, so he had to work with what he had.
Blowing smoke out of the window, Frankie continued, "Jonas saw it himself, Nash. Wrapped in chains and everything!"
Kevin took a long drag, drawing the smoke into his lungs. At the rate he was going, he'd probably be dead by his thirtieth birthday. Not that he had anything wonderful planned in the meantime. His To Do list consisted of one thing: Getting the Hell Out. He was bidding his time until his eighteenth birthday. "Jonas sniffs White-Out, Frankie. Not exactly my idea of a reliable source."
"But I heard things, Nash." Frankie always referred to Kevin by his last name. Five months his senior and already pushing the six-foot mark, Frankie insisted on showing Kevin respect. Whether the older boy wanted it or not. "Awful moaning and groaning. Coming from the basement. Up through the vents."
"Probably somebody gettin' lucky." Kevin flicked his cigarette butt into the toilet. "The only demons are the ones we create."
"Wow, Nash… That's deep." Mimicking Kevin's actions, Frankie disposed of his cigarette and flushed the toilet.
With his back turned, he couldn't see Kevin rolling his eyes. There were worse things out there than imaginary demons. Much worse. Everyone knew Francis K. Winslow was as gullible as the day was long. He swallowed any story you fed him, right down to the dumbest detail. If Kevin told him there were lizards in the sewers that could climb up the pipes, into people's toilets, and bite their balls off when they sat down, Frankie would never shit again. The boy needed to toughen up or he'd never survive high school.
Frankie's mouth kept right on running as the bell sounded to end the period. "Me and Jonas are sneaking down there tonight. I wanna see it for myself."
No, you don't, thought Kevin. You wanna sit at home and watch the Flintstones or the Jetsons or something just as childish. But you gotta go or else you'll be called a chicken shit. Which you are.
Instead, what he said was, "I'll come, too." Not because he didn't believe in demons. A small part of him hoped human beings weren't to blame for all the evil in the world. A supernatural force had to be behind some of it. But the odds of those hypocrites stumbling across an honest-to-goodness demon were highly unlikely. Most likely all Frankie had heard was some drunk sleeping off a bender in the basement.
That was how he'd wound up standing outside the church on a Wednesday afternoon with Frankie the Chihuahua and Jonas, the boy with a constant case of the sniffles.
Jonas was seventeen years old and always about two shaky steps from rehab. He would snort anything he could get his hands on. Magic marker, spray paint, cold tablets. He'd do a line of pixie stick dust if he thought it could get him high.
Jonas came from a long line of users. His father was a not-so-secret alcoholic, just like his father before him. And Jonas' mother was on just about every pharmaceutical-grade narcotic known to man. Even on her "good" days, she couldn't name all of her children.
"I saw 'em being him… it… down myself," sniffed Jonas. His nose was as red as a fire engine. "Huge fucking thing. With hands so big, it could crush cantaloupes!"
I'll give you fifteen bucks to spell "cantaloupe", thought Kevin. Jonas had burned through so many brain cells, the school board was probably promoting him through the grades just so they could be rid of him by his eighteenth birthday. Thus turning him into someone else's problem.
Frankie shivered. Whether it was from the late afternoon chill or from fright, Kevin couldn't tell. "Did it have claws?" he asked, meekly. No doubt his imagination was working overtime, filling in the gaps of Jonas' description.
"Didn't see no claws," Jonas replied. "But they had it wrapped up in chains! And smoke was coming off his skin where the metal touched. Like steam from a kettle."
It was hard for Kevin to believe that any metal would hurt a demon. They danced around in hellfire. And, if he believed every word his parents told him – which he didn't – demons tended to rip human flesh right off the bone. Wrapping it in chains should be like wrapping a T-Rex in toilet paper. It would rip the crap off in under a minute before ripping their throats out.
"Unless it was silver," Kevin thought aloud.
"What?" the other boys asked, in unison. They had been looking up at the church like it was about to sprout legs and chase them all the way home.
Kevin completed his thought. "Silver hurts werewolves. In the movies, at least."
"This ain't a movie, Kevin," chided Jonas. "And that ain't no werewolf."
Jonas may have been older than Kevin, but all his vices had left him thin as a rake and pale as the moon. It wouldn't take much for Kevin to break his nose.
Kevin sneered, "I know this isn't a movie. I'm not a mental case. But I figured, logically speaking, that werewolves and demons were kinda similar. Both damned or cursed or whatever. That's assuming logic even has a say in the matter."
"What I don't get," Frankie stated, chewing his thumbnail, "is why they're keeping him around. Why not just destroy it?"
Because they're adults and they think they know everything even when they can't tell a schoolhouse from an outhouse.
Kevin turned to Frankie. "Do you really think they know how to get rid of it?"
"Can't they just… send it back?"
"It's not like they got it at Sears!" scoffed Kevin.
Jonas started up the church steps. "You two knuckle-heads wanna see it or not? We haven't got all day. They said it wakes up once the sun goes down."
Frankie hustled after him with Kevin following at a more sedate pace. Despite what Jonas had said, there was no point rushing things. Best to think things through instead of running in like a couple of idiots with their dicks swinging in the breeze.
The silence amplified every noise they made. The hinges of the church doors squealed in protest as they snuck inside. The patter of their sneaker-clad feet along the corridor rebounded against the walls and ceiling. Announcing their presence as if they were the three Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The fourth having to stay at home to work on his algebra. Frankie knocked over a stand of pamphlets. The resulting boom nearly scared the piss out of him.
"Damn it, Frankie," Jonas whispered. "You wanna get us fucking killed?" He smacked Frankie upside the head. "You wanna get us fucking murdered?!"
Clutching his head, Frankie whimpered enough "I'm sorry"s to get him forgiven for every bad thing he had ever done. Including acts he had merely thought about, but never went through with.
Kevin reluctantly rose to Frankie's defense. "You said this so-called demon doesn't wake up until sun down. Why are you making such a fuss? We still got another hour til then."
"Guards, dumbass," Jonas replied. "Don't you think they got people guarding it? Use your brain for once!"
I couldn't use your brain to wash my ass, Kevin thought. There's not enough left to make a loufa.
Fed up, Kevin growled, "What 'they'? We haven't seen anyone since we got here."
"Just because we haven't seen them doesn't mean they aren't here."
"Jonas, your bread ain't baked," Kevin said. "All this talk about 'they' and 'them' makes you sound like a damn lunatic. Maybe we should call the funny farm and have you picked up!"
Jonas balled his hands into fits. "I know what I saw, man. I ain't no fuckin' loony."
Brave but stupid Frankie placed himself between the two boys. "Come on, guys! Don't do this. Not here, anyway. Not in the church."
Seeing Frankie more shaken up than usual, they called a truce.
At the end of the hall was a door. Jonas motioned for them to stay silent as they approached it.
Too full of nervous energy, Frankie squeaked, "It's locked, isn't it? They wouldn't just leave the door open, would they?"
Again with the "they", thought Kevin.
Irritated, Jonas grumbled, "I swiped the key from the office and put a piece of tape on the door so it wouldn't lock itself once I closed it."
"You stole from the church?" gasped Frankie.
"Cool it, dude," Kevin said, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder. "It wasn't from the collection plate. Don't pop a blood vessel."
Jonas turned on them. "You two need to get your shit together 'cause this is the real deal."
As promised, the door was unlocked. The stairway leading down to the basement didn't look any different to Kevin. He thought it would somehow have become warped by the demon's malevolent influence. The steps were a light maple. Not charred, not blackened. The white walls remained unmarred. Brightly-colored flyers advertised rummage sales and a reminder to set the clocks back for daylight savings. All completely normal.
Frankie followed Jonas down, with Kevin bringing up the rear. Boxes of various sizes were stacked all around. A carousel of folding chairs took up one whole side of the basement. No foul odor permeated the place. Just dust and mildew and other ordinary underground smells. A spider had spun its web in one of the corners of the ceiling. Completely oblivious to the denizen of Hell occupying the nearby space.
Kevin was about to call Jonas out on his lunacy again when they came to a door marked Boiler Room.
"Here," whispered Jonas.
Kevin was incredulous. "The boiler room?"
"Is it locked?" Frankie squeaked. The tone of his voice implied he hoped it was.
Jonas sneered, "Why would they lock it? The thing can't get out." He placed his ear against the door, listening. After a few seconds, he pulled away. "Don't hear anybody." He placed his hand on the doorknob.
Frankie slapped his hand over Jonas', preventing him from turning the knob. "Jonas, I…" He sputtered to a stop. He was lost for words. His round eyes landed on Kevin, pleading for assistance. For an intervention.
No one really wants to see a demon, thought Kevin. And anyone that says otherwise shouldn't be allowed out in the world.
"You wait here," Kevin ordered Frankie, much to the smaller boy's relief. "Guard our backs and let us know if anybody's coming."
Thrilled with having a purpose that did not involve coming face-to-face with a demon, Frankie nodded. "Will do, Nash. I'll knock three times if I hear voices or footsteps or anything."
With Frankie stationed at their rear, Jonas and Kevin entered the boiler room.
The first thing Kevin noticed were the boards nailed over the small windows near the ceiling. Closing the door behind themselves would plunge them into absolute darkness.
"There's a light switch," Jonas pointed out. "On the wall, by the door."
Grateful, Kevin flipped the switch. "Fuck…"
"What?" cried Frankie from the open doorway. "What?"
A single light bulb hung from the ceiling, flickering at first before streaming its lonely little light on the man-shaped thing in the middle of the room. At least, Kevin thought it was a man. He'd never seen a person so massive. Even at rest, the muscles in the man's arms were flexed, large and well-defined. Jonas hadn't been kidding about the size of its hands. If it managed to get those things around a person's throat, it would be a quick ending. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred bucks.
Jonas smiled smugly. "Still think I'm a loony?"
Cautiously, Kevin approached the seated figure. Just as Jonas had described, chains wrapped around its torso and legs. The flesh appeared red and sore in the places it made contact with the metal. The flimsiness of the chains puzzled Kevin. Each link was about two inches long and couldn't have been more than a quarter of an inch thick. A super-strong demon should have been able to easily break free. Kevin used a thicker chain to tie up his bike.
Fingers trembling, Kevin snatched away the cloth sack covering its head. A wave of dark curls fell free, covering its face.
"No horns," he murmured.
"What?" whispered Jonas.
Kevin inched closer, first examining the face, then the head. "It doesn't have any horns." Aside from a few scorch marks on the right cheek, its face was unblemished. The hair on its hair matched its neatly trimmed beard and mustache. A color much closer to bronze than brown. Its hair hung down past its shoulders.
Jonas spat into the corner. "What difference does it make of its got horns or not? Ain't got a tail either, as far as I can tell."
"What self-respecting demon doesn't have horns?" Kevin inquired, mainly to himself.
For a second, he thought he spied a mischievous smirk flash across its lips. He immediately dismissed the notion, attributing the false sighting to a trick of the light.
It wasn't ugly, Kevin concluded. No sores. No warts. No boils. He'd seen rubber Halloween masks more terrifying. Lacking horns or any other visible signs of its wicked nature, it could easily pass for a human. Then again, he knew plenty of humans with rotten insides. His fingers graced the scorch marks on its cheek, no doubt caused by contact with the chains. The skin was so pale, it seemed to glow in the light bulbs meager light. And cold, he noted. Like it was sucking the warmth of his fingers.
Kevin's eyes traveled down to its mouth, all pink and full and perhaps still smirking. A sudden desire flared within him, setting his heart to pounding. A desire to touch those lips with his own. To be in intimate contact with something that wore a human skin, but apparently was not of his world. Nothing sexual, he assured himself. Just an experiment. Just to find out if it would burn.
Three knocks sounded on the door. The signal that the coast was no longer clear.
"Let's make tracks!" hissed Jonas. He squeezed out of the room before the door was fully open.
Kevin's feet remained fixed to the spot. Whatever it was, he decided, he couldn't leave it. If it was evil, then so be it. Couldn't be worse than the evil already out there.
Tugging at the chains with all his might, he was disappointed to find they only gave an inch or two. Two padlocks held them in place. What he needed was a bolt-cutter or a hacksaw.
"Frankie!" Kevin called. Frantic, his eyes searched the sparse room, finding nothing useful. "You still out there, Frankie?"
The response he got was a blow to the back of his head, knocking Kevin off his feet. His face met the floor with a teeth-jarring smack.
