Please review; I need the encouragement to get past this writer's block. Plus, I answer all reviews at my blog, and who doesn't love seeing their (screen)name in print? As always, I do not own the boys, but OH, I wish I did.
I never thought it could happen.
All my life, I never would have thought that I would do anything like it. One thing that Dad taught me is that you never raise a hand to a woman; not unless they're playing Holiday Inn to a demon or something, anyway. But I did.
Her skin was so soft. I ran my hand across the inside of her bicep, traced the muscles, teased the silky whiteness of her flesh. I could see the fear in her eyes. She begged me not to hurt her. But I did it anyway.
I was supposed to protect humans. It was what I was raised for, what I lived my whole life for.
But hell changes things.
My first day, I watched as a demon reached into my chest and came out bloody-fisted. I watched him take a bite of my still-beating heart, and I felt his teeth tearing and grinding. I saw the gore pouring down his face as he tasted my blood. How can that not change you?
I relived every wound I've ever gotten, all at once. Every broken bone, every gunshot, every stabbing; hell, every stubbed toe. All at once, my body remembered those pains, and felt them all again simultaneously. I couldn't stop myself from screaming.
It was constant. Fear, panic, sadness, pain, torture, screaming. It never ended, not for a second. In the moments that their claws weren't on me, in me, I had to listen to others' screams, see others' torment.
They tore a woman limb from limb right in front of me. The entire time, she stared into my eyes, screaming. She looked like mom. As if they hadn't done enough, they set her afire. I felt the searing pain of the flames, took the smoke from her flesh into my own lungs. Her terror choked me like a hand on my throat, and I could hear her skin crackle and her flesh melt. Fat and water poured from her fingertips. And still, she didn't die.
They taunted me with every doubt, every fear, I've ever had.
They threatened to take Sam's soul, to do to Sam what they're doing to me. They said that they'd make me watch, make me listen to his scream. And I believed them.
The worst thing of all was the knowledge that this was my eternity. There was no escaping this. There would be no end.
I know now how human souls become twisted and corrupted, become demons. It turns into your only choice, the only way to stop your pain. And it doesn't matter how strong you are, or how determined you are, because they will break you. They'll use pain, they'll use fear, they'll use shame, they'll use every tool they have until you're right on the edge. Then they break you, make you take that first step across the line. And you become what you've despised.
I never thought I would. But I did.
