Constance opened the door to her grandson's bedroom to wake him up for school, and screamed at what she saw.
There was a grown man sleeping on her boy's bed. Her first impulse was to scream (which she did) and maybe call the police as well, but her instincts told her this wasn't a stranger, this was her grandson, and that frightened her even more. It was unholy.
Michael was dreaming, and in his dream both God and the Devil where standing on each side of him, reaching out their hands, wanting him to make a choice. He reached out to God by instinct, it was such an obvious choice to him. Who would choose the Devil? But as he reached out, God took a step back, shook His head and disappeared. That's when he felt a burning hand around his throat, choking him and pulling him into the darkness. His grandmother's scream echoed through the dream, pulling him towards consciousness and letting him breathe again.
He opened his eyes slowly, the memory of the dream still fresh in his mind as he wondered in his sleepy state about what it could mean. Turning his head, he saw grandmother Constance at the door, but the look on her face made him frown. Confused he sat up and looked down at his body... it wasn't his body. Or so he thought. Panicked, he got up and ran to the bathroom, taking a good look in the mirror. He looked to be at least 19 years old, which was crazy because he had just turned 8 last month. In an attempt to prove to himself that he wasn't still dreaming, he slapped himself hard across the face. He was definitely awake.
Do I have to be an adult now and do adult things? Am I gonna have to get a job? Is grandma going to hate me now?!
His thoughts at this moment where still those of a confused 8 year old mind, his body had grown but his mind hadn't. Trembling, he came out of the bathroom and knelt in front of his grandma. He never let her see him cry, but this time he made no attempt to hide it.
"Grandma... what's happening to me?", he asked her between sobs, holding onto her skirt.
Constance didn't know what was more shocking, his sudden growth, or his sudden tears. She hadn't hugged him in a while now, but now she felt she had to. And so she too knelt down and wrapped her arms around him, letting her own repressed tears flow. "I don't know, son... I don't know."
Michael spent the rest of that day in his room with the door locked, he refused to eat or drink anything all day. He spend half an hour naked in front of the mirror, taking in his new appearance, his new body. It felt almost inappropriate to be looking at himself, he had never seen a naked man before and it was still so difficult to see his reflection and accept that it was in fact him. Afterwards, he dressed himself again and sat by the window, looking at the grey cloudy sky as the rain fell softly from the cotton-like clouds. Watching the sky used to give him such a sense of peace, of warmth, as if a divine presence embraced him and comforted him, it drove even the shadow away... but now the sky made him feel nothing but abandonment and coldness. The shadow stood close to him, but not close enough to touch him, as he started to cry, and moved a little closer when his silent tears turned into desperate sobs.
It took two hours for him to stop crying and for his eyes to dry. He was hungry, but couldn't bear to face his grandma yet, before he could even open the door he needed to find some sense of normalcy, something that could take his mind away from all the messed up things that happened in his life. With slow, weak movements, he turned his videogame console on and grabbed a controller, playing almost mindlessly in an attempt to ignore real life for at least a little while. Then a knock on his door was heard, the door handle moved like someone tried to open the door, then he heard whispers, quick steps going down the hallway and then returning seconds latter, the sound of a key turning and his door finally opening. He had forgotten his grandmother had a copy of the key... But she wasn't standing there alone, she had a priest with her. It dawned on him that she thought he was evil or possessed.
Maybe I really am...
The priest whispered something to her and entered the room, closing the door behind him, leaving him alone with the boy. Shy and a little fearful, Michael dropped the controller and moved away from the priest, bringing his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them, the way the priest watched him was unnerving to say the least. The man then opened a book and grabbed holy water, throwing it on Michael who had no reaction except for blinking when a drop of water fell too close to his eye.
Explaining the demon wasn't inside him, that it was an evil presence that followed him was useless, the priest didn't believe it. Anything he tried to say was interpreted by the priest as the demon trying to trick him, and so the exorcism ultimately failed. Frustrated, the priest grabbed Michael by the shoulders and slapped him across the face a couple of times, yelling in his face for the demon to come out and face the word of God. This scared Michael. Here he was, an 8 year old, in his bed, being shaken and slapped by a complete stranger yelling things to his face. He panicked, naturally, and pushed the priest away, screamed for his grandma and ran to the door only to find it was locked from the outside.
Did she really lock me in here with him?!
The priest went after him, determined to exorcise him no matter what. Michael felt someone grab his hand and thought it was the priest, but when he looked down there was nothing there, the now familiar homicidal impulse ignited in his chest as he turned around to face the priest. With a split second of hesitation, Michael attacked him.
With the priest now dead, he felt himself being guided by the hand towards his videogame, and with his mind in a daze he picked up the controller and resumed playing. He didn't register the look on his grandmother's face as she opened the door at last, having heard the priest scream, he just looked at her and smiled, a non-genuine smile that felt as though someone was pulling on the corners of his mouth to force him to smile. All that went through his head as saw her, was the sad realization that, if she came quickly for the priest's screams, but not for his own, then she no longer loved him or cared about him. The shadow didn't let go of him this time, influencing and manipulating him throughout the rest of the day, keeping his mind in a dreamlike state from which he couldn't escape.
When the shadow finally let go of him, he was on top of someone, his hands firmly around her neck choking her to death. His eyes widened as he recognized who it was.
"...Grandma?!"
His eyes filled with tears as that very familiar guilty crashed upon him like a tidal wave and he got away from her. No amount of apologies and attempts at explaining it as sleepwalking (something not even he believed in at this point) would make her forgive him and he knew it. The realization that he destroyed her love for him without chance of recovery was overwhelming, and the hatred he felt for himself at that moment couldn't compare to anything he had ever felt before. In defeat and knowing nothing would fix this situation, he asked her for a glass of water as if nothing happened, and left the room.
He never grabbed that glass of water, though, he went straight to his bedroom, closed the door, took the sheets from the bed and made a makeshit noose that he tied to the ceiling fan. With an uncontrollable flow of tears falling down his cheeks, he put it around his neck and kicked the chair away, hanging and contorting his body as the effects of suffocation started to get to him, but just as he thought he would finally leave this cursed life, he suddenly fell to the floor. Gasping and coughing, he looked up to see the sheet was cut, by whom he would never know, but it only served to make him feel even worse. His life was so cursed he couldn't even die in peace without everything going wrong.
He sobbed throughout the rest of the night until the sunrise. Sometimes he hated being such a sensitive child, he cried so easily it was ridiculous, things affected him more deeply than what is considered normal. When the first ray of sunlight touched his face he got up from the floor, removed the failed noose from his neck, and walked outside, going to sit under that same tree where he sat years ago, he wasn't crying this time around though, nor did he look up to the sky. The sun light didn't feel like a warm embrace anymore, it felt like he was burning. God had truly abandoned him.
Constance too had been crying the whole night, her love for him was gone at this point, only the fear and sadness remained, as well as a profound sense of failure. It so happens that she sat by the window as he sat under the tree, she saw him from her window, with his head lowered as if he felt horrible, she also heard his sobs during the night, heard his loud gasps for air, and concluded that he tried to hang himself. Surprisingly, though, she didn't feel sad for it. In truth, she didn't know what to feel anymore. And as she watched him under that tree from her window, she could swear the sunlight made it look like he had wings.