a/n: This chapter is a bit dark. Content warnings here for self harm, school shootings, and sexual abuse.

The gray ghost town reminded Michael of the old black and white Westerns that Grandma used to show him on TV. The road between the two rows of uniformly empty buildings was unpaved, dusty and wide. He kept waiting for someone or something to pop out and torment him and grew agitated when nothing did. Even torment, Michael thought, would be better than nothingness.

"Fucking fine," he finally muttered, picking a rock up from the center of the dirt road, "I'll do this the hard way..."

Michael used the rock to draw a large circle around himself, then filled it in with lines to make an inverted pentagram. He collapsed to his knees in the center, realizing how hot and dry this gray place was. All the dust was irritating him, making his throat hurt.

"Father!" he called to the nothingness, hearing his own voice echo through the empty, hollow streets. "Father, I want to serve you! But you have to tell me what you want me to do!" Michael picked up a particularly sharp rock and pulled his sleeve up, digging the rock into his arm for a blood offering. But even when it did break the skin, his own flesh taunted him by closing up immediately. Michael threw the sharp rock in frustration.

"Please!" he called hoarsly into the void. "Please, just tell me something, anything, and I'll do it! Anything!" He crumpled forward, hugging himself. "Please..."

After some amount of time the lamb appeared. It looked soft and clean and Michael straightened, eyes growing wide in the creature's glowing light. It struck him as beautiful for an instant before making him horribly angry.

He lunged for the animal before a man flickered behind it, two-dimensional and halfway translucent. Michael stopped. There was something about the man's unblinking eyes that he couldn't stand to look at for more than a few seconds at a time. It was like going somewhere in the car during sunset, driving straight into the West. Too much light.

The translucent man raised a hand, revealing a a hole in his palm in the shape of a crimson star. "Awake, O sleeper," he whispered, "and rise from the dead..."

"I'm... not... yours!" cried Michael, furious, but when he stumbled forward only the lamb was left. He grabbed it by the throat and picked the jagged rock back up, no tolerance left inside of him for soft and lovely things.

When he looked down the lamb had become a black goat, so Michael killed that instead. It felt good until half a dozen more appeared, swarming him slowly. He stepped out from the circle he'd drawn, suddenly too dizzy to run. His lower legs felt heavy and stars appeared at the edges of his vision.

"Father!" he called, swaying, as it tunneled to black.

When he came to he was somewhere else, huddled under a table in an outdated school library. Michael immediately knew where he was. Though he hadn't been there, he had imagined it many times. He had seen it in his dreams.

He heard the sound of boots on carpet in the quiet distance and somebody whistling a tune. Then all at once, a gunshot.

"Father," he repeated, a whisper to himself.

The footsteps and the whistling came closer, until a pair of combat boots appeared in front of the table where Michael hid. The shooter crouched then, silent, a pair of big dark eyes staring out from a face even younger-looking than Michael's own.

"Dad..." Michael whispered, reaching out his hand. In his heightened state he couldn't tell if he was trembling with fear or excitement. "Take me with you, please. I'll help you kill them."

Tate recoiled. "You're fucked up," he said indignantly, as if Michael were the one in the middle of committing mass murder.

"I love you," Michael whispered. "Please..."

Tate cocked his gun and positioned it so that Michael could see down the barrel. "Not even I could create something as evil as you," he said. Then he pulled the trigger.

When he opened his eyes next he was in his childhood bed at his grandmother's house. But he wasn't alone. Unlike the last scene, this was a true memory, one that Michael was now being forced to relive.

His body was different now, taller and stronger than it had actually been, but it made no difference. Michael still hated the way that the babysitter was touching him.

The first nanny he had killed for fun, that was true. Hurting her had felt good, and Michael had been too young to understand or care about anything but that. But the second one did bad things to him, things that made him feel sick. After three or four times the revulsion in his body and the anger inside of him had grown to be too much. Just like now.

His face was splattered with the woman's blood when Grandma appeared in the doorway. "Michael!" she shrieked, her face crumpling. "What have you done now?!"

"Grandma," he panted, "I can explain, please. Please don't punish me..."

And she had, in reality. In his recollection of the real event, Michael received the spanking of his lifetime followed by several hours solitary in the closet of mirrors. But now reality deviated, his grandmother calming instantly. He noticed a glass of water in her hand.

"There now," she said, coming closer to sit beside him on the bed. He noticed her voice was still shaking. "There now, my remarkable boy... a glass of water, a nice glass of water is all that you need..."

A sudden sense of dread gripped Michael. He didn't want the cup, but he was sick to death of Grandma's tears. He was sick of looking out the upstairs window and seeing her digging, of dirt under her painted nails; he was sick of the death-scent of roses. Maybe, he thought, she was right.

"Here now," she repeated, pressing the cup into his hand. Hers were dusty from the garden, smelling of earth. "It's all you really need..."

He drank.

To say he awoke next would be slightly inaccurate. His consciousness returned. Again he felt the worn-in creak beneath him, the twin-size mattress that was Tate's before it was his. Again there was the scratchiness of the crocheted afghan pulled up over his face and the stifling warm of the old heater; again the scent of earth and roses. But he was alone now. He tried to open his eyes but couldn't.

His body was no longer his home. His legs and arms no longer responded to his frantic brain's commands; they felt cold and heavy, full of pins and needles. His mouth was Sahara-dry and tasted chemical. He couldn't swallow.

I cannot cry, laugh, move or speak, Michael thought. No one's coming. I cannot, I cannot. I am not. It's done. With a terrible resignation he tried hard to will the last of his consciousness away.

But he couldn't. Instead, after a terrible period of time he felt a hand pull the cover from his face. On instinct he tried to open his eyes again, and could this time. He never would have thought he'd feel relieved to see Papa Legba, but now the man's hovering visage in the dark room made him almost giddy.

Papa smirked and held a hand out. Michael took it, surprised that his body now worked again. As he rose from the bed with the gray diety, he heard the faint chime of girls' voices somewhere in the distance, singing a hymn.

One bright morning, when this life is over

I''ll fly away

To that home on God's celestial shore

I'll fly away...