4: Enter Richard Eetre

He always heard the chuckle behind everyone's eyes when he introduced himself. The laughter. His name was Richard Eetre. Dick is short for Richard, so his name was also Dick Eetre. By the way, his last name was pronounced 'eater.' Behind his back he was known as the eater of dicks. He resented his last name and his first name. After puberty the jokes had begun. At first he had laughed along with those laughing at him. Har-dee-fucking-har. After a while, however, the novelty of his name wore off.
Richard began to hate everyone who brought his name up to him. At points he got by himself and pounded on his own skull in frustration and rage. He experienced many head aches through his teenage years. Then he began to hit his girlfriends.

The injustice of it all. His family that had given up on him after he failed Biology one year and English the next. The child his girlfriend had not allowed him to know existed before getting an abortion. The so-called friends who screwed him over and landed him in jail for a full year and a half when they were caught selling drugs. He hadn't had a thing to do with that business! That had been their cross to bear! But they had pointed their fingers at him nonetheless.

He let it all loose on his girlfriends. All but one left after the first beating. His latest one before the outbreak of demons lingered. She got off on it in a sexual manner. The more she bruised, the harder she came.

He loved her. She let him take his stress out on her, and she didn't laugh at his name. She made no jokes about it. Brooke Vega was who Richard thought he was meant for. She didn't need to cover up her bruises because all of her friends knew of her special sexual needs. On top of it all, she had a personality and intelligence. She was a movie chick and loved to play videogames whenever there was a group to play them with. On top of all that she was decently hot with nice tits.

She loved him, too. She never vocally proclaimed it, but she did. This was the closest to actually believing in love she came.
They moved in together after a single year of their relationship and relished each other's company. They spent their lives together in a twisted romance.

Six months after moving in together Richard woke up just before ten. His bladder let loose all over the bed and his mind locked up. He screamed with the others he didn't hear.

Two impossible things were on the bed that he had shared for six months with Brooke.

The first was a brown monster taller than him with claws and four red dots for eyes and a fireball in its hand staring down at him with what Richard imagined to be a grin.

The second was Brooke's dead and mangled body half-on and half-off the side of the bed. Her blood was staining the yellow-and-white bedspread.

Richard moved his pillow in front of his head just in time to block the thrown fireball from the imp. He then threw the flaming pillow to the side and rolled out of bed. The air was cold against his nude body and he shivered.

The imp hurled its four-hundred pound body through the air towards Richard. He ducked down and the imp hit the wall so hard the house shook and a couple DVDs fell from the shelf next to the television on the wall opposite the bed, where the shattered door was. The imp fell to the ground, either unconscious or temporarily disoriented.

Richard stood unmoving, the window for his escape inching shut as the clock ticked. Brooke's legs had been all of her that he had seen before. They had been coated in blood that had not yet coagulated. He had wished after the fact that he hadn't looked at the portion of her that was off the bed.

This was pain that she had not gotten off on.

Her left breast was gone, and her lungs were spread across the floor. Her broken ribcage was exposed all the way down her chest, and her intestines laid, torn up, on her stomach. Her eyes were closed and her mouth open in an eternal scream that had been turned into a lopsided grin by her lack of a right cheek and the exposure of her jaws. Her nose was absent from class, nowhere to be seen, and her right ear was torn in half. Her dirty blonde hair was a bloody mess that she would not have the chance to clean up.

"Oh fuck," Richard managed to get out in a small voice. "Oh, Jesus. Oh, you bit… oh, you fucking… What the fuck? You bitchy bitch. Goddammit… God… Fucking piece of shit… Goddammit. WHAT THE FUCK?" He then threw on his jeans and a plain, black T-shirt. The cold was killing him, and to move along as though he had not just seen the mutilated body of his year-and-a-half girlfriend would make it easier to get out of the house and call for help. The imp began to move again. This time it had learned not to miss.

Richard disappeared down the hall, hurrying as much as he could without breaking into a jog or a run. His mind would lose hold if he went any faster. He had a small pistol in his workroom next to the first floor's bathroom.
He got down the stairs without hurrying and continued walking quickly. He darted a quick look behind him when he heard the heavy, running footsteps upstairs that suggested either his girlfriend was coming to pull him down into Hell for all eternity… or the imp was coming to do just the same.

"Not happening… impossible… fucking piece of shit…" he began to mutter under his breath. It became a chant, then almost a song as he added more sentence fragments.

His house's décor was depressing down the hall leading to his cluttered workroom and the stench-filled bathroom. Poor lighting and blank, gray walls.

His workroom was full of encyclopedias, dictionaries, leisure books, and non-required reading. This on top of his laptop and piles of paper-airplanes constructed during moments of extreme boredom. His laptop was full to the brim with downloaded pornography that Richard believed Brooke would frown upon if she were to see it. Thinking of Brooke was a mistake. Richard stopped walking just outside of his workroom.

His mind shut-down and grief hit him like a shotgun blast to the gut. He dropped to his knees and drool leaked out of his mouth and streamed gently down to his chin where it collected into a droplet and fell to the hardwood floor.

The imp's screech as it tripped and fell headfirst down the stairs was what dragged him kicking and screaming back to reality.
He leapt to his feet and pulled the door open, almost tearing it off without turning the handle. He rushed in and slammed it behind him.

He charged to his desk, his mind already losing its grip from that short amount of running. He threw the first two drawers across the room after merely glancing inside. On the final of the three drawers he found the small, already loaded pistol. He had been instructed once by a security guard friend how to use a gun. He did the first thing anyone should do before using their gun after retrieving it from a long-dormant situation: he checked to make certain it was loaded.
The ten-bullet clip was full. Richard trained it on the door and waited. His breath came raggedly and his legs felt weak. His finger's muscles loosened from their ready tension, and his mind locked up again. He couldn't believe Brooke was dead. It couldn't be possible. He closed his eyes and sobbed twice. He lowered the gun and began to rub the tears from his eyes.
The imp was drawing closer and Richard was locked up. It was charging down the hall. Richard was moments from death and all he could do was cry.

The moment before the door flew off its hinges and into the wall next to Richard's work desk he had unlocked his mind and began to raise the gun.

The imp charged in and whacked at his hand, meaning to make him lose his grip on the gun. It didn't work; Richard retained his grip on the gun. He gained a boost of confidence after realizing that the gun posed a threat to this thing, and that the thing knew it. He brought the gun back and shot the imp in the shoulder, not having time to aim for a more deadly blow. This all happened in the space of two seconds.

The imp lurched backwards and screeched. Blood spewed from its wound. It looked at the bullet hole, then back at Richard. This slow motion was meant to impose. Instead it allowed Richard to aim perfectly and blow its brains out through a large hole in the back of its head.

Once the imp's body hit the ground Richard lowered the gun to his side again. "Fucking… fucking… fucking fucking fucking… fucking piece of shit. Please… why? What'd me do? Me? Me… me… I… nothing… I'm innocent… she's dead… I'm innocent… she's dead… not me… what'd she do? Anything? A-Anything? NO! SHE DID NOTHING! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU? WHAT… THE FUCK ARE YOU? FUCK ARE YOU? FUCK ARE YOU?" He then shot the imp's corpse twice in the head. Bits of skull and the remaining brain matter inside flew out in all directions. Richard's bare, cold feet were warmed up by the blood and brain tissue now on them.

That was when he noticed the screaming outside. That was when he noticed the acrid smell of smoke filtering into the house. That was when he heard the gunfire and explosions. That was when he realized that this was not a contained event. He decided it would be safer to stay inside until the panic stopped rather than to run out into the chaos. It would be better for his sanity to stay inside and not witness the horrors that awaited him beyond his broken front door.

Outside he heard hydraulics… and the accompanying burring of a gatling gun. Outside, gunning down the panicking innocents on the streets, was another biomechanical nightmare… this one worse than the dog/bulls. In fact, it was worse than the imps and the floating demons. This was the most powerful creature to yet show its face on Earth. Richard began to whimper.