For an indeterminate amount of time, I floated around somewhere far from consciousness, experiencing the ecstasy of blissful unawareness. But slowly, pain - deep pain - aching in some spots and stinging in others, came in waves dragging me back to the shores of reality. Breathing was a chore as I heaved lungfuls of precious air through wheezy airways with sore muscles and cracked ribs. Blinking my eyes open, I was met with bright lights, strange smells, foreign fabric, and unfamiliar faces.
Somewhere in my drug addled, probably concussed brian, I realized that I was injured and in a hospital. My right arm was in a shoulder - immobilizing sling. The memories from the last time I was conscious belatedly slammed to the front of my brain, causing it to rapidly try to rationalize and explain what I saw. Before I could form a coherent theory, a nurse and a doctor were assessing me and asking questions and explaining my injuries. They asked what I remembered, and I feigned not remembering a damn thing. I had to understand what I saw before I told anyone else because what I thought I saw was not actually possible. The last thing I needed was a trip to a mental institution.
They asked me if there was anyone that they could call for me, but if I remembered correctly, the people that I would've had them call, were all killed by a…a…something. I shook my head and was grateful when I was finally left alone to think.
I shut my eyes, trying to run through every detail from the previous night.
My family had moved to this depressingly small, rural town in Iowa so that my father could start his own little bakery business and my mother could be closer to her ailing father. I was in my last year at a local community college to become a nurse and bartending in the evenings. On occasion, the owner let me sing and play the guitar on their small stage because apparently, I didn't have the worst voice and I was regularly drawing in larger crowds on the nights that I sang.
My grandfather's failing health was putting a strain on my parents' relationship with him and with each other. He had a difficult time with feeling like his independence and freedom was being taken away from him. There had been talk of moving him to an assisted living home after he suffered a fall where he was lying on the floor for hours in his home, unable to move or call for help until one of his regular community nurses stopped by for their daily check-up.
He would say terrible things about my mother and it was clear his memory was starting to slip. It put my mother under a tremendous amount of stress, making her understandably irritable. Not to mention she had a teenaged son at home who was experiencing pressure from his peers to engage in underage drinking and drugs.
My mother, guilt ridden for not being able to do more for her father, spent many hours by his side after she finished up shifts waitressing at a diner downtown. My brother and father fended for themselves, which meant my brother died of an overdose and my father had an affair. Only two months after my brother died, grandpa passed on, too. After the funeral, I stayed in my old room back at my parents' house. Dad slept in the guest room and mom never came upstairs. At some point, I remember hearing my parents shouting at each other. The echo of their voices seemed odd and I found myself hastily wandering through the house to find them.
To my surprise, they were in the field that stretched out behind the house.
It was difficult to see at night, through the windows of the house, but they were yelling, then crying, my mom falling to her knees in my father's arms. Then, there was wailing. Deep cuts materialized on my mother's back, her wails turning to guttural screams. I ran out onto the back porch in an effort to get a clearer view when slashes cut across my father's chest, seemingly out of nowhere.
And beyond them?
A man with burning red eyes, shadows from the night shrouding his face and figure.
I heard him laugh, a deep, sinister chuckle. An unseen force started dragging me towards the man. I fought as much as I could, but it almost seemed like the more I fought, the tighter the grip of whatever was pulling me became.
I came face-to-face with the devil, of that I am certain.
The last thing I remember is my back hitting against the trunk of a nearby tree, and then nothing.