(Unfinished) The Devil's in Michigan

I ran to the devil as a small boy. It was a barn in Michigan, it was on fire. I ran in, knowing he was there, I offered him my life to spare my family's. He accepted. I died.

I awoke some time later to the sound of some ridiculous noise, a sound like a lawnmower being dragged over stones and chunks of metal. I covered my ears, but the sound just got louder, thicker, like it was the air itself, or a liquid I was swimming in.

I felt something hot and warm scrape across my back, I flinched, and it stopped. The awful sound disappeared.

'Henry my boy.' The devil had a smooth voice. 'Henry, I need you to look up.' His voice was like molten gold, it poured itself around me and into my ears. 'Henry, don't be scared.'

I wasn't scared, not at first, I was more... confused, rebellious.

'Rebellious! Ha! Against me? The progenitor of sin? Henry, I'm your friend. I promise, anything you want, I have. Anything you need, I'm here. We can be friends, I'm not as bad as everyone says.'

I still couldn't rid myself of the uncomfortable tingling his voice left in my ear. It felt like an insect, crawling it's way inside. I shivered, and listened to a squelching noise coming from somewhere far to my left. I ignored his offers, I'm a good guy.

'Are you? Are you really? Do you feel qualified to make that call? Do you even know yourself?'

I didn't even want to consider his words but they hung in my mind, they sat like tumors, blocking all thought and reason.

'I know you, Henry. You're not bad. But you've done bad things. I can help you fix everything, take back what you have done. You may think we're different, but we're not.'

I couldn't take it. I knew what he was talking about. He was talking about my school. He was talking about my sister. He was talking about William.

'Yes, I am. I know the wrongs you would love to right. I own you with your secrets, I'm going to take your soul, and take you, and leave nothing more than a shadow of a memory.'

Insane. Switching between hateful and friendly in such succession. Switching between prosecutor and defender, enemy and ally, predator and protector.

'Anyway, as fun as this game is, we've all got a decision to make, so open your eyes.'

I couldn't help it, I opened my eyes and stared forward; desperate to let my eyes settle and stare, to see nothing. It was no use. The motley of horrific images seemed to never end. The devil, with his sharp face, charred, scarred skin, wide orange eyes and bald, horned head. His entourage was worse, a thousand white-cloaked, hooded figures, drenched and dripping with blood. Of the six or seven hundred in my view, at least sixty were hunched and wrapped around a corpse in their lap, the source of the squelching noise was them, feeding.

'You're quite clever, you know. Most people think they're dreaming, they shut us out. Never seems to work in their favor though. I wouldn't want to stop my council bringing meals to these often-long... shall we say, tribunals? But I admit it can cause some of you to just lose it, then and there!'

I tried to stop myself looking, but I was mesmerized, watching a demon bite a portion of thigh off a woman's corpse as he held her like a chicken leg.

It was all too.. real. I knew I would go insane, but I thought it would be apparitions, noises. This was solid, real, nothing like I ever imagined.

'Yes it is, wonderful isn't it?'

I tried to speak, to tell the devil where to stick his pitchfork, or ask why I was in this room. All that came from my mouth was soft gurgles, like my tongue refused to move.

'You're going to have to do better than that Henry, start thinking about the things that matter. The things that need to be thought of. You only have one chance.'

The smile of Beelzebub widened and cracked into pure glee, a smattering of dried blood flaking and drifting to the floor. He let his head fall backwards. I don't think I've heard anything quite as horrible as the noise that came next. It was a laugh, I think. It was the sound of a bird screeching warning to it's hunted lover, the sound of metal scraping on metal, of paper tearing, limbs ripping, an industrial saw severing a careless finger.

'My name is not Beelzebub, I, am more. I have many names, thousands, each one as unbecoming as the last. You humans and your names, as though a word could sum up all I am!? Your petty and vain attempts to name me have but captured facets. I am Satan, the father, Lucifer, the son. I am devil, the holy ghost. I am Beelzebub, the king of demons, I am the lord of the flies, king of death... I. Am. All.'

He mocked everything. He mocked humanity and its religion, he mocked death and life, freedom and language. But something was amiss.

'Amiss dear boy? There are a myriad of things amiss for you boy but why, what is it you sense beyond the fear and the anguish and the rebellion, what is it you sense in the shadows?

It was a sensation of farce, and deceit. This... devil, a perfect likeness to tales spun by parents, preachers and poets, feels like a descendant of the legend rather than its progenitor. As though he embodies the role, but fails to define it. I can't explain it, but he is far too 'devil-like'.

'That's my boy! Clearly there is much more to both of us beneath our pretenses.'

The devil then clawed at his chest, strips of flame-coloured flesh were torn beneath his fingernails and dripped onto the obsidian floor. Charcoal black skin, sleek and flawless, began to show through. This was no normal shade of black, this was an absence of colour, his skin impossible to see because it destroyed all light it touched. He was a perfect, contoured shape of nothingness.

I looked at him for as long as my body would allow, his face growing shallower, darker, capable of burning his image into my retinas. Then I was home. It was night, the barn looked the same, but the burnt hems of my pajamas and blood on my feet told me I hadn't imagined my ordeal. I pulled open the heavy barn door and stepped out into the cold breeze.

'This is your job now. Remember, perceive, and accept your own sins. You will be rewarded.'