Someone You Loved

“For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.” -James 2:10 - - - - - - October 28th Sans Manor Katie had warned him, pleaded him more than once not to consider it, to not go through with it (despite not believing in the supernatural), but... what other choice did he really have? It was either this or a life spent waiting and wasting away for the authorities to do their goddamn jobs. Or worse, allowing his father's killer's to f*****g walk free in the end - all because of the police's incompetence. Which meant Rick had to do something - he had to act fast. Rick wasn't a religious man by any means, but he wasn't atheistic either - he just prefers logic over putting all of his faith to the Big Guy... which is why if he was told six months ago that he was going to be in his family's masoleum, around 2:50 am, making weird-ass drawings you'll only find in Satanic books (courtesty of his cousin Tim who was into cultist s**t), Rick will laugh so hard before socking the moron in the face who told him so. But still, here he is. Desperate times call for desperate measures and to be fair, Rick was half-drunk out of his mind - something that he would later dare not to admit. From what he had read (and could understand) there was one demon, only one, who was willing to make deals with humans that were seeking justice as opposed to demons who usally make deals with humans that were only after fame or worldly possessions. This particular demon (a favored spawn of the Devil, according to the book) is known for avenging mortals from those who had wronged them. The ritual to summon the demon was simple enough. Suspiciously so, Rick had thought for a moment while chugging the rest of his vodka before tossing it aside with the rest of his logic - was this really all it took to get a demon's attention?- but as the drunken i***t he was, he still followed the book's instructions to the letter because he had half-thought that this was all some f*****g nonsense as he managed to draw a large, inverted cross using his own blood (he wasn't a stranger to self-harm, anyways) in the very middle of the dirty, dusty floor. In what little light there is coming from the moon that seemed to be playing hide and seek with the clouds, the obsidian sculptures that dominated the garden outside the masoleum looked like a carved image of a weeping princess, her silver crown shattered at her bare feet and her dress seemed to be designed to look like it had been torn and bloodied - and to be honest, Rick rather hated that f*****g creepy thing. At this point, Rick couldn’t even read the instructions from the book. But he didn’t need to. They were, after all, simple enough. And he had read over them enough times, had heard them enough times from Tim and his stupid creepy friends, all the while trying to convince himself for weeks that he wouldn’t need them, that he could cite each step from memory. First, he had to go to an isolated room - the demon doesn't like making deals with a witness. Second, draw an inverted cross in the middle of a room using the debtor's blood. And last - close your eyes. Don't open them till the clock strikes 3. With his eyes squeezed shut in a world that would have looked just as dark to him if they were open, Rick thought he had fallen asleep right there and then, that is, until he very nearly jumped when he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket, signalling his alarm. 3 am. Devil's hour. Sobering up a bit, Rick felt himself gulping when he realized what the actual f**k am I doing? He exhaled as he slowly dared to opem his eyes, blinking down at the messy inverted cross he had drawn on the floor. For a moment, he thought that the ritual hadn’t worked. That, as usual, Tim had been wrong. But there was faint static ringing deep in his ears that was growing louder and louder and louder and louder with each passing second until it grew so loud that it literally hurts his head. Rick let out a pained groan as he tried to cover his ears with his palms, trying to block out the horrible sound that was practically vibrating the ground beneath his feet until he felt his own knees trembling in sheer terror and nausea combined. He almost felt like throwing up there and then when something sharp and cold grabbed his face, his entire vision blurring for one good moment until it was filled with an angry, bright red. No. It didn't turned red. He was looking at its eyes. He paled. ohshitohshitohshit- It tightened its clawed grip on his face when he instinctively tried to move away in panic, roughly pulling him closer until their noses brushed. (Strangely enough, the scent of fresh apples and something like flowers filled his senses) Still, Rick felt his own blood running cold as he dared himself to force his gaze away from its -her(?) - painfully bright red eyes to get a better look of what the f**k he just brought from hell what has he f*****g done - The demon was just as tall as the statue behind him, roughly seven feet tall, excluding the pair of pristine silvery white horns portruding out of her forehed, curved and sharp in the end like hooks that looked like they could gouge out his eyes if the demon so wished it. Rick had a rough idea what the demon was supposed to look like based from the illustration -a single, crude drawing of an impossibly slender and tall (so tall that it was depicted as hunched to stand face to face like what it was doing right now), it seemed to prefer to resemble a female in a black dress with snow-like skin and impossibly wide, glowing bright red eyes - but those things always exaggerated their subjects, which is what he had assumed until now. He was wrong. It was accurate, it was terrifying. And it was also grinning at him with a mouth that seemed too big for its face, showcasing an impressive row of sharp, jagged teeth that looked like they can chomp his head off in one go. "tell me, my love" it... said without even moving its grotesque mouth while his own slackened in horror. Its diabolical grin seemed to grow wider at the look of fear it caused, its soft voice deceptively feminine but with a subtle, malevolent hiss: "...do you have a death wish?"