A Giant Mess

A man wakes up to a disturbing vocal memory and a fenced-in area with a firepit and bodies.

“Well, generally we don’t condone child sacrifice, but your paperwork seems to be in order.”

Yes, someone had said that to him. Who? Was it the effeminate man lying beside the firepit?

Ew… that’s a woman, not a man. He had been hanging out with an open-minded crowd, apparently. Ultra-libertines? What had he been doing with a child, anyways? He wasn’t a dad. Heck, he’d never had a girlfriend in his life.

Did he really kidnap a child? Was the hunk of charcoal inside of the pit the burnt remains of someone’s poor, innocent son or daughter?

“I don’t want to make a big ruckus, guys.”

Who had said that? Maybe a rational human being that temporarily lost his or her senses? Could he award himself the privilege of being a normal person who had just made some bad decisions last night?

According to the strange bottle in his hand, he certainly hadn’t been in his right mind. Maybe a temporary insanity plea would do the trick. Would that work? Maybe they really did drug him, making it not his fault. Would he still be charged?

He should’ve gone to law school, just like how Mom would constantly suggest. Instead,  he had become a banker. One lies about money, one lies about lives. In some cases, the two jobs weren’t very different.

“I love you!”

A child had said that. Think carefully, did he ever have any sort of one-night stand with a woman? Was he really a father? There was no way. If he had ever done such a thing, he would’ve remembered it.

Unless, of course, he was inebriated.

Or drugged.

By people who sacrifice children as long as you have the right paperwork.

Come to think of it, six years ago he had been to a very wild party. A beautiful woman brought a refill of his drink to him. If they had “done it”, he should’ve at least remembered waking up in bed next to such a woman. No, as far as he knew, he was still a virgin, so the only options were still kidnapping or having been drugged.

Or…

In college, he had been so desperate for money, he started donating bits and pieces of whatever he could spare. Sperm included.

Was the child his, biologically? But he had donated it, what, ten or eleven years ago? The voice was clearly that of a toddler’s. Did sperm really last five or so years? Was he so undesirable that, even at his peak of attractiveness, no woman had wanted his DNA to be used for their child for such a long time?

“This isn’t going the way it should…”

Black lipstick. Black hair. Pentagram necklace.

The speaker had been a witch. Not the silly, harmless kind that claimed the fallen angel to be a misunderstood being. No, she knew Lucifer was wicked as could be and worshipped him anyways. She had been practicing black magic.

One spell must’ve involved child sacrifice. Was the child hers? Did the child mistake him for the deadbeat father that never came back, yet she loved just as much as her mom? Even if she was a devil-worshipper, how could she possibly kill her own child for the sake of… sake of… sake of what, exactly? What was the point of killing an innocent creature?

“Get away from me!”

He had expected it to be the child shouting this. Instead, the only face popping into his head was a green-eyed woman with no hair. Why were there so many women? Had he been the only male last night?

He decided to get up and walk around. He noticed three things.

1. There were ten other people.

2. They were all women.

3. None of them seemed to be breathing.

Shaking ever so slightly, he grasped the bottle in his hand and gingerly poked the supposed lesbian. She didn’t move.

He moved on to another witchy-looking woman. It was clearly a different woman than the one his memory had conjured, but her attire and make-up were quite similar. When prodded, she made no physical reply.

Horror growing slowly, he walked around the field he now noticed was fenced in by menacing iron chains and barbed wire. Each woman he poked proved to be dead.

“Just think, Aldrea… immortality!”

A witch had said that. Yes, now it was coming back to him. He was surrounded by witches practicing the dark arts. Were they simply in permanent comas? Had they failed to perform as they should’ve?

A soft rattling caused him to scream. His eyes grew wide as he swung his head back and forth, trying to determine the cause of the noise. He found nothing.

That itself was proof that he was more high-strung than usual. In fact, he wouldn’t have even heard something so quiet yesterday afternoon.

“Misguided puppets, am I right, Mabel?”

The voice had been too young for comfort. None of the witches lying dead before him were below the age of thirty; at the very oldest, the line’s owner had been ten.

He sat down and held his head, trying to force the memories to the surface. He glanced at the bottle, begging it for a clue. The label was written in some odd language. Japanese? Chinese? No, it was Korean… yes. Korean. That helped him remember exactly nothing.

A childish giggle emanated from behind the fence. The bottle dropped from his hands as he sprung to his feet, once again whipping his head back and forth. He walked to the edge of the fence and reached out a hand…

Very, very, very bad idea.

He recoiled from the initial shock, which had been minor, but something must’ve followed him as he leapt away. A second pulse went through his body, burning everything. He dropped onto the ground. Memories began flooding into his brain.

A group of small girls, watching the witches prepare a bonfire.

A witch telling him to drag one of them by the stack of wood.

The girl being much more obedient than a normal girl.

The smell of burning flesh.

The child shedding a layer of ashes as if it were dust.

A dusty library.

Women screaming.

His mind melting.

There was no order, no direct chronology he could rely on. They came when they felt like it.

He lay on the ground for what felt like an eternity. It had been one minute and thirty seconds.

He remembered it all.

A group of witches had asked if he’d like to play a game with them. While one of the more attractive or the women began flirting with him, another had gone to refresh his drink. Once she brought it back and he drank it, everything became fuzzy.

Fuzzy, but not quite gone.

The girls had been from a poor orphanage. The headmistress tried her best to keep everyone in the best conditions, but they just didn’t have enough funding to give the children good clothes or quality food. By promising the girls lovely dresses, they gladly agreed to come along.

One of the witches went to a small office, gave the only woman there a flask filled with something(the same drink they had given him, perhaps?) and handed her a small stack of neatly typed papers. The woman glanced through them in ten seconds and let them go out back.

Someone had started digging a pit in the middle of the field, while another went to fetch kindling and gasoline. The children waited patiently for it all to begin.

He was told to keep quiet and not to interfere, or else he would remain a pitiful mortal and die just like everyone else.

When it was time for the first child to be burned, the fence had appeared. No one noticed. Why didn’t anyone notice?

But it was too late for anyone to care about the fence. She stood in the fire, the destructive element licking her hair and clothes, the girl smiling steadily as she was eaten alive by the dancing flames.

And then she jumped out. Shook herself off like a wet dog, he remembered. She was still smiling.

And one of the witches had dropped to the ground.

The next girl hopped into the fire. Everyone was spellbound by it; even the so-called witches who made daily deals with the Devil were horrified by their actions. One by one, the women all dropped dead.

There had been one child left. And he was the only adult left. He watched, feeling nothing but a strange coldness as she jumped into the fire.

And she burned.

Her smile suddenly became a grimace, then a scowl, then a pained howl escaped her tormented lips as she began to burn alive. The childish skin slowly melted off, revealing a charred imp-monkey-boar hybrid of some sort. Ears like a monkey, snout like a pig’s, hairy all over… she wasn’t human.

None of those girls had been human.

And because he was a he, she had died.

The girls had learned a very important lesson that night: do not let any man interfere with the process. He had heard them squabbling and shouting as their fellow demon was burned; this was new. This hadn’t happened before.

He managed to fall asleep just as they began to decide his fate.

Were they going to come back and kill him? Would he starve to death inside of this iron circle?

Considering how corrupt they were, killing humans just for cheap laughs(or maybe they really did need the immortality?) , did he really want to stop and find out what they would do to him?

He reached towards the fence, beckoning its cruel shock to put him out of his misery.

It failed to do its job, only putting him through a terribly grievous pain. He reached for it again, shouting as his skin began to fry. He was dying.

He reached out one last time.

Crows soon landed on the fresh corpse, attracted by its strong scent. Many others arrived to peck at the colder bodies.

---

“Oh, girls, I was so worried about you!” Headmistress Lily threw her arms around the youngest, Kylie, as that was the only one who still appreciated hugs. “What were you all doing? You didn’t accept any offers from strangers, did you? Oh, please tell me you’re all okay!”

The eldest of the group, an eleven-year-old with black hair and piercing blue eyes, stepped forward. “We made a bad decision, Miss Lily. And now… Heather is gone.”

“It was terrible,” eight-year-old Robin cried. “They lead us to a bonfire and burned her alive! Horrible, horrible savages!”

“We hadn’t wanted to go,” seven-year-old Yvonne piped up. “They threw us in a van!”

“But they’re all dead now,” the little girl clinging to Lily whimpered. “I watched ‘em all die. Don’t know why.”

“Oh… oh, my… girls, get to your rooms and rest, please! I… you need some sleep. Please, girls, just… t-try to relax, okay? We’ll get this all sorted out.

Ten mortified little girls marched grimly to their respective rooms as ten strange, furry creatures watched from under the floorboards. They were learning so much from their new hosts, and peeling off their skin had been as easy as pie. Putting it back on their gruesome form had been rather easy as well.

As a bonus, it seemed that there were plenty of people willing to take little girls to secluded places, even women. It was interesting how the humans’ thought process worked: everyone gives a scruffy man the evil eye when he tries to take his son off of the merry-go-round, but a woman pulling a bawling child away won’t be blinked at.

Their mission was simple: live forever and cause chaos. A simple task, really. Most small demons had a similar job on this earth. The rituals were unnecessary but fun, and it seemed to stir up quite a bit of suspicion, as well as opening old scars and creating prejudices. Anyone could put whatever twist on it they wanted, making everyone hate each other.

Of course, losing one of their own had been a grave mistake. They didn’t know what happened to dead demons. Was it recycled? Did Satan punish it for failing? Would Satan punish them for failing?

A small chat lead to the obvious conclusions: avoid males during the bonfire ritual. Try something new. Find a different target.

Author's Note

Tear. This. Story. To. Pieces.
I already know it needs a re-write(it was created at midnight by a hyperactive mind ten seconds away from burning out), but I only have a vague idea of what to do, such as clarification and making it a bit longer. I'm not quite sure how, though, and I would be eternally grateful for some criticism.

Reviews

[Rana]

This was actually quite good. In the beginning, the suspense has been built up finely and just the right amount of information has been revealed as the story proceeded. There was nothing extra or boring. Now, the strange, furry creatures watching from under the floorboards, you could elaborate on them. Also, on the motive behind the evil, like what were they doing it for and also how. It was interesting trying to figure out the culprit till the very end and getting a surprise. I loved this line the best: "Everyone gives a scruffy man the evil eye when he tries to take his son off of the merry-go-round, but a woman pulling a bawling child away won't be blinked at." A nice write.

[Beetle Twist]

Thank you very much! I'll work on the demons' motives and whatnot.