The Odd

The unmerciful hues of ebony descended upon the writhing afternoon sky, dusk beginning to take its toll on the arrogance of the once morning sun. Though there, a tattered box was left in the beams of daylight, absorbing all the stubborn heat midst the wretched folds of only desert and road.

Pity, pity, poor thing, for an ambiguous voice lay quiet and silent in the crate of cardboard, awaiting for a savior to pass along the untouched trail. It wasn’t until a car began to pass that it screeched with such ferocity, it caught the passenger by utter disbelief. My, what an odd little thing?

“Help me, for I am but a meek trinket!” It had shrieked, its cracked voice shrouded in desperation.

“What are you,” the passerby said inquisitively, “For you are not human to fit yourself in such a small box.”

“A figment of which I cannot say,” it responded, rushed, as if cautious of an over-whelming anxiety. With impatience, the queer object erupted in spasms, struggling to be free from its cage, and at once pounded onto the sides with such ferocity until it reached the edge of the car.

“You must be the demon the villagers speak of,” The driver hissed, scowling at the ambiguous voice, “It matters not if your suffering is of the likes of such a foul beast.”

With a pause, the trinket began to erupt in a jovial laugh, its chiming tone, as if a young girl, light and ringing. Though the innocent, idyllic giggle deepened in a sudden gurgle and a course cackle took foot, crusted and low, as if declined by decades of an over-laying dust and the silk cobwebs of insolent spiders.

And, without warning, a crack sounded in the box midst the laughter.

Sharp, loud and swift.

In an odd event, the inaudible sighs of the timid wind slowed.

The male, still in distance of said crate, tsked and began to further the space of him and the voice. Though the car refused to move. Instead, it hissed with heat and in a warbled cry, shuddered with a meek haughtiness. Deepening his foot on the pedal and trying to strengthen his already slipping mentality, he cursed himself for speaking to the dubious so-called ‘trinket’ in the first place.

“I do believe you’re worsening your situation, bucko!” The youthful female’s voice mused, a snap and odd burble commencing.

“Don’t you know? Night-time is a comin’!” This time, an older man of a southern origin had informed.

A cough and crack reverberated through the box, as if the sound of thousands of small lithe bones crushed in the instance of a dying second, becoming increasingly shrill.

Frantic, the man at once ran from the car and headed towards the right of the desert in search for help.

Though all was too late.

As the sun began its pompous decent, the box began to quiver.

In a small judder, it ceased its talking and began to hiss.

Petrified from the sound, the man stilled in his attempt to escape and began to edge his both tormented and curious head toward the cause.

It struggled with more intensity now, the voice within the box changing as if a radio station, between voices and languages from within the world. Though all murmured the same statement.

“Run… in DaYliGht. Seek… at nIGHt. Hide… at DaWn. Five till’ nIGHt.”

The male ran.

He continued until he could no longer see the worn container that held the odd demon.

Though the moon began to rise.

The box was opened.

In a hiss and low, deep-throated rumble, it splayed its disfigured body across the ground and scurried towards its victim ravenously, hiding within the depths of the ill-biding shadows.

The male, running for the sake of his pitiable life, could only do so to scramble impetuously from the monster that lurked at night. It was then that the lights of a city came into view.

He was close.

Too close, it seemed.

Desperately reaching for the lights of a newfound savior, he cried for help and ran only swifter. Though all was shrouded in dark. An inky ebony that was unseen to those in a safe reality, a black so deep, even the tone of death could not bare to reach its unimaginable standards of obscurity swathed the man.

The taps of nails scuttling across an obsidian concrete was the only noise in the void. And, in the grim, yet unaccepting, realization that he could not escape, he sprinted from the surrounding clamors, though ran only closer to the demon.

He was near the brink of a death so unsightly, not even he could dare imagine it.

Nor admit it.

With a hiss, it was feet away.

Sweat beaded down the male’s face as he stood utterly still, his heart beating like a bird desperate to escape from its iron cage. A sense of nausea over-whelmed his adrenaline run body, quivering uncontrollably from the thought of his end. As he brought his hands over his eyes, crying tears of helplessness and an unmatchable anguish, he held back his wracks of sobs and wished not to see the monster’s face.

It snuffed the ground near his feet, pushing its snout-like nose into the foot the innocent man’s shoe before cackling in the young girl’s cheerful tone.

But that was all a ruse, thought the man, I will die by the hands of a demon, nothing more and nothing less. What an incredulous beast with only the thought of chaos in its mind.

The demon pounced on the male’s body, forcefully removing his hands from his face and smiling with utter malice.

It was the unborn fetus of a woman.

Disgusted and scornful, the male attempted to kick the demon from his body and struggle against its powerful grip. Though it only stared at him with its grin, unmoving.

Its body held no skin, crimson with its unending flow of its own blood. Its eyes were swollen and blind, milky with cataracts and the delayed development of proper irises. The child’s face was knobby and flawed, having a snout twisted and flared as if a swine’s, as well as unsymmetrical ears and a lopsided, unfurled grin withholding pointed teeth of an aged yellow.

“Found you.”

The demon sunk its jaws into the jugular of the man and consumed him voraciously, a spray of a clear claret across the black canvas of the void they sat in.

It was then that an innocent was murdered in the insatiable grasp of night to a demon of differing identities.

A lurking carnivore of an unquenchable thirst for human blood.

A beast of many names, but well-known and feared for his true self:

A reaper of souls.