And The Heavens Fell Silent, Maria Louise [children's books read aloud txt] 📗

        “Because!” we told her smiling. “Don't you know? Evil always craves innocence. We lust for it like a starving man does food.” We could feel her heating our blood now. She had so much purity that we felt a never ending need to corrupt it! To take it away from her! 

        We feared if her father did not come soon, there would be no innocents left in this girl. Only the leftovers of what we had taken.       

        We licked our lips. Oh, how sweet she would taste!

Do not fear death. Fear never having lived in the first place- Unknown

“Hey bitch, get off my lawn!” I blinked my eyes open, an angry man with a few fingers missing stood impressively over my head. The light was streaming dully through the thickened atmosphere. He wore jeans with huge holes and tears in almost every square inch, so that his jeans were more fraying collections of strings rather than a solid piece of denim. His face was lined with scars which made the shape of a pentagram, if only just. A sharp pain came from my back as the man kicked me swiftly, “Get out of my yard you filthy scumbag!”

      I leapt to my feet, the pain sharpening as the cracked pavement connected with my feet. I felt every pebble and crack through the pads of my bare feet. Every person on the street looked at me with hatred, contempt, and disgust, I don’t even know why. One man saw me walking in the street and started running. He rammed me at full speed knocking me to the ground. “Whatcha gonna do, ya feak!”

I picked myself up off of the dusty ground, I couldn’t walk three yards without getting knocked over, spit on, or yelled at. I kept walking despite the abuse flying at me, both physical and verbal. Suddenly a wave of nausea hit me like a ton of bricks, sending me reeling to the ground. It took a second for my vision to clear before I saw the large stone house that stood derelict at the end of the street.

  Despite my deep feeling of dread that increased with each step I continued on towards the foreboding building. The deep, blackness that surrounded the house was like a vortex, pulling everything to its center with no mercy, and no prisoners. I walked to the side of the house where the doors stood open like a mouth, waiting for some, poor animal to wander into it. I reached towards the door, as if to test the air temperature inside the house. I drew back my hand and squealed, something in the air had burned the tips of my fingers as though I had put my hand in molten metal.

  As if I had set off some alarm two men ran out of the house, angry looks on their faces, and weapons in their hands. “Please!” I shouted, “I just want to get into the house!”

The first man's eyes widened like he had seen a ghost while he turned to his partner. He mumbled something inaudible and plunged his knife hard into the other man’s bare chest. His blood emptied onto the cracked pavement and soaked into the craven ground beneath. While all this happened I simply stood there in shock, flecks of the man’s spoiled blood trickled down my face. The man raised his knife one last time and brought it down swiftly. He dropped the knife, his bloody hands reached deeply into the other man’s unceremoniously split chest. He withdrew and turned to me, his eyes still wide as dinner plates, I must have looked a little like that.

  He handed me a bloody mass of heart, no emotion registering on his face. He opened his lips, but did not speak. After a minute or so he finally spoke,”only the heart of the wicked can enter the house of Satan.” After he finished he pointed one trembling, bloodied finger at the house. I looked and saw a pentagram above the house, burning with black, un-holy flames. I looked on, the symbol swirled above the roof like a swarm of ugly, black vultures just waiting for their prey to drop dead.

  I nodded the smallest sign of thanks, the shock still taking its time to wear off. I walked to the door of the house, I could feel its energy resisting me. I pushed into the doorway, like someone pushing their way into a lake’s icy depths. I moved through the house as if the air were made of jell-o, it was a great pressure just to breathe. I heard a shout from behind me, and I spun around; a burly man with a missing eye charged at me with animal ferocity. I closed my eyes, I could feel the sheer existence of the other human life forces. The energy of their bodies hurling through empty space towards me I saw every possibility, and every possible reaction. My muscles tightened as I prepared for a bone jarring mass crash into me. But it didn’t come. I winked one eye open and saw the man laying sprawled on the floor. His eyes were milky white, and his fingers spasmed with every creak of the God forsaken house.

  A shriek. It was swift and it was shrill, but it was human. I turned to the door at the far end of the room, an aura swirled around it like a river. And in the same way a river does, it drew me downward, nothing can escape gravity. I walked on dumbly, despite the fact that whatever was on the other side of that door would probably kill me.

How much has to be explored and discarded before reaching the naked flesh of feeling-Claude Debussy

At that moment something inside me snapped. Or should I say, was unleashed?

   The small boys face appeared again like an apparition in my mind. His large eyes wide with terror as he gasped for breath while the demon took it away from him. My blood lust was like a burning coal in the pit of my stomach. My rage stocked the flame until it burning brighter and brighter so that my whole body was inflamed. I was so crazed with wrath that I could barely feel the sensation of ever impending doom. But the feeling kept nudging me and playing with me until I could do nothing but notice its unwelcome presence.

     I could sense the being that brought about the feeling of doom, outside the demons house. Through the anger I strained my ears and heard scuffling outside and then a thunk as something hit the ground heavily.

     I stared at the door in pure horror and rage. The feelings mixing together in insanity. I no longer feared the man of a thousand voices, but instead, I feared the unknown being outside of the house.

        The demon paid no heed to the odd sounds. He simply stepped over the lifeless child and started walking towards me with a strange expression upon his face. I pulled the warm metal from my pants, it slid under the delicate flesh of my lower stomach as I comprehended the meaning of the demons expression. His face was molded into a mask of loss of control, and hunger. A demented expression like that could only mean one thing.

      My death.

Blood oozed through the waistband of my pants but I didn't feel the pain. No, I could only feel the knife clutched in my hand.

   The demon grabbed a hold of my hair and pulled me to my feet the same moment that the front door was forced open.

   To my sock, not a monster, but a man awaited me at the entrance.

     Time seemed to still as he held me locked in his icy gaze. It was as if the whole world became silent around us.

     I noticed with horror that the man held a bodiless heart, clasped in his hand.

     There was something so pure and child like in the man that I had never seen in anyone before. So pure. His childlike expression and large blue eyes held great contrast to the blood splattered across his face and the demented heart held in his hand.

        I could not shake a strange realization that was blossoming within me. The way  the man stood with his muscled chest heaving in fear, his brow furrowed in confusion, and a look in his eyes that promised protection... Was this man was here to save me?

        It was as if I was the dreaded damsel in distress, and he, was my knight in shining armor. Though he wore no shining armor. Actually, I realized, he wore nothing at all.

        The strange man was completely unclothed from head to toe and covered in ash. How was one supposed to respond to this? I wondered incredulously. A naked ash cover man with a bloodied heart in hand? I had no clue.

        With fury awakening again in my blood, I laid eyes upon the dead boy lying discarded on the floor.

    The demon let go of me in shock and the servants flead. If I would ever get the chance to kill the demon, now was the time.

  I tackled the demon to the ground and screamed at the top of my lungs, “I rebuke you demons, in the name of Jesus christ, the lord God, my father!”

    I had read the bible and listened to Mama’s stories enough to know how to kill a demon.

        The demon bellowed. It was the pained yell of thousands voices screaming in agony all at once. It was so loud I felt my ears pop and a trickle of blood began to tickle the insides of them. The demon then convulse on the ground having a type of sizer. His skin bunched and pushed away from his body as if something was trying to push its way out.

     Even speaking the name of God to a demon as evil as himself, would send pain coursing through his body, thus giving me enough time to end him.

     “PATER noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.     

     My responsibility rang as clear as a bell inside of me. With a passionate shudder I