Three Games of Seance

Three games of Seance. That’s all it took to unleash pandemonium. Three games we all thought were nothing but a fun little thing to do to pass the time on Halloween. Turns out we’ve unleashed something terrible into this world. For each game opened the gates of perdition and let out a terrible demon. Three demons came haunting my loved ones and me.

Father’s gone. A stroke took him.

Mother’s suffering from rapidly progressing dementia.

Best friend’s paralyzed from the neck down – car crash.

Four others are hospitalized because of a mountaineering accident.

My love, my love… slowly dying from the all-consuming, all ravaging tumor inside her brain and I am slowly dying with her. My heart is certainly failing under all of this stress. This heart broke and is now decaying. I’ve grown numb to everything; I can’t even feel the pain anymore.

Four nights ago, while I was yet again drinking myself into oblivion, I heard a voice call out to me from the darkness. It was deep and rough, abrasive and violent in its tone. At first, I assumed it was someone talking on the outside, and I ignored it. The voice persisted, growing louder and louder. With each passing moment, with each passing shot of flesh melting whiskey – the voice grew nearer. When I could feel it under my skin, a cold sweat ran down my neck and I dropped my snifter. I froze, and a lump got stuck in my throat, making breathing hard.

The voice told me it knew all about my misfortunes, accused me of being the one at fault for my suffering. Each word felt like piercing hot iron being shoved into my chest, sending painful shocks of stifling pain across my chest. The voice told me I could make it all end. Promised to make it quick and painless. I had to endure a simple little game and the demons I had unleashed would be gone. The voice promised everything would go away if I beat its game. It said that I had no actual choice; I was listening to a whisper in the darkness, a dead voice that wasn’t exactly there. I had to either accept its offer or watch my world burn right beneath my feet.

I had no choice. I accepted, barely pushing the words out of my mouth. My body was shaking, and my skin was ice cold. Cold fingers softly prodded my lungs, and an icepick set eerily close to my heart, poking it gently with each beat of the muscle.

What I had to do was quite simple, lock myself inside my own house for three days and three nights with no way to leave. A battle of wills between myself and the demons I unleashed into this world.

I had a friend lock me in from the outside and leave with the keys. I told him to come back in three days. He had a concerned look on his face and was reluctant to do as I requested. I had to force his hand with threats of self-destruction. I had threatened to blow my brains out if he refused or called the cops or anything. He knew I’d do it, and so he relented.

Thus began my war against the demonic creatures that came from deep within the depths of the abyss. I spent my first-day drinking. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough booze in here to dissolve my liver and send me to an early grave. The hours flew by quickly; the day gave way to evening, and as it came, so did they.

Countless shifting and morphing shapes that had no corporeal form. Cold shadows cruelly danced in my field of vision, torturing me with their mere presence. At first, I assumed they were nothing but a product of a drunk mind, but then one of them flew straight into me.

The ghastly cloud collided with my body, felt like a million needles stabbed my skin, my throat seized and my ears rang. Amidst the storm of confusion and pain, I heard it accusing me.

*“It’s all your fault.”*

A ghastly, hollow, dry voice rang in my head, bouncing off the walls of my skull, assaulting my brain.

Then the feeling dissipated, but before I could even take a breath, another one hit me. It rattled my bones, prickled my skin, shoved its violent hand down my throat, and screamed at me again. Soon enough, they were all smashing into me, violating every inch of my being. A storm of pain, cold, and sonic violence assaulted me from every direction. I fell to the ground as my skin became painfully cold while my insides caught on fire. I curled into a fetal position as I absorbed countless blows from a legion of ghastly figures that sought to rape my mind and soul.

They screamed, whispered, moaned, and laughed all together.

*“It’s all your fault!”*

*“You’re to blame for everything!”*

*“You did this!”*

*“The blood is on your hands!”*

*(Do yourself a favor and kill yourself)*

*“It’s all your fault!”*

*(Kill yourself)*

*“You did this!”*

*“The blood is on your hands!”*

*(Do yourself a favor and kill yourself)*

*“It’s all your fault!”*

*“You’re to blame for everything!”*

*(Kill yourself)*

I just laid there and took it all. I was sure I was going to die; the terror felt so real; it felt like a pair of hands tearing at my insides, clawing and reaping apart internal organs. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe. It felt like it was the end for me.

Then sunrise came and everything went away. I spent the entire night crumpled on the floor, drooling and pissing myself. I remember little of yesterday. Probably because I must’ve passed out on the floor after being tortured by the pernicious nothingness for a whole night straight.

I woke up in my bed, not remembering how I even got there. It was night once more. The smell of dust and old furniture assaulted my nostrils as I attempted to make sense of what was happening. My head spun and my body felt absent. Missing, nonexistent. I felt like something had detached my head from the rest of me.

I tried moving, but I couldn’t. The same feeling from the day before came crawling into my chest. At least I could feel my heart. It hurt, oh there are no words to describe the pain I’ve felt last night. A vice grip locked tightly around everything that allows me to breathe. Water seemingly slowly filling my lungs and knives being repeatedly lodged into my ribcage from all imaginable angles. The taste of sand and blood filled my mouth, and dust cut my throat, forcing violent fits of a cough out of me. A ringing sound pounded in my ears.

A soft hum came from within the impenetrable darkness. Growing louder and more pleasant by the second, almost soothing the pain completely. Then, as if a result of divine intervention, the moonlight forced its silver rays through the window exposing the abomination that pinned me to my bed.

A massive chimeric half bird half woman whose feathers were black flames and whose claws were Damascus steel. These claws were plunged deep inside my chest. Its face, a sickening visage of a bloated corpse with an overly stretched jaw and massive knife-like teeth, its eyes a yellowish shade of and lacking any features. The demonic siren screeched inhumanly as the moonlight burned it out of existence.

The beast faded into nothing, but it had done enough damage. It left me in the darkness, dreading an unstoppable horror. The sound of demonic hordes marching inside my walls and the dying shriek of the winged chimera echoed over and over in my ears. The pain in my chest seemed to only get worse with each passing moment, so much so I ended up throwing up blood.

The pain wouldn’t subside. I can still feel it. I can still feel the unbearable pressure in my chest. A sensation of metallic claws trying to crush my heart and suffocate me in my blood.

But tonight, tonight is different.

The voices are back, but I ignore them. They’re screaming, moaning, laughing, and shrieking all the same things they’ve shrieked two days ago. They are everywhere, but nowhere at the same time. Inside my head but all around me too. A cacophony of sonic torture that is nothing but the ghost of voices who’re long gone and not of this world.

They are getting desperate and tired; I can feel it in their words.

*“It’s all your fault!”*

*“You’re to blame for everything!”*

*“You did this!”*

*“The blood is on your hands!”*

*(Do yourself a favor and kill yourself)*

*“It’s all your fault!”*

*(Kill yourself)*

*“You did this!”*

*“The blood is on your hands!”*

*(Do yourself a favor and kill yourself)*

*“It’s all your fault!”*

*“You’re to blame for everything!”*

*(Kill yourself)*

They are choking and losing their grip.

I was already on edge, so their reemergence ended up becoming adrenaline-formed pain relief.

I sit here under the moonlight, trusty knife in hand and a bottle of Jack right beside me. It’s half-empty, but I have drunk none of it.

Across from me sits a pale, skeletal, deathly parody of a humanoid form. Its limbs are long and thin, it contorted its face into an expression of mixed pain and hatred, veins bulging under its sickeningly tight skin. Black tears streamed across its cheeks while it shrieks and whistles at me, begging me to kill myself.

It scratches itself every now and again, somehow forcing a surge of phantom pain in the respective area of my body.

In response, I make an incision into my arm. The pain provides relief from the heartache. At first, the apparition seemed to approve of my actions. Soon enough, I replaced its pleasure with desperate rage. It tore into its own abdomen and pulled out the yellow flat intestines. The heartburn it had caused exacerbated my chest pain. In response, I doused my lacerated arm in alcohol, and the thing lost its mind, tearing at its face.

Now I sit across from a creature of the darkness whose face barely hangs onto its face by a thread. Exposed facial musculature infested with maggots and worms is staring back at me. The thing is repeatedly slashing at its throat, spraying around foul-smelling black and yellow liquids. For some reason, I cannot feel our shared pain anymore.

I can only feel the burning sensation of the chemically scorched lacerations on my arm. The heartache seems to be subsiding, too. Perhaps cutting myself helped reduce my blood pressure.

The screeching shadows still send shivers down my spine with each syllable they utter. That’s why I’m writing this down, to occupy my mind from the voices that are trying to rape it into self-destruction.

I can hear the raindrops hitting the streets outside.

I can almost smell the rancid stench of decay that tomorrow will bring.