Young Writers Society

My name is Johnathan Smith and I am a monster. I’m hiding in the basement of an abandoned house, the police are after me and I don’t know what to do. Even if I wanted to turn myself in, it would take over and try to attack them all and I’ll get shot dead, all because I signed a contract to keep my wife safe.

My name is Johnathan Smith, I am a 24 year old man and I am struggling with a problem. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but when I look at myself in the mirror, I find myself staring and having thoughts of needing more limbs, arms specifically. I keep trying to tell myself that I don’t need any more, I have two just like the rest of everybody else, but it’s like those thoughts aren’t even me, it’s not me I’m talking to, it’s a demon. It started off as little things, like feeling the slight urge to want an extra eye or finger or toe, but now it’s demands. Needs for more. Needs to kill to gain more arms. I’ve tried putting it off for as long as I could, I really did. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, especially my own wife,  but when she tried to surprise me that one night, saying in bed, waiting for me to devour her, I guess the demon wanted to as well, but he meant another devour. He ripped her arms off after tying her up, she didn’t think anything bad of it, neither did I when he tied her down and wrapped cloth around her mouth so no one could hear. I didn't even know he was in control. I didn’t know he was going to hurt her, I would have tried to intervene, but even someone as stupid and naive as me knows that you can’t fight or stop a demon. Tears rolled down my cheeks at her muffled screams as her cries for help were slowly becoming more and more silent. As her eyes rolled in the back of her head, at least she knew that it wasn’t me. I had told her what was happening from day one. She had watched me struggle as it got worse from wants to needs and from an extra finger to an extra arm. She watched me as I got more aggressive about it, but had never once harmed her - until now! It wasn’t my fault.

I hid in her room with her rotting corpse for days, trying to keep myself from the outside world. I grew depressed, my wife was dead, I knew I couldn’t see my friends, I couldn’t even go out for a drink to try to forget about all this. Anytime that I was almost starved to death, the demon would make me go downstairs to feast on the food that we had. I thought it was because it cared but it didn’t, it was just keeping me alive so that it could use my body as a vessel. I got mad, I wasn’t going to let it do this to me. I wasn’t going to let this damn demon harm anyone else. I made up my mind and tried to kill myself, over and over and over again, but each time, the demon would take over to physically stop me. It wouldn’t talk to me or make me do anything that was calming for me so I wouldn’t be left with those suicidal thoughts, it wanted me to suffer. So I did, and there was nothing that could be done. After we ran out of food, it made me eat my own wife. I tried to struggle against it but it was way stronger than me, I tried not to vomit as the demon took a piece of my wife’s face off and slipped it into my mouth. I choked on my tears and I could hear it laughing inside my head.

A few days pass and there’s nothing left of my wife but bones. I’m curled up under our bed covers, sobbing loudly, hugging myself in order to feel some kind of embrace, some kind of goodness in all this  mess. I remember when I signed that contract in the first place, it was on the Dark Web so I should have realized that something bad would come out of it. My wife was being stalked and blackmailed by someone and we didn’t know who. They kept sending us photos of her, some of them I was in too but it was directed for her. Her at work, her at the grocery store, walking home, even in the bathroom. We tried asking if they wanted money but they said all that they wanted was my wife. They wanted her to be theirs so that they could do unspeakable things that I can’t even think about without throwing up and feeling like beating the shit out of this person. We didn’t know what to do, but my friend, after talking with him, mentioned the Dark Web to me, saying that if my wife needed a bodyguard, he’s 100% sure that the Dark Web would have something, and that kind of stuff is not expensive so we wouldn’t need to pay for a bodyguard the regular way with the loads of money that we did not have. Too much stress had gotten to me and I just wanted my wife safe so I didn’t think twice and went on forbidden website, clicking off the pop ups that came up, searched in the search bar bodyguard and looked at a few sites until I found one that didn’t cost any money at all, just a contract. My stupid brain was so trigger happy that my wife was finally going to be safe that I didn’t read it at all. I know I should’ve, you should always read a contract, especially if it’s from the Dark Web, if I had read it, I would have known what I was getting myself into and maybe I could have prevented it. I went back to the contact when we didn’t see anyone following my wife to protect her and I kept blacking out. It said that while my wife would be out by herself, a demon would possess my body and follow her secretly to make sure that my wife stays safe. A demon. That would make sense why we didn’t see anyone. The contract also said that the demon would remain in my body since the first time it gets in, just take over whenever it needs to but with having a demon in your body has consequences of course, whatever craving the demon has, since it stays in my body, it’ll make it seem like I did it, it’ll make me take the blame for it’s demonic “fun” activities. Slaughtering, drinking/doing drugs, raping, dangerous stunts, etcetera could all be included. I started freaking out, wondering what the demon was doing with my body when I blacked out, and I guess it found that annoying, either that or it wanted me to see, because I no longer blacked out. He didn’t do anything bad until I started having the small craving and it got bigger.

The demon made me get out of bed and start walking downstairs, snapping me out of my flashback. I started to panic as he made a straight beeline for the door. “No! No! I can’t go outside! You’ll make me hurt more people, please!” I begged the demon to stop but to no avail, it opened the door and I walked for miles into the night.

We were walking for two hours straight and my feet were starting to hurt. I started sobbing slightly and angrily wiped my tears away. I squeezed my eyes shut tightly as I tried to make my feet stop and to my surprise, they did, but I realized that I didn’t do that. We were stopped by a bus stop. There was a female, she looked like she was in her young 20’s. I sat down next to her, she looked over at me and smiled and gave me a small nod, telling me that she acknowledges my existence. I smile and nod back, feeling myself become slowly overpowered with the urge. Thoughts of ripping her apart came to my mind. C’mon, it’s the middle of nowhere, do it John, I heard a voice say. I try to scream, to warn the lady to run, or to run away myself, anything. I don’t want to hurt he-! I screamed in my head but it was interrupted by the warm, hot, gushy feeling I know too well; I'll never be able to forget the feeling from when I killed my own wife, how her insides felt, how her blood felt. I looked down and my eyes widened and teared up, even though I knew exactly what I was expecting. The demon had somehow given me the strength to punch through this woman, I pulled my hand out of her chest and in my hands was her heart. The bloodied organ pulsated in my hands as I’m still looking down in shock. I hear the woman screaming but it’s silent and muffled to me, my ears are ringing and tears are violently streaming down my face. I drop the heart on the ground and feel my face being stretched into a smile. For once the demon’s not making me, I lose it as my smile grows wider and I start to laugh. I have lost my sanity since this demon took over my life. I stop laughing when I realize that I should probably run, if the police catch me, they’ll never believe me and put me in a mental hospital and fuckin trust me, they don’t actually help you, at least not here, they’re shit and they treat you like shit. The devil ripped off the woman's arms before we left and I ran as fast as I could into the nearest abandoned hospital. I ran down the stairs into the basement part of it and hid in a corner. I took out a needle and thread from my pocket, already stained bloody from my wifes’ arms I put on a few days ago. I smile widely as I add on my new arms. 

Three hours later, I guess the police aren’t as stupid as I thought they were, I hear them upstairs, probably searching for me. I curl up in a ball, awaiting for when they find me and take me away. I guess the demon realizes that he can’t get out of this either because he’s not making me do anything, he knows we’re done too. I hear shots coming from the door of the room I’m in, I guess I didn’t hide very well.

I woke up in my hospital bed, sweating from the nightmare that I had. At least I got a good part of it for a little while, I had a wife. I turn my head as my doctor comes in, looking like the demon that I had in my dream. My eyes widened. No, not again. “It’s time to take your schizophrenic medication Mr.Smith,” she said as she came towards me with a demonic grin. A needle filled with propofol behind her back is the last thing I see.