Young Writers Society

The little boy could hear furious roaring in the distance.

His small, bare feet pounded against the lamplit pavement. The slapping noises echoed from the houses, ringing in his ears and certainly notifying the monster that was chasing him where he was. His huffing and puffing sounded loud to him as well, and his heart pounded in his ears like drums in an African village. He looked up, looking for the thing. All he could see was black and the occasional stalactite lit up by the bright streetlights. Where did he go?

He gritted his teeth and kept on running, ignoring the pain in his side and the fact that he wasn’t the most athletic six-year old in the world. The only way to survive was to run; it didn’t matter that he was acting like a crazed animal. In this situation, he was the prey and the monster was the predator.

His survival instincts forced him to sprint faster as the roar sounded, his desperate breaths breathing even more sharply than before. In the attempt to sprint even faster, however, he tripped and fell over his blue pinstriped pajamas, smacking his head on the cement sidewalk with a loud thunk. He smelled blood and felt something wet on his face where it didn’t hurt and knew that he had scraped his face really badly. He struggled to get up and gasped when he saw all of the blood on the path. Whipping his head to look behind him, he saw something huge flying its way towards him. The boy uttered a word that his mother would never allow him to say and started to run again. But it was too late. The demon had already caught up to him enough to grab the little boy around the waist with his huge, purple claws and lift him up kicking and screaming.

The boy’s cries were not heard. Or ignored by the residents of the small demonic neighborhood that he was currently being kidnapped from.

The human child punched the scaled claws squeezing his midsection, but to no avail. He was helpless. Giving up, he fell limp in the beast’s hand with defeat. The thing smirked an ugly smile, spread its wings, and flew into the blackened night shadowed by cave.

--

They landed in front of an elaborate palace. It was made of a strange, purple rock and it was filled with spirals reaching up towards the cave ceiling. There were also solid-looking, menacing walls, fire towers, and guard turrets. Some black glass that lined the windows added a sort of delicateness to it, but the boy still wanted to look away from it, foreboding as it was. The purplish demon tapped his foot impatiently while waiting for the guards to open the solid, steel gates in front of the demon and the boy. When the gate finally opened, the demon breathed something in his language and shuffled into the castle with the child.

The boy gaped at the surroundings as the demon walked across the courtyard. He never expected this in this underground prison. Lavish gardens - though full of strange plants - filled the entire area. One plant had several pink flowers situated like a hyacinth, except that they were more... droopy, was how the boy would describe it. Another one was bright red with a yellow stamen in the middle that kind of looked like a leaf. Yet another one was a pink one that the boy has seen many a time before, but he couldn’t place it. He knew that he had seen it at seasonal times, however, he couldn’t quite get the name. It was on the tip of his tongue, he knew it-

He jolted out of his thoughts. There were more pressing matters at hand than what the pinkish flowers were.

The demon carried him inside, swinging open a large set of dark, wooden double doors with what looked to be solid gold handles. It revealed a decorated throne room. It had a large golden and red carpet unrolled to an ornamented golden throne that was sat upon by yet another...

Demon?

The human boy didn’t know whether he was a demon or not. Instead of the leathery bat wings that demons normally have, as he had seen during his time here in the Underworld, this demon-thing had black, bird-like wings instead. He had the traditional reddish skin and ivory ram horns, however. He radiated authority and he tapped his black-colored claws against the side of the throne, making a clack clack clack noise.

The man-demon-thing smiled, revealing a set of sword-sharp teeth. The boy quaked underneath the malicious-looking smile. He could feel himself falling into that sharp mouth already, being crunched by those hard jaws with a quick snap.

“Hello, Asmodeus,” the demon-thing said. “It is I, your father.

It smiled even wider. “Lucifer.”

-- 8 hours earlier --

Thomas “Tom” Wellridge stood outside of the junior school, waiting for his mother to pick him up from Year 2.

“Hey, Tom?” his friend Edward called out. “What’s going on? You seem sad.”

“I’m not sad, I’m just worried that Mum forgot me,” Tom answered.

“Again?”

“Yes, again.”

Tom smiled sadly. His mother had forgotten him at least four times that year already. I mean, he understood that his father died that summer in a hunting accident and that it was sad and all, but Tom had gotten over it. His mother should too. It was October, for God’s sake! She shouldn’t have forgotten him this many times already in the year.

Edward frowned. “That’s horrible.”

Tom nodded. “I know.”

They sat in awkward silence until Edward’s mother pulled up to the quaint little lobby. Edward shrugged at Tom, mouthing ‘sorry’ as he climbed into the Nissan his mother owned. The boy waved as he drove away.

Tom slumped in his seat with a sigh. He didn’t have a phone like all of the other girls in his grade seemed to have, and there was no way he could walk home. He should have just gone with Edward’s mother or something. There was no way that there was anyone else in the school at that time, except for the teachers, but teachers live in school.

Don’t they?

Tom went over the facts in his head. Teachers teach at school, but that doesn’t mean that they work there, he reasoned. His mother worked at a bowling alley but she didn’t live there. They were always there in the morning as he walked in, but that could mean they get up really early, like at 6:00. His mum got up really early and made him breakfast and stuff and left him to get ready on his own all the time. Do teachers do that too, for their kids? Tom assumed that it was perfectly normal to do that - since his mother did it, obviously it must be normal - so that definitely wasn’t out of the question.

His thoughts were interrupted by a gleaming white Ford pulling up in front of him. Inside of said Ford was his mother in all of her glory, with her dark brown hair tied in a bun that clashed slightly with her bowling alley clerk uniform that she wore constantly. She looked over at her son with an apology written all over her blue eyes. Her red lipstick-covered mouth opened up to apologize but Tom put a hand up, meaning “save it.” He was tired of apologies from his mother.

Susanne obviously was very hurt and directed her gaze back to the road, ignoring her son. Tom climbed into the passenger seat illegally to see if she was just pretending to not pay attention. She wasn’t.

“Why are you so angry all the time?” she asked hoarsely as they sat at a red light. “This is the third time this month you’ve given me the hand.” She turned towards him. “Where did you even learn that from? You’re only six, for goodness sakes!”

Tom shrugged. “You taught it to me. You would do that all the time,” he answered simply. “And I’m not angry. I never am.” He stopped himself before he could say that he was never happy, or sad, or anything like that either. His mother didn’t need to know that. “I’m a happy child,” he lied. He mentally slapped himself for almost giving his secret away.

He could see his mother visibly relax as the light turned green and she pressed the gas pedal, driving towards the place they called home. “Good. I’m just... worried for your well being, you know?” Tom knew, in reality, that his mother was probably worried for him anyway, but he didn’t go on about it.

Tom nodded, staring out the window. He was pretty bored, and he had put all of his books and stuff out in the backseat, which meant he couldn’t get anything to do. The only thing was to talk to his mother, and he was too shaken about what he had almost revealed to do that anyway. Guess it was staring out the window then.

Susanne leaned over and pressed a button to turn the radio on. Kidzbop - ugh - played some song that Tom didn’t know but his mother obviously did. She sang along to the lyrics happily.

Oh, halfway there.

Oh, livin’ on a prayer!

Take my hand, and we’ll make it I swear.

Tom was really confused. How can you live on a prayer? Prayers were just words, weren’t they? It wasn’t like there was anyone up in heaven to listen and hear it. There was no such thing as God; scientific reason prevented that from being possible.

Susanne finished singing along to the song and smiled at her son, the happiest that she had been in days. Tom just glanced at her. He honestly didn’t care how happy she was. Whatever happy felt like, anyway.

They pulled up to a quaint little home with a large flower garden in the front, red brick siding, and a small porch tucked in between of the garage and the main door. Mother and son pulled open the doors of the car, crossed the sidewalk, and walked into the house through the small porch door.

Their dog - a brown mutt with a torn ear - jumped onto them and almost knocked Tom onto the floor. Susanne stopped and scolded the dog for jumping while Tom entered the kitchen.

The kitchen had blue and off-white tile, grey-blue walls, and varnished, mahogany cabinets. An island stood in the middle with a blue marble countertop like an ocean on a clear day. There were pictures of sailboats, seashells, and various beach oddities hung on the walls. It looked to be a kitchen out of a magazine - due to Tom’s mother working only a part-time job - at least, until Tom dumped his bag onto the kitchen table. Then it didn’t look so much like that.

He opened the white fridge to get something to eat, but he couldn’t find anything except leftovers and sandwich materials. He sighed with defeat - looks like his mother hasn’t gone to the store again - and closed the fridge again.

Susanne winced when she saw Tom’s face, like he was disappointed in her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I will go to the store tonight.”

That’s what you said yesterday, a little voice in Tom’s mind pointed out.

Tom sighed and rolled his eyes, acting disappointed, when in reality he didn’t feel anything at all. No food in the fridge? Same old, same old. Just stop lying about getting more when you won’t.

“Do you have any hom-” his mother started to say.

Tom shook his head before she could finish and stomped up to his room, pretending to throw a fit so his mother would think that he was normal. He slammed the door and allowed himself to shudder at the thought. Normal? Ugh. What a horrible thing to be.

He looked at the mirror across from his white door and a short boy looked back at him with striking multicolored eyes. One black and one blue. Tom bit his lip and rubbed his head to make his brown hair messy, grinning at the look and revealing one missing tooth to the reflection, who revealed it back to him in turn. A gray cat slinked behind him, trying to avoid the boy that didn’t exactly smell right.

For most of the afternoon, Tom read the book “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” He couldn’t wait when he could show it to the other kids in school and rub it in their faces that he could read a preteen book and they couldn’t. He also was enjoying it so far. He was near the end when he decided to stop. He enjoyed to torture himself like this; him stopping reading a book right before something really climatic. He liked to theorize about what would happen.

Tom was really tired and didn’t feel hungry, so he decided to put on his pajamas ahead of time. This wouldn’t be the first time that month he had skipped dinner. He usually was fine the next day.

He picked out his favorite blue pinstriped pajamas and slipped them on himself, removing his other clothes of course. Tom picked the stripped clothing off of the black-and-white carpeted floor and threw them into a blue laundry basket, being the neat little boy he was. He walked over to his oaken desk and turned on the nightlight that was on it. He couldn’t - wouldn’t? - sleep without it.

He thumped his bare feet over the carpet and pretty much dove into bed when he realized that he had forgotten to turn off the main light on the ceiling fan in his room. He groaned and rolled out of the black duvet and blue sheets and walked across the room to turn off the light. Once that task was done, he settled underneath the covers for a deep sleep.

--

He was awoken by a blinding white light shining right in front of his face. He groggily opened his eyes and shut them again, muttering “five more minutes.” He didn’t want to go to school that day.

Wait, isn’t it Saturday?

At this thought, Tom’s eyes flew open and was immediately blinded by something white. He hissed a little bit; an inhuman sound. When his eyes got used to the light, he noticed something strange.

There was a light. Floating. Above the floor right beside his bed.

How was this possible? Tom racked possibilities in his head and couldn’t find anything. What? How? Huh? This wasn’t possible! Lights couldn’t float! They had to be attached to something, and Tom could plainly see that there was no string hanging above the light. Besides, his mother wasn’t the type of person to do this. He had no prankster siblings either, so what could it be? Edward? Edward was most likely asleep.

And then it began to speak, confusing poor Thomas even more.

Another ball of light floated from behind the other and bobbed in the air like a nod. “Yes.” The other voice was equally tiny.

“Are you sure? If we're wrong, you-know-who will kill us.”

“Oh please, I’m not scared of him. Besides, he's not going to care. If it's human after all, we can just feed it to the hounds.”

“That is true.”

What is a fallen angel? Tom wondered. I know that an angel is something out of the Bible, but I don’t believe in God so I’ve never read the Bible. Just a waste of time. And what are these hounds that they are talking about? Are they wolves? Dogs?

“Should we just take him?”

“Yes.”

The lights started to spin around Tom, who was paralyzed underneath the suffocating black duvet. Light filled Tom’s vision and that’s all he knew before everything went black.

--

He was in a prison, he knew.

It was pretty obvious from the forcefield that would zap him whenever he would get close to it and by the sharp purple rocks lining the walls. The only at least slightly comforting thing was the hard - Tom guessed cement - floor. Tom lay there, away from anything. He has just woken up in the middle of the room with no idea how he got here. He guessed that it had been only a few minutes since he had arrived, but it had felt like hours with nothing to do.

Tom stared at the ceiling. There was one thing to do, and it was to think about conspiracy theories, one of his favorite activities. Did the astronauts really land on the moon? Are the governments of the world hiding evidence of aliens? Does Illuminati exist? Was Kennedy really shot by something human? His brain jumped from theory to theory in an attempt to find something to do.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tom saw the forcefield go out. He got up, confused, and realized that there were no guards. He had no idea how or why the forcefield had gone out, but he knew he had to take his chance to escape. He ran as fast as he could carry himself out of the prison when he heard stomping.

He looked back and to his terror he saw a purple thing with large ram horns on his head, sharp teeth, huge wings, and feet like hind dragon legs. Tom gulped and ran. The demon made a screeching noise that dropped a few rocks and ran after Tom. Tom skidded and turned a corner, diving into a small nick of a rock as the demon ran by. It hadn’t seen him. Tom sighed with relief, a little too loudly. He heard the demon stop and turn around, footsteps getting closer. Tom scrabbled backwards and, to his surprise, there was no wall behind him.

He turned around. It looked to be a hidey hole for small humans like him. He forced himself to remain calm and crawled through as fast as he could, scrambling just in time as one of the demon’s claws slashed where he was earlier. Tom gasped and looked back and he saw a giant black fingernail inches from his feet. Growing even more frightened now, Tom looked forward and crawled even faster. The demon retracted the finger and stomped away, probably to figure out where the niche ended.

The thought to stay where it was safe - in the niche - occurred to Tom, but he dismissed that thought early. No, that wasn’t possible. He would starve to death or something. Besides, how did he know what types of technology that monster had? They could have robots, or small death machines or something. Maybe even those hounds that the lights talked about.

Tom decided to keep going. He crawled for the longest time until he saw a golden light. Was it heaven? Tom decided not; there was no way that there was a heaven. It didn’t exist.

Tom crawled out of the hole and popped up in a hole inside of a rock in an ordinary-suburb, which would have been normal if it weren’t for ugly demons crawling all over it. They got in cars, flew around, greeted each other like neighbors. There were even some demonic children playing ball in what looked like a park, complete with a sort of playground.

Tom snuck out of the rock and snuck into the town, making careful to stay in the shadows where the demons couldn’t see him. He saw a puddle and jumped into it, masking his scent, and made sure to not scrape himself or do anything that would lead the things to him.

He couldn’t find a way out, but he assumed that that castle up ahead would be a great place to go to for help. He started making his way over, but as soon as he saw the other demons scattering and heard a furious roar, he knew that he was in trouble.

--

This was how he was in this predicament now.

“Who is Asthmodis?” Tom asked with difficulty.

“Asmodeus,” Lucifer corrected with amusement. “Do you not remember anything? Interesting how the mortality spell messes up a demon’s brain.”

“Who are you? What are you? Where am I?”

“I am Lucifer. The King of Demons, and your father. You are in your home, little Asmodeus.”

“You’re not my father! Luke Wellridge was my father!”

“Luke Wellridge was but a pawn.”

“A pawn? What does that mean?”

“He was a toy. Something for me to use. You see, Asmodeus, you are the reincarnated version of my son.”

Tom gasped. “What does reincarnated mean?”

“It means you were brought back from the dead, Asmodeus.”

-- 20 years later --

The man dashed across the yard, careful not to be seen. Using a pentagram, he created a hole in the fence gate. Dissipating magic was useful, he decided. Especially for his first mission.

He slipped through the hole, making his slim, feminine-shaped body and shortness useful for once. He reminisced on school and the boys making fun of him for “looking like a girl” or “looking like a gay.” The man winced. What is wrong with being gay?

Focus. You can't think about that now.

He crossed the yard, bending shadows around himself to hide the ram horns sprouting over the top of his spiky brown hair. Well, to hide him in general. He did not want the mistress of the house to see him. She would think that he was breaking in. How silly! He wasn’t breaking in!

He was just letting himself into the house, you know? That’s not a crime, especially when you were from a place where it was legal to let yourself into places. He didn’t know the laws here, not anymore, at least.

The man burned through the back doorknob with another pentagram, using yet another dissipating spell. He grasped the hole that was created in the door and opened the door with no difficulty.

The next door was unlocked. He didn’t need to use a spell, that much was obvious. Even though the man was chock-full of magic, he didn’t want to use it over and over again as magic usually tired him out; the mission depended on him to not be tired.

He shadow-walked upstairs - or turned into literal shadow and walked along the walls - to make sure that nothing would be able to smell or hear him, like a dog. He wondered if that old dog, Scooby, was still alive. Probably. That dog could survive anything. Even if Scooby wasn’t, he should do it anyway. If he remembered correctly, the woman who lived here used to be a cat fanatic. She might have taken that habit up again after the death of the man and the disappearance of the boy of the house.

HIs theory was proven correct when a white cat with a pink collar sauntered past him with its tail up in the air. Acting like they own everything. Stupid animal. The man kept shadow-walking, all the way to the top floor where he sensed the woman after reaching the eighth step from the bottom. Her and three other beings, which he thought were cats. Looks like Scooby wasn’t alive anymore. That’s too bad.

He stood outside of her door, debating how to come in. Knowing the woman, she would leave her door locked, as she had been paranoid ever since her son disappeared. Should he just unlock it? No, she'd hear the noise. Should he disintegrate it? No, that was too obviousand he wanted to use a new trick. Should he try the doorknob like an ordinary human being? He wasn’t sure. The last time that he had been in this house was quite a little while ago, but he remembered that his mother put a piece of white tape on the doorknob to see if it would turn or not. Crazy woman.

Besides, he most certainly wasn’t human.

He sighed. Screw it. He was going in with a bang.

He summoned two small fireballs and shot them at the door. Combined with the explosive pentagrams that he had also summoned, it blew the door open. It rained splintered wood all over the brown carpet and the woman screamed.

The man stepped inside of the room and smiled at the cowering woman evilly. His one blue and one black eye flashed with malice. Finally; my first mortal kill.

The woman gasped, recognizing those eyes immediately right before the man lunged at her. He spread his dark purple wings and revealing his sharp teeth, a black fluid dripping out of his mouth as she shouted something before he ripped into her flesh with his sharp black claws.

“Thomas, is that you?”

--

A/N: This is a project due on Monday. PLEASE REVIEW! I want longer reviews, not really short ones that don't help at all. Look at DP's. That's the perfect example --

Kara.