Daemones Dominus: Zhaira

(Daemones Dominus)

~ "Disgusting. Truly disgusting." She was standing on the edge of a tall building looking down at the rows upon rows of horrible, ugly, man-made buildings and houses. "I swear, one day I'm going to kill them all one by one, and I'm going to start with..." She raised her arm and pointed at an average looking house. It was white with a black slate roof. It was two stories high and had a small lawn with a white picket fence. 

"Are you sure about that? I mean, we don't know who those people are." The demon behind her said. "They could be sorcerers or Hunters or they might even have a demon more powerful then me, not that that's likely, but it's always possible."

"You're a demon, you're meant to embrace a challenge and destroy fear and caution."

"Yes that is the stereotype, but I'm just a tad smarter then the average demon, it's not luck that's kept me alive for this long."

"Well whatever it is, it might run out soon if you don't shut up." Although he was powerful and intelligent, he was a bit too cautious for her liking. She was a Dark God and he was her demon, it was unusual for him to know caution. She turned away from the view of the suburbs to face the demon. He wore a long robe with a baggy hood resting on his head. He wore a plane white mask over his face, he always did, but she knew that underneath that mask was a face that was so horribly mutilated that anyone who gazed upon it instantly collapsed and vomited all over themselves. "You're my demon, that's why you're still alive. Nothing else."

"I apologize." He said as he lowed his head to her.

"Good. Now come here." She crossed her arms behind her back and stood up straight as he walked towards her. He stepped closer and closer until he was only a couple of millimetres away but he kept walking. He placed a foot on hers and it sunk to the floor. He took another step and soon his body had completely merged with hers. She let out a sigh as she felt his power add to hers. She turned to watch over the city. She walked to the edge but didn't stop. She walked over the edge and kept going as though there was still something beneath her. She stopped walking a metre from the roof and stood there for a few seconds before dropping straight down.

~ The dreams started a week ago. The same thing every night. I'm just having a normal day at school, working hard as always and then everyone would vanish. I'd run outside but there was nothing there, just a barren wasteland, that's when she shows up. A tall lady completely dressed in black. There's never any wind but her long black hair still flows around her shoulders, but it never blows in front of her face. And God, her eyes. They're the most beautiful, spectacular eyes I'd ever seen. They wear a bright purple and they looked as though she could stare right into your soul and know everything about you in a fraction of a second. She wore a smile on her lips, almost like she had just finished laughing and was still thinking about the joke, but it was still subtle. She was so beautiful. Then she started to walk towards me. I couldn't move even if I tried; she had hypnotised me with those eyes. She reached out with her hand and touched my shoulder. I knew what was coming but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't stop it. She leaned in close, hand still on my shoulder. Her lips were getting closer to mine, I could feel her breath now. Then I was free to move. I stepped back and looked at her again. She was still holding my shoulder but now she wore a long robe with a big hood over her head. Her free hand lifted the hood off of her head to reveal a plane, white mask and no hair. I tried to pull further back but sharp nails dug into my shoulder and broke the skin. As I felt the blood flow out of the wounds I lost control of myself again and lifted my hand up to the mask. I felt cold white stone touch my hands and I lifted off the mask. The face was so horrible that I can't even begin to describe it. I wanted to throw up, I wanted to run, but I couldn't. The girl was gone, replaced by this... thing, this monster, the only thing that was left of her was the eyes. I looked deep into them and began leaning forward. Whatever it was leant forward too. We were really close now. I closed my eyes and lifted my head, her eyes still in my head. I look down just in time to see that beast open it's mouth and dig it's teeth into my neck. That's when I jolt awake screaming. My mum always worries about me when I have those dreams. She hears me scream when I wake up and runs into my room. Before she gets there there's always a dark figure in front of the door. I can't tell who it is, all I can see is a pair of purple eyes staring at me through the dark.

~ She loved to torture humans before she killed them, but she was going to take extra care to completely destroy this one before she finally let him go. She would watch him as he slept, feeding him the same dream each night. She always kept her demon inside her, it's was too dangerous to keep him out all of the time, just in case he tried to escape. They always ran for freedom sooner or later. Soon she grew bored of tormenting him in his sleep. She watched and waited, following him wherever he went, memorising his daily routine, and soon, she had almost learnt everything about him.

~ I saw them again today, those god damned purple eyes! I swear, everyone I see has purple eyes, but then I look again and they're normal, it's driving me insane! I talked to my girlfriend about it but she thinks I'm just imagining it, and I would of thought that she was right until what happened when I got home that day. I explained it all to my mum and she could tell that I was all shaken up. "I'll bring you some water after I bring the washing in ok." That's what she told me, and I was ok with that when she left the room. She came back a minute later holding a glass of water and a bowl of chips. "Here you are sweety," she said as she put them on the table. She left the room but popped her head around the corner again. She had a big smile on her face as she looked at me, "oh, and I hope you get better." Her smile grew bigger as her eyes turned into a bright purple and she left the room again. I just stopped and stared at the spot where her head had been, unable to move. She walked back into the room holding a glass of water. "Oh, you got your own water," she said, noticing the water and chips on the table. I just sat there, staring, so many questions were running through my mind. What was going on? Who was that woman with the purple eyes? But above all else, why me?

~ She was loving this. The paranoia she caused him to have coupled with the fact that almost nobody believed his stories of a woman with purple eyes were slowly driving him over the edge, and she was ready to push him just that little bit closer to the brink of insanity. She would take away the one person that believed him, the one person that could never think he was crazy. She would take his mother away from him. Zhaira positioned herself in the upstairs room, right above the green house in the back yard and called the mother's name in her sons voice. Thinking her son was home from school, she went upstairs to see what he wanted only to find the room empty. She slid open the glass door on the other side of the room and looked down upon her greenhouse. Zhaira dropped down from the ceiling without making a sound and threw her victims mother over the wooden railing of the balcony. She gazed down and watched as the woman fell down. She hit her back on the steel frame of the greenhouse and smashed through the glass. Zhaira didn't even notice the man standing beside her until he spoke. "Just like you to attack from behind." She didn't look up at her visitor, only kept staring at the bleeding mess of flesh bone and glass. 

"I am honoured to be visited by the so-called 'Daemones Dominus'."

"Don't sound so excited." He replied as she looked up at him and smiled. "It's been a while Zhaira." She looked into his black eyes and watched as they poured out shadows that twisted and danced into the sky as if mimicking smoke. His black feathered wings gently moved in the wind and his tail danced behind his back.

"I agree. Far, far too long. So how have you been? What's it like to be the new Lord of the Demons? Tell me everything Jesse."

~ Mum's been in hospital for months. I try to visit her everyday, but it's getting harder, and her health is slowly getting worse. I don't think she'll make it. When she tripped and fell over the balcony she broke her neck and her back which left her completely paralysed. They've been feeding her through a straw and she's been put on life support. I don't have a dad, he left when I was 2, so if my mum dies then I'll be all alone in this cold world. I have noticed something though. I haven't seen that lady in a while, or the man. I don't particularly miss them, but I can't help but think that maybe my mum didn't trip, rather, she was pushed by that woman. I don't now why she chose me, or why she's even doing this. I just wish she'd stay away forever.

~ The three of them walked together through the grave yards of the world, pointing out their victims and telling stories of their victories. Zhaira lifted her hand and the three became two as her demon walked back into her. "That one was great. This guy was taking a tour of a brewery when I pushed him into a big vat of beer." Zhaira said, motioning to a grave that read 'R.I.P. Nick Tran'. "Of course he thought it was a good thing to be in there, but that vat was the vat filled with beer that had been contaminated. He was drinking it when the draining system turned on and sucked him down through the pipes underneath. What was worse was that the suction that made the beer drain faster was made by lots of sharp, spinning blades. He died with his lungs half full of beer and no legs. I laughed for a week at that one." They walked on a bit more before stopping at another grave that read 'R.I.P. Matthew Clark. Loved by many.'

"Oh man, this guy was great." Jesse began, "now this guy Matt had lots of friends and so what I did was I killed them all, and then I brought them back from the dead and made them follow him so that he thought he was crazy. Then one day, I made them all appear in front of him and he shot himself because he couldn't take it any more. I would have said that he quite while he was ahead, but he didn't have a head after he quit." The demonic pair laughed before carrying on their walk. They reached the end of the cemetery and found one last grave. 'In memory of Katie Bognuda'. Jesse stopped in hesitation as he remembered the name Katie and thought that it must have meant something to him, but what.

"This was one of mine," Zhaira said, "she didn't have many friends, but she had lots of cats, so one day.." Jesse wasn't paying any attention to the story, he was too lost in his forgotten memories, trying to remember the significance of that name. Katie. Who was she? "It was obvious that the cats enjoyed eating her because when the police found her only a few pieces of flesh were lift on her bones," she finished. Zhaira looked at Jesse who was just staring blankly at the grave and the name.

"Did I know her?" He asked.

"No, but when you were human you had a girlfriend named Katie." She responded.

"When I was... human?"

"Of course. Every demon starts off as a human, and I'm the one that turns them. The only pure blood demons are the ones that kill humans without my help, but they don't last long before they get caught."

"Who did I used to be?" This wasn't a good sign. Zhaira knew that whenever a demon questioned their origin, they'd always turn back to it and grow a conscience.

"Listen, why don't I take you to a house with a lovely old couple whose blood you can drink. You know that the older they are the better the blood. Come on, you know you want to."

"I do, but.."

"But nothing, come one, I'll show you where they live!" Zhaira said, showing as much excitement as a small child on a Christmas morning. She led Jesse to the house that used to be his own. The house that his parents still lived in, and watched, laughing, as he slaughtered them.

~ She's gone. My mum died. I haven't left my room in days except to get food. I know it's only a matter of time before she comes back, that demon. When she does come back I'm going to kill her, and nothing's going to stop me.

I saw her, she's back. The purple eyes are all around my room, more of them. Seven, eight, all in random places. I blink once and they've moved, it's impossible to track them. They hurt when I look at them too, in my chest and my head. It burns, so much.

There's more now. Thousands. All over my room, there's no more wall left that isn't covered by purple eyes and white masks. Why me.

~ She was enjoying this! She would make reflections of herself and place them throughout his room but only make her eyes visible. Then she'd sit back and watch him as he'd sit a squirm, unable to do anything until he forced himself into a restless sleep filled with nightmares of her. And through all of it, she'd watch, and she would laugh. Pretty soon he would snap, and go completely over the edge, spiralling down into the eternal chaos that he would call insanity, led by those unnatural purple eyes and the plane white mask, all the time asking why; why him? However, he wasn't the only one asking that question. As soon as she realised it, she cast him out, the demon. "You're going soft on me, demon." She said as he appeared in front of her, shadows swirling around his dark robe. 

"I have a name, and why do you persist with this one, he's suffered enough."

"I'll decide when he's suffered enough, now get back here demon!"

"My name is Kratich."

"Hm, do you really want to do this?"

"I'm sick of you." He threw a shard of shadow towards Zhaira who simply absorbed it into her body.

"You really want to just throw away your life?" He sent another blast, and another, each one being absorbed by her as she walked closer. "You were such a nice demon when I made you. What happened?" 

"I became better than you." He said as he lunged at her, but it was too late. In a single move she reached out and grabbed his throat, knocking his mask off at the same time. She lifted him up into the air while his hands grabbed uselessly at her arm and his screams filled the room. The boy woke up from his empty sleep and screamed as he saw the conflict that had unfolded in front of him. Zhaira and Kratich both turned to look at him and watched as his screaming stopped and he fell unconscious. 

"Maybe you're right, maybe he has suffered enough." Zhaira said, still holding her new victim off of the ground, "but you haven't." His face filled with fear and pain as a wave got sent up Zhaira's arm and he knew that she was absorbing his powers. He grew cold and weak before finally passing out, but she didn't stop, soon there was nothing left of him but a limp, empty shell. He was dead, his very life force taken away by his master. Now there was only one thing left to do.

~~~~~~~~

~ A neighbour had called the police after she hadn't seen the boy leave the house in over a month, she hadn't even seen him moving through a window or anything. The police entered the boys room and were shocked at what they found. There were burn marks all around the room and a large burn mark on the floor in the shape of a man. at the far end of the room was a bed, and on it was the boy. His skin was dark with decomposition. The officers that entered the room had to leave, but the once that stayed threw up because the smell from the body, as long as the smell from the pool of blood, vomit, sweat and human waste that had accumulated around the body was too overwhelming for any man to take. On the victim's chest was a plane, white mask that was completely spotless, untouched by the filth around it. An officer named Pete Jones collected the mask and placed it in an evidence bag. As he turned to hurry out of the room, he caught a glimpse of what appeared to be purple eyes floating on the other side of the room, but ignored it as a simple trick of the mind, but even then, he was still shaken by the sight. His boss noticed it when he returned to the office that day. "Jones, are you alright?" He asked. Jones recoiled at the sight of his boss' purple eyes, but relaxed when they slowly returned to their usual grey colour. However, he couldn't help but think, did his boss' eyes look ever so slightly more... purple? His boss looked into his eyes, no, into his soul as a cruel smile crept across his face, the smile of a Dark God.