She Had Demons

© 1999 Teri Lucia
All rights reserved.

I am running through the darkened rain, leafy hands slapping my face. Behind me the sibilate pounding of cloven feet on the damp ground, a leathery rustle of wings extending and retracting, unable to fly in a storm, pursues. My chest ready to burst, I stumble, falling to the ground. Nearby, I hear the church bells ringing ... ringing ... ringing....

Swimming from the green depths of sleep, unable to open my eyes, I hear the telephone answering machine pick up. I hadn't bothered to leave an opening message.

"Kelli? It's Erin. Where the hell are you; are you still in bed? Ranken says this is it, you're fired. Get your ass up and down here or I swear, he means it."

My feeble attempt at clarity failed, eyes throbbing, I return to the Green Depth. With some effort, I float just beneath the surface, able to see light.

A bright June afternoon. I, a precocious sixth-grader out for the summer, bike my way home from the Lexington Street pool, clad only in my swim-team suit, flip-flops, my towel folded over the seat underneath me. I park my bike under the carport and run into the house, just under wire of my five-o'clock curfew.

"It's about time." Mother, tall, cold and beautiful as death, looms before me, hands to her hips. "I told you I was going out for dinner. You've made me late. Now go get dressed. Your Uncle Alan is going to babysit you."

Uncle Alan. Handsome brother to the woman nominated "Most Beautiful Woman in Bountiful," two years running, my idol of male supremacy in the absence of the father. At a decade plus two, my only notion of sexuality stemmed from late night reruns of "Valley of the Dolls" and daytime T.V. Love is something to be violently displayed, not felt.

My uncle did not disappoint me.

"Your fault, your fault," mother had stood over the bleeding bed, hissing.

I wrestle the twilight with herculean effort and manage to lift my head. The nebulous green tile over the tub looms above through the pulsing stream from the shower head. So this is what it feels like; the blood flowing from my wounds, languid as gelatin left in the sun, slow like dying of a botchy disease. A trickle of warm ... hmm....

He sat in the neon halo of a Heineken beer light, anomalous to the bar scene in his suit of milk and sugar, the Christ of junkies and prostitutes. He promised the world, complete with despotic freedom and the absolute pleasures of sins of the flesh if I would only let him rule me.

Everything, everything; until they found him under the streetlamp, a knife in him.

Flung suddenly back into the cold, my cheek to the wet ground, rain lashing me from above the alarming pounding draws nearer. Opening my eyes, my vision level to the earth, I see the church tower not far away now, eclipsed by the rain, the bells ringing ... ringing ... ringing....

The Green is paler. The water has grown cold.

"This is Ranken, Kelli. This is to let you know that this time you're fucked, lady. I was doin' you a favor, you're not exactly top quality anymore, you old bitch. Don't you come beggin' 'round here, or I'll put a boot up your junkie ass. Got that? ... HEY! FUCK YOU!"

I regain my feet in the now freezing rain. I face the tower, my sanctuary. The bells have ceased for me. The pounding stops behind me. I make a last endeavor toward the tower. A clawed hand closes about my throat. My body becomes enveloped in a leather shroud. It draws me around to face it, the thing from Hell, to look once more into its burning eyes, the fanged visage. It tips back my head, sinking its teeth.

A flash of red, then black.

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