“Dreams have meanings” my keepers used to say. I suppose I agree, dreams can’t just be mindless gibberish your brain throws at you to entertain itself at night. Sometimes I can understand them, but the dreams I had after the murder of my family members we’re not ones I could decipher. Twisted visions of Angels and Demons ripping each other apart on the battlefield haunted me. Every morning I’d wake to the horror that was my life, and the pain of the Angels that die in my nightmares. Sometimes I would notice them as alive, having names and families and lives, just to be gunned down in the Demon onslaught. One couple in particular showed up on multiple occasions, seeing through their eyes, their lives and their struggles, everything; almost as tough I was them. I never had the same dream twice. that is except for one…
Lucifer wandered the streets of a large city, which one was unclear. He walked, glancing up at the sky every once in a while in hopes of seeing her. He knew she would fly to meet him, her white angelic wings would kiss the starless nightime sky. He missed the stars, they all did.
He looked up one last time before entering the rundown warehouse. The building looked like the mold was holding it together inside, there were mushrooms growing along the far right wall. Lucifer held his nose as he walked towards the support beam in the middle, the hole in the ceiling over it providing the only light. The moonlight came to settle on a pair of white wings. The wings were spread wide, well over the height of their owner. Lucifer was captivated by the majestic beauty of his wife, every time he saw her, his gaze was drawn to her wings. She smiled slightly. “hello Lucifer.” he couldn’t help but notice something off in her voice, it reminded him of how one would talk to your enemy.
Lucifer stared at Angelica for a long time, unable to speak after such a cold greeting. He looked around the warehouse, scanning the shadows for them. “w…where are they?” his voice echoed through the cold emptiness of the vermin-infested building. Angelica shook her head, her expression unreadable. “They are not here, they are somewhere safe, somewhere you can never hurt them.” she almost laughed, her lips shifting to form a kind of smug grin. Lucifer suddenly ran forward, shoving her into the beam behind her, his hand on her neck, raising his wife from the floor. The beam made a worrying noise and moved slightly, as if it were going to fall but it remained upright. “I knew it. y…you have become a demon, you are not the man you once were…” Angelica struggled to say as Lucifer strangled her. She flapped her powerful wings and they began to glow with a pure white light that burned him to the point of falling unconscious. She wrapped her wings around herself, beginning to ascend into Heaven, her home, leaving Lucifer smouldering on the floor.
* * *
I woke up screaming in the pain he had felt, my quilt abandoned in my haste to escape the dream. This was the third time I had had that dream, it haunted me like a ghost, looming over my every waking hour, a shadow representing my dark thoughts. I remember staying awake that night, unlike the other times, this dream had felt real, like Lucifer was me. I spent the better part of the night just starting at my hands and arms, imagining them burning with Heaven’s fire like Lucifer’s had. After “the incident” when I killed JJ, all blame was rested on my shoulders. ‘MADMAN ON THE RUN’ the newspapers screamed. ‘PSYCHOTIC KILLER STILL AT LARGE’ the news reports shouted at all who would listen. ‘beware this murderer’ ‘hide from this killer’ everywhere I went I saw and heard the accusations. But, as I said before, I am not the villain here, J is; always had and always will be. I remember very little of the night I lost Zoe (other than what I have already told you), but I remember my keepers entering my room, having heard me scream. the look on their faces as they saw the blood and the bodies, the kid and the knife. The next thing I remember is waking up on someone’s sofa the next morning.
Being friends with a Demon is really handy. After I ran away, I went to live with Lilith, who had once been my babysitter. yes, she is a Demon, she took me in and, somehow, managed to make everyone forget what I looked like. My keepers forgot most things about me because of what Lilith had done; I was grateful. She told me about how, on the night of the murders, she had found me running through the park, my eyes alternating between red and black. Apparently, I was screaming, shouting loud as humanly possible “they are dead! The Angel and the Demon are dead! We are rid of their presence, rejoice sons and daughters of Hell, for we have won!” In some parts of my speech she said sounded like JJ and it was all spoken in a language only Demons can understand.
There was no need for me to return to school, Lilith taught me all I needed to know, the rest, I could instantly learn because of what I am. Don’t ask me how it works, I do not know myself. Anyway, I lived with Lilith as the invisible boy, unknown to all but her, for almost two years. The day I lost my last friend, was two days after my fifteenth birthday.
We were sat on her apartment’s balcony watering the plants then IT came. The sun went dark, making it near impossible to see. A black cloud of smoke, similar to that of JJ’s soul, peeled it’s self from the shadows. Its smoke surrounded us both and, being only half Demon, was choked by its toxic fumes. I was rendered immobilized by the Demon smoke and collapsed to the ground, catching only a glimpse of the fires of Hell burning through the hole in the wall it had created to go home. I woke up several hours later, remembering next to nothing about what had transpired there. I remembering pulling myself from the floor, my vision teetering and swaying. That was when I heard it, the soft voice in the back of my mind. “Run” it whispered, over and over and over. So, after a short while of questioning my sanity, I packed my rucksack, filling it with clothes, food and whatever else I felt I would need. I took a risk and stayed there overnight, leaving Lilith’s house and my town behind to start a new life on the run.
It didn’t take me long to realize what I was running from. Lilith had taught me how to fight and how to hide, but not how to control JJ. Nothing much happened until I was sixteen. Living on the street, begging for scraps, and eventually, learning to hypnotize humans into allowing me to stay in hotels for free. The dreams had mostly stopped, just the odd one of Lucifer looking for…something. My main problem was J. I had gotten used to his presence, it was like a constant feeling of being watched.Then he got bored and figured out how to take control. I was asleep when he cracked it. I woke up lying on the floor in a kids park. I stank of alcohol and something else I couldn’t identify. It took me a while to get back to my hotel, for I didn’t know the area at all. Before long he managed to work out how to block my view. When he takes control, I can still see what is happening, that was until J developed “the block” which basically makes my vision dark, making me unable to see what is happening.
Soon, my seventeenth birthday came, bringing with it a fresh round of bullets for me to dodge. My life became more complex as J took control more often, leaving me to wake up in the aftermath of what he had done. He quickly learned how to take control while I was awake, but I was still conscious, watching through his eyes, unable to say or do anything but watch. Being two souls in one body, we both has a physical form visible only in my mind. Anyway, as my birthday arrived, it was triggered. Like a switch flicked in my DNA, my powers unlocked with enough force to cause a minor earthquake. My powers were what caused the Demons to find me, I was like a living magnet to them, and this was what that dream I had been having was warning me about.
As I slept the night before I became seventeen, I began to dream. Angelica, with her wings spread wide casting off a holy light which burned me like the sun, but not as bad as it had burned Lucifer. JJ stood beside me in my dream, Angelica unable to see him. She looked at me and folded her wings away behind her long, flowing dress and the burning stopped. “I don’t have much time so I will be concise. Today is your birthday right? We all know what will happen when the hour strikes, I think you should too. A, your powers will unlock, you have to be ready for them, they will be drawn to you.” I looked at her, trying to keep my voice even. “Don’t call me that. Only my friends get to call me A. Who are you anyway?” Angelica sighed and waved her hand across her mouth. When I tried to ask her about the dreams, I realized my mouth was stuck shut.
I stood in stunned silence as Angelica began to speak to me, her voice seemed musical lie she was singing every word though she was not. J laughed at me until his mouth was sewn shut like mine. Horrible black stitches threading from lip to lip leaving livid red sores where the needle must have cast though the flesh. Blood dropped from them and I began to worry he may blame me for this, but my worries were cast aside when I remembered that it was all a dream.
Angelica introduced herself then she pointed out that I should know who she was, after all she had told me via my dreams. When I asked why she would show me such horrid images she simply said that I “deserved to know the truth” about her past. “Anthony, you are our son, mine and Lucifer’s” I have to admit there was definitely another way of telling me she was my mother. But, what she said afterwards was really what pushed me over the edge. “Lucifer spent years living in Hell, it has turned him into a Demon. When six a.m hits, you will be exactly seventeen years old and they will be alerted. The Demons that live among you will come for you, and they will kill you. Your father may be among them.” whether it was the thought of having Demons chasing me or the fact that she was warning me about what was about to happen, the shock hit me and I collapsed to my knees on the ground.
The floor was hard and black but almost shiny, the whole area blacked out apparent from an ominous glow lighting the three of us. Angelica keeled down before me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “You have a choice, my son. You can run from the Demons as you have for so very long already or, you can risk it all and use what Lilith taught you and fight them. Whatever you choose, if you see Lucifer do not fight, just get the hell out of there as fast as you can. A, he cannot get his hands on you.” Her body began to shimmer and fade. I tried to speak, I had so many questions that needed answering. “I’m sorry, I must leave now. Goodbye, for now at least, but I promise we will meet again. Oh, and happy birthday.” She faded away into nothing, leaving just me and JJ.
The stitches on our mouths disappeared, allowing us to talk. J was first to break the silence. “Wow I thought she’d never leave.” He joked, pulling me to my feet. He was tall, somewhere over six feet. Though he was twenty years old, he looked closer to my age, with his leather jacket and ripped jeans. it’s true that the forum he has inside my mind is how his soul adapts to his taste. even after all this time, it was still hard for me to look at him. I can honestly say I do not regret ending his life, but I regret not being able to stop him taking over my mind. If I had known then what I know now, he would’ve been in Hell where he belongs. I stood in the black abyss of my dream and looked around, wondering why it had not ended. that was when JJ grabbed the front of my t-shirt and lifted me from the ground. I grasped his hand so he could not strangle me and looked at him with nothing but pure hatred. “Look, Mom said you have a choice, right? Well you don’t. hurt any Demon and I can make your life much more miserable little bro. got that?” I nodded and he dropped me, causing me to land awkwardly on my side.
I stood quickly and noticed something on a chain around his neck. Upon closer inspection, I noticed it was an oval with a cross carved into it. On each point of the cross was an initial of our family. Mom on the top, Dad at the bottom, me on the left and Zoe on the right. It sickened me to see him wearing it. It was like someone leaving a masterpiece on the side of a road to be vandalized and ruined. I decided I had had enough and turned away from him, closing my eyes.
When I opened them again I was back in my room in the hotel I had spent a few nights in. I sat up, still not fully awake from my sleep. I was awake enough to know that my knees hurt, almost like I had fallen on them. A quick look around told me what J had been up to before he had passed out. There was about five or six people sitting on chairs or laying on the floor passed out from too much booze. It wasn’t long before the headache hit me. From the looks of my room, J had had a party which had gotten out of hand…again; I remembered none of it. I wondered into the bathroom and looked into the broken mirror. The bags under my eyes were not at all subtle, and the darkness was darker than J’s hair. I sighed and walked away, ready to tackle the day. First, I cleared out the passed out people, the one I couldn’t wake was taken home by his friend. Once he was in the car, his friend came over to thank me for the party. I used my headache as an excuse to not talk to her. As I was about to close my door, she rushed back up the stairs towards me. “Wait!” she yelled, stopping just in front of me. “Listen, as fun as it was to meet you and pretend to be your friend your going to have to come with me.” She grabbed my arm before I could react and slapped some handcuffs onto my wrists.
I felt an extreme sudden pain in my heart, just like I had when JJ had first possessed me. Before I knew it, he was in control of my body. I watched through my eyes but wasn’t in control of anything that J did. While the cop was reciting all the laws I had broken, JJ just stood in silence and I couldn’t help but wonder what he was going to do. Before she could react, J grabbed the flip out mini knife from the front pocket of my jeans and freed the blade. While she reached for her gun, which she must have retrieved from her car, J lunged forward and stabbed her in the gut. The blade was too short to cause any extreme damage, but it did bring her down. JJ swiftly unlocked his cuffs and put them on the cop. While she slowly bled to death, J pulled out his phone and sent an “SOS” to a close “friend” of his. It wasn’t long before a car pulled up in the car park. Last thing I saw before J put up the block was him reaching down and picking up the bleeding cop.