/* Trigger warning: this story contains elements of suicidal thoughts, physical abuse and non-consensual sex. If those topics are a turn-off regardless of what the rest of the story includes, then you should probably look elsewhere.
Everyone engaged in sexual activity in this story is over eighteen.
Your comments and ratings are seriously appreciated! */
Sir:
Michael Hutchence was not wrong. Everyone does have the devil inside. Only in my case, you can take that literally. Okay, maybe not *the* Devil. But *a* devil. Or demon. Or imp. Or something.
Just a couple of years ago, I was an ordinary guy leading an ordinary life. I was reasonably successful and fairly happy with my job as a software sales rep. Sure, I spent a lot of time on the road, but I was good at it so the money was great and I figured that at 32, I had a couple more years to make my mark and then start worrying about family and the future.
Then Salt Lake City happened.
I was at a bar in a non-descript mid-priced hotel near the airport on the north side of the city, getting ready to call it a night and turn in. I had a flight back home scheduled for 2pm, which gave me time to write up my notes from the meetings I'd had that day.
I had just signaled the bartender for the check when a wild-eyed older man stepped up to the bar next to me and grabbed my wrist. I felt a shock travel up my arm, like I had plunged it into a tub of ice water. I yelped and shook him off, but not all that hard.
Nevertheless, he fell to the concrete floor and it was pretty obvious that he was dead before anyone even thought about checking for a pulse. EMS was there pretty quickly but of course all they could do is declare him to be in the condition we had already surmised and take the body away.
I suddenly felt exhausted and after charging my drinks to my room, I stumbled for the elevator and made my way back to my room on the third floor.
My next conscious thought was that the bed was a lot more comfortable than I remembered. Then I realized that I wasn't in my room at all -- and that the huge bed I was lying in was covered in sticky pools of congealing blood.
I let out an unmanly yip and slid out of the bed, looking around enough to realize that I was in a much nicer room than my own, that I was completely naked and that the blood was most likely not from me, as I seemed to be uninjured. And there was a *lot* of blood.
Checking the obligatory sign on the back of the hotel room door, I confirmed that I wasn't in my hotel. I wasn't even in Utah. In fact, I was in one of Vegas' better-known hotels, likely in a high rollers suite. There was no sign of where the body that had produced the copious amounts of blood was and in my shocked state of mind, all I could think to do was get dressed and drive back to Salt Lake City, if in fact my rental was here.
I got dressed and made it to the parking deck without anyone stopping me and used the remote clicker to find the rental Nissan Maxima. It was about 5:30am and I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting to be arrested at any second.
Instead, I drove up I-15 like a bat out of hell, quickly changed clothes and checked out of my hotel and headed for SLC. I was terrified that I would get pulled from the TSA line, but I boarded without incident and made it home to Raleigh with no issues.
"Normal" only lasted a couple of weeks. I tried to forget about what I internally referred to as "The Incident". After a few days with no authorities come around to ask questions, I started to think that I was home-free, despite the number of cameras that are everywhere in Vegas.
Then the voices started. Or maybe just one voice, mostly speaking in a low, guttural, unintelligible language but sometimes using a much higher feminine but no less hideous voice. I couldn't understand any words, but there was an urgency building, like something was coming that I needed to react to.
I knew better than to tell anyone about it, so I suffered in silence, getting shorter and less patient with my co-workers and even my boss as the urgency grew. Then I blacked out again.
This time I had images of an older woman, a brunette with touches of grey - being ripped limb from limb. The screams were heart-rending. I even had images of dumping what little was left of the body into the nearby river. And again, there was so much blood -- in her apartment, running down the stairs, and all over the strange car (hers?) that I parked at the edge of the shopping center a half mile from my apartment.
The voices stopped again for a while. And again, no one came to arrest me for a grisly murder. Furthermore, I realized that I was now hearing not just the voice, but the thoughts of others. That took my mind off of the bloody business for a little while as I spent a few days trying to understand this ability, which quickly also became the ability to somewhat control others' thoughts and actions as well.
Some of these things required huge amounts of energy and I collapsed for a day or so afterwards. Some I found that I could do easily, with very little energy expended at all. Making physical changes or making people do something physical was hard. Making someone *want* to do something was relatively easy. So making someone physically drive to the store for ice cream was hard but it took nothing to make them want to do it so badly that there was no talking them out of it. And reading minds required almost no energy at all.
I was somewhat prepared the next time the voice started getting louder. I had a sense of how much time I had and I made my way into an area of downtown that was known for homeless people. It was horribly cruel and callous of me -- homeless people are people, after all -- but I was selfishly trying to protect myself.