Hi there! This is my first story and as such any helpful advice, constructive criticism or positive feedback would be much appreciated. :)
Anyway, onto the important part. This story will be posted under the 'Sci-Fi and Fantasy' section. However, that doesn't mean that it will not contain themes from other genres. So, if you feel you'll die if you read anything containing possible Non-Human, Non-Consent, Erotic-Horror or (heaven forbid) Romance elements then I'd recommend you grow a pair and continue reading.
What I don't recommend is reading this for a quick fix shall we say as the first post will not contain any sex scenes (although they will come soon enough). Yes, I didn't resort to making that a pun. I could have, but I didn't. You owe me...
The story will be a long one, expect another 10 or so posts of this length (possibly more) before its finished. However, I will try and keep you informed of my progress so you don't feel I'm just leaving you hanging.
Finally, this story will also contain: strong language, gore, violence, explicit sex scenes, bouts of philosophy, intimate relationships, magic, demons, misuse of kitchen equipment, different perspectives (both 1
st
and 3
rd
), a complete disregard for geographical locations and a vastly unrealistic representation of our solar-system.
If you feel you can handle all the above then I warmly invite you to delve into my imagination to your heart's content.
-- Demonnox --
Chapter One -- Rude Awakenings
I awoke to the sound of my mother, screaming my name.
Crap...
I tried to hide my head under the pillow. Hoping the sound would go away. It didn't, somehow, the shouting got louder.
Seriously, how is that even possible. I'd bet my left nut that she was in the kitchen, waiting for the toaster to work its magic, so how the fuck could I hear her so well.
Urgh...
We live in a Town-house, three stories if you count the loft. Which I do considering I live in it. The kitchen and lounge are on the ground floor. My mum's bedroom and the bathroom are on the second floor. My bedroom, 'The Loft', makes up the third floor. So, despite being two floors above her; separated by a thick wall of brave loft insulation which attempted to battle my mother's screams each day, but instead ended up retreating in shame every morning. I could still hear her. Loud and clear.
That's when it hit me. It must be Monday. My weekend of rest, relaxation and xbox domination was just a memory.
"Urgh..." I groaned, groggily, slipping once more into the welcoming arms of sleep. My head tucked under the pillow to muffle the annoying voice from downstairs.
I slowly opened my eyes and, after blinking away my morning dizziness, quickly realised that a few minutes must have passed since my mum had called my name. I came to this conclusion from a number of different sources. All pointing to the same fact -- time had, unfortunately, not stopped. The first thing I realised was that my mother stood in the room. There are two flights of stairs to get from the kitchen to the attic. I knew that running up them took several seconds at least. The second thing was that I saw my mother eating a slice of slightly burnt, brown toast from a white china plate. This was actually two things that told me time had passed. The first was that my mum didn't run, with food or cutlery, in the house. Holding both meant she had definitely not run up the flights of stairs, and had instead walked. The second was that her toast was burnt. My mother hated burnt toast. She'd eat it, being a firm believer in not wasting food, but boy did she not enjoy it. This meant she'd probably gotten annoyed with me -- for not instantly appearing in the kitchen after violently shouting my name.
Right. Like I could just teleport down two floors, while simultaneously dressing myself...
When my mum gets annoyed with me she often forgets what she's doing, and focusses instead on how to get even. This leads to incidents like the one I assume happened this morning. She began thinking of a plan to get even with me. Completely forgetting the toast. Burning it, and now being even more annoyed. Culminating in her taking longer to reach my room as she would have had to think of a more devious plan -- having just burnt her toast. Which was clearly my fault too for not coming downstairs instantaneously.
However. I think that the third, and most important observation for time having marched on relentlessly was the skylight directly over my head -- which at that moment looked more like a gaping hole -- spewing forth ice cold water onto me, my bed and most of the floor around the bed. Including where I had painstakingly thrown my school clothes when I got home last Friday.
Seriously it took a lot of effort to throw clothes onto one patch of carpet so consistently.
I had to hand it to my mum though. It was a fucking great plan. Evil, but great.
I swear it's always raining in London. We'd only been here a couple of weeks; having moved down from Birmingham at the end of the Christmas holidays. In those two weeks, I'm pretty sure, there was a day that it didn't rain. Maybe. However there's a distinct difference from getting wet outside, while bundled in a large amount of warm clothing, and getting drenched in bed wearing only boxers.
Man. How I loved Mondays.
I could feel the water soaking my skin through the blankets, and gathering in the space between them and the pillow -- which happened to be my back. My pillow, thankfully, was still protecting my head from the worst of the rain.
"Fuuuuuuck!" I literally screeched as I rocketed out of bed. My face narrowly avoiding the wooden rafter above the bed as I leapt from beneath the sheets.
"Well. At least you should be on time for school now." a pause. "No need for a shower!" I heard my mother say with barely contained mirth from beside the bed; just beyond the range of the freezing rain.
I glared at her, while wrapping a towel around my waist, and using another one to rapidly dry myself.
My mother's name is Sophie Parker; although we still use my father's surname of Raven -- as he married her before leaving us. We don't speak about it much; it's still an incredibly sore subject to brooch with my mum, and it all happened a few months before I was even born anyway. It's not like I miss my dad. I've never met him so I can't really miss him.
I glared at her again when she reached up for the string which would close the skylight. Making sure she wasn't going to try anything else. Sophie's thirty-eight, stands at around five and a half feet, has long, glossy, black hair that reaches to the small of her back, and blue eyes that still shine with youthful exuberance. At least when she isn't thinking about Michael Raven -- my father. She has a shapely figure despite her athletic frame, and good muscle tone from teaching me kendo, jujutsu and aikido for over a decade. I'm pretty sure she started the lessons when I turned eight, but it's so long ago that I can't remember precisely.
She never told me why she wanted to teach me martial arts, or why she started when I was so young, or even how the fuck she was proficient with at least three separate disciplines! I asked a few times but never got a real answer so I long ago decided to stop the questions, and instead to enjoy the training with my mum.
I love Sophie but we kind of rub each other the wrong way a lot. Training with her is different though as she's a lot calmer, and we tend to get on well despite not seeing eye to eye outside of training.
Sophie finished closing the skylight, and turned round as I began to shake the water out of my school clothes.
"The bus will be here in around ten minutes Luke. Want me start some toast, while you sort this mess out?" she said evenly.
I rolled my eyes at her -- fairly decent -- attempt to keep a straight face over the state of my room.
"Yea a couple of slices would be great." I said equally evenly. I couldn't quite stoop down to offer a polite thank you for the offer -- A man has his pride damn it!
She smiled teasingly as if she knew exactly what I was thinking and headed downstairs humming Queen's 'We are the Champions', while she leisurely walked down the steps, still eating her toast.
After shaking out most of the water from my school clothes. I laid them on my chair and sat on the one corner of the bed that wasn't soaked, looking at my room with a sigh. It's one of those standard attics, often found in terraced houses. Something about space being extremely valuable in towns and cities. So people started building thick chimney like buildings, and then stuck twenty or thirty of them in rows alongside the street. I'd been here for two weeks and I didn't care how 'standard' these lofts were. I could barely fucking stand in mine.
I'm just over six foot tall and have messy, black hair that occasionally gets in the way of my eyes. These are grey and my mum says they go 'lighter' when I get really emotional until they're almost ice-blue with just flecks of grey. I've never been able to confirm this as it's pretty damn hard to get that emotional in front of a mirror, but my mum has no reason to lie so I took her word for it when she told me. I briefly looked into the small mirror on top of the bedside cabinet. Confirming, once again, that I wasn't born with any abnormalities and was, in fact, still 'normal' looking. I like to think I look handsome -- or on a good day, rugged! What with my black hair, grey eyes, tall, athletic frame with lean, defined muscles from all my martial arts training with my mother and 'devil may care attitude' that I tried to exude. Although, I think, trying to have an attitude defeats the point, but it's pretty hard to be totally honest with yourself when you're looking in a mirror.
I quickly got dressed, brushed my teeth, grabbed my books -- which were scattered around the room where I cunningly stowed them last Friday -- and shoved them all into my backpack. Checking the clock by my bedside I saw that I had five minutes before the bus arrived. It would take me around a minute to walk to the bus-stop, so I still had four minutes to spare. I hung the bedding on the radiator and turned it up hoping that would be enough to dry off the dampness and bounded downstairs for breakfast.
You know when I said my mum's plan was evil but great. I think just plain evil would have covered it more truthfully.
Sitting on a chair around the kitchen table looking up at me was my mother. A huge smile on her face and an empty chair next to her. A plate of burnt brown toast, completely burnt brown toast, was resting on a white china plate in front of the empty chair.
On the plus side at least there was a glass of orange juice, next to the plate of stuff pretending to be edible.
