A Visitor At Dusk
The house echoed with the melodies of 90s music; largely the songs of a popular boyband of that ear, Backstreet Boys, played throughout the small two bedroom rundown house. A stark contrast to the deafening silence and sources of melancholy that enveloped the boy's room that lived in this house.
The boy in his late teenage sat on his bed. Lost in deeper thoughts than what boys his age ordinarily thinks about.
But this boy's mind had no thoughts of girls or upcoming college applications, no, his mind was a tumultuous storm of guilt and fear. The weight of his actions bore down on him heavily, suffocating him with remorse and dread.
The boy's mother, a distant figure lost in her own world, paid little attention to her son's internal torment. She moved about the house with detached indifference, her presence barely registering in the boy's troubled mind.
Part of the reason why the boy felt so alone and so afraid. He had no one to confide in, no one to show him the way, show him right from wrong; as the only parent in his life was also lost to catching her own remnants of youth. Unfamiliar that the lack of her comforting presence has drove her son to the edge.
As the boy contemplated his fate and what comes next for him, a knock at the door shattered the fragile façade of his solitude. He hesitated, ignored and briefly considering ignoring the intrusion as someone else's problem.
Maybe it's another one of her mother's visitors that she often have at the house and often told him to go to his room for. She could answer the door herself.
When the knocking persisted and never going above the certain octave of sound that could be considered as 'whoever is here, comes in peace', a fleeting thought that someone else might care pulled him reluctantly to his feet.
Maybe it's not someone for mom, that's why she isn't even bothering to answer when she is right there in the living room. The boy thought going to the door.
Little did he know, it was absolutely true to his assumption; whoever it was, it wasn't here for his mom.
Opening the door, he eyes were met with the imposing figure of a man, tall and enigmatic, his presence exuding an otherworldly aura. The boy's heart raced as he met the stranger's gaze, a shiver of unease coursing through him.
Like he knew what this man was here for even when he didn't know who he was.
"I have come to claim what is owed," Dante said, his voice ever so soft but commanding enough to never be mistaken as weak. Each word dripping with a chilling finality that sent shivers down the boy's spine.
The boy watched the world behind this man went on ahead as if there wasn't the presence of his dreadful fate standing at his doorstep. The neighbor's kids rode on their bicycles and their mother waved a hand as a friendly neighbor to the boy who stood wide eyed at his door.
Couldn't they notice this ominous being of the tall wide man standing in front of him; why isn't anyone afraid like he was? The man's mere aura was heavily weighing him down and any minute the boy will fall to his knees.
The boy recoiled in fear, his mind conjuring images of the devil come to claim his soul. With trembling hands and not speaking a word, as his worst fears, his nightmares have come to life; he slammed the door shut, retreating back into the safety of his room.
Like a closed wooden door would help his case.
Alone, locked behind the door to his room once more, the boy's thoughts spiraled into a dark abyss of despair. He grasped the knife in his trembling hands, his resolve wavering as he teetered on the edge of oblivion. It is better to end this misery right here right now than to succumb to a fate in the hands of the devil outside his house.
If he is dead, the devil can not have him. That is what the boy believed.