Zephaniah didn't like the night but he'd gotten used to walking home this late. Still, there was something eerie about being out after dark. It always felt to him like he was never alone even though there appeared to be nobody else out in the streets at this time of night. At least, that's how it felt to him. His apartment is only a few blocks away, so most nights, he walked as quickly as he could through the neighborhood while trying a little too hard not to look scared. Tonight, he wouldn't make it too far.
Zeph let his thoughts distract him from the darkness around him. Why would Jodie lay on his lap like that? She had never done that to him before so why start now? Did she mean anything by it? No way. And it didn't matter anyway since Zeph was always a loyal friend to Eric, even if Eric wasn't always loyal back. Zeph remembers when Eric used to sell weed on the side. Way back one day, Eric was pulled over and Zeph was stuck hiding a few grams in his cargo pants. They were both pulled out of the vehicle, and Zeph would have been arrested for sure if a speeding maniac hadn't raced 40 miles over the speed limit right by the stop, screaming obscenities at the cop. The officer told them it was their lucky day and sped after the offender. Of course, this was several years before Dylan was born, and Eric swore he would never deal again after he cleared the rest of his inventory. Zeph would've gone down for Eric because that's what friends do: they look out for each other. And when he found out Eric and Jodie liked each other, Zeph backed off just like friends should. God, how long ago was that?
Zeph was lost in his thoughts but barely made it to the end of Jodie's street when he felt a rumble from beneath his feet. An earthquake? Just then, a purple flash lit the sky behind Zeph, which would have confirmed to him that this was not, in fact, an earthquake. Too bad he didn't see that flash so when the rumbles stopped, he just kept walking, not thinking much of the strange event.
"STOP, you imbecile." A voice seemed to come from the wind, but it was enough to give Zeph pause.
He wasn't training in any martial arts beyond the old Kung Fu movies he used to enjoy as an adolescent. Nevertheless, Zeph froze in the ready position, armed with karate-chop hands. "...H-hello?" Zeph asked the night, hoping it didn't respond.
A response came despite him in the form of an angry hiss. "Go back, Zeph. Just go the fuck back."
The hair on the back of Zeph's neck stood up on end and his head turned around to see there was a new car parked outside Jodie's house. He started speed-walking anxiously back towards the house, squinting in an attempt to make out who was parked there and who was lying face down in her front yard. His pace quickened, nearing a jog, still unsure what his eyes were seeing. Soon, it was clear that the vehicle parked in the street was from a local pizza shop. When did they have time to order pizza? He dropped into a hurried run. It wasn't long before he was in front of the yard and saw the body of someone dressed as a pizza delivery man lying face-down in the grass. At least he would be face down if his head wasn't facing the wrong direction. Instead, his body was down, head was owled all the way around, contorted to look at the cloudy night sky. Fear was frozen in how he must have felt the moment just before he died. Zeph didn't slow to take in the sight, sparing only a glance for the recently deceased before he approached the front door. It was wide open.
"Jodie!?" Zeph's sprint had to come to an abrupt stop just past the entrance to check the kitchen and the living room for anyone. Just then he heard something heavy hit the floor boards down the hall. Panic filled his lungs to let out a "DYLAN? JODIE?!"
His breaths were sharp and short as he rushed down the hall and pushed open the door to Dylan's room. There Jodie stood with her back to the Zeph but clearly standing, clearly alive. The sheets on Dylan's bed were strewn to the floor and Dylan was curled up looking at Jodie.
Zeph relaxed at the sight of his apparently safe friend. "Oh thank god you guys are okay! Jodie, why was the door open? I know I closed tha-"
"ZTHEPH!" Dylan shouted out in a tone inexplicable to Zeph. Zeph couldn't understand why Dylan sounded so upset with his mom right there. Even when she was disciplining him, Dylan never sounded so- so scared. Just as the thought occurred to him, Jodie grabbed Dylan by the throat and lifted him off the bed with a single hand. Dylan grabbed at his mother's arm, pulling and slapping her wrist.
"Hey, Jodie!" Zeph pushes further into the room and reaches for her. "Hey! What the fuck are you doing?" He grabs her shoulder and pulls on her softer than he would if some strange man was grabbing Dylan by the throat but harder than he normally would for her. Still, she barely budges. Instead, her head turns to Zephaniah and her face shows anger. Not anger like earlier tonight. This time her face was twisted, bent into an inhumanly furious shape. Her eyes were hot coals and her teeth bore, gritted and grinding out her response. When she spoke, the words came like snarling growls, more vicious than anything he had heard before.
"UUURRGHH, YOU HAVE BEEN A THORN IN MY SIDE FOR TOO LONG." Even the voice seemed inexplicable to him. A guttural growl squeezed through this tiny woman's frame, a perfect image of hate blanketed his once friend. Zephaniah recoiled in shock. "NOT SOON ENOUGH, I WILL KILL YOU MYSELF" She then turns her head back to Dylan, refocusing her interest.
"What are you talking about, Jodie?!" Zeph pushes her and tries to shake her arm free. He yanked and pulled at her arm, trying to loosen her grip on Dylan's throat, but it was like stone, unyielding.
Jodie didn't look at Zeph this time when she spoke. "WAIT. YOUR. TURN." And on the last word, she used her free hand to clamp down on Zephs wrist, and in one motion, she pried his hand free and threw him backward to the wall behind him. This wasn't a shove you would expect from a woman of Jodie's stature. No, this was an actual throw that sent Zeph flying backward. He was airborne before he hit the wall and he could hear a crack that he hoped was just the drywall when he slammed into it, collapsing to the floor. He landed on his rear end but his left arm rang like a church bell, all the while still watching Dylan struggle against his mother's grip. He could feel the pain jolt from his shoulder down to his pinky like someone wailed on his funny bone with a ball peen hammer. When he reached for it with his other hand he couldn't feel it. No, that wasn't right; he could still feel the pain in his left arm. Instead, his hand couldn't feel it. He looked down, finally breaking his gaze on Jodie to see that instead of his right hand, two splintered bones jutted from mangled flesh, fountaining crimson ooze all over his lap and other arm. His vision blurred in and out as his eyes tried to make sense of the bizarre reality and the surrounding room. The room was dark already but now he could just barely make out the right hand she disposed of, cast limply to the floor by a disinterested Jodie. He couldn't help but think it sounded heavy when it thumped against the wooden floor panels. His vision faded again before his eyes opened once more to see the hazy scene of Jodie mouthing some word at Dylan. They were both floating now but that kind of detail didn't seem to bother Zeph at that moment. Instead, he was more concerned with the fact that Jodie wasn't mouthing words; she was shouting them. He couldn't hear the words. In fact, he was also shouting something too but the words sounded muffled. It was a surreal feeling for him since he had always been able to hear his own voice but now his inner voice was louder than his outer. He was repeating two words, at the top of his lungs, and it must have been loud because even Jodie distracted her gaze to him. He was standing now. He wasn't sure when he stood up. He didn't care. Jodie must be stopped from whatever she is doing to Dylan. He garnered his strength as his vision cleared and cold reality flushed his face and he could hear his own voice shouting the same two words over and over again: BLOOD LOSS.
The bizarre chant seemed to work because Zeph threw himself at Jodie and attacked her titanous arm with the sharpest thing he had. He rammed his jagged forearm bones into her inhumanly swollen, veiny bicep, earning a scream from the beastly woman. He clung to her like a rabid animal, violently stabbing her arm with his over and over spraying the two friends in each other's blood. The pain in his arm wasn't quite like anything he had felt before. It was like someone trying to aggressively shove a wet, dirty rag as deep into your open bone as possible. He managed to experience that delightful feeling nearly ten times before he was tossed once again to the floor; this time, nearly all his strength fell between the cracks of the floorboards that caught the rest of him. He opened his eyes to the ceiling that stared back down at him when Jodie joined the stare. She towered over him, but he didn't even look at her, instead peeking past her to see Dylan still struggling in mid-air, suspended by what looked to be nothing but the purple glow emanating from behind him. The woman bent down and tilted her head to intercept his vision before speaking, this time not shouting but clearly furious. She had the tone of someone so angry that her fury dial went all the way back around and returned to a softer, still angry sound.
"You just couldn't wait to die, could you, Zephaniah? Do you know what this is?" She brandished a pitch-black blade. The metal was darker than even blackened metal would be, more so that light recoiled from this blade than anything else. "I have been saving this blade for you for nearly 2 decades. Make no mistake, Zephaniah, Dylan will be mine and you will die. And when I skewer you with Dunbal, not a being in the universe will want anything to do with you!" She almost smiled a grim grin before she remembered what she had come here for. "Goodbye, pawn. The queen must reign." And she plunged the blade into his chest, easily pushing it through his heart and bone and splitting the wood beneath him before she let go of the handle and stood straight. He could feel his heartache with the last beat against the edge of the blade. His eyes shut and the blade seemed to fill him with frigid ice through his veins as he exhaled his last breath.
Above him, Jodie floated in the air again, shouting the incantations needed to claim Dylan's body and soul. She reached out at him, arm still wounded but seemed to stop bleeding despite the holes torn into it. Just in front of her floated her son, Dylan, prosed in front of a glowing purplish wound in reality. It was almost a sphere but still not taking three dimensions of space. It was more like whatever the opposite of a sphere is. It sparked and crackled with blue bolts of something similar to electricity by the edges of the shape were lined with symbols from beyond this world.
As Jodie continued her encantation, she noticed the electricity of the portal slows down, nearly pausing in midair. She could see the arcs weave their way through the air and Dylan was practically frozen. No, they weren't getting slower. She realized the world around her wasn't slowed, more like time couldn't keep up. Someone crammed more time into this moment and she knew it wasn't her. It's an incredibly costly spell and there was only one being in the universe she knew who would know about this happening and had the resources to expand on this moment alone. But why? Her train of thought was interrupted when a movement to the left of her caught her eye, rising as if to answer her question.
Zeph was inexplicably on his feet. He wasn't really standing, but more like how territorial a chimpanzee might stand if someone threatened him. The blood previously pouring out from him seemed to stop flowing. It just puddled on his chest where the blade had entered but refused to flow any further. But his face is what seemed to have truly changed. Across his forehead, stamped into his skin are the deep groves of some ancient language unknown to earth. Deep purple light glowed from the valleys that carved characters and it pulsed as he glowered from across the room. His eyes were glazed heavily with a whitish-purple haze that his pupils barely showed through. In the pause, his body weight seemed to shift forward and he only just lifted his foot from the ground when Jodie's demonic voice responded sharply.
"KILL HIM"
Just then, Zeph could only see Dylan floating there before him, seemingly within reach and his lean became a sprint with such a force that should shatter a normal man's shins. Even the wooden floor bent under the enormous force. He didn't even notice that it did, his numb rush toward the kid hid the fact that the tibia in each of his legs cracked in two places. It didn't matter, since they didn't have time to fold like noodles before he leaped at Dylan. Dylan's form became clear and large in his vision filling his eyes when a dark shadow came from his right when the figure collided with him and he with Dylan in such an angle that sent all three into the other-worldly anti-sphere. It felt to Zeph that the other side of the portal was like plunging into a warm, almost hot pool as they slowly sank into the depth of the unknown. His vision slowly cleared despite the feeling of being under something thicker than water. A light even came from his left that showed the approaching figure. He could just barely make out the frantic approach of the dark figure flailing through the fluid toward Zeph. It was a woman but he could only make sense of her gray, purplish skin before flails earned her hands purchase on his limp right leg. Her sharp claws punctured deep holes into his already ruined leg as she pulled herself through the thickening ooze that clutched the three of them. Three? Zeph only wasted a half second to look for Dylan while this harpy clawed up his leg. He saw the light to his right was in fact coming from the unconscious boy. Zeph looked back to his foe just in time to see the mouth of the woman bite into his left eye with piranha-like teeth that ripped flesh before pulling free with chunks of his face and what used to be the left side of his vision. He couldn't feel it but he knew he should've. Instead of pain he felt only emotion. He felt fury. This woman would tear through anything and anyone to harm Dylan. No. Not if he could help. Zeph grabbed the witch by the throat and took his trusty right arm and jammed the jagged bone through her own eye. She seemed to scream out but her cries didn't reach his ears in the void. She flailed and clawed, ripping his chest and gut but he still felt nothing of his ribbons floating away from his person. All he felt was the rage as he punched the bone deeper into her skull but she was moving too much. He pushed her down, easily over-powering the demon and wrapping his thighs on chest and twisting her neck as the bone inched deeper into his victim. His remaining eyebrow furrowed as he pushed deeper into the creature. The bone continued deeper as her expression changed from angry rage to pained fear until he felt his arm touch the back of the banshee's skull like reaching all the way into the back to get the newest milk at the grocery. Then her expression was loose, limp, and her good eye no longer made eye contact with him getting only a little greyer.
Zeph let go of the dead weight, looking what he could only consider as up and at the light. He sprang off the husk of his victim and drifted towards Dylan, only slightly quicker than Dylan drifted down. The light from the child's skin only grew brighter as he drew closer. The light of Dylan was the only discernible shape in the dark depths. It was like they were sinking into an ocean that never stopped and your ears never popped. The depths never ended but all Zeph knew was he had to get to Dylan. With only one good limb remaining, he could only swim as fast as one tired hand could take him. When he finally did reach Dylan, he didn't have a way of stopping, simply clutching him with one good arm and thankfully Dylan seemed to reflexively clutch him in return. At that moment, they were back to one of the many nights that he and Dylan stayed up too late watching Pulp Fiction or another movie on his mom's banned list. Dylan always insisted he could stay awake for the whole movie and he would never get nightmares but every time he was knocked out by the 3rd act. He cried in the middle of the night and Jodie would call Zeph up each night around 2 or 3 am saying something like "I told you he can't watch those movies" and "if I have to suffer, so do you! Stay awake until he falls to sleep." Zeph would be lying if he said he didn't like those calls. He would sometimes stay up so he didn't miss the call, as if she wouldn't keep calling, to hear her voice a little longer. And here he is clutching the son of his best friend and forbidden love interest in an unknown world, risking life and limb to fight her and save the child. Still all he could feel was emotion which started as rage but it cooled to relief when Dylan clung to him. Now all he felt was dispair as it set that he did not know how to get this boy home. That was all he felt until the pain came to him all at once. His eyes shot open from the pain from his sword bearing chest, eviscerated guts, mangled legs and ripped right arm. The blood spilled from his body as the purple hue he didn't notice before faded from his view and the light from Dylan illuminated the last thing he saw before he died. Zeph saw enormous teeth, larger than any sea creature he has ever heard of, swimming towards him faster than he has ever seen anything his life move. The monstrous creature swallowed all three of them whole: Dylan, Zeph and the dormant demon witch known as Vermille.
Back in Dylan's room, Jodie watched her witch servant, Zeph-a-fucking-niah and the single most important mortal on this plane of existence disappear into a one-way portal to the soul cauldron. She slowly descended from the spot she was floating in the middle of the room as the crackling stopped and the darkness retreated from the incandescent overhead light above her.
She hung her head in exhaustion, now standing alone in the room, "Shit."