It was the woods. It was always the woods. How fucking stereotypical. But what could he do? Nothing would ever be the same again. That thing had left his entire family and the house in which they lived in ruins. They couldn’t even identify the bodies, they said. How hot does a fire have to be in order to totally reduce bone to ash in a matter of a few hours?

He did not know how to stop it, but he would definitely try. His hand clutched the well-worn bible to his chest. He had “borrowed” it from its location on the church’s altar. God would forgive him. He was about to rid the world of something that consisted of pure evil. Surely that would warrant some sort of forgiveness for his desire to do whatever it would take to get the deed over with.

The area around him suddenly got darker and he knew he was nearing its home, if you could call it a home. The inky darkness surrounded him and pressed on his chest. It hurt to breathe. Even the air that managed to find its way into his lungs seemed to burn him from the inside, as if it contained acid vapours in it. He had to ignore it. He had to press on and not be deterred by this.

From somewhere behind him he heard a myriad of voices begging him to turn back or suffer a horrible fate. He refused to listen to them, instead muttering a prayer to himself as he ventured further. Nothing would stop him. Not even the creature which had haunted his very existence.

Around him suddenly switched from being pitch black to a red hot glow. His boots felt like they were melting on his feet. But still he pressed on. His prayer became more than a mass of words escaping his lips. Now he concentrated on them and tried his best to truly mean it. He hoped that God was listening.

The creature appeared in front of him. Decomposing flesh hung off of yellowed bone in bits and pieces. He opened the bible and tried to find the psalms quickly, but not quickly enough. It grabbed the holy book and flung it away from him. He tried to ignore the sick stench of death as the creature advanced on him. Its mouth opened and a raspy noise came forth. He had to do something or else he would join his family.

He swung a fist at it, catching it in the throat. He heard something tearing and a flap of flesh came loose, hanging from its neck by a piece of skin. The creature, seemingly unfazed by this experience, ripped the piece of tissue free from itself and threw it at him. Its larynx was gone and it could no longer talk. But that voice box would not be useless. As it hit him, the voices of thousands of dead assaulted his ears. His head felt like it would explode from the inside out. He fell to his knees, clamping his hands over his ears in a vain attempt to reduce the noise level. It was useless. How would you use a bible to banish a being who did not believe in a God?

The creature pulled on his hair and forcefully lifted him up to his feet. He tried to close his eyes to prevent himself from having to stare death in the eye, but he could still see even with his eyelids tightly shut. The face of death looked right back at him. One eyeball hung loosely in its socket, the other was covered by a milky white substance. The nose had long since broken away and the two nasal cavities were all that was left. From within the cavity there seemed to be a mass of other, smaller, animals, all squirming and crawling around within their host. Under the chin, on the neck where the larynx had just been, was a gaping defect.

He wanted it to be over quickly. He had tried, and he had failed. Death would be the only absolute left in his life and there could be no fighting that. But he refused to go down like a coward. He opened his eyes and looked at his executioner right in the eye.

The creature made it quick. One swift jerk of its arms and his neck was broken, severing his spinal cord. His brain kept his body alive for the final few moments as he was flung against the side of a tree, breaking several more bones in the process. He could finally die now. He thought of joining his family in the afterlife and he hoped that it would be better than his life on earth.

But for some reason his body held onto his life. The screams and moans of the dead had long since faded away, and it was now replaced by one voice, that of the creature’s.

“Time for your rebirth as one like me.”

Marriage lasted beyond the grave and his wife was proving it to him. She put the mixture of herbs into his mouth and lifted him to his feet again. Now they would continue being together…forever.

(I'm still not feeling like my normal self but this is what came out of me. I didn't even know I had it in me to begin with.)

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