I, Devil (a love story)

Chapter Forty Three: Adramelech

"Oh, thank you for coming," said Wendy. "It has been absolutely nuts. The entire neighborhood," she continued.

I listened to Wendy's conversation with a Catholic priest. She was telling him that the entire neighborhood seemed haunted. It was haunted, of course, by me. I became a glutton on car batteries, cellphones, and power lines. I tried to pace myself, but it was hard.

I tried to direct my attention away from her house. I didn't want to feed off of Wendy's cellphone in particular. I didn't want to hurt her, her children, or her house. Yet, after I made a snack of Sachiel, Wendy was legitimately worried. I am afraid I scared her. Countless city utility workers came out to work on the electrical grid in her area. No one could figure out what was shorting all of the lines and causing signal to fail.

Wendy, being a spiritual woman, began to think it was ghosts. She wasn't a fool, either. She knew she had been dabbling in supernaturally questionable things. Since she went in with good intentions and love in her heart, she didn't think of the consequences... not that there were any. I wasn't personally going to allow anything or anyone to hurt her. I was certainly not intimidated by the priest, either.

"You know this isn't my first call out here?" offered the young priest. "This month has been weird. The church has been called to bless several houses on the street."

"How's Noah?" asked Wendy. "I'm not Catholic and I wouldn't even think to have texted you if you weren't his friend."

"He's very good," said the priest.

I listened as I sipped my Turkish coffee. Today, I didn't feel like floating in the pond or taking it easy. I wasn't feeling great since eating Sachiel. It was as if he gave me some kind of indigestion. I felt light sensitive. I felt like I had a headache. Not even a Bloody Mary seemed appetizing. Although I wasn't intimidated by Wendy's new religious friend, I certainly didn't like him hanging around.

"I just spoke to him the other day and he seems to be doing pretty well," the priest went on. "He seems like he is taking life easier and things have definitely been better without his father around-- so, I would say he's good."

"I'm glad to hear," said Wendy. "I felt like a house blessing couldn't hurt. Come on in," Wendy said as she invited the priest into her home. I couldn't help myself and followed them inside.

The house didn't have any feeling, and that was perhaps the change that Wendy felt. Where her house was once a bustling place with pixies, sprites, and ghosts of her long-passed family members, it was now a desolate place. It used to be a busy bus station, but now her house was a supernatural dead-zone. It likely had an eerie feeling with just one, great, gigantic beast prowling around.

I couldn't change that or mask it for her. I couldn't just fix the "vibe" of her house since I moved in. I know Wendy's heart. She just wanted to love unlovable things. That's what her subconscious said. She felt I was cheated or treated unfairly. Hell was gone. This was the only place I had to stay.

In truth, I was afraid that God would find me and send me to a place worse than Hell. I thought if I stayed in Wendy's home and didn't do anything "bad" that I would continue to go unnoticed. Or maybe God had forgotten about my brother's and I entirely-- who knows?

"No-- no," said a little voice inside me that sounded an awful lot like Sachiel. Sachiel, who I consumed, was the brother most recently in Heaven. He knew that the Creator didn't forget us. He just knew it-- so I knew it, too. God didn't forget. There was still a larger agenda at work that even we, the fallen angels, didn't yet understand.

"Yeah," chuckled the young Catholic priest. I could not see him, but I could tell that he was a very young fellow. Just a boy. "Definitely, definitely this house gives me the creeps. It has the feeling," he commented.