The Demon's Half

Chapter 6

I crashed to the ground, shoulder first. Pain flared through my body, but I didn't stop.
My hands were completely numb. I could barely feel them.
Mia's cries grew louder.
More desperate. More broken.

Every fiber of me screamed—DO SOMETHING.

"HELP ME!" I yelled. "HELP ME! HELP ME PLEASE, SOMEONE—ANYONE!"

No answer.

I twisted, writhed, tried to bring my legs to my mouth—tear at the bindings with my teeth.
Missed.

Again.

But the blindfold was making it extremely hard to aim. And I wasn't flexible enough.

"Mia, I'm coming!"
Lie.
A lie wrapped in hope—thin, fragile, stupid hope.

Her scream rang in my ears. "PLEASE, PLEASE DON'T!"

I tried again.
And again.
Trying desperately to reach my feet with my teeth. To free my ankles.
But what if I—

SNAP.

I felt the rosary around my neck breaking.
The sound of scattered beads clattering against the floor.
A cold air brushed the back of my neck.

"I'll give you my soul," I whispered into the silence, knowing damn well something was listening. "Only if you save her."

The darkness swallowed me whole.
Not the blindfold's darkness.
But the kind of darkness that consumes and never lets go.
It weirdly felt like it came from me, and exploded around me.

And then, I could see everything.

Not from where I was on the floor, but from somewhere else. I looked down— my body... it was there.
I had been ripped from my body.

I. Had. Been. Ripped. From. MY. BODY.

¿Qué coño?

The world felt twisted, far away, unreal.
I hovered, weightless.
Silent.

Below me, I was there.
Lying motionless on the filthy floor, my dark long hair plastered to my sweat-slicked face. Wrists and ankles bound, blood covering the ropes.
I looked broken.

The room was a basement, a purgatory.
Walls that had once been white looked almost brown, crumbling, filled with green and black mold. The right far corner was dripping. A leak from rusted pipes.
But I had no time to process it.

Mia screamed again.

I tried to move—to get to her.
But I was being held. Trapped in place.

"Let me go!" I screamed, but no sound came.

My body below me stirred.

I'm waking up.
I'm regaining control.

But no.
Horror bloomed as I realized I was still hovering above it.

My body twitched.
My head snapped back—CRACK. The restrains fell.
My arms and legs twisted at impossible angles. In ways no human body would be able to.

Black veins crawled beneath my skin. My flesh turned sickly green. My blindfold dissolved into nothing. And when my blackened eyes snapped open—

I wasn't human anymore.

The basement lights flickered. Struggled to remain on. Each flash revealed something worse.

My grotesque form.

The shadows all around the room started moving in ways it shouldn't.
Like serpents coming to life.
Glass shattered. Windows. Bulbs. Everything.

The air plummeted to an unnatural cold, the kind that burns.