Disappear: Into Shadow

- CHAPTER TWO -

Sitting in the intermittent light of a musty basement office, Rabdos contemplated how he hated few things more than humanity and life. Combining the two, the present body he was infesting, a health insurance adjuster named Amy, was pure torture. Her decaying, bulbous body and everything around her had intensified his hatred. This was a cruel prison, but it and the many bodies before it had been successful in hiding Rabdos for centuries. He knew the Watchers and their unclosing eyes still hunted him, the Strangler. He scoffed at their nickname. He often wondered: if they ever found out the manner in which he hid, how would they react?

A hunter and a smotherer of life since the dawn of evolution, he was blacker than the deepest, light sucking vortexes of deep space. A malignant shade of darkness, when it came to evil, Rabdos was the genuine article.

I want out of this body, out of this place!

He wished for escape. If only he could roam free again. He was in debt and would remain so until fulfilling a promise he made long ago. For a spirit who escaped the swords of the Angels and the hunting Watchers countless times since the Fall, it was a frustrating experience to be so controlled, contained and trapped. For now, he would wait until he was called on.

Straining, Rabdos willed the health insurance lady's chubby, nail-bitten finger to press the power button of her computer. Grimy, infested by years of unclean use, the button's filth, like the woman, was loathsome to him. The heady, sweating touch of the on switch lingered as he waited for the machine to boot up. He knew he would have to find a new body soon. This current one was reaching its end and required too much energy to remain animated. Whenever he left a body to die, he risked discovery. Rabdos knew it was dangerous to do so, but looked forward to that blissful reprieve rather than wallowing here in what he thought often as "this putrid meat."

Listening to the tiny fans whirr and spin, pushing air about the interior of the desktop tower's casing, he sensed the loose particles swirling across the dust caked innards of the only real link he had from this foul basement to the world outside.

Elsewhere in the building, he heard the bleeps and bytes of faxes arriving along fibre optic cables. Shuffling papers collated within photocopiers, spitting out their pages on the various floors of the office above. Coffee machines steamed and percolated. Drinks were slurped out of paper cups. Water coolers belched and burped air as they were drained. Rabdos heard the collective thoughts of the employees, the visitors and the callers. The multitudes of cockroaches scuttling through the gaps between the walls of the building, mixing with the tiny heartbeats of mice searching for food and adding to the cacophony were the rhythmic pulses of sprinklers spraying the green grass around the parking lots.

Everything was normal in the building; he heard nothing new, strange or different. Drumming Amy's heavy fingers against the faux walnut grain of her desk, Rabdos felt secure. Her fingers, filthy as the computer's buttons, left visible impressions in the dust and grime coating the debris strewn workspace.

The desktop monitor hummed while it warmed. After the screen appeared, Rabdos logged onto Amy's network and decided to check for new emails. There were none. Scanning down the contents of the inbox, Rabdos focused on a single name

"Josh Skinner," Rabdos's cruel voice hissed.

On the cluttered desk, a threadbare stuffed animal sat in haphazard fashion against a lamp. Its purple head hung limp against its chest, the material unable to support the head. Stuffing poked out from the many places where stitches, loosened by age, had separated from the seams. The animal had the look of a long loved and much abused toy kept for purely sentimental reasons because the toy was long past its time. What this animal was, real or imagined, was now wholly unrecognisable.