Vision

Chapter three

Chapter 3:

The Portal

As he begins the long drive to his base, he thinks of what his pastor told him. The image of a demon rising up from the flames just recently registered in his mind, and is now a fresh memory. He plays the image over and over in his mind, and he’s going to keep on doing it until his brain cells burst into flames. He can’t escape it, no matter where he goes. Even in his dreams he can’t seem to escape it.

He is so busy fighting with himself that he doesn’t even notice the road. He decides to look forward. Suddenly, there is a huge red truck driving straight for him. The truck is too close to him for him to hit the brakes on his Mercedes-Benz. He tries to drift and misses the truck, but only by the fraction of a hair.

The truck misses him, but his car is unfortunately going so fast it cannot maintain balance, causing it to start rolling. Glass shatters and cuts poor Jack. He tries to hang on to something, and suddenly the car ceases to roll.

“Aw, man… I really don’t like that Mercedes-Benz…” he says, under his breathe.

He gets out of the car after a few minutes, and walks further into the forest next to the main road. After walking for some time, he takes out his phone and calls the police station. He can still smell the fumes from his brand, new car.

“You have reached the NYPD. How may I help you?” asks Max with his usual routine.

“Hey, Max. It’s Jack.”

“Jack, buddy! How’s it going, bruh?!!”

“Ah…suckish.”

“Oh, sorry, man. What’s your current position, yo?”

After telling him where he is, Jack asks how long it’s going to take them to get to him. Max tells him that it might take a couple of hours. After ending the call, Jack sits on an old, mossy stump. Sooner or later, his frustration gets the best of him. He picks up a sandstone that is lying next to him. He throws it with the little might he has left in his right arm. The strange thing is that although it did fly through the air, it didn’t fall. It just…disappeared.

Jack moves to the location where the rock vanished, slowly…and cautiously. He picks up something and throws it toward that area. It also vanishes into thin air. Next, he takes a branch that fell off a tree and sticks the end of it through this wall of nothingness. It emerges - unobliterated. He sticks his hand through it, and is glad to still be able to feel his fingers. He walks through it and there is a sense of unfamiliarity in the air.

He sneaks through a broken hotel in a kind of warzone. It looks like a nuke was dropped there. There is ash all around him, and he can smell burning sulphur. The windows of the building seem to be obliterated, turned to dust. He carefully steps over shrapnel and debris, and avoids stepping on framed pictures that fell off the wall, so that he doesn’t break the glass.

When he does, however, accidentally step on a glass frame he is very surprised to see what happens. The glass case doesn’t break, since it was melted, and is now sizzling and burning his boot. He instantly pulls his foot away, takes his shoe off and waves his hand in the air so that it can cool down. He closes his eyes, wipes the sweat off of his brow and looks at the picture that was just dematerialized.

He tries to recognize the imagery in front of him, but, as was proven in the past, his mind takes longer to process these kinds of things.

“No!” he gasps, his breathing becoming heavy as he finally notices the distinct features of someone that means a lot to him. It is the same picture that Zach had shown him that exact same day. What was the ruins of an old hotel that had been caught in the blast of a nuclear explosion, is now the house of Zachary Quinton, which had also been destroyed just as badly as the hotel.

As he takes another glimpse at the photograph of that family, he notices something horribly wrong. The face that was once the face of his buddy, Zach, was now the face of the demon that he had once seen. To his surprise, it starts to speak to him.

“You think you know me?” it shrieks, “You don’t know me at all!!!”

Jack stares at it, at first, but then he drops it and runs as fast as his feet can carry him. He sprints through the hall and makes a beeline for the door. There is a huge explosion in the house that he avoids by jumping and crashing through the front door and onto the porch.

As soon as he is outside, he crawls on his belly to the side of the road. He sits up straight and spits blood out of his mouth. He takes the time he needs to salvage, and to check his surroundings. It is dusk, and the darkness seems to be swallowing the city whole, but that isn’t the worst part. No. The worst part is that wherever he looks, demons are storming towards the city. There are so many of them that it looks like there are dark clouds in the sky, and it keeps growing worse and worse. The demons start to possess anybody they can see. People start to turn into monstrous creatures such as vampires and werewolves, revealing the demons inside them. He can see them ripping the people the demons haven’t effected into shreds.

They don’t seem to notice Jack, who is just watching helplessly. Suddenly, a werewolf seems to be running straight towards him, but he is frozen in that position. The creature leaps…and goes right through him! The beast looks confused and cannot comprehend with what just happened.

Proximately, a silver blade appears in Jack’s hand, appearing out of thin air. Suddenly, the werewolf leaps. He holds out the sword in front of him, shuts his eyes and hopes for the best. He soon hears the sound of flesh being pierced, and decides to open his eyes again. He is frightened when he sees the monster’s beady eyes staring right at him, a snarl still twisting its sinister face. He lowers his sword and lets the werewolf’s heavy carcass slide off the blade.

Unfortunately, the battle isn’t over, yet. There are many more creatures creeping over to him, so Jack wipes the blood off his weapon on the forest’s grass. He prepares for battle and stands in a single pose, waiting for his enemies to make their move, but all is silent. At that moment, his opponents start to race towards him, but he still refuses to move. Just as he is about to be ripped to shreds, he unleashes the sword’s power on the poor monsters, a smile forming on his face.

The battle is a massive bloodbath, and lasts for hours. The more monsters are killed, the sharper the blade gets. Jack is prepared to fight till his very last breath. When he finally finishes them all off, he feels something that he does not often feel. It is an overwhelming sense of guilt. He knows that all those hosts are going to suffer in hell if they truly did die, what he fails to notice, though, is that he didn’t kill the people. He merely crushed their inner demons.

That instant, there is a blinding flash of white light. It is so bright that Jack has to squint to see his surroundings. He groans and waits for the light to fade. As soon as the light fades, there is a massive dome surrounding the entire city. Jack holds his breath. The image of the demon is now maximized on the huge dome.

“You don’t know me at all!” shrieks the demon in a loud, shrill voice.

“Nooo!” exclaims Jack. His head spins and he can’t seem to think straight anymore. He falls onto his knees and passes out because of the shock.