The Raven

Greetings from Hell

We laid there, on the soft beach, for a few minutes when we noticed that the sun was rising. It turned out that our fight had lasted the whole night. I thought it might have lasted a few hours, but I guessed it was normal to take the whole night to defeat five demons. Maybe it was even quicker than the norm, but it wasn't like I could ask someone what the norm for killing demons was. We were the 'lucky' ones who had to deal with the demon threat. I never heard of anyone else who had to face a similar problem, but then again they wouldn't go around talking about it. If they did, they would have ended up in an asylum. 

We were lying there bleeding, and there I was thinking about the things that weren't important at that moment. The only thing that was important, was for us to get up and try to stitch ourselves back together as well as we could. Turning to my friend, I noticed that she wasn't paying any attention to our situation. She was actually enjoying the beautiful sunset. 

She must've been in as much pain as I was, and there she was admiring the sunset. Couldn't she see the things that marred the beauty of the moment? Couldn't she see the eye covered in blood lying on the beach, and the bones of the flying demon scattered nearby? How was it possible that she couldn't see that the pristine yellow sand was covered in demon blood of varying colors? It was as if her eyes passed above that gruesome scene and just focused on the sunrise, on the horizon. 

That was one big difference between us, I couldn't do that. Just shut off all the horrible things, and enjoy the beautiful sunrise, well that, and the fact that I was in excruciating pain. I could see from her dazed eyes that she saw only the magic of it all. The pink and purple colors on the sky reflected on the surface of the sea, and the sea rippling in gentle waves. It reminded me of many pictures I had seen in the travel agencies but that didn't lessen its beauty. Nevertheless, I couldn't just let us bleed to death, so I tried to snap my friend out of her trance.

Calling her didn't seem to work, so I went over to try to shake her out of her state. Then I noticed that her hand wasn't bleeding anymore. It seemed to be already healing. 

"How did you do that?" I said pointing at her hand and wincing in pain since I used my bleeding hand to point. A stream of fresh blood started pouring down my hand as if to remind me that I was the only one bleeding. Coming out of her trance, my friend told me that she was renewing her power by focusing on all the good and positive things. She was focusing on the beauty of nature, the light breeze on her skin and the smell of salty air. Honestly, I was so tired from the loss of blood, from all the fighting, now and before, so I just stared at her not understanding. 

"You were the one who told me that we all have the power. That we just need to learn how to use it, and that is what I am doing now. Of course, I can't regrow my finger but otherwise, I can heal my body as much as you can, as much as every person can." She said.

Although I understood what she was saying, I couldn't feel it. My eyes kept wandering towards the mess left on the beach. The snake-like demon sprawled dead, smelling of rotten eggs. The bones of the flying creature and the eye. Always the eye. I couldn't stop looking at it. Something was watching us from the dead eye lying on the beach. I could feel the icy stare boring into me, making me feel weak and confused. 

"Let's just leave, and I will use some bandages until I figure out how to heal myself," I said. My friend agreed and that was when I got an even worse feeling. Slimy and disgusting stare that made my skin crawl, I could feel it like an actual presence. Suddenly, a huge raven appeared but it didn't seem to pay any attention to us. It went towards the lifeless eye that was staring at us even dead.

Or was it lifeless? I had no idea. I hoped it was dead, like its owner. Still, it was creepy to watch the raven pick up the eye by its nerves, and point it towards us. It seemed as if the raven was helping someone see us. Or maybe it just wanted to creep us out, I wasn't sure. 

After a few seconds went by, I could see some spark of life in the eye dangling from the raven's beak. Inside the eye, a toothy mouth appeared.

"I might be trapped, but my minions shall destroy you. Even if they don't actually kill you, they will destroy your will to live by constantly attacking you." Said the creepy voice coming from the eyeball. 

I knew in every bone of my body that it was the Devil speaking through the eye of its demon. As grossed out as I was, I had enough sense to figure out what had to be done. 

"Let's run!" I told my friend.

We ran out of there surprisingly fast considering our state. We were followed by the bone-chilling laughter and an unkindness of ravens started gathering on the beach. 

Surprisingly enough, we weren't followed. Maybe it was just the demons playing with their food, again. They kept doing that, even though it often gave us time to escape or fight back. I guess they didn't actually care, because they had all the time in the world to catch us. 

Not sure where to go, covered in blood as we were, we headed for the nearby church hoping that the sacred ground would protect us. We needed time to recuperate, and I needed to stop the bleeding since I was already light-headed and weak. 

We were in luck since it was one of those churches with an open door policy. Meaning its doors were always open, never locked. Having in mind that it was early in the morning, it was empty. We had a few hours before the morning service, and we used them to recover. 

My friend worked on her healing and tried to teach me, but just in case we also tied a part of my shirt around my wound to stop the bleeding. Having done the best we could, we decided to leave the safety of the church, so that no humans would be able to see us and call the police or something as crazy as that. When we went outside, we were surprised by what we saw.