the only heaven i'll be sent to

2.0

Luis woke up the next morning with a dull ache in his head. He'd left his blinds open all night, so the sunlight coming through the window blinded him when he opened his eyes. He rolled over onto his back and rubbed his eyes, shivering slightly from the cold. He glanced over at the clock. The time read 8:17 a.m. He had his computer engineering class at 10, and he was definitely not looking forward to it.

He laid in bed for a few minutes, eyes closed, trying to get his mind to wake up. He groaned, thinking about the assignment he never finished. He was usually a studious student, always doing his work, sometimes even turning it in early. But he was so distracted yesterday...

Luis's eyes shot open. The demon. It had to have been a dream. He must've blacked out or something after studying all day, and all of the fears he had about failing in school manifested into some annoying man-demon-thing that followed him around. Luis glanced over to the other side of the bed, remembering how the demon hadn't left before he'd fallen asleep last night. There was no one there.

He wasn't crazy. He had just been mentally exhausted yesterday. And maybe he was also a little lonely, and that's why the imaginary symbolic demon thing was so attractive. Luis was not crazy.

Luis exhaled a sigh of relief, rubbing his eyes again. Then he heard his bedroom door open. Luis held his breath and prayed for the first time in his entire life, still keeping his hands over his eyes. 'Please be Kaiya, please be Kaiya,' he chanted in his head.

"Oh, hey, you're up," spoke the deep voice that Luis had come to hate more than anything in the world. When Luis groaned loudly, Adrian simply laughed. He seemed to do that a lot. It was only 8 in the morning and Luis was already seething.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Luis whispered to himself. But Adrian heard, and so he laughed again, louder that time.

"You mean, you're not happy to see me?" Adrian joked. Luis still had his hands covering his face, but he could hear the amusement in Adrian's voice.

"I am really, really not in the mood for this today. Can you go haunt someone else for a while?" Luis grumbled, finally removing his hands and turning his head to look at Adrian. He looked the exact same as he did yesterday, though Luis isn't sure why he expected anything to change. God, why did he have to be so beautiful? 'He's objectively attractive,' Luis thought to himself. 'It's not like I'm actually attracted to him at all. He's just nice to look at. And why the hell am I thinking about this again?'

Adrian smirked at him, and Luis was convinced that the demon could read his mind or something. Irritated, Luis threw the pillow that he wasn't using at Adrian, but it went right through him. Luis almost cried. This guy was impossible.

"I'm not a ghost, you know," Adrian said, ever-present smile still on his face.

"What?" Luis asked, confused and already exasperated.

"I can't 'haunt' people. I'm not a ghost. I'm a demon. There's a difference."

"I really don't care. They're basically the same thing." Luis reluctantly moved to get out of bed, swinging his legs over the side and planting his feet on the floor.

The floor turned black, and so did all of the walls and ceiling. It was a black darker than any he'd ever seen. He could feel every sin and all of the misery of every human that had ever lived inside his chest. He tried to look around, but it was so dark that he couldn't tell what direction he was facing, if he was looking up or down or left or right. He couldn't feel anything but a bitter, aching cold running through his veins that, at the same time, felt like a scalding heat, burning his skin. He tried to scream, but no noise came out of his mouth.