Page 10 of Devil Inside

That’s our gift. Our dark gift, tied in your very own veins, the reddest of ribbons.

We let them decide. Not by asking, but sensing their shadows. Inhabiting their deepest, darkest secrets and dragging them out into the light.

Sean wants to see. To feel. He wants to experience the night. To be free. Not afraid.

Let him watch.

The city is ours. The speckle of lights. Constellations along every block. We wander these streets, amongst the temples made of glass and steel, piercing the sky itself.

This world offers us so much. We want it all. Every last drop.

Where do we even begin?

The club is confined. So suffocating. Bodies press against each other in the dark. We step inside the darkened hall and immediately feel the temperature elevate.

The music is dull and throbbing. It pulses in a frenetic beat that we feel deep within our chest. It blocks out all other sound, nearly every other sensation. There is nothing, nothing but the music itself. It is a demon, this music—its rhythm so invasive. Pervasive. The song wishes to possess everyone on the dance floor. It pushes out all other thought.

Everyone here succumbs to this possession of sound, succumbing to the very song. We are all helpless against it. We love it. Absolutely love it. Let this music overwhelm us.

Overpower us. Take us.

Beams of candy-colored light flash from far corners of theceiling. They cast their saccharine hues over everyone’s skin, sugar scattering across the sky, pinks and purples and greens and reds, there and gone, lapsing in shadow, red now blue now green again.

Look at everyone sweat. Moving in unison. Lost to the sound. A blurring of bodies. We reach the center of the dance floor and let ourselves go, losing ourselves to the music.

We dance. Let the music consume us.

This music is new to us. Your songs were so sibilant before. Hissing horns. Jazz. The sound of trapped gasses escaping a corpse, the shrill whistle of brass, those coiled intestines. Trumpets. Saxophones. A grotesque display of entrails, whistling in their pitch.

Now there are no musicians. Tonight, the songs seep out of speakers.

My, how times change. A fresh era of flesh. There is so much lust around us. We smell it. The sweat. The downright decadence of it all.

We like it here. In this suffocating club. Bodies brush against one another, flesh coalesces, heaving to the beat, moving in unison. An infernal machine of body parts.

We are alone. We are everyone. Nowhere and everywhere all at once.

We are legion.

A sea of flesh. The oscillating waves form a rhythm. A tidal wave. It reminds us of our world below. Our home. Bodies press so tightly against one another, pushing and heaving to the syncopated beat, the pulse provides a riptide—a current—for us to drift.

Who’s to say we can’t hop? Go for a little joyride?

No one will notice. Can’t I have a little fun?

Time to swim...

I leave our host. Abandon his body.

Farewell, Sean...

I enter the body beside his. Fresh flesh for me.

Let me in...

The taste of a new host. The pleasure of our vessels, experiencing their lives, tapping into their memories. Soak up their sorrow. Simmer in their soul. Their simple existence, their tiny lives, every little experience, it all adds complex textures of pleasure. Piquancy.

When I enter a vessel, it’s much like opening a vintage bottle of wine. The more these hosts have undergone—the pain, the heartache—the more it enhances the flavor.