Page 111 of Devil Inside

“You push him too much,” Josh cuts in.

The words make no sense. Pushwho, exactly?Josh?

Something about the look in their son’s eyes—the glee—sends a chill through the room. Something is wrong here. Something is definitely wrong. This is not like Josh.

Not like Josh at all.

He smiles.

It’s his lips, his mouth, his body—but it’s not his smile. His mother doesn’t recognize her own son in that moment. This grin isn’t his. He’s never looked at her like that before.

“Would you like to see what you’re doing to your son?” Josh asks.

Before his mother knows how to answer or his father can manage to say a word...

Josh’s head snaps back.

crk

It’s such an abrupt motion, his own body doesn’t know how to respond—articulate—the hollow pop of his vertebrae filling the hall, surrounded by so many framed photographs of their family in happier times. Pictures of vacations. Recitals. Holidays.

That boy isn’t present. In his place, within his bent body, is something else.

Something malignant.

“He called out to us,” Josh says as his head folds so far backward, the bed of his cranium now nestles itself in the center of his shoulder blades. The exposed slope of his throat stretches so far, his mother can’t help but worry that it might tear. His Adam’s apple protrudes from his flesh, sliding up and down as he swallows, speaking in a voice so unfamiliar to his family. “I was more than happy to answer his cry for help...”

His mother’s heart halts. She brings her hand up to her mouth, as if to clasp hold of the gasp before the air can escape. Too late. The air is gone, emptied from her lungs. She’ll never be able to breathe again. Not with what she’s witnessing. This moment will suspend itself in her memory for the rest of her days. There is nothing, nothing else, beyond this.

“Pushing,” her son says. “Always pushing...”

Josh continues to fold over backward. His body, his bones, are no longer defined by the rigid structures of human anatomy. They are improvising, finding fresh directions to bend. It looksso painful. And yet, through it all, that grin remains. Josh never stops smiling, even as his body defies all logic and bends, his head now reaching the back of his knees, his feet, the crown of his head touching the floor, elevating his pelvis in the air, his arms flung out at either side and curlicuing themselves, a radiating sea anemone, a fleshy starfish uprooted from the sea, limbs now curling and flexing and gesticulating wildly.

“Don’t you see what happens when you push...”

Another pop from his spine.

“And push... and...”

Another.

“Push?”

Why won’t he stop smiling? His mother can’t help but wonder. Why won’t he stop?

“Look at me,” he says, eyes so wide, burning with a madness that she never thought was humanly possible—not her son, no, not her angel—“See what happens?”

Laughing now. Josh is laughing. But it’s nothim. Nothislaugh.

“Don’t you see what happens?” Hammering the floor now. The tile. Pounding against the ground. His head. His beautiful head. Now nothing more than bruised fruit.

crk

Something within their boy is breaking. Cracking.

crk

Bones.