Page 145 of Devil Inside

I am not graced by God’s light.

Think of myself like the hydromedusa—that deep sea jelly radiating in innumerable tendrils, an invisible sun, much like its Greek namesake and its serpents.

That’s notexactlywhat I am, but it’s close enough. You get the idea. Maybe you don’t...

You know what? Never mind. Maybe it’s best you don’t see me. Ignorance is bliss, especially down here in the dark. Trust me, you probably wouldn’t like what you’d see.

No one ever does.

I find warmth inside those who plummet. Simple shimmers of soul still clinging to your being. Those last scraps of humanity, so sweet. There will be a feeding frenzy, all the others rushing for that warm morsel. I’ll devour the last lingering bit of yourself, absorb it until it’s my own, until there’s nothing left. Nothing but cold again, as the screams linger.

It’s in the dark that you’ll find me, find all of us, feeding in the void we all call home.

Look at me now. I’m winnowing in the ribs of a particular sinner, pecking at what’s left. There isn’t much to this one, let me tell you. Gristle and—

Did you hear that? That wasn’t just me, was it? I could’ve sworn I heard something.

Heard him.

Jordan.

Sorry, I was distracted there for a—

There he is again. His voice calls—I summon them—a bell tolling. It shakes me, so loud it distorts our form. Where did he come from? There’s no possible way that could be—

I call upon them.

At just like that, I am yanked

up

up

and

away.

Jordan’s voice pulls at us. Draws us in.

I bind them to me.

Plucked. I am a flower uprooted from the soil. The world is now a blur, cast across a vast expanse, an endless stretch of flesh, of time and space, until we find ourselves—

Here. In Jordan’s apartment. How did I get here?

Where is he?

There is fire all around. The room is burning. Flames pour forth from the center of the room, a ceaseless barrage of black light and smoke billowing from a hydrothermal vent. This fissure emits such heat, plumes of roiling light, it’s blinding to bear witness to.

I can’t look straight at it. It’s far too bright. I feel so exposed. So vulnerable.

I have no host.

We are me.

I have been divested of any flesh, free from my vessel, lost and loose in this plane. There is nothing for me to hold on to, no body to filter into, unmoored and naked and afraid.

I don’t like this feeling. I don’t like this feeling at all. I’m so... soexposed.