Demon

By Marlin Eller

I had just slipped in a new disk of Baroque music and returned to my brandy, my overstuffed chair and latest pass through Moby Dick when the first flashback hit. Naturally I was totally unprepared. For one thing I had never really done a lot of LSD in the first place, just an occasional hit of blotter for special occasions like a three day hike in the Greens or like when the Dead came to Boston. For another thing I had figured the whole flashback trip was a crock of shit invented by some local school board to scare high schoolers from trying drugs, or better yet to turn in the kids that were "doing it". But mostly I was unprepared because I hadn't done any serious drugs in years. Years! Hadn't even smoked pot for the last, I don't know, must have been at least 4 years, not since Brett was born anyway. I'm a family man. Have a good job. Have a family even, wife, kids, cat, you know, the whole works. I have a reasonable commute into the office every day, where I track purchase orders, contact customers. Are you getting the picture, I am fucking ORDINARY! So what am I doing having an acid flashback?

It occurred to me that maybe I was going crazy, but I rejected the possibility, it was too much like drugs, you know, it suddenly comes on, you find yourself mumbling, "Oh WOW!", and while the last functioning cells in the cerebral cortex are thinking, "Did we do them yet?", the reptile brain is screaming, "YOU HIGH, YOU HIGH". Only this time I hadn't done anything. I thought, if you can call the paranoid phantasms that flash about your head during these moments thought, maybe this is a heart attack. Maybe this is the big one. Possibly I'm checking out. But I kept flashing on this time years ago when I'd chewed some acid for a party that never happened and I had to face the night terrors alone. It was terrible, I turned on the TV and watched Johnny Carson, confused the whole time as to whether I was watching him or he was watching me through that little box. I'd turn the set off then get the creeps and turn it back on, get the creeps, turn it back off, then on. And then there was this horrible thriller, occult, demon witchcraft calypso night of the living zombie thing that just scared the piss out of me. I flew to the land of the dead and saw slavering demons. It was one of those situations where you don't dare turn the set off while the monster is still alive, and even though you have to you don't dare go take a leak until the show is over and that THING is DEAD, DEAD, DEAD!!

And then it was Telleman. The CD popped onto the next track. There I was in my chair, drink at my side, Moby Dick in my lap, heart thumping, and sweating like a pig. I listened to the music for a while, getting a grip, letting the nausea subside. Should I tell the wife? I decided that if it was a mild heart attack it would just worry her and if it was a flashback, I'd purchased it with my own decisions years ago and did not need to share it with any one else. It was probably just a brown out in the Medulla, but the lights were back on now so I took a sip and tried to find the paragraph I had been on. An hour later I bookmarked my place, did the nighttime number in the bathroom, slid into the sack with the wife and slept without a dream.

The second one hit two days later when I was on the phone reaming out one of our suppliers for being late on a shipment of printed circuit boards, trying to squeeze a price cut out of the situation. He was telling me that they would have told us sooner but that they had been screwed by the guy who was supposed to deliver them a new pin setting machine, you know, the usual crock, when I feel the hooks bite into my chest and start pulling. I've still got the phone to my ear but the guys voice is getting slurred and breaks into a stream of meaningless phonemes. And suddenly I know, with the absolute certainty that can only come from drugs or mathematics, that the guy on the other end is the demon out of that damn movie from so long ago. I can see the revolting face in front of me, high cheek bones, filed teeth, beetle shell black skin, and thin red slit eyes that have no surface, just slits that let you look into the hell fire forge that burns within. I can smell the stench of sulfur dioxide and rotting eggs. A stream of foul curses gutter and spit from his long pointed ebon tongue. It raises the hairs on the back of my neck and fills me with a hatred and loathing that matches his. My blood pressure has knotted my arteries and I want him out of my face, NOW. I'm ready to scream back my own curses and damn him back to what ever hell spawned his ugly black hide, and then a moment of sanity prevails and I say, "Hey Dick, something's come up here, can I call you back in a few minutes?" and hang up.

I take a few deep breaths and try to regain control but I can still see him, cursing me for hanging up on him and swearing that I won't get off that easy. I know that he is plotting some new way to get to me, to trap me, to enrage me. He is trying to explode me. And it's not just him, it's a whole group, all of our suppliers are out to personally screw me. I HATE THEM! I LOATH THEM! DAMN THEM ALL! They are succeeding too. I am in a frothing rage. My Goddamn chest is on FIRE and I want to KILL! And then I can't breathe! I choke and gasp for air but can't pull any in. I try to stand up to call for help but I get dizzy and black out.

I come to almost immediately, able to breathe, heart OK, well maybe a little fast. I decided then and there that two cups of coffee is the limit for the morning. I mean, a few days late on an order of printed circuit boards is just not worth blowing your ticker over. I went to the men's room, took a leak, returned to my office and called Dick back. Told him I'd give him the week to get us the boards and if they were going to be late again to be prepared to do some serious ass kissing if he wanted to keep our business. He assured me that they'd be here Thursday, Thursday morning.

On the commute home I tried to remember the name of the movie, but it was too far back, too fuzzy, only the ugly faces and a few scenes played back. Ugly stuff.

That night in the shower my body turned to stone. I was soaping up my arms when my legs grew heavy. I was very very stoned, couldn't move my arms any more. I was under water, no, slower than that, under ground. I was dirt. I felt the goose flesh on the legs and then couldn't feel any more. The water turned cold, then icy. I slipped to the floor of the shower and the water poured on down filling my ears, my slack mouth, my head dropped onto the hard tile floor. And then the face.

Pearl spikes in a cruel grin. Ivory knobs, and the dry (never slimy) scales of a black moccasin. The fires glowed but the chamber was dark. I heard the chanting and realized that I was surrounded by five of THEM. I was lying on hard packed earth, the icy shower still pouring down on me but running where? I tried to move but was still made of lead. The tension and excitement in the room stunk, reeking bodies, dung and offal. They had fouled themselves but didn't move from where they sat and swayed and chanted. I tried to comprehend their vile tongue and then with a sickening fear heard only one thing over and over, my name over and over. It grew to a roar, freezing my blood in terror. THEY KNEW MY NAME!

I can't say how long it was before I could reach up and turn off the shower, but afterwards I sat for a very long time with the drain hole between my legs dripping dry and shivering. They knew my name. Dear God in heaven, they know my name! I was lost. I had sinned somewhere and fallen from grace. There was no hope now. They knew my name. Anytime they wanted me, for whatever foul stinking purpose, on any whim, I could be summoned. I was in chains. I was bound. The hooks were deep in my guts and I was now in slavery. The candle flames, the damn pentagram. Five of them and they knew my name. Damn them humans! God damn them all to hell!