From: neale@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Neale Davidson)
Subject: The Demon...
Date: 22 Aug 92 20:55:52 GMT

The Demon
A Tale of Confession
(c)1992 Neale Davidson

        "God, this is sick," the male officer said. The body lying
before him was once a beautiful young woman, a girl named Lady Moria.
Though she was far from innocent, her death was still a waste. Behind
the heavy black visor he wore, the officer gave a look of quiet
despair.
        His partner, an attractive young woman, was polling some of
the nearby persons, most of which were gawkers. While the partner
was collecting the specifics, he already knew the gist of this scene.
Moria was a well known seller of Pink-Love, a pleasure-drug. While not
illegal itself, the drug was a major cause of crime within Outer
Haven. Pink-Love was quite addictive. The high price of each doze
had driven quite a number of otherwise innocent people into a life
of crime.
        And now some fool had killed for it. Lady Moria went from a
moderately young successful aphrodisiac-seller to another statistic.
What was worse was that there was an enormous amount of suspects to
sift through. There were fifty-odd individuals nearby when the crime
occurred, all of which could have committed the crime.
        "I didn't do anything," one of them cried when the female
officer grabbed him. "What do you want me for?" he whined. The fool
was making a scene for the benefit of the others, trying to make
himself look cool for the anti-cop crowd.
        The female was undaunted and pulled out her heavy taser stick
with her free hand. "You ran when I called for you, just a tad bit
suspicious," she cooly replied. "Got a witness said you made a buy
from Moria just before she was killed."
        The male officer finally showed some interest and casually
walked over. "Are you carrying any identification, or should we write
you up as a dreg?"
        The man was getting feisty, frustrated by the fact that a
petite woman was so easily holding him. "I left my Eye-Dee at home,"
he started. The woman readied her taser as a warning against oncoming
sarcasm. "But my name is Janis, Philip Janis. I live at 233 La Placa,"
he hastily concluded.
        The male officer motioned to his partner and she let loose her
grip from the suspect. The male officer stroked his silver badge, a
nasty habit he'd picked up from massive impatience. "Mister Delago
says he saw you approach Lady Moria with a knife an hour ago," he
began with a cool patience.
        But the fool laughed, "Delago? The Dreg?" Suddenly Philip
Janis was confident again, shaking aside his fear. "Officer, if I'm
not mistaken, a dreg's word doesn't hold squat in court. You've got
nothing on me."
        The male officer had to force himself from punching the
suspect's lights out on the spot. "You're wrong, I've got a bad
attitude on you," he cooly replied. "You may be right, but that still
makes you a number one suspect, Janis." The officer finished by
shoving his gloved finger sharply into the fool's stomach.
        The suspect stuck his nose in the air and proceeded to walk
off, heading home. He had won. "I'll have to remember you when the
next Security Force ball opens," he smarted before disappearing from
sight.
        "Well," the female officer finally chirped,"looks like he
called your bluff. That's three you owe me." She replaced the taser on
her belt. "Think that he's the guy?"
        The male took some time to answer, holding back a burst of
anger. "You know he is, but he's right. We don't even have any
probable cause on him, save that he was in the neighborhood." The
officer took one last look at the once beautiful Lady Moria before
covering her face. "Sometimes I wonder why I get up in the morning."
        Meanwhile, Philip Janis laughed.

        ***     ***     ***     ***     ***     ***     ***     ***

        Philip was quite proud of himself, the pills were easy to
obtain, and the only person who could finger him as a murderer was a
worthless dreg. "They've got nothing on me," he repeated to himself as
he crawled into his bed for the night. Philip was ready for some
well-deserved sleep.
        But the night air of Haven poured into the room through an
open window at the side of the bed. "Damn, I thought I closed that,"
he grunted as he stumbled out of bed and walked toward the glass pane.
When he arrived he slammed it down, only to see the writing on the
glass, writing in blood. "Confess", it said.
        "Friggin cops," he muttered at the sign. He stormed to the
rusty bathroom and angrily snatched a towel. He turned on the
sink faucet and wetted the towel. "I'm gonna have to complain about
those two, think they're righteous or something."
        He then turned off the faucet and walked back to the window,
ready to clean it off. The chilly breeze poured through, the window
was again open. "What the hell?" Philip muttered as he reached out to
close it again.
        From the eerie Haven night the wind howled. Before the fool
could close the window, a fearsome voice called from beyond.
"Confess," the wind said. "Confess."
        Philip dismissed the voice. It was, probably, from his
imagination due to lack of sleep. He closed the window, ready to wipe
off the word that was smeared on. But the pane of glass was clean,
there was no word.
        The fool locked the window instinctively, and then check the
remaining locks on his tiny apartment. "Nerves," he said to himself. A
night's rest would do him good, and tomorrow all would be forgotten.
        Philip Janis went to bed, and slowly drifted into sleep.

        ***     ***     ***     ***     ***     ***     ***     ***

        He was floating in the sky, effortlessly. The world was below
him, as well it should be, at least in his opinion. This was a
particularly nice dream, one that he had had before. Philip Janis was
the superior being, the next Napoleon. He was above everything,
including the law. All that mattered was him.
        Of course, beings of such superior ability do tend to attract
notice. There was another person within the dream, a darker, more
fearsome creature than even Janis. "Do all killers dream of grandeur?"
it muttered with a thunder which shook the dreamscape.
        Janis was taken aback. How dare this thing interrupt such a
pleasant dream. This thing, this demon had to be his conscious, the
part of him which still had morality. This demon was Philip
Janis's guilt, something which could be purged. "I did what I needed
to do, and there is nothing to fear from it."
        The demon moved closer, its violet eyes cutting deeply into
Janis's own. The blackness of his being flowed about him in the
imaginary breeze. "You needed to kill?" it grimaced.
        Janis stared at the Demon menacingly, arrogance driving him
on. "She wouldn't give it to me willingly, not for free." He then
smiled with an evil grin. "Besides, I quite enjoyed it."
        The Demon didn't reply, not in words. He simply beckoned to
the darkness about them. The darkness then physically clung to
the body of Philip Janis and begun to pull. The sick fool screamed in
darkest agony. "You, you can't do this to me. This is my dream," he
pleaded.
        The Demon commanded the darkness to pull tighter, starting to
tear and sever the joints which held the fool's drug-ridden body
together. When the Demon spoke, his sharp, vampire teeth protruded.
"Confess your crime, Philip Janis, or die."
        The darkness pulled tighter, and Janis could hear bones give.
Panicking, Janis threw the sheets off of his body and onto the floor.
His breath was racing just like his heart.
        The fool slammed his fist to the mattress from anger. "It
wasn't wrong, she had it coming," he said, failing to console himself.
"Who'll miss her anyway?"
        It would be several minutes before he realized that the window
was open again.

        ***     ***     ***     ***     ***     ***     ***     ***

        The poor fool would make another, final attempt at sleep. It
was near midnight now, the moon was shining directly through the
sea-side window. The cool night air from the Pacific Ocean brushed
lightly on his face.
        Sweating, shaking, Philip Janis painfully rose from his bed.
"It's just nerves," he fearfully said. The bathroom was near, and he
wanted the sleeping pills which were inside. "Just need to knock
myself to sleep."
        Joints cracking, he stood and closed the bed-side window,
cutting himself off once again from the crisp Haven air. The familiar
nightlight in the bathroom radiated a dull yellow glow. To Philip, it
was a beacon, the marker to his answer, the pills.
        How ironic, he thought to himself. The pills were both the
problem and the solution. He had killed for pills, and now he needed
other pills to help him sleep. Under the pills, he consoled himself,
there are no dreams.
        He had reached the bathroom, the water was leaking from the
rusty shower. There was a certain smell within, the smell of death.
Poor Mister Janis dismissed it as is overactive imagination. His hand
carefully rose to the bathroom mirror which was the front of the
medicine cabinet.
        He opened the door, and quickly grabbed the bottle of pills as
soon as they caught his eye. His frenzy caused him to fumble with the
lid. When the fool could not open the child-proof lid to the his
frustration grew to near panic. "Come on dammit, I want sleep," he
cried.
        Finally he had fumbled the container open. It could be
considered impressive that he actually remained dexterous enough to
pour two of the pink pills into his hand. He quickly popped them into
his mouth and felt near instantaneous relief. "No more dreams about
demons," he said after swallowing.
        But then he chose to close the mirrored door, and he could
see that the glowing violet eyes of the demon were behind him. "More
pills?" the demon asked with a air of disdain.
        The container Philip had crashed to the floor as he
instinctively tried to run. But there is no running from the demon. The
black fist from hell already gripped the murderer's body, and the fist
was tightening.
        "What do you want from me?" the fool cried as the demon grew,
breaking the house from his giant mass. The demon's violet eyes
pierced the fool's soul. The demon's teeth were ivory white, but their
tips were dripping with blood. Philip Janis was being visited by hell
itself, and he could not know why.
        The demon tightened his grip even more, threatening to squeeze
the life-blood of the fool. The demon was the ultimate strangler,
able to crush whole bodies. "I said Confess," the demon commanded,
throwing the fool down, hard.
        For that moment, Philip Janis thought he was going to die. But
he landed on his bed with a hard blow. The bed coils squeaked, the
pillows flew off, but there was no further damage. Hadn't the demon
broken his house only moments before?
        The window was still open, the pills lay on the floor in the
bathroom. The nightlight was still on. The fool was going insane.
"Need help", he cried, gasping for air. There were bruises on his
body, bruises from a giant fist. His lungs were crushed, and blood was
slowly dripping from his mouth.
        He grabbed the phone and quickly dialed. The policeman on the
other end stated his generic telephone answer. "Haven Security Force,
is this an emergency?"
        Philip Janis tried to compose himself, but his mind had been
destroyed. The demon had indeed visited, and had already sent the fool
to hell. "It's mad at me," he panted. "It wants me because I killed
Lady Moria."

        ***     ***     ***     ***     ***     ***     ***     ***

        Two policeman escorted the poor gentleman from his apartment.
He was obviously shaken, obviously frightened of the demon he'd dreamt
of during the night before. "Please take me away," he cried to the
female officer, "Protect me from him."
        The woman officer smiled with an amused look, "Certifiable,"
she began. "We'll need to put him in a real soft cell." Instinctively,
she reached for her taser, not wanting to allow a psychopath a chance
to cause more damage.
        The taller, male officer let loose a small grin, his violet
eyes softly glinting into the morning sky. "Yeah," he began as his
sharp teeth protruded out of his smile. "The kooks are getting weirder
each day."
        Philip Janis screamed in terror as the Demon took him away,
forever.


--

"Our crew's living quarters have left the ship."
			- Secundam Yto aboard the IRON CLAW II
Neale Davidson, another writer wanna-be. neale@mentor.cc.purdue.edu