Sold My Soul

It was nearly six-thirty by the time I made it back to Jimmy’s place. The front door swung open before I even had a chance to knock and Jimmy grabbed my arm, dragging me inside. After quickly re-locking the door behind us, he turned to me. “What the fuck is going on here?”

Seeing Jimmy like this brought everything that had happened back into sharp focus; on my way here I had sort of zoned out, and everything kind of seemed like it had happened to someone else. But now, Jimmy’s scared and pale face brought it all rushing back.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this.” I said instead, sounding rather thoughtful.

“What are you -” he changed his thought mid-sentence. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re covered in blood!”

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

“There’s probably something wrong with her head.” another voice added, and I glanced behind Jimmy to see Zacky and Johnny, looking equally worried.

Jimmy led me over to the couch, and Johnny appeared in front of me with a glass of water as I sat down. “What happened Ash?”

I took the glass from him and just held it, staring at it intently. My head felt fuzzy, not to mention it felt as though it would split in half at any moment, and all I wanted to do was sleep. But that was definitely not an option. “I don’t really know...you know?”

“No we don’t know, it’s why we’re asking.” Zacky said bluntly, and Jimmy smacked him across the back of the head. “What was that for?!”

“Just shut up. You aren’t helping. What do you remember?” he turned back to me.

I gave a sigh. “I remember everything, I just don’t know what happened.” So maybe it was only a half-truth. I did remember most things, everything I was awake for, anyway. But overall, I really had no idea what had actually happened tonight.

The three guys had varying looks of confusion on their faces. “Maybe she’s drunk.” Johnny said helpfully after a moment. “I mean, we all know she can’t handle her alcohol, and she’s not making any sense, so...”

“That doesn’t explain the blood!” Zacky said skeptically.

Rather than defend myself, I just sat in silence and concentrated on staying awake. Jimmy had disappeared down the hallway.

“I think I speak for everyone here when I say there have been nights of drinking that have ended with us being bloodied up and not remembering why.” Johnny continued.

“...fine. Your logic wins this round.” Zacky said after a minute, before sitting down beside me. “Ashley, you drunk?”

“No.” I yawned, laying my head on his shoulder. “I’m tired. And scared.”

“Scared? Ash, you need to explain as much as you know to us. Brian checked his messages after this place cleared out, and whatever it said, he didn’t like it. He was out of here ten seconds later, and told us that if you weren’t here by seven to call the police. It was really fucking weird, I’ve never seen him like that and it kind of freaked us out.” Jimmy had returned with a blanket and bottle of Advil. Shaking two pills out of the bottle, he handed them to me before sitting on the edge of the coffee table and waiting expectantly.

Everything? Slim chance of that happening, at least not until after I talked to Brian about it. But they deserved to know at least some of what had happened tonight. “There were some guys at the party, guys that Brian doesn’t get along with. They thought it’d be funny to take me “hostage” and make him pay up to get me back. He showed up at their place, they let me go, I came back here and he said he’d be back soon.” I summed it up as vaguely as possible.

“What a bunch of fucking dickheads!” Zacky yelled, making me wince. That definitely didn’t help the headache problem. “Where are they? We’ll go fucking kill them!”

I think that’s already been taken care of. “Don’t worry Zee, Brian can handle it.”

“Still, we need to kick their asses!” he stood up, already heading for the door. He unlocked the deadbolt, but just as he reached for the handle the door swung open, and Zack very nearly missed being nailed in the face.

“Already done, Baker. Thanks for caring though.” Brian grinned tiredly, stepping into the house. His clothes were absolutely covered in blood, but he himself looked fine. If I thought I’d be able to, I would have ran over to him. As it was, though, I was having difficulty sitting up straight, so I just smiled to express my relief.

Zacky and the other two guys seemed lost for words. “Well...you...that’s a lot of fucking blood man!” Zack finally blurted out. “What the hell happened?!”

“I took care of it, don’t worry. It was really just a big misunderstanding. Now don’t you think it’s time we all got some rest?” Brian said, with an air of finality.

“But -”

“We can talk more later, if you guys want, but I’m going to bed right now.” Brian said as he crossed the room to help me up. “We’ll see you guys in awhile, okay?” Without waiting for a reply he scooped me up bridal-style before leaving three very confused friends in the living room.

“You need to make sure Ashley’s okay!” Jimmy called after us. “She’s in bad shape.”

Once in “our” room, he set me on the bed before locking the door, then sat beside me. “You okay?” he whispered, suddenly looking exhausted.

Rather than answer his question, I asked my own. “What happened?”

He sighed wearily, putting his head in his hands. “Let’s just say, anyone who was in that house won’t be bothering us anymore.”

I placed my hand on his arm, not really sure what to do or say. “Want to talk about it?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“No.” he paused for a moment, but didn’t look up. “The thing is, there weren’t that many guys there. And definitely not Chris or Todd or any of the “higher-ups”, so...I don’t know what’s going to happen now...”

We sat in silence for a couple minutes, before Brian apparently remembered something and looked over at me. “Now, are you okay?”

“I think my head is pretty fucked.” I said reluctantly, and that may have been an understatement. One side of my head was still covered in dried blood, and the world was becoming continually more fuzzy. “I think we should go to the hospital or something.”

“Can’t. Not tonight at least. They’ll have guys scouting around any of the hospitals nearby, cuz they know you’re hurt.” he looked worried again, and for some reason, a little nervous too. “But it does look pretty bad, so there’s something else we could do...”

“What?”

He took one of my hands, but wouldn’t meet my gaze. “He could fix you up in no time, you’d be good to go by tomorrow I’d bet.”

I was confused, and the head injury probably wasn’t helping me think coherently. “Who?” Brian didn’t answer right away, and I was about to ask again when he finally spoke.

“Mephistopheles. The demon.”