Burning You Down

Okay, I admit it, I was a bit scared. I don’t know. It was just, when we reached my house I suddenly realized that I was going to spend the night sharing a room (and probably a bed) with a sexually frustrated demon possessing the body of the boy I had a crush on. This was more than just awkward, things could get out of hand really quickly. No. I wasn’t going to let anything happen.

I closed the door after me, trying to be as quiet as possible so I wouldn’t wake my mom up. Since it was Friday I didn’t need to go to bed early, but still, she wanted me to be at the house before midnight. I didn’t want her to know how late I came home.

The first thing Vic did was to throw himself on my bed, crossing legs and settling comfortably.

“I bet you never had a Friday night like this.”, he winked.

“Indeed.”, I admitted, sitting on the edge of the mattress, away from him. “It was… sort of fun, I admit it.”

“Told you.”, he kicked me playfully, leaving a dusty footprint on my (or, to be more precise, my sister’s) red jacket. He was still wearing his boots, even though he was lying on the clean sheets.

“Take those off.”, I shot him a glare.

“Oh, you want me to take my boots off?”

“Yes.”, I nodded.

“You do?”

“Yes.”, I repeated, now slightly annoyed.

“You reaaaaally do?”

“Yes, just fucking take them off, man!”, I lost patience.

“Aw, calm down, darling. You forgot the magic word.”, he giggled and kicked me again. He was obviously feeling playful, but I wasn’t in the mood for his shit right now. Correction – I was never in the mood for his shit.

“Just do it, please.”, I sighed tiredly. The look on his face changed a bit and he sat up.

“You look upset.”, he noticed. “Why are you upset?”

I didn’t reply. My mood had gone worse ever since I came home. I was feeling bad because of the accident with Jesse, and I was really missing Walter. He would know what to say to make me feel better, he’d manage to make me laugh and help me forget about what happened. But instead of Walt I had an annoying demon, who kept bullying me and wouldn’t leave me alone even at night.

“Is it because I kicked you?”, he continued.

I just shook my head a bit. For a second I was sure Vic was about to apologize, but instead he went silent as well and scooted closer. He hung his legs down so his feet were now touching the floor, and he pulled the boots off of his feet, tossing them aside.

“Don’t be upset.”, he said softly, but it sounded more like an order. I didn’t react, so he raised his voice: “Stop being upset, now!”

I laughed bitterly. “It doesn’t work like this. I can’t simply decide not to be upset and cheer up out of nowhere. Things like this need time.”

“But I don’t want to be upset for a long time, you’re ruining my mood this way.”, he frowned and tried to twist the corners of my mouth up with his fingers. “Cheer uuuuup.”

“Vic, stop it.”, I tried to push his hand away, but he kept trying to force me to smile, gripping my face so tightly that it hurt. “Ouch, I said stop it, you’re hurting me!”

He let me go, looking confused. Damn, he was like a child, who was trying to fix his broken toy, but in his clumsy attempts he only broke it more. I knew he didn’t mean to cause me pain, so I couldn’t be mad at him.

“I’m not that upset. I’m just tired.”, I half-lied, trying to smile a bit. “I want to go to bed.”

“Okay.”, he shrugged. I threw him a meaningful look.

“To go to bed I need to change clothes. And to change clothes…”

“…Oh! Right. I have to get out.”, he rolled eyes. “This is really stupid.”

“I don’t give a shit if you find it stupid or not. Just get ou-”

He raised his hand to stop me. “Don’t bother.” And he disappeared.

Once he was gone I did my usual evening preparations, including brushing my teeth, taking a piss, changing into my pajamas, and, in this particular case, brushing off the dust of my sheets, because a lazy demon with dirty shoes had settled on them without my permission. When I was done he was still gone, and I used the opportunity to turn the lights off and quickly slip under the blanket, quickly, so he wouldn’t stop me. Knowing Vic, he would want to talk to me some more, and I really needed some sleep.

I had been lying in the darkness for a few minutes, when I felt his presence in the room. I pretended to be asleep so he wouldn’t bother me, and surprisingly, he really didn’t. I felt his weight on the mattress. He was sitting on the edge of the bed without saying anything. What was he doing? Was he watching me sleep? I hope he wasn’t, this would be fucking creepy. Soon it didn’t matter anyway, because my eyelids grew heavy and I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, completely forgetting about Victor. Calm and blissfully oblivious… Sleep was going to give me what the last two days couldn’t – comfort.

* * *

Unfortunately this didn’t last long, because after awhile a quiet voice woke me up.

“Kellin.”

I groaned and turned to the other side, struggling to go back to sleep. The stubborn voice wouldn’t let me, though.

“Kellin, wake uuuup.”

I felt someone’s hand slip across my back and shake me lightly. I chose to ignore that, hoping that he would give up and leave me alone. He, obviously, wasn’t going to, though.

“Kelliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin.”

“…What?”, I finally murmured, still without opening my eyes. “Leave me alone.”

“I want you to wake up!”, he raised his voice a bit. “Come on. Rise and shine…”

I let out a deep sigh and opened my eyes to see Vic lying next to me, his head resting on his arm, which was folded behind his neck. I moved my sleepy look to my watch and in the pale moonlight I could barely distinguish the hands – it was showing almost four AM.

“It’s too fucking early.”, I snorted out. “What do you want?”

He made a face. “I’m bored.”

I sighed. “Why aren’t you sleeping? Maybe if you fall asleep you wouldn’t get bored…”, I fixed the pillow under my head.

“Demons don’t sleep.”, he shrugged slightly.

“They don’t?”, my eyes widened a bit, intrigued.

He shook his head a bit. “Nope. We’re created this way. No rest, ever. We’re obligated to be always on the alert.”, he looked almost sad. “We’re just souls, like, parasites, who use others’ bodies to move and talk, and we’re strong enough to keep these bodies healthy and okay without needing them to rest. Practically, we don’t need any sleep, so we can’t get it.”

“Oh…” I sat up, now wide awake. “I… I’m sorry. This must suck. So you never get tired?”

“Physically? Nope, never.”, Vic shook his head. “But mentally… You can’t even imagine how tired I am sometimes. Not all the time.”, he quickly added. “But from time to time I really wish I could close my eyes for a moment and let my mind wander without having to worry about all these little things that usually bother me. Especially down there… For hundreds of years I have to listen to people’s screams, and honestly, sometimes I wish I could just fucking die. It’s… It’s hell. Literally and figuratively.”

An unfamiliar feeling stabbed me in the stomach, replacing the usual hatred and annoyance. It was… sympathy? Yes, most definitely. Even though I didn’t want to, I was feeling bad for Victor. I got why he was so mean the whole time. I guess he was just too bitter. A question popped into my head. What if demons aren’t initially evil? What if all the time they spend down in Hell makes them this way? What if the endless torture turns them into what they are? And… for how long exactly had Vic been there?

“Vic… how old are you?”, I asked slowly.

He looked at me and I could tell that the question surprised him. “Five thousand and thirty-four.”, he grinned. “I might look young and sexy, but I’m an old man.”

I raised eyebrows. “Five thousand?”

“Well, time passes differently down there. It’s really… not like here. If I was a human, I guess I would be about… twenty-five? Or something. One year in Hell is two hundred years here. But as I said, time Downstairs is really weird. Sometimes, one year might seem like five. Sometimes it might seem like it lasted only two months. It really depends.”

“That’s so weird.”, I shook my head in slight disbelief. “So for five thousand years you haven’t slept at all?”

“Yeah. I just can’t.”

Now the sadness was clearly written on his face. He looked so lonely and abandoned in the darkness, now his sassy self fading to show another part of his personality I didn’t even think existed. He was like a lost child, who wasn’t even sure who he was anymore. Pushed by a sudden fit of confidence I moved closer and hugged him gently, just like he had hugged me back at the party when I was in shock. I felt his body tense in my arms, but after a second he relaxed and let me hold him close.

“Oh, please, don’t go all sloppy on me.”, he pouted, but I knew he enjoyed feeling me close to him, so I didn’t pull back. “The last thing I need right now is some little human pitying me.”

“Shut up.”, I murmured, trying to hold back a chuckle. “I’m trying to make you feel better here.”

Vic just sighed and let me hug him for a few more minutes and pretending to be unamused, without hugging back, of course (he’s really not into that sentimental shit.) After awhile, he gently pushed me away with a little smile on his face.

“…You should sleep.”, he declared.

“But you just woke me up.”, I protested.

“I know.”, the demon simply said.

“Then why-”

“Shh. Sleep. Now.”, his voice returned to being commanding, as usual.

I gave him a long weird look and then lay back down with a shrug. Okay, I was going to sleep if he wanted me to, I was still really fucking tired anyway. Three and a half hours of sleep weren’t enough for me. I needed more and if he was going to let me, then I wouldn’t mind.

“Goodnight, Vic.”, I murmured.

After a long moment of silence, as if he was hesitating, he replied.

“Goodnight, Kellin.”

I smiled a bit, turned to the other side and closed my eyes. I had just started to drift off, when Victor’s voice broke the silence once more:

“…What is it like?”

I opened an eye.

“What is what like?”

He didn’t reply right away and I thought he had given up, but then he suddenly spoke up.

“…Dreaming.”

I turned around to face him again. Now he was lying to the side, kind of hugging the pillow and watching me. His big brown eyes looked really dark and deep in the weak light, but at the same time somehow warm and sparkling, as if there was a fire burning somewhere deep inside them. They were nothing like Walt’s eyes, even though they were still practically his. They were… stunning. Inhuman, yes, but captivating.

“I don’t think it can be explained.”, I said after a moment of hesitation.

“You can try.” His eyes twinkled a bit brighter. “Does it feel good?”

“Depends. Sometimes, yes. But other times you’d have nightmares and you’d wake up scared, upset and sweating, which is not a good thing at all. It’s really up to the dream you’re having.”

“Can’t you control your dreams?”, he looked at me curiously.

“No, at least not always.”, I chuckled a bit, amused by how little he knew about this.

“Then who does? Who decides what you should dream about?”

“Um, no one. Our mind processes the things we’ve gone through during the day and creates an imaginary situation based on what we experienced… or something like that.”

“So dreams are, like, memories?”

“Nope, not at all.”, I mentally cursed at myself for being so bad at explaining things. “They don’t even resemble memories, some dreams don’t even make sense. They’re more like… a visual representation of our emotions.”

“…I see.”, he nodded slowly. “So… the human mind creates new places and situations, based on what you’ve seen and felt? Like… like you’re unconsciously inventing a story?”

“Yeah, exactly.”, I smiled, glad he understood.

Vic moved a bit closer, looking interested, his arms still wrapped around the pillow. Snuggling it like this, he looked almost cute.

“Tell me what you dreamed about tonight.”, he demanded.

“Oh, man, I don’t know, I don’t remember.”, I shrugged. “I don’t always remember my dreams clearly.”

“Try to remember.”, he insisted.

“Hmm, alright.”, I furrowed eyebrows and concentrated. “I think it was something funny and random… I don’t remember what it was exactly, but I think it involved Walt, and you possessing a girl.”, I giggled a bit.

“Hah! Possessing a girl, that would be fun.”, he grinned. “But nah. I prefer boys.” He hesitated. “…Do you love that Walt guy?”

I blushed, startled by the unexpected question.

“No, I mean, I, um, I don’t know. I don’t think so… I just like him a lot. We’ve been best friends for a really long time and I’m not sure what I feel about him anymore…”

His grin returned. “Do you want to fuck him?”

I made a shocked face. “No!”

This seemed to confuse him.

“But you just said you like him.”

“Yeah, I did, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m sexually attracted to him.”, I frowned a little. “I mean, to me he’s just… Walt. I never really thought about how good he looks or anything like this.” Until you possessed him, I added to myself. Even right now, at the moment, a small part of my mind kept reminding me how hot the boy lying next to me was. Which was strange, because really, before Vic showed up I never realized how handsome my best friend was. I guess I was just so used to him that I hadn’t really noticed the little things about him until now.

Victor pushed a strand of hair off of his face and stared at me. “I thought when you, humans, like each other, you have sex.” He was looking slightly disappointed.

“Yeah, we do, but not necessarily, and not right away. We take some time to get to know each other better. And call me old-fashioned, but if you really like the person, I think it should happen in a very… special way. I think that what you don’t understand is that being attracted to someone is far not the same as liking them, or loving them.”

The demon watched me for a minute, thinking over what I had just told him. He looked genuinely confused.

“…I think I understand. Okay.” Vic let the pillow go and lay on his back. “I asked, because… If you wanted to fuck him, I have his body here, so…”

Oh, so that was his plan! But of course, what else could I expect from him, really.

“No.”, I said firmly. “I don’t want to fuck him, or you, or anyone. I just want to get some sleep, please. If you don’t want me to be tired as hell tomorrow, you better let me.”

“I see, alright. Goodnight.”

“’Night, Vic.”

I looked at him. He was staring at the ceiling now, thoughtful. Well. It seems I had given him something to occupy his mind with for the rest of the night. I smiled slightly and turned my back on him once more, closing my eyes. Unfortunately our small conversation had woken me up completely and no matter how hard I tried, the sleep wouldn’t come. What we talked about had given me something to think about too. I felt Vic shift next to me uneasily. I wondered what he was thinking about and what he was feeling right now. Maybe nothing. Maybe he was just bored and disappointed I wasn’t willing to let him have sex with me. Why did I care what he was thinking of anyway? Damn! I was just keeping my mind awake with these thoughts! I had to stop distracting myself.

After maybe fifteen minutes I was still half-awake, and I felt Vic move closer to me, probably thinking I’m already sleeping. He settled right behind me and rested his head next to mine, in a way I could feel his hot breath on my neck. The hairs on my arms straightened up as he slipped his hand through my waist gently and stopped it at my hip, where it remained. The sudden closeness made my body tense for a moment, but after a few seconds, listening to him breathe seemed comforting, and with a small, soft sigh, I let the tiredness overpower me and the dreams overwhelm me. And next to me this creature that couldn’t dream listened to my heartbeats and wished he could join me in my sleep…

No rest… Always on the alert…

END OF CHAPTER 6.