I felt the possession coming.
While I lay in bed, the TV on the wall about to auto-start another episode of Friends, an evil entity was trying to worm its way into my meatsuit. In seconds the demon would have full control. After it pushed my consciousness into darkness, it would raise hell on earth while posing as a twenty-three-year-old Harley Baker.
My fingers clawed at the comforter. The skin on my arm turned an ashen color, veins rising like sprawling black ivy. The sound of my breathing went down an octave, becoming grunt-like. It was taking over my bodily functions, eyes twitching, muscles spasming, legs flailing under the covers. I’d gone through this enough times to know what was coming next—horrifying images flashing through my mind, the acrid smell of sulfur, and the sounds of hell playing in my ears like a bad death metal band. And then nothing. Blackness.
I’d wake up hours, sometimes days later in a weird place with no idea how I’d gotten there. I’d feel worn out, nauseated, head pounding. It was literally the hangover from hell. There’d usually be a hot mess for me to clean up: eviscerated animals used for ritualistic purposes piled up in the backyard, orgy-weary strangers strewn all over the living room floor, and my browser history—don’t even ask.
Right now, I had to get out of this body.
The trick was to astral project before the evil bastard took over. To do that, I had to calm my mind, slow my breathing, focus my thoughts. Getting into a Zen state when a demon was about to possess me wasn’t easy. I’d only be able to observe while I was out of body, but it was better than being in the dark.
I had no one to blame but myself for these visits. Six months ago, I’d signed my soul over to Satan and that had turned my meatsuit into an Airbnb for every Tom, Dick, and demon in the underworld. Before you get all judgey on me, try watching your girlfriend bleed to death for a mistake you made. I’d held Stephanie in my arms and felt the life draining out of her. Giving up my soul to save her was a no-brainer, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Don’t think I didn’t consider offing myself rather than become Hades’s Holiday Inn. But if I’d done that, I would’ve gone straight to hell and evil would’ve just found someone else to do its bidding. This was my fate. Becoming the beast’s bitch was even a family tradition. When I’d signed away my soul, the Prince of Darkness had told me my parents were already roasting in hell. After they’d died in a car accident when I was a kid, their “unintentional” occult practices had gotten them both a one-way ticket to permanent perdition. Sometimes they’d show up in my nightmares, huddled together behind a wall of flames, calling out for me to save them. They’d look completely out of place amid the fire and brimstone—Dad in khakis and a blue cardigan, Mom in a floral dress, her hair up in a bun.
“Save us, Harley!” my parents cried out.
“I’m coming for you! I’m going to get you out of hell!”
Was it a concoction of my subconscious or were their lost souls contacting me on Satan’s friends and family plan and pleading for me to rescue them? There wasn’t much I could do either way. I’d made my deal with the devil and, eventually, I’d be right there with them.
On the third calming breath, just as the demon was about to force my consciousness into darkness, I shot out of body and hovered in the room in spirit form. My ghostly appearance had undergone some changes since going exclusive with evil. My “lightbody” didn’t glow so brightly anymore. I was now a wispy black ghoul with glowing red eyes.
Possession complete, my human body rose from the bed without me in it and shuffled toward the window. Seeing my sorry self in the third person like an avatar in a video game was never easy. I’d like to say I had a bad case of body dysmorphia, but the reality was I looked like hell. The ungroomed, three-month beard wasn’t hiding the pizza face acne. My hair was an oily, ratted mess, and the black bags under my eyes made me look like a beaten prize fighter. My arms were spindly, like two wet noodles. My glutes were as flat as a gangplank, and my protruding gut made me look like a middle-aged, beer-guzzling couch potato. It wasn’t totally my fault. The demons partied all night in my body, so I barely slept. I had to avoid people for their safety and mine, which meant a gym membership was out of the question. Same social distancing went for grocery shopping. Somehow, I was surviving completely on delivery—not counting occasionally being force-fed ritualistic, raw animal organs. The isolation wasn’t helping my self-image either. The only visitors I was expecting were the townsfolk in Asheville showing up at the house carrying torches and pitchforks.
The lifestyle was turning me into a bit of a negative Nelly. I’d spend most of my non-possessed days aimlessly wandering the twelve-room estate, a blanket draped over my shoulders, spreading sadness and despair like a superhero of misery. Signing with Satan had doomed my soul to eternal torment, so forgive me for not being cheery. It didn’t help that evil was kicking ass everywhere: politics, religion, food, entertainment, sports, health care—for fuck’s sake some of my corrupt colleagues were even in the baby formula business. Evil was winning.
The demon donning my meatsuit just stood there gazing out the window at the moonlit Blue Ridge Mountains, sighing pensively. I half expected it to break out into soliloquy.
It used my hand to scratch my balls. Unbelievable…
So far, no bizarre rituals, no general mayhem, no terrifying small children. The view in purgatory probably wasn’t all that great. Maybe this hellion had come topside to enjoy the scenery.
“Let’s just stay here and enjoy the view,” I said, knowing it couldn’t see or hear me. “We’ll have a chill evening. Snuggle up and watch some Netflix. How’s that sound?”
A deer wandering into the backyard captured the hellhound’s attention. It let out a low growl as it watched the deer gracefully bend its neck to feed on the grass. The demon then leaped out of the second-floor window, landed feet first on the lawn fifteen feet below, tucked into a roll, and then bolted after its prey.
I flew in pursuit. “That’s my body! Take it easy!”
The demons were capable of amazing feats of physical fitness, even while in my flabby physique. I’d pay for it later, though. After a typical possession, I’d wake up to take a piss and be so sore I’d have to hobble to the bathroom, hunched over and shaky like a decrepit octogenarian.
I caught up with the demon in the woods as it was tearing at the deer’s flesh with my teeth, my stolen face covered with blood and fur—another pair of flannel pajamas totally ruined.
“Dude, that is so gross,” I said.
This was why I couldn’t have nice things, why I had to move out to the middle of nowhere, why I had to ghost my friends.
The hellhound severed an artery in the deer’s neck, and, while holding the animal, it drew a circle in blood in the clearing. When finished, it carelessly tossed the carcass to the ground like a fast-food wrapper.
Next came the Latin chanting… This was never a good sign.
I shook my head at it. “What the hell are you summoning?”
“Come, master!” it cried out.
The ground shook, clumps of dirt, twigs, and leaves dancing on the forest floor. An explosion then erupted from beneath the earth, a column of fire rising above the tree line burning everything in its path to a black crisp, menacing eyes charged with jagged bolts of electricity emerging from the mushrooming inferno.
The flames and smoke fizzled out with a poof, and then, as if born from the aftermath, the ghost of a lion-headed monster with a scaly, serpent body appeared on the charred circle in the woods. It let out a beastly roar.
A look of ecstasy was on my possessor’s face when it said, “Yaldabaoth! Come into me, master! Come into me!”
As if heeding its call, the monster’s ethereal form flew toward my already possessed body. Its serpent tail wiggled forcefully as it bored its way in through the back of my head. Overwhelmed by the process, my body blacked out, tipped over like a fallen tree and fell face first into the dirt.
The forest went eerily silent.
A few minutes later, my body stood up, straightened the pajamas, dusted off twigs and leaves. The demeanor of my meatsuit’s new demonic occupant differed completely from the last one. This possessor was more human-like. I followed the imposter back to the house, irritated by its perfect posture and cocky strut.
It entered through the patio door and went into the office. It signed into my laptop using my password and got on the Internet. An evil entity’s ability to hack my brain like a hard drive always felt like the most intrusive part of possession. It had access to my thoughts and memories. It knew everything I did.
I watched over its shoulder as it went onto a site for a charity called FAM, short for Family Adoption Movement… Something about helping foster children.
It clicked the “About” page. Pictures of my best friend, Darren Jonson, and my ex-girlfriend, Stephanie Sawyer, came up along with their bios. They’d been busy in the last six months. The two of them had started a nonprofit to help orphans and runaway teens. Darren, calling himself the chief financial advisor, took care of the business stuff. Stephanie, as CEO, did everything else.
The demon selected the digital calendar and made an appointment with them for tomorrow at 2:00 p.m.
“You can’t just wander into their lives looking like me!” I said, to no effect.
I chased the demon upstairs to the bedroom.
“I haven’t seen or talked to them in months because of demons like you!” I said.
Oblivious to my protests, it went into the closet, flipped through my clothes, and decided on a navy suit, a white-dotted blue tie, and black leather double monk straps. It hung the outfit on the wardrobe valet.
The demon got into bed, pulled the covers up to its chin, and restarted season one of Friends, even though I’d been on the last episode. The shithead even clapped along with that part in the intro.
Angry, frustrated, fed up, I unleashed a primal shriek from the depths of my blackened soul. The only slightly satisfying part of it came when the lights in the room flickered. Was it a coincidence, timed perfectly to a fluctuation in the power grid, or had I just discovered a completely useless superpower—Poltergeist Pulse?
Who the hell was Yaldabaoth? Why was it contacting my friends? And what was it planning to do in my body?
