HOME | DD

Description
Commission for Aetobatus. [link]

I am open for commissions like this, check out info here =>[link]

The client also wrote a story to go along with the painting, enjoy!

I rolled over on the tattered couch I called my bed. Bed bugs swarmed as I moved, but I ignored them as best I could. My father snored in the bedroom, even though the sun was starting to rise behind the broken windows. It was already cold; winter had come early and it was raining outside, a heavy, dreary downpour. Occasional gusts of wind would blow rain in through the broken windows, but we had a roof over our head, which was better than nothing.

I rose, walking to the window to look at the world below. Our apartment was on the fifth floor of the building and the height used to scare me and hold me back, but there were far more things to keep me afraid now. Looking back at the room, this burnt-out shell of an apartment was my entire life now, since the war, since The Mishap four years prior. I remembered when this building was new when we first moved in to the apartment. Though I knew it was middle-class at best, I felt rich as I stood on the upper floor, looking down on the world. Now, I just felt lucky to be alive.

Father’s snoring grew less regular; he was close to waking up and I knew I should be gone before he did. After The Mishap, after Chad died, having succumed to The Infirm, his verbal abuse became physical and his mild habit became a full-fledged addiction. I don’t know what drugs he took and I doubt he did either: He just injected, swallowed, or inhaled anything he could get his hands on, without concern for his health or what he did to those around him when he was out of his mind.

As I closed the broken door behind me, I heard Jerry begin to cry. I hated leaving him alone with my parents, especially with my father, though my mother was little better, ignoring both of us entirely, trading physical abuse for downright neglect. As I turned to the stairs, limping from a year-old injury courtesy of my father on one of his blitzed-out nights, I shook my head, wanting to be gone from this place, but there was nowhere to go.

I ran in the rain to the old school building, my thin jacket barely keeping me dry and not providing me with any warmth. I sat on a narrow bench with my fellow students when the teacher walked in, eyeing us all carefully. He wore a sidearm and I’d seen him use it to ward off an attack from one of the student gangs. The body of the student he shot lay in the hall all day as a reminder that the teachers were there to keep order among us as much as instill any knowledge. “Don Tasp,” I heard him call, breaking me from my reverie, “Here,” I called out in reply.

I have no idea why they called roll still. Nobody cared if we were there or not, but they did. The only reason I still showed up was for lunch: what was left of the state government sent down processed food bars to the school every month, and it was the closest thing I ever got to real food. We joked about Soylent Green day, after we found old books in the library, but, we didn’t really know what was in the bars, and quickly decided we didn’t want to know. It wasn’t as funny, when it was real.

At lunch that day, I felt a shove from behind and a hand reached to grab for my food bar. I slapped it away, spinning to elbow the thief behind me. Matt Stainton, the leader of one of the gangs around the schoolyard, stood there grinning a toothy grin with his minions beside him. “Mine,” he said, as he grabbed again for the bar. I punched at his neck, though he dove aside before I could connect. We traded punches a few times, then he laughed and walked off, “I’ll go find another cripple to give me his lunch, I guess.” That was something, at least: If you stood up to them, made yourself less than an easy target, they’d pick on someone else. With my limp, though, it was just a matter of time until I was, in fact, the easiest target.

At school, I knew where I stood and more importantly, I knew how to defend myself. I hated going home, though. I couldn’t stand up to my father, knew better than to expect any help from my mother, and I was terrified for Jerry. In two years, he’d go off to school and maybe I could protect him for his first year or two, before they kicked me out for being too old. People died there, students were killed by other students far too often and nobody really cared. I could only protect the small child but so much.

I heard Jerry crying as I walked up the stairs to our apartment, bawling loudly at something. I heard Father screaming at him, his words blurred by the drug of the day. As I stood outside the door, I also heard Mother sobbing more quietly, then suddenly there was the sound of a fight, of fist hitting flesh. Mother cried out in pain as I stood there, too afraid to enter, to worried to run away. I listened to the fight for what seemed like an eternity, tears pouring from my own eyes, Jerry’s cries growing louder and louder. Just as I was about to enter, I heard Father roar, “Shut up! Just shut up!” There was another sound of a punch, then sudden, horrifying silence, the cries of the small child cut short. My hand rested on the doorknob when I heard Mother scream, “You’ve killed him! You’ve killed him!”

“What good was he anyway?” I heard my father say. After that, I heard nothing, anger boiling through me. I wanted to go in, to tear him apart, but fear won out over anger and instead I turned running down the stairs, from the apartment, away from everything.

I don’t know how long I ran, but eventually I found myself at a destroyed bridge. Climbing down the side, there was a small space under the broken concrete, strangely uninhabited. I curled up, watching the sunset, looking at what few lights were left in the city after dark. Before me was an area of pitch blackness which I suddenly realized was The Void. That’s where the missile fell upon us, where the chemicals which lead to The Infirm were let loose upon our population. That’s where those few unlucky enough to survive the disease lived.

The Infirm did things to you if you survived and you were never quite human again. It wasn’t the same for everyone. Some people looked human enough, until they opened their mouth, razor sharp teeth lining their gums, and they lunged at you, hungrily. Others took on the look of animals, werewolves, rat-creatures, and other such creatures of horror. What was common among all of them was that they lost their sanity, lost what makes them a person, and instead turned into a mindless killing machine.

The survivors of The Infirm lived in The Void as animals. The police didn’t care what we humans did to each other in the city nor what the survivors did to each other in The Void: They spent all their time fighting the survivors who dared enter the city, keeping the city safe from them. As I sat there hiding under the bridge, within site of the Void, the sounds of fighting rose from the desolate place, of creatures at battle, killing each other without any thoughts of what’s right and what’s wrong. I turned to look back at the city, wondering just how different it was there.

I still went to school every day for the food bars if nothing else, but took up residence under the bridge. When I walked home, I always took different routes, made sure I wasn’t being followed. I lived alone, without family, and that made me a target to Matt and his ilk. I fought more, once people realized I was on my own and tested me, but the long walk to my new home actually kept me in better shape and I won the fights, or at least made it clear I wasn’t the day’s easy target.

On one of the coldest nights of winter, I woke to something moving against my flesh under my thin jacket. Years of fighting helped me keep my cool and in a sudden burst of motion, I grabbed the creature, yanking it out. In my hands was a snake, around an inch in diameter, three or four feet long. It’s body was black with red markings and I heard a rattler on it’s tail sound as I held it. It looked at me with an oddly calm expression, it’s red eyes boring into mine, and it casually raised it’s tail to loop around my arm. I pulled my knife out, ready to take it’s head off to roast the animal for dinner, but stopped short; something just seemed wrong about taking it for food.

I let go of the head and it slithered back under my jacket, around my shoulder and arm, resting it’s head next to my neck. Much to my own surprise, I slept soundly that night.

Over the next few weeks, I began to bring the snake with me to the school. The teachers looked on suspiciously at first, but since I never actually used him as a weapon they didn’t take any real concern. If I was putting my own life at risk, they didn’t really care. Eventually, though, the gangs took notice of the snake and one day I felt an unexpected pull at my back, Matt grabbing the snake’s tail, trying to pull it from me. “Let go, he’ll bite!” I found myself yelling to the gang leader as he grabbed at the snake.

“Yeah, and it’s your neck he’s laying against, so I think you’re the one at risk!” he replied, still teasing the reptile, as fear from my newfound “pet” finally washed over me.

My fear was misplaced, though. The snake did lash out, but it was surprisingly intelligent for such a reptile. It let Matt pull him free, then lunged toward his face, jaws wide, fangs bared. Only Matt’s fast reflexed saved him, tossing the snake away before it could land the bite. As I ran to recover the snake, Matt turned to me, growling in anger, a knife in his hand. I knew the stakes were higher now. He didn’t just want to hurt me, but wanted me dead. I turned from reaching for the snake to defend myself, but suddenly I felt the familiar slithering reptile leaping toward my outstretched hand. Instinctively, I held the hand up, the snake posed in an S-shape, ready to strike, fangs out, focused on the bully. We circled each other for some moments before the other finally stepped back. “If I ever find you without that damned snake, you’re dead,” he growled as he turned to walk away. The snake started to make chase, but I held it back, “No. No, if you do that, they’ll call you a dangerous animal and kill you. I don’t want that.” I know it couldn’t understand my words or likely even hear them, but somehow saying them comforted me.

It was that moment I decided I was done with school. I turned and walked out at that moment. Nobody stopped me or even cared. I like to think they saw me leave and just crossed my name off the list of students. I went back to my home, started a fire, and let the snake writhe over me playfully.

As darkness fell, it took off into the distance without warning. This wasn’t really uncommon, as that was it’s prime hunting time and once a week or so, it would go off on it’s own, returning fattened with some helpless rodent it found hiding among the ruins. It was only a few days since it’s last meal, though, so as it slithered into the distance, I was curious and concerned as to it’s departure.

Some time later, it returned, something wound up in it’s coils. As it got close to the fire, its coils loosened, revealing two rats, before returning to it’s resting place on my shoulders. I reached down, picking up one of the dead animals, inspecting it. There were no fang marks, but I could tell it had been partially crushed. “You’re not supposed to be a constrictor,” I said to the snake, who had by all appearances, fallen asleep on my shoulder. I’m not proud to admit that wasn’t the first time I’d cooked rat for dinner and they were over the fire in minutes, me not questioning that my pet snake had just gone hunting for me.

The Void was overrun with rodents and other pests, so every night the snake would go hunting for me, returning with a few small rodents. Strictly speaking, I was probably getting better nutrition from the food bars, but the rats were actual, fresh meat, something few people ever got to eat. I felt rich, living in my hiding hole under the bridge, getting to eat real meat every day.

The nights were finally growing shorter, spring on it’s way, when I heard something shuffling my way from the direction of The Void. There was a fire burning, so there was no hope of hiding the campsite, but I moved off to the side, hidden by a fallen slab. As the creature entered the light from the fire, I got my first look at one of the survivors of The Infirm.

He stood upright and looked to have retained his human form, more or less. His skin was a pale grey, appearing to lack hair of any sort, stretched over an oddly muscular, healthy-looking frame. He wasn’t a thin creature. In fact, if anything, he was overweight, which surprised me as I didn’t think any inhabitants of The Void could find enough to eat to be overweight. His fingers and toes were longer than normal, each ending in a long, deadly-looking claw. His face was elongated in a strange muzzle-like shape with two large ears twitching constantly, listening for sounds around him, while a short, rat-like tail flicked back and forth.

I stared at the creature for some time, remaining hidden, silent as I did. That this thing was once human was terrifying. That a man-made disease could do this to you was beyond terror. As I looked at him, I felt a moment of pity for him as well as disgust for my fellow man: We caused this.

My inspection was cut short, though, as the creature opened his mouth wide, dozens of needle-sharp teeth glistening in the firelight. There was a sudden sound from him, like a chirp, loud and piercing. He repeated this over and over, his ears turning toward me as he did so. I moved deeper into hiding, but he knew where I was and dove toward me, claws and teeth bared. I roared loudly as he attacked and his ears folded, turning away from me. As soon as his sonar was directed away from me, I dove to one side, but still took a claw to one of my shoulders, the wound painful and bloody. Without vision, though, he went past my position and I saw the snake bound from my shoulder to the creature, fangs buried instantly into his neck.

I watched as the bat-creature died a slow, painful death, the venom from my pet taking him down. The snake was back on my shoulder the whole time, watching as well. I started to drag the body off, but the snake hissed angrily at me as I did so. It slithered to the ground, nosing at the body before looking at me. I didn’t understand for some time and it finally opened it’s mouth, starting to swallow one of the creature’s fingers. “I don’t think you can eat that,” I said to the snake, chuckling, when my laughter suddenly stopped. “But I can,” I said, calmly, coldly, causing the snake to crawl back up my leg, to it’s resting place on my shoulder. “You can’t be serious. He’s... He used to be human.”

I stared at the dead creature for some time before finally pulling my knife out, butchering the body, tossing meat onto the fire. I felt sick cutting the best meat out, preparing it, eventually eating pieces, but the rats never really filled me up and I kept telling myself, “meat is meat.”

The next day, I sent the snake out to fetch some rats; he looked disappointed, but I promised him he’d understand why. Once I got half a dozen of them, I summoned him back to my shoulder and began to walk into town. My limp was more pronounced than it had been for some time and I realized remaining under the bridge was cutting out the little exercise I got. There was a shop which sold jackets and while I had no money, with half a dozen fresh rats, I could probably trade for something at least marginally better than what I had. The owner wanted the snake at first, but with a baring of fangs and angry hiss, he decided the rats were enough for him and I left with something at least vaguely capable of keeping me warm on the colder nights. The snake snuggled into the new coat, liking the warmth as well, as I turned to walk out of the store.

“You’re alive,” I heard a voice from the other side of the store just as I left. Matt Stainton. “Now I’m going to kill you.” I dove out the door, taking off into a run, but my lame leg slowed me and I was tackled to the ground by the old enemy. “And you, without your precious little lizard,” he said, as he flipped me onto my back, staring into my eyes.

“It’s a snake, not a lizard,” I heard myself say. I have no idea why I felt it necessary to correct him, but I did. He wore what looked like a brand new jacket and boots, and I didn’t want to think what they cost, or what happened to the person he stole the money from. He pulled a long knife from his belt, though, raising it up just as the snake poked out of the jacket to see what was going in. “Oh, you do still have it. We’ll have to fix that!”

Instead of thrusting the knife down into my chest, he swept it across, the edge running over the serpent’s flesh. As I looked down, I saw the snake’s head break free from his body, felt it’s cool blood rushing over my flesh. I roared with anger at first, but as head came to a rest on my shoulder, terrified instincts still rushing through the dying brain, I felt two fangs sink into my own skin, the snake unintentionally taking me down with him.

As the venom flowed into my blood, I heard Matt laughing, “Aww,” he growled between bawling laughter, “you two are going to die together. I think I’ll sit back and watch!” I remembered watching the bat creature die, the pain I felt that I’d caused that. The gang leader wouldn’t feel pain, he’d treasure the vision. He should have died instead of the poor beast I’d not only killed, but butchered and cooked.

The voice rang in my mind, coming from everywhere at once.

“What?” I cried out in confusion and pain, my words beginning to slur from the deadly venom. “Who are you?” Matt burst out laughing at my seemingly random cries, thinking I was losing my mind.

the voice called out to me, almost as a command,

The offer was tempting, even if, in the back of my mind, I didn’t believe I was hearing it truthfully. I didn’t really know what the venom did when killing someone and didn’t believe it was anything more than a delusion, the venom tearing my mind apart. Even so, I hung onto the hope of power, of survival. “I want it,” I hissed out in what felt like a dying breath. “I want power.”

“You’re past power,” Matt laughed, standing over me, kicking me in the ribs for no reason other than added cruelty. “Poor little cripple.”

I started to complain to the voice, I didn’t know what the name was, what to call. Suddenly, though, I knew the name, knew what to call. Over the pain of broken ribs, muscles breaking down under the attack of the venom and a body soon to expire, I howled at the top of my lungs, “Gilrandree!”

The voice boomed in my head, as I cried out the strange name and, in a heartbeat, the ground began to rumble. Making the call took the last of my energy and I could barely tell what was going on around me. Distantly, I could feel the ground surge below my body as, just before me, great spires of black crystal erupted from below the road surface. Red flames of lava erupted all around, and suddenly, I noticed a creature standing atop the spires.

The creature looked like something from The Void, standing upright, covered in a thick pelt of brown fur. Two tattered wings stood outstretched upon his back and a long tail whipped back and forth as he balanced atop the spires, his hooves seeming to give a tentative perch at best. The vaguely canine face grinned, staring at my dying body, eyes glowing a bright red. “You have brought me forth to this world,” I heard him speak calmly, “and I keep my promises. My gift to you.” His clawed hand raised, pointing at me and the gold runes on his large, curved horns suddenly glowed bright red. I could sense some deep, dark magic spring from him and suddenly, instantly, I was alive, uninjured, powerful. I looked up, Matt still stood above me, terrified by the demon I’d summoned forth.

As I lay there, attention split between the demon standing on the crystalline perch and the terrified human, I felt my body shifting, changing. I felt a tail spring from my back, ripping clothing away, growing seemingly endlessly long. My legs contorted and popped, moving up my torso, finally coming to a rest below my arms, legs turning into a second pair of arms below the first. I could feel my body slithering around the broken pavement and finally, I rose, to look at the demon before me as well as my own new, serpentine shape. I saw a long forked tongue flick out before my eyes as I tasted the scents upon the air and heard, behind me, the gang leader suddenly dive back from my new-found body. He stumbled on a ridge in the pavement, falling against the end of my long body. I heard my rattler sound as, instinctively, I began to coil around him.

I looked up at the demon, opening my mouth wide, releasing a strange hissing roar. As I did, I felt two long fangs extend, ready and waiting for their first victim. It took a force of will to calm myself enough to look up at the demon, realizing, without thinking about it, I held Matt tightly in my coils. “What have you done?” I finally asked.

The demon leapt down from his perch, landing beside me and calmly set upon my thick, sinuous body. “I have given you power, more than you ever could have managed on your own.” He reached one of his clawed hands to my own, holding it up for me to inspect. I was covered in thick black scales, my own fingers ending in sharp claws. Distantly, I heard the sound of panic around me, but I put it aside, the spire of crystals would keep unwanted visitors away for some time.

“I’m a snake,” I said, somewhat stunned.

“Well, a serpent of some sort,” the demon replied, chuckling in an oddly friendly, conversational tone. “I think the arms largely exclude you from actually calling yourself a snake.”

“You did this.”

The demon took a deep breath. “Yes and no. I facilitated it. I provided the channel for you to draw the power needed to make this happen. I lead you to this form, but you are the one, ultimately, who actually did this to yourself.”

I paused, inspecting my hands, my body. I looked back to the human in my coils, picking him up as easily as my pet snake carried around the rats, sitting him in front of my face. “What should I do with him?” I asked the demon.

“Come now, I think you know.”

I nodded slowly. “I’m not a cannibal, though.”

“Nor was the snake when he ate the rat. You’re not human anymore and it’s only cannibalism when you eat your own kind.” the demon replied.

I simply nodded. By the time I spoke again to the demon, Matt Stainton was nothing more than a bulge within my great body. “Now what?”

The demon grinned and rose to his hooves, stretching wings. “That’s your choice. In case I didn’t make myself clear enough, you’re no longer human. You’re a demon now. You can do whatever the hell you want. Literally.”

I nodded slowly, realization sinking in. “They’ll hunt me down.”

“Yes. At first, they will. Then, more than likely, you’ll kill enough police officers they realize it’s much, much safer just to leave you alone. Or maybe you’ll end up working with the police as judge, jury, and executioner, all rolled into one slithering package. Or perhaps you’ll just head to The Void and hunt the beasts there. Your choice.”

I nodded, as he started to spread his wings to take flight. “Wait. I have a question.”

He looked back to me, “Of course. You’re new to this existence and need a mentor. Ask away.” For what he was, what he admitted to being, the general friendly nature to his words was off-putting.

“You were the snake, weren’t you?”

The demon nodded in reply. “More or less, yes. I was trapped, unable to fully manifest myself here, though I’ve been able to exert some control over the area. The Infirm: It just kills. I was able to manipulate the survivors into the inhuman monsters. The snake was just a normal snake, but I certainly was imposing my will on it most of the time.” He relaxed his wings, eyes focused on me.

“I’ve been watching you since you left your home. Nobody goes that close to The Void. The beasts terrify humanity. Yet you lived there. I knew you were a good hope to free me.”

I nodded, wondering what horror I’d freed from the pits of Hell. “What are you going to do?” I asked him.

“I’m going to go hunting.” His eyes fell on the bulge in my body, meaningfully. “Before you ask, I’ll tell you I didn’t bring the war to this world. The war brought me.” He reached up resting a clawed hand against my serpentine face. “In the first days of the war, when the chemical warfare broke out, two billion people died in less than a week. Another three billion died slowly over the following months. A world of over six billion people suddenly had only a billion alive. You’re down to half a billion now, five years after the war. That many deaths draws forth powers from the underworld, powers such as myself. But that many deaths, no single creature, no matter how powerful, can contain. The world needed not just me, but another to channel the power of the deaths it’s sustained and it wanted one if it’s own. You’re now that being. One day this world will recover, the population will either return or be destroyed entirely, for some other species to take over. Until then, you and I exist and this world is our playground. We are, in some ways, the embodiment of death here until the destruction from The Mishap is behind, a thing of the past.” He paused in thought and looked to the sky.

“I’m going to go hunt,” he continued grinning a decidedly evil grin, “and have a bit of fun with the remaining population, at their expense, of course. I suggest you figure out what kind of demon you want to be, and get on with your... existence.”

I nodded, as he stretched his wings again, to take flight. “I think, perhaps, I’ll pay my father a visit,” I said, as he flew off.

-----------
Made with Photoshop

Description
Commission for Aetobatus. [link]

I am open for commissions like this, check out info here =>[link]

The client also wrote a story to go along with the painting, enjoy!

I rolled over on the tattered couch I called my bed. Bed bugs swarmed as I moved, but I ignored them as best I could. My father snored in the bedroom, even though the sun was starting to rise behind the broken windows. It was already cold; winter had come early and it was raining outside, a heavy, dreary downpour. Occasional gusts of wind would blow rain in through the broken windows, but we had a roof over our head, which was better than nothing.

I rose, walking to the window to look at the world below. Our apartment was on the fifth floor of the building and the height used to scare me and hold me back, but there were far more things to keep me afraid now. Looking back at the room, this burnt-out shell of an apartment was my entire life now, since the war, since The Mishap four years prior. I remembered when this building was new when we first moved in to the apartment. Though I knew it was middle-class at best, I felt rich as I stood on the upper floor, looking down on the world. Now, I just felt lucky to be alive.

Father’s snoring grew less regular; he was close to waking up and I knew I should be gone before he did. After The Mishap, after Chad died, having succumed to The Infirm, his verbal abuse became physical and his mild habit became a full-fledged addiction. I don’t know what drugs he took and I doubt he did either: He just injected, swallowed, or inhaled anything he could get his hands on, without concern for his health or what he did to those around him when he was out of his mind.

As I closed the broken door behind me, I heard Jerry begin to cry. I hated leaving him alone with my parents, especially with my father, though my mother was little better, ignoring both of us entirely, trading physical abuse for downright neglect. As I turned to the stairs, limping from a year-old injury courtesy of my father on one of his blitzed-out nights, I shook my head, wanting to be gone from this place, but there was nowhere to go.

I ran in the rain to the old school building, my thin jacket barely keeping me dry and not providing me with any warmth. I sat on a narrow bench with my fellow students when the teacher walked in, eyeing us all carefully. He wore a sidearm and I’d seen him use it to ward off an attack from one of the student gangs. The body of the student he shot lay in the hall all day as a reminder that the teachers were there to keep order among us as much as instill any knowledge. “Don Tasp,” I heard him call, breaking me from my reverie, “Here,” I called out in reply.

I have no idea why they called roll still. Nobody cared if we were there or not, but they did. The only reason I still showed up was for lunch: what was left of the state government sent down processed food bars to the school every month, and it was the closest thing I ever got to real food. We joked about Soylent Green day, after we found old books in the library, but, we didn’t really know what was in the bars, and quickly decided we didn’t want to know. It wasn’t as funny, when it was real.

At lunch that day, I felt a shove from behind and a hand reached to grab for my food bar. I slapped it away, spinning to elbow the thief behind me. Matt Stainton, the leader of one of the gangs around the schoolyard, stood there grinning a toothy grin with his minions beside him. “Mine,” he said, as he grabbed again for the bar. I punched at his neck, though he dove aside before I could connect. We traded punches a few times, then he laughed and walked off, “I’ll go find another cripple to give me his lunch, I guess.” That was something, at least: If you stood up to them, made yourself less than an easy target, they’d pick on someone else. With my limp, though, it was just a matter of time until I was, in fact, the easiest target.

At school, I knew where I stood and more importantly, I knew how to defend myself. I hated going home, though. I couldn’t stand up to my father, knew better than to expect any help from my mother, and I was terrified for Jerry. In two years, he’d go off to school and maybe I could protect him for his first year or two, before they kicked me out for being too old. People died there, students were killed by other students far too often and nobody really cared. I could only protect the small child but so much.

I heard Jerry crying as I walked up the stairs to our apartment, bawling loudly at something. I heard Father screaming at him, his words blurred by the drug of the day. As I stood outside the door, I also heard Mother sobbing more quietly, then suddenly there was the sound of a fight, of fist hitting flesh. Mother cried out in pain as I stood there, too afraid to enter, to worried to run away. I listened to the fight for what seemed like an eternity, tears pouring from my own eyes, Jerry’s cries growing louder and louder. Just as I was about to enter, I heard Father roar, “Shut up! Just shut up!” There was another sound of a punch, then sudden, horrifying silence, the cries of the small child cut short. My hand rested on the doorknob when I heard Mother scream, “You’ve killed him! You’ve killed him!”

“What good was he anyway?” I heard my father say. After that, I heard nothing, anger boiling through me. I wanted to go in, to tear him apart, but fear won out over anger and instead I turned running down the stairs, from the apartment, away from everything.

I don’t know how long I ran, but eventually I found myself at a destroyed bridge. Climbing down the side, there was a small space under the broken concrete, strangely uninhabited. I curled up, watching the sunset, looking at what few lights were left in the city after dark. Before me was an area of pitch blackness which I suddenly realized was The Void. That’s where the missile fell upon us, where the chemicals which lead to The Infirm were let loose upon our population. That’s where those few unlucky enough to survive the disease lived.

The Infirm did things to you if you survived and you were never quite human again. It wasn’t the same for everyone. Some people looked human enough, until they opened their mouth, razor sharp teeth lining their gums, and they lunged at you, hungrily. Others took on the look of animals, werewolves, rat-creatures, and other such creatures of horror. What was common among all of them was that they lost their sanity, lost what makes them a person, and instead turned into a mindless killing machine.

The survivors of The Infirm lived in The Void as animals. The police didn’t care what we humans did to each other in the city nor what the survivors did to each other in The Void: They spent all their time fighting the survivors who dared enter the city, keeping the city safe from them. As I sat there hiding under the bridge, within site of the Void, the sounds of fighting rose from the desolate place, of creatures at battle, killing each other without any thoughts of what’s right and what’s wrong. I turned to look back at the city, wondering just how different it was there.

I still went to school every day for the food bars if nothing else, but took up residence under the bridge. When I walked home, I always took different routes, made sure I wasn’t being followed. I lived alone, without family, and that made me a target to Matt and his ilk. I fought more, once people realized I was on my own and tested me, but the long walk to my new home actually kept me in better shape and I won the fights, or at least made it clear I wasn’t the day’s easy target.

On one of the coldest nights of winter, I woke to something moving against my flesh under my thin jacket. Years of fighting helped me keep my cool and in a sudden burst of motion, I grabbed the creature, yanking it out. In my hands was a snake, around an inch in diameter, three or four feet long. It’s body was black with red markings and I heard a rattler on it’s tail sound as I held it. It looked at me with an oddly calm expression, it’s red eyes boring into mine, and it casually raised it’s tail to loop around my arm. I pulled my knife out, ready to take it’s head off to roast the animal for dinner, but stopped short; something just seemed wrong about taking it for food.

I let go of the head and it slithered back under my jacket, around my shoulder and arm, resting it’s head next to my neck. Much to my own surprise, I slept soundly that night.

Over the next few weeks, I began to bring the snake with me to the school. The teachers looked on suspiciously at first, but since I never actually used him as a weapon they didn’t take any real concern. If I was putting my own life at risk, they didn’t really care. Eventually, though, the gangs took notice of the snake and one day I felt an unexpected pull at my back, Matt grabbing the snake’s tail, trying to pull it from me. “Let go, he’ll bite!” I found myself yelling to the gang leader as he grabbed at the snake.

“Yeah, and it’s your neck he’s laying against, so I think you’re the one at risk!” he replied, still teasing the reptile, as fear from my newfound “pet” finally washed over me.

My fear was misplaced, though. The snake did lash out, but it was surprisingly intelligent for such a reptile. It let Matt pull him free, then lunged toward his face, jaws wide, fangs bared. Only Matt’s fast reflexed saved him, tossing the snake away before it could land the bite. As I ran to recover the snake, Matt turned to me, growling in anger, a knife in his hand. I knew the stakes were higher now. He didn’t just want to hurt me, but wanted me dead. I turned from reaching for the snake to defend myself, but suddenly I felt the familiar slithering reptile leaping toward my outstretched hand. Instinctively, I held the hand up, the snake posed in an S-shape, ready to strike, fangs out, focused on the bully. We circled each other for some moments before the other finally stepped back. “If I ever find you without that damned snake, you’re dead,” he growled as he turned to walk away. The snake started to make chase, but I held it back, “No. No, if you do that, they’ll call you a dangerous animal and kill you. I don’t want that.” I know it couldn’t understand my words or likely even hear them, but somehow saying them comforted me.

It was that moment I decided I was done with school. I turned and walked out at that moment. Nobody stopped me or even cared. I like to think they saw me leave and just crossed my name off the list of students. I went back to my home, started a fire, and let the snake writhe over me playfully.

As darkness fell, it took off into the distance without warning. This wasn’t really uncommon, as that was it’s prime hunting time and once a week or so, it would go off on it’s own, returning fattened with some helpless rodent it found hiding among the ruins. It was only a few days since it’s last meal, though, so as it slithered into the distance, I was curious and concerned as to it’s departure.

Some time later, it returned, something wound up in it’s coils. As it got close to the fire, its coils loosened, revealing two rats, before returning to it’s resting place on my shoulders. I reached down, picking up one of the dead animals, inspecting it. There were no fang marks, but I could tell it had been partially crushed. “You’re not supposed to be a constrictor,” I said to the snake, who had by all appearances, fallen asleep on my shoulder. I’m not proud to admit that wasn’t the first time I’d cooked rat for dinner and they were over the fire in minutes, me not questioning that my pet snake had just gone hunting for me.

The Void was overrun with rodents and other pests, so every night the snake would go hunting for me, returning with a few small rodents. Strictly speaking, I was probably getting better nutrition from the food bars, but the rats were actual, fresh meat, something few people ever got to eat. I felt rich, living in my hiding hole under the bridge, getting to eat real meat every day.

The nights were finally growing shorter, spring on it’s way, when I heard something shuffling my way from the direction of The Void. There was a fire burning, so there was no hope of hiding the campsite, but I moved off to the side, hidden by a fallen slab. As the creature entered the light from the fire, I got my first look at one of the survivors of The Infirm.

He stood upright and looked to have retained his human form, more or less. His skin was a pale grey, appearing to lack hair of any sort, stretched over an oddly muscular, healthy-looking frame. He wasn’t a thin creature. In fact, if anything, he was overweight, which surprised me as I didn’t think any inhabitants of The Void could find enough to eat to be overweight. His fingers and toes were longer than normal, each ending in a long, deadly-looking claw. His face was elongated in a strange muzzle-like shape with two large ears twitching constantly, listening for sounds around him, while a short, rat-like tail flicked back and forth.

I stared at the creature for some time, remaining hidden, silent as I did. That this thing was once human was terrifying. That a man-made disease could do this to you was beyond terror. As I looked at him, I felt a moment of pity for him as well as disgust for my fellow man: We caused this.

My inspection was cut short, though, as the creature opened his mouth wide, dozens of needle-sharp teeth glistening in the firelight. There was a sudden sound from him, like a chirp, loud and piercing. He repeated this over and over, his ears turning toward me as he did so. I moved deeper into hiding, but he knew where I was and dove toward me, claws and teeth bared. I roared loudly as he attacked and his ears folded, turning away from me. As soon as his sonar was directed away from me, I dove to one side, but still took a claw to one of my shoulders, the wound painful and bloody. Without vision, though, he went past my position and I saw the snake bound from my shoulder to the creature, fangs buried instantly into his neck.

I watched as the bat-creature died a slow, painful death, the venom from my pet taking him down. The snake was back on my shoulder the whole time, watching as well. I started to drag the body off, but the snake hissed angrily at me as I did so. It slithered to the ground, nosing at the body before looking at me. I didn’t understand for some time and it finally opened it’s mouth, starting to swallow one of the creature’s fingers. “I don’t think you can eat that,” I said to the snake, chuckling, when my laughter suddenly stopped. “But I can,” I said, calmly, coldly, causing the snake to crawl back up my leg, to it’s resting place on my shoulder. “You can’t be serious. He’s... He used to be human.”

I stared at the dead creature for some time before finally pulling my knife out, butchering the body, tossing meat onto the fire. I felt sick cutting the best meat out, preparing it, eventually eating pieces, but the rats never really filled me up and I kept telling myself, “meat is meat.”

The next day, I sent the snake out to fetch some rats; he looked disappointed, but I promised him he’d understand why. Once I got half a dozen of them, I summoned him back to my shoulder and began to walk into town. My limp was more pronounced than it had been for some time and I realized remaining under the bridge was cutting out the little exercise I got. There was a shop which sold jackets and while I had no money, with half a dozen fresh rats, I could probably trade for something at least marginally better than what I had. The owner wanted the snake at first, but with a baring of fangs and angry hiss, he decided the rats were enough for him and I left with something at least vaguely capable of keeping me warm on the colder nights. The snake snuggled into the new coat, liking the warmth as well, as I turned to walk out of the store.

“You’re alive,” I heard a voice from the other side of the store just as I left. Matt Stainton. “Now I’m going to kill you.” I dove out the door, taking off into a run, but my lame leg slowed me and I was tackled to the ground by the old enemy. “And you, without your precious little lizard,” he said, as he flipped me onto my back, staring into my eyes.

“It’s a snake, not a lizard,” I heard myself say. I have no idea why I felt it necessary to correct him, but I did. He wore what looked like a brand new jacket and boots, and I didn’t want to think what they cost, or what happened to the person he stole the money from. He pulled a long knife from his belt, though, raising it up just as the snake poked out of the jacket to see what was going in. “Oh, you do still have it. We’ll have to fix that!”

Instead of thrusting the knife down into my chest, he swept it across, the edge running over the serpent’s flesh. As I looked down, I saw the snake’s head break free from his body, felt it’s cool blood rushing over my flesh. I roared with anger at first, but as head came to a rest on my shoulder, terrified instincts still rushing through the dying brain, I felt two fangs sink into my own skin, the snake unintentionally taking me down with him.

As the venom flowed into my blood, I heard Matt laughing, “Aww,” he growled between bawling laughter, “you two are going to die together. I think I’ll sit back and watch!” I remembered watching the bat creature die, the pain I felt that I’d caused that. The gang leader wouldn’t feel pain, he’d treasure the vision. He should have died instead of the poor beast I’d not only killed, but butchered and cooked.

The voice rang in my mind, coming from everywhere at once.

“What?” I cried out in confusion and pain, my words beginning to slur from the deadly venom. “Who are you?” Matt burst out laughing at my seemingly random cries, thinking I was losing my mind.

the voice called out to me, almost as a command,

The offer was tempting, even if, in the back of my mind, I didn’t believe I was hearing it truthfully. I didn’t really know what the venom did when killing someone and didn’t believe it was anything more than a delusion, the venom tearing my mind apart. Even so, I hung onto the hope of power, of survival. “I want it,” I hissed out in what felt like a dying breath. “I want power.”

“You’re past power,” Matt laughed, standing over me, kicking me in the ribs for no reason other than added cruelty. “Poor little cripple.”

I started to complain to the voice, I didn’t know what the name was, what to call. Suddenly, though, I knew the name, knew what to call. Over the pain of broken ribs, muscles breaking down under the attack of the venom and a body soon to expire, I howled at the top of my lungs, “Gilrandree!”

The voice boomed in my head, as I cried out the strange name and, in a heartbeat, the ground began to rumble. Making the call took the last of my energy and I could barely tell what was going on around me. Distantly, I could feel the ground surge below my body as, just before me, great spires of black crystal erupted from below the road surface. Red flames of lava erupted all around, and suddenly, I noticed a creature standing atop the spires.

The creature looked like something from The Void, standing upright, covered in a thick pelt of brown fur. Two tattered wings stood outstretched upon his back and a long tail whipped back and forth as he balanced atop the spires, his hooves seeming to give a tentative perch at best. The vaguely canine face grinned, staring at my dying body, eyes glowing a bright red. “You have brought me forth to this world,” I heard him speak calmly, “and I keep my promises. My gift to you.” His clawed hand raised, pointing at me and the gold runes on his large, curved horns suddenly glowed bright red. I could sense some deep, dark magic spring from him and suddenly, instantly, I was alive, uninjured, powerful. I looked up, Matt still stood above me, terrified by the demon I’d summoned forth.

As I lay there, attention split between the demon standing on the crystalline perch and the terrified human, I felt my body shifting, changing. I felt a tail spring from my back, ripping clothing away, growing seemingly endlessly long. My legs contorted and popped, moving up my torso, finally coming to a rest below my arms, legs turning into a second pair of arms below the first. I could feel my body slithering around the broken pavement and finally, I rose, to look at the demon before me as well as my own new, serpentine shape. I saw a long forked tongue flick out before my eyes as I tasted the scents upon the air and heard, behind me, the gang leader suddenly dive back from my new-found body. He stumbled on a ridge in the pavement, falling against the end of my long body. I heard my rattler sound as, instinctively, I began to coil around him.

I looked up at the demon, opening my mouth wide, releasing a strange hissing roar. As I did, I felt two long fangs extend, ready and waiting for their first victim. It took a force of will to calm myself enough to look up at the demon, realizing, without thinking about it, I held Matt tightly in my coils. “What have you done?” I finally asked.

The demon leapt down from his perch, landing beside me and calmly set upon my thick, sinuous body. “I have given you power, more than you ever could have managed on your own.” He reached one of his clawed hands to my own, holding it up for me to inspect. I was covered in thick black scales, my own fingers ending in sharp claws. Distantly, I heard the sound of panic around me, but I put it aside, the spire of crystals would keep unwanted visitors away for some time.

“I’m a snake,” I said, somewhat stunned.

“Well, a serpent of some sort,” the demon replied, chuckling in an oddly friendly, conversational tone. “I think the arms largely exclude you from actually calling yourself a snake.”

“You did this.”

The demon took a deep breath. “Yes and no. I facilitated it. I provided the channel for you to draw the power needed to make this happen. I lead you to this form, but you are the one, ultimately, who actually did this to yourself.”

I paused, inspecting my hands, my body. I looked back to the human in my coils, picking him up as easily as my pet snake carried around the rats, sitting him in front of my face. “What should I do with him?” I asked the demon.

“Come now, I think you know.”

I nodded slowly. “I’m not a cannibal, though.”

“Nor was the snake when he ate the rat. You’re not human anymore and it’s only cannibalism when you eat your own kind.” the demon replied.

I simply nodded. By the time I spoke again to the demon, Matt Stainton was nothing more than a bulge within my great body. “Now what?”

The demon grinned and rose to his hooves, stretching wings. “That’s your choice. In case I didn’t make myself clear enough, you’re no longer human. You’re a demon now. You can do whatever the hell you want. Literally.”

I nodded slowly, realization sinking in. “They’ll hunt me down.”

“Yes. At first, they will. Then, more than likely, you’ll kill enough police officers they realize it’s much, much safer just to leave you alone. Or maybe you’ll end up working with the police as judge, jury, and executioner, all rolled into one slithering package. Or perhaps you’ll just head to The Void and hunt the beasts there. Your choice.”

I nodded, as he started to spread his wings to take flight. “Wait. I have a question.”

He looked back to me, “Of course. You’re new to this existence and need a mentor. Ask away.” For what he was, what he admitted to being, the general friendly nature to his words was off-putting.

“You were the snake, weren’t you?”

The demon nodded in reply. “More or less, yes. I was trapped, unable to fully manifest myself here, though I’ve been able to exert some control over the area. The Infirm: It just kills. I was able to manipulate the survivors into the inhuman monsters. The snake was just a normal snake, but I certainly was imposing my will on it most of the time.” He relaxed his wings, eyes focused on me.

“I’ve been watching you since you left your home. Nobody goes that close to The Void. The beasts terrify humanity. Yet you lived there. I knew you were a good hope to free me.”

I nodded, wondering what horror I’d freed from the pits of Hell. “What are you going to do?” I asked him.

“I’m going to go hunting.” His eyes fell on the bulge in my body, meaningfully. “Before you ask, I’ll tell you I didn’t bring the war to this world. The war brought me.” He reached up resting a clawed hand against my serpentine face. “In the first days of the war, when the chemical warfare broke out, two billion people died in less than a week. Another three billion died slowly over the following months. A world of over six billion people suddenly had only a billion alive. You’re down to half a billion now, five years after the war. That many deaths draws forth powers from the underworld, powers such as myself. But that many deaths, no single creature, no matter how powerful, can contain. The world needed not just me, but another to channel the power of the deaths it’s sustained and it wanted one if it’s own. You’re now that being. One day this world will recover, the population will either return or be destroyed entirely, for some other species to take over. Until then, you and I exist and this world is our playground. We are, in some ways, the embodiment of death here until the destruction from The Mishap is behind, a thing of the past.” He paused in thought and looked to the sky.

“I’m going to go hunt,” he continued grinning a decidedly evil grin, “and have a bit of fun with the remaining population, at their expense, of course. I suggest you figure out what kind of demon you want to be, and get on with your... existence.”

I nodded, as he stretched his wings again, to take flight. “I think, perhaps, I’ll pay my father a visit,” I said, as he flew off.

-----------
Made with Photoshop