Down the Rabbit Hole

October 30th - Demons & Doubts

30-Day Blogging Challenge Oct 30th
Start your entry with this sentence:
You might not believe in ghost stories, but…

You might not believe in ghost stories, but there are other things that haunt and hunt from the shadows. The horror of the things I have seen make me long for those tamer phantoms. Ghosts are bound by laws of the spirit realm. They can not possess a corporal form and their presence is a delicate balance biased in a large part, on the muscle memory of their loved ones still anchored to life. The other things, the crawling, snarling masses that share our space, have no such limitations.

I have been a demon hunter since I was seventeen. The profession was unceremoniously thrust upon me after I watched one drive my Uncle straight into Hell. He took six other souls with him that day. At the end, his face was a mask of darkened rage. There was nothing left of the man who had raised me. If I gazed into his wide, dark eyes I could almost see the unthinkable thing with claws and blackened skin perching there, tearing ribbons into his tormented soul. Later, when my uncle gave his last, rattled breathe of life, it flew from his distended jaws with ragged wings flapping, leaving a sulfur-stained wake behind it.

Demons freely move among us, through us. They shed their forms and camouflage themselves in our weaker flesh. They are skilled manipulators and trade in sin and in shame. I have killed five to date. Each time I dispatch one back to Hell, they turn to look at me with empty eye sockets and hurl curses at my back in their wicked ancient languages. Each time I kill a demon, I die a little more inside. My book and my cross weigh ever heavier in my pack and I feel the fatigue of an infinite war wearing on my tired bones.

Take my advice, start believing in ghost stories...


"Blogging Circle of Friends "
DAY 2172: October 30, 2018
Prompt: Start your entry with "In the midnight hours..."

In the midnight hours I listen to rain, to the creaking of my old home, to the gentle breathing of my sleeping daughter. I think about the world at my door and the fragile state of my life. In the midnight hours I try to find peace but the questions and the doubts are my constant companions, made ever bolder by late hour. In the midnight hours, sleep eludes me.


"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
Day 179--Oct. 30, 2018
Prompt: “The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.”
― Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality-
Are heroes cowards inside? What do you think?

I don't believe a true hero is a coward but I think most heroes experience fear. Fear doesn't make one a coward and bravery never happens by mistake. I believe most people could never image their capacity for heroism until the need for bravery is thrust upon them. True heroes rise to the call in spite of their fear.