I Woke Up

    Lightning illuminated my room, like a camera flash capturing but a moment of time and writing it to my brain. I closed my eyes again, seeing the still image of my room in my head again, exploring it thoroughly, and seeing clothing on the floor, a mirror on the wall, a computer on my desk, a television in the corner, and a body hanging from the door post. My entire body recoiled into the bed as though struck from above. The horror, the gruesome realization of what my mind’s eye beheld caused me to open my eyes again. A crash of thunder, accompanied by another flash of lightning, and my terror was vindicated: I had indeed seen death at my doorstep.
   
    The body hung there, hands tied, feet bound, slowly rotating around. I trembled in my bed. The skin was white, contrasting heavily with the blood streaking down the
body, appearing only black in the images captured in the lightening. In my terror I had not given thought to whose soul may have once been contained in this now wretched corpse. As it further rotated around, a new terror ripped at my heart as  I saw the face of the now deceased hanging from my door post. The eyes had been gouged out, and were the source of the black blood streaming down the body. The face was incomplete, but the nose, yes I recognized that nose. Those ears, why I’d recognize them anywhere. And yes of course the mouth as well, only one of my parents’ descendants had such a mouth. These features, though on a distorted and mutilated face, were unmistakably the features of my brother.


    My terror was now mixing with a horrifying sadness, a realization of the full extent of the scene in my room. My brother, dead and gone, a horrifying spectacle. The sadness gave way to strength, a boldness to get out of bed, though still trembling madly, I stepped forward toward this now rotting flesh with the intent to both examine it and sneak past it away from its maddening sight. As I approached it, it seemed its rotation slowed. It faced me now, the empty eye sockets peering through me. Staring was unbearable, but not knowing was considerably worse. Thus I continued my approach, my eyes locked on where his would be, had he had them. I was close now. I could reach out and touch him. I was paralyzed. I looked at his mouth. It was changing. It was closed. It was grinning. It was smiling at me! A bolt of lightning illuminated his eyes. I fell back. Eye sockets which had but a moment ago been empty, contained white, lifeless eyes in the flash, but for a moment, and they returned my stare. His head lifted. His mouth opene,
   
    “Jack… sleeps.” It whispered. Then a shrill scream. “Wake up Jack!”

    I opened my eyes. It was morning. My brother stood over me. “Jack.”

    Sweat had soaked through my sheets. Just another dream. Since my father came home with death in his eyes, my dreams (or nightmares) had been growing darker and darker. Recently, they were all contained gruesome suicides of different family members. My brother was the last of my immediate family to appear in a dream.

    “Jack,” he said, “time for breakfast.” He turned and sauntered out of the room. With his shoulders sagged, head hung low, arms dangling at his side, he made his way to the staircase muttering to himself saying, “It’s coming, he’s coming, their coming” over and over. He often muttered nonsensical words and phrases. He was depressed. Well, no, my sister was depressed. He was something else entirely. I could never read him. It was as if something pushed down on him all the time, walking around all day like a zombie, I couldn’t tell who he was anymore.

    I made my way down the stairs into the kitchen where my family was standing around minding their own business, altogether just not associating with each other. My father sat at the table with a bowl of cereal and a newspaper spread out in front of him; he was reading the classifieds. He looked furious, rabidly drawing his finger across the paper, tearing it where he marked it with his pencil. We still had money, but not enough to support the family’s extravagant lifestyle. About a month ago he lost his job. Since then, day after day it seemed the rage would build inside of him with no outlet except of us, his family. He had turned the family into a dictatorship. A week ago my sister Jane was late to dinner talking to a friend on her computer. My father, losing control, grabbed a bat, stormed into her room, and smashed the computer to pieces. That was the last time anyone ignored the call to a meal.

    My mother sat at the other end of the table, waiting for her husband to finish his breakfast. She was having an affair with our eighteen year old pool boy named Enrique. It wasn’t much of an affair though. My father knew about it, and despite his anger issues did nothing about it. About two years ago my parents embraced a new philosophy. My father had taken his midlife crisis a little harder than most. Brought up in a Catholic family, he had been taught to repress his baser desires. He’d been taught that he was evil and so was everything he wanted, thus he was to give in to no basic desire, but rather the life of suppression was the key satisfaction.

    Finally he came to a point where he realized he was miserable, and he decided to immensely change his life. Instead of doing what he was told was right, he decided that he, and his family, would give into every desire, doing what we want when we want, as long as we don’t hurt anyone else. “Avoid the rampant mediocrity that permeates our society today!” he told us, “Live!” Since then our family has gone from bad to worse. My mother sleeps with everyone that will take her. My older brother, almost overnight, lost his academic scholarship and his personality, and spent his time doing drugs and prostitutes and meditating on pentagrams. He claimed demons gave him power and strength. He wasn’t the brother I grew up with; I would look in his eyes and not see one ounce of humanity in him. He was dead inside. I tried to love him as a brother; I’m not sure he was even aware I existed.

    My younger sister, once the happiest girl I knew, now spent her time in her room behind closed doors writing mostly in her journal, sometimes talking to other depressed people she found on the internet. She had had three abortions in two years, six “serious” boyfriends, and she had lost two of her friends in a drunk driving accident where she was the only one, out of six (one was in the trunk), to walk away. She never smiled anymore, she never laughed; she would only weep behind closed doors and bear the expression of one in mourning while moping around the house.

    My family withheld from themselves nothing, wonting nothing. Giving into every carnal desire, experiencing every pleasure, they were left with nothing. For awhile it worked, but now they were beginning to crack at the seams. My father’s anger was an obvious sign. The death of my brother and sister’s old persons was another. My mother’s intense desire for sexual gratification was her contribution to the dysfunctionality of our family. Her mother died giving birth, and growing up without a mother obviously warped her mind.

    As for me, I went a different route. I started going to a local church down the street. It was a Christian church which taught humility and self sacrifice. It taught me about Jesus Christ and salvation through him. Quite simply, my family and I went opposite directions, while living in the same house, eventually bringing the five of us here, eating breakfast in the same room, but hardly together. There was no spoken enmity amongst any of us, but I felt deep down each family member despised all the others for allowing our family to come to this point of mutual loathing.

    Breakfast ended and everyone scattered, my father to his job search, my brother to his “cult” (I was never entirely sure what he did in the day time, I could only infer), my sister to her room, and my mother to the pool house. Walking through the house I felt cold. It was summer, the thermostat read 78.2 degrees, yet the air against my skin brought no warmth. The lack of life with which my family lived through felt as though it affected everything around us, even our home. The air was stale and everything seemed to have a shadow on it, as if there was a fog in the house. I went back upstairs to my room, the only place in the house where the air was still fresh and the sun shone brightly through the open windows. After awhile I could hear my sister crying. Her sobs resonated through the house, augmenting the lifeless atmosphere.

    I used to be able to make her laugh. I used to be able to cheer her up when she scraped her knee or had a bad day at school. Now I simply didn’t know what it was that was eating her. She wasn’t just upset about something; she had no happiness in her at all. Still, I did what I could to at least connect with her. Every guy she dated tore her heart apart; I wanted her to have someone, even if it was just her older brother, which she could trust.

    I opened her door and knocked. She was sitting at her computer. She stopped crying as I entered. “Hey Jane,” I said softly. There was no response. I sat on her mattress behind her.

    “Ours is a messed up family isn’t it?” She just looked at me. “Mom is probably with the pool boy right now,” I joked; she didn’t smile. “I’m sure dad is out researching ways to persecute his children some more.” That got her to smile. I was ecstatic. When we were younger I would have her laughing within minutes. What happened to us? As we age we gain experience, but we lose ourselves in the process.  “What happened to us Jane?” She sat for a second, and finally opened her mouth.

    “We got older.” She never said much, but when she did speak, it was usually something worth listening to; her years of introspection gave her some supernatural insight into life, so I held off on responding. She turned to face me. “We woke up,” she finally said.

    “I guess we did.” I got up from where I was sitting and walked over to her, to see what she was doing. She was writing in a book, but as I came within reading distance in she closed it. “Private?” I asked.

    “Yea, a little bit. It helps to write. It’s a release.” Conversation was never easy with her anymore. I didn’t know what to say. We had nothing in common. We had spent nineteen years of our lives together, and we had nothing to say to each other.

    “You know, I want you to understand that I don’t take my state of mind for granted. I know you can’t help it. I don’t know why you can’t, I’ve never experienced it, I’m just predisposed to feeling balanced, but I’m sorry you have these problems, and I know it’s not because you’re weak, it’s not your fault.” That was the first remotely personal and nice thing I had said to her in over a year, maybe two. I never spoke to Isaac about his issues. I never really saw his coming. He was my older brother; I had grown up respecting him, only to realize all at once he wasn’t right in the head.

    “What do you suppose Isaac is up to right now? Boiling lizard heads and rattlesnake tails?” I asked waiting for a response.

    “He frightens me. I can’t stand him going on like that,” she finally said, “every day his eyes grow darker. Like, he can’t even see us anymore; he just drags himself around, becoming something else.” I was happy she was talking, but disturbed at what she was saying; she was right. Her eyes glazed over. I’d lost her. I said good-bye, but she didn’t hear me. She would get inside her head whenever something frightened her or saddened her. She had regressed back to a child. When this happened there was no talking to her.

    I went back to my room. The window was open, fresh air blowing the curtains into the room. I called a few friends, but no one was around. I sat down on my bed and put a movie on the television in my room, and eventually fell asleep to it. I woke up to the smell of fresh cooked tomato sauce. I moseyed on downstairs to find my mother cooking. The rest of the family trickled in slowly and we eventually began our dinner.

    My father was seething with anger. At the job interview he exploded on one of the employees who accidently spilled some soda on him. He had to be escorted out of the building. He told us the story in between his profane outbursts of insults and four letter words. He was losing control of himself. Every night he would explode about something, usually a few times. The coffee was cold. His car wouldn’t start. He couldn’t find his glasses. The remote control needed new batteries. The lawn was too long.

    Isaac was brooding at his seat, unresponsive. His bangs hung in his eyes. “Tonight is the night,” he said. “Tonight,” we all looked at him. Most of the things he said were morbid and dark, but his tone always lacked force. Tonight, for the first time in over a year, he spoke with a sense of authority; his voice had an ominous quality to it. His shoulders still slumped and head still hung in front of him, but his words were intentional. “I’m tired of this forged family.” He was speaking to no one in particular. “It’s a joke.” His speech was getting frustrated and heavy. “We escaped the rampant mediocrity permeating society by throwing ourselves headfirst into seditious misery. We hate each other. The only one any of us can stand to talk to is Jack,” I shifted in my seat, “Gee father, I wonder if it’s because he didn’t choose your appallingly vacuous philosophy. You brought us here only to ruin us. You are like the progenitor and apollyon of this family, its originator and annihilator. It’s as if you’re trying to…”

    He was cut off as my father smashed the table with his fists. His face was nearing light shades of purple, and his lips distinctly curled up, as though he were relishing his son’s anger, this excuse to let his rage out. “You mind your tone!” My father roared, his voice intentional and deep and filling the room, “I have slaved twenty-two years providing for this family, and you sit there and call it a joke?!” He grabbed his plate and hurled it at Isaac as well as a mouth full of profaning insults. Isaac deflected the plate with his forearm and it smashed against the wall. My sister was crying. My mother kept eating.

    “Go to Hell father,” my brother growled. His audacity and resilience were unnerving.

    “You insolent maggot, I brought you into this world! And you tell me to go to Hell?” He grabbed his glass of water and flung it towards his son, the bottom corner striking him square in the face this time, crushing his nose and undoubtedly the bone structure surrounding it. My brother recoiled for a moment as blood gushed from his nose, dripping off his chin into his hands. Through the cascading blood I saw my brother’s lips curl up into a fiendish, diabolical smile. This creature sitting at the table was not Isaac; he had left us months ago. This remnant was something else entirely. He withdrew a long kitchen knife from his pocket.

    “It’s over,” he paused and looked up at the raving lunatic and in a voice deeper than his own calmly said the word, “father.” With that he did something no one saw coming. My father braced for impact, but it was an ineffectual motion. My brother lifted his head to face us, took the knife in both hands and plunged the blade deep into his eye. His head fell forward, hitting the blade on the table and sinking further into his face. My sister threw up. My mother stopped eating. My father’s anger did not dissipate. He stood there, seething, looking at his now deceased son, whose head rested on a blade supported by our dinner table.

    “It’s over for all of you.” My heart stopped. My father’s face paled. The voice was that of my resigned brother. I couldn’t move, all my energies were bent on absorbing the situation. My brother’s head rose. He pulled out the knife leaving a grotesque open wound, and used it to cut off his shirt revealing on his chest a carving in his skin of the word, “Azazel”. My brother the stood and jumped out of his seat, over the table stabbing at my father. He hit my father, who landed on his back and warded off the first few vicious attacks, however the persistence and ferocity with which my brother attacked eventually proved to be too much and the knife sunk deep into his skull and his body went limp.

    Nobody was moving. Isaac looked at my mother. He jumped towards her and swung at her. She put out her and closed her eyes in a hopeless attempt to defend herself. Me and Jane stood side by side now and watched as our mother was slaughtered. I picked up a chair to defend myself. In the corner of my eye I thought I saw my father stir, but my attention was quickly drawn to Isaac’s corpse which was now looking at Jane. I gripped the chair hard. Recently Isaac’s body had atrophied and even though he was my older brother, I would have had no problem dispatching him in a fight. Watching him as he fought my mother and father, I began to doubt my ability against this new being.

    Isaac jumped onto the table looking straight at Jane. I didn’t know why he was saving me for last. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t run and leave Jane, but I felt a fight with Isaac was futile. At that moment I noticed for the first time the darkness that filled the room, like a black smoke masking the light. I looked over and saw my father back on his feet, his face half covered in blood and crimson lines forming on his shirt, as if his chest was bleeding. I looked back at Isaac. He was crouching, as if he intended to leap onto Jane. I tightened my grip on the chair.

    Jane was frozen. For a moment, time stood still. Isaac made the first move. He leaped from the table. I lifted the chair and checked him into the wall midflight, before he could reach Jane, and sent him sprawling to the floor. Then I turned and hurled the chair at my father who was now moving towards us, knocking him on his back again. Then I turned and grabbed my shocked and frozen sister and rushed her up the stairs into my room, locking the door behind me. I sat with my back against the door in a small attempt to prevent it from being smashed open.

    Jane sat next to me, with her head between my arm and chest, neck against the door. I waited. Then after a moment I felt the door shake. I could hear Isaac’s voice behind the door. The door then shook much harder and heard my father growl as he bounced off. Again the door shook, and again and again, rattling the hinges. Then it stopped. I waited, petrified. Jane was squirming in my arms. I felt hopeless. I glanced at the open windows and considered making a dash for it. I mentioned my plan to Jane, but she only squirmed and said nothing.

    The door shook again, softer than before, but I heard something crack. Jane had stopped squirming. I looked down and saw why. A knife had been jammed through the thin wood of the door into the back of Jane’s neck. My spirits sank. I looked down at her again. Her face looked calm. She was gone. She had done nothing wrong. Now the gravity of the situation was beginning to sink in. My brother had killed himself, and risen from the dead. My father had been killed, and he came back as well. I didn’t know why or how, I could only suspect there was some supernatural explanation.

    I looked down at my sister. Her shirt was stained with blood. What struck me was that there were no open wounds on the front of her. She had been stabbed in the back of the neck, severing her spinal cord, but the blade did not penetrate through to the front. I suspected the worst. Hands shaking, I opened the top half of her shirt and my fears were confirmed. On her chest was freshly carved the word “Moloch”.
I pushed her off my lap in a frenzied motion, and her corpse was filled with some force, coming back to life, or something resembling life. My head was swimming.

    She was dead. My whole family was dead. Why were they still moving around? The hair on my skin was standing on end. I was terrified, but my hands were still steady. Jane’s corpse began to glare at me and I knew it was time to leave. I opened the door to find it had been left alone. I jumped into the hallway and closed the door behind me. No one was in the hall but I heard a commotion downstairs. I decided not to investigate. Behind me my doorknob began to jiggle, and in blind fear I went for the nearest room to hide in. I went into the room on the opposite side of the hall and locked the door.

    The room was dark, painted white with black streaks all around. It was Isaac’s room. Looking around I saw pentagrams, candles, pictures of goats, knives stained in blood. One wall was completely barren except for the word “Azazel” written on it in red, undoubtedly with blood. It felt like a cheesey shrine to Satan as well is this Azazel character, only it wasn’t cheesy, I had a disturbing feeling it was all genuine. On his desk was a notebook lying open. The last entry was short.

    “I am the angel of death. Tonight I restore three lives, and take thousands. The ‘Presence’ still lurks here, but there is nothing he can do now.” I flipped back a few pages to a longer entry. “I am oppressed; I am dejected and unable to feel anything. The demons inside me want to come out. I can see it in the entire family, except Jack. I hate everything. I withheld nothing. I don’t understand. I have experienced nothing but pleasure for these last two years. How can I be so miserable? I’m losing control of myself. My friends are beginning to see through this facade. I find myself becoming obsessed with death. I am becoming an outcast. Sometimes I find myself even sabotaging my own friendships so people will hate me. Last night I woke up in a grave yard. I don’t even remember going there, but I believe in a dazed state I wandered there, seeking out death of any sort. I know I don’t want to kill anyone, but I FEEL like I want to kill everyone. I can’t turn back anymore.”

    This notebook was a chronicle of my brother’s possession. In both anger and fear I picked up the book and held it over a candle, as if destroying the book would somehow free my brother from this bondage. I knew I was no exorcist, I knew it wouldn’t change a thing. This process had taken a course of over two years. My family had taken the same course. The demons inside them had been released. Though they still maintained the characteristics of my family, they had lost the ability to control themselves long ago, and in the process lost what made them who they were. My brother, the day he gave into every waking desire, relinquished his control over himself, and over time had forgotten what it was ever like to have such power over his desire, such was the demise of my family.

    The book was burning now and I threw it out the open window. I felt myself giving way. I just wanted this to not be, I wanted to get away. I wanted to run. Tears were streaming down my face. My hands were trembling. I heard someone shouting for help outside. For the moment I forgot myself and ran out of Isaac’s room, down the stairs into the dining room. Again the cry rang out; it was coming from the pool. The voice sounded like that of the pool boy. He would stay at our house sometimes overnight as long as my mother kept paying him by the hour. It made me angry to think of the money wasted on her lustful pursuits.

    Rage began to well up inside, then I was struck from behind. I tumbled to the floor, turning to see my assailant. What stood before me was a monster. Shredded pants, and blood stained rags hung over ripped flesh and some visible bones shaped in the form of a human, half of the face had been torn off, while the other half held my father’s likeness. The chest bore the word, “Andras”, though unlike the other carvings, it was not engraved into the chest, but protruding from it. How his body had been so mutilated in the past half hour was of no concern at the moment. However the word “Andras” was the first word I recognized. My brother, about four weeks ago, was standing at the doorway of my parents’ room saying “Andras” over and over. No one else was around. He was just standing there talking to himself, holding a journal that he was writing in. My heart was praying, but my mind was panicking. I turned and tried to get to my feet, but I was pushed down again; this time however I tucked and rolled out, landing on my feet and continued running to the pool.

    I made it outside, slamming the door behind me. I ran for the pool house where I heard a commotion, when I was stopped to see a body floating face down in the pool. I could tell by the clothes it was my brother. Suddenly I heard a crash and breaking glass behind me. I turned to see my father’s body rolling on the ground, towards me through splintered wood and glass.

    I stopped. I’m not sure where the courage came from, but I turned to face him and braced myself for a fight. He came towards me and I clenched my fists. Then just before we collided, he stopped dead in his tracks. Confused, I looked at him for a moment. He was silent. He didn’t even breathe. His body could move, but it was not alive. For a moment we stood there, then the commotion in the pool house caught my attention and I turned and ran.

    I opened the door and was greeted by a revolting odor comparable to rotting fruit and sewage. I stepped cautiously, heart racing. I looked back to see my father had made his way into the pool and was gnawing on Isaac’s arm. I took a deep breath and moved farther into the pool house, turning the corner to big dark open room. I turned on the light and was horrified by what I saw. My mother, now stripped of all her clothes and some of her skin, had buried her face into the now deceased pool boy’s neck, making a sucking sound. She was drinking his blood. Blood was everywhere. The light upset her, and she turned to face me, still in a crouched position.

    I looked at her chest, looking to see what was written on it. I saw the word “Churel” engraved on it. Her face had been completely scraped away, leaving her eyes, some muscles, and an almost entirely visible skull. Her hair was either matted and tangled or missing. Then it caught my attention. The pool boy was staying dead. He wasn’t getting up. Why was my family not dying? Or more specifically, what force was reanimating their dead corpses?

    I suspected the words were names. My mother got to her feet, her body still in good shape considering her disfigured face. She leaped at me and brought her hand across my face, scratching me badly. She jumped up on me, both her feet and hands landing on my shoulders, knocking me down and clawed at my face. She seemed stronger, but she still only weighed a hundred pounds. I pushed her off and ran. Outside it was dark, with only the lights outside allowing me to navigate. When I went by the pool back to the house I saw Isaac standing again in the water, moving towards me. I ran through the smashed door my father had earlier broken through and headed for the door to the garage. I was cut off by my father’s corpse and turned and tried to head back out to the pool to escape that way, but saw my mother and Isaac coming towards me. There was no exit. I ran upstairs, knowing it wasn’t safe, but having nowhere else to go. I ran to my room. I closed the door and pushed my bed in front of the door. The door rattled and shuddered; it was obvious they were trying to get it. I grabbed my dresser and slid it up on to the bed, further barricading myself in.

    I sat there for about an hour when finally all was silent. In the beginning I wasn’t sure if they were going to kill me or not, but it had become obvious in the end that they were. Not even the devil’s presence could get me to leave this room now, which at this point didn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility. After some time passed and I relaxed I realized I was completely exhausted, both physically and emotionally. My television was on, which was strange since I couldn’t remember turning it on. It was just a black screen with the words “No signal” flashing around. Then the screen flickered. It caught my attention. It flickered again and lines appeared, as if the LCD screen wasn’t working quite right.  Then the screen flickered again and shadows seemed to move around the screen, some sort of figure.

    “Jack.” The noise came from the television. I was freaking out. I was in shock. I was imagining the TV talking to me. “They’ve gone, you’re alone.”

    “Except for this,” I said under my breath. I was going crazy. “What is this?” I whispered.

    The TV spoke up, the figure remaining still, resembling a shadow of a face, “This is possession. This is anger, hate, self-loathing, and lust.” I pictured the face of my family as I heard each sin called out. I felt no fear. I felt nothing at all. I couldn’t tell if it was real or just my fried brain acting up. I began to suspect I had imagined everything.

    “Andras, Azazel, Moloch, Churel, these are all the presences that existed within your family.” The TV kept talking. Perhaps it had a solution. Perhaps it was just my imagination. I didn’t care anymore. I just wanted to get away. I just wanted tomorrow to come.

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