Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 54848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 54848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 274(@200wpm)___ 219(@250wpm)___ 183(@300wpm)
“Get a grip, Charlie,” I told my reflection, staring into my familiar eyes.
Intelligent eyes, my father would call them.
I’d always prided myself on my brain, on my rationality.
I didn’t even believe in things that weren’t human. There was no such thing as the supernatural. As ghosts or witches or gods or, well, demons.
Because that had to have been what I’d seen, right? A demon? It was the only thing that seemed to fit the image of what I’d seen.
A demon.
How absolutely… ridiculous.
A demon would mean the existence of a devil and, therefore, a god.
And, yeah, that was just… not rational.
A strange, whimpering sound escaped me as I turned and saw myself reflected in the mirror on the bathroom door.
With those same scratch and puncture marks from earlier, and new ones to match.
Those were real.
Right?
I didn’t even trust my own eyes right then.
So I peeked out to make sure Bael was gone, though I’d heard him rush out, and grabbed my phone before rushing back into the bathroom, and locking the door. You know… just in case.
I zoomed my camera in close, so it wouldn’t be clear where the injuries were, and snapped the picture before sending it to the only person I really had. My father.
- What do these marks look like to you?
- Hm. Is this a brain teaser? I don’t know. I knew someone with a parrot once who got marks like those.
That was all the confirmation I needed.
The marks were real.
My father confirmed it.
My heart hammering in my chest, making it feel tight and airless, I hit the call button.
“Was I right?” he asked, sounding tired and a little amused.
Because we did frequently send each other brain teasers and riddles. It was our love language to each other. Neither of us were good with outward shows of affection, so we showed it in the way that was most comfortable for the both of us. Our brains.
“Actually, I have a strange question for you.”
“I love those,” he said, sounding instantly more awake. In my mind, I could picture him reaching over to turn the light on over the reading chair he’d fallen asleep in, his book on his chest, his glasses nearly falling off his nose. “Hit me.”
“Well, it is sort of… philosophical.”
“You don’t need to bait me any more, Char, I am biting.”
“Right. Well. What are your feelings on God?” I asked.
“Gods?” he clarified.
“No. Well, yes. But no. I mean more… a god. An all-seeing, omniscient being.”
“In the sky with wings?” he asked, and I could all but hear the smile on his face.
“Yes. Or no. I mean any god, I guess. In the more modern sense, anyway.”
“You’ve never asked me this before,” he said, sounding thoughtful. “All those discussions we’d had about thoughts and opinions, but the one big one, you never asked me.”
“I think I always assumed you were an atheist,” I said.
“Like most intellectuals?” he asked, sounding just a tad bit mocking. “Char, didn’t I raise you better than to assume things like that. But to give you the benefit of the doubt, when I was younger, I was much more sure of things like you. There was no God. It made no rational sense. It couldn’t be proven.”
“But as you’ve gotten older?” I prompted.
“But as I’ve gotten older, I guess I’ve become a little more… open to the idea of a God. Maybe it is as simple as getting closer to the grave, and finding comfort in the idea of an afterlife. But, I don’t know, maybe it is more the people I am around now. They’re smart, Char. As a whip. Like all the other intellectuals I’ve ever known. Yet most of them believe. Not necessarily in any one thing, but the idea of… something.”
“Something,” I repeated, looking at the claw marks on my body. That was… something alright.
“I even know physicists who believe. They are perhaps who have swayed me the most. They claim it is actual more irrational to believe this and us is all there is in the whole world, the whole universe. You should hear them go off about aliens.”
“So, you believe?” I asked, getting him back on track.
We were good at getting off of it, talking for hours about a million different barely-related topics before circling back to the main one. But I didn’t have time for that. I was too busy trying not to believe I was actually losing my mind.
“I… maybe,” he said. “I think anyone who says they know anything for sure when it comes to this sort of thing is lying to themselves. Whether they are believers or non-believers. Because, at the end of the day, Char, none of us can know. Not until we’re dead.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“What’s going on, Char? Why this talk now? Is something wrong?”
Other than just having sex with an actual demon? No, everything was going swimmingly.