CHAPTER 1.
Finally home, I think as I walk into my bedroom. “Long day.” I sigh, plopping myself down on my bed. The soft mattress welcoming me. All stress and tension gives way as I get comfortable, exhaustion beginning to set in.
I pull out my phone to check the time and find a new text from my girlfriend. “I love carnivals! I had so much fun with you. See you in the morning, babe! Can’t wait! Amy.” I smile at how she signs it with her name at the end. I give the text one more read as lay out on my bed, the warmth of the sheets beckoning me to crawl beneath them and I do.
Still in my clothes, with my phone on my chest open to Amy’s text, I close my eyes and feel sleep taking hold.
My eyes slowly open just a fraction. Taking an unfocused look around my room before shutting them tight . . . I jolt awake, sweating and panting for no reason. Taking in short heavy pants of breath. What is going on?
I sit up in my bed quickly, my head moving around the room in a panic, scanning for whatever woke me. I see light shining through the window in the corner, the moons glow dimly lights the room revealing shadows all around.
My eyes adjust after a few moments, allowing me to put details to the shadows. Looking up, I see the ceiling, coated in the same old dark blue paint a modern brown ceiling fan smack in the middle.
I dangle my legs over the side of my bed and bring my hands to my face, slowly rubbing the sleep from my eyes. My unsettled nerves and sense of paranoia nearly gone completely.
Before laying back down I take a look around the room, seeing the flat screen TV mounted inside a cherry cabinet against the far wall, the matching table sitting in the corner the corner where it always is, the moonlight coming in from the window above it, making the tabletops high gloss finish glisten.
Okay. I tell myself, taking in a long slow breath, my nerves now all gone allowing sleepiness to settle in its place. I’m awake. Good. I let out my long breath and spin myself back into bed. Sleep. Sleep is good.
I lay my head back down against my pillows, my eyes half closed staring up at the ceiling fan. Something doesn’t look right. My eyes shoot open, straining to focus. Are those scratches? Long deep gouges glow on the blades of the ceiling fan. Those weren’t there a moment ago!
I’m Asleep! As the thought plays through my head, black fingers move over my face, their nails cutting into me like razors as they glide down my forehead, over my eyes, stopping as the tips of the sharp nails dig into my neck.
Not Him. It can’t be Him! I grimace in pain but don’t move. Too scared to move. The sound of tearing fabric fills my ears, and then I'm falling. Falling into blackness, into nothing. No sound of wind rushing past me, to black to see anything around me. Nothing reminding me I am even alive but the immense pain of the cuts that travel down my face and the smell of my own fresh blood stinging my nose.
Out of nowhere His legs wrap around my waist and His horrid laugh rings in my ears. “I’m Back!” He whispers to me, His voice raspy with a sick amused tone to it, like the devil telling a joke before he rips out your soul.
His claws cover my face once again, ripping the flesh open from the top of my head to the bottom of my chin. Excruciating pain stings at my face as my hot blood begins to pour from the wound. But He isn’t done yet. He pulls back the skin from my skull and rips it off in one powerful tug. He then leaps from my back as I scream out in agony, finally finding my voice.
Without any warning, I hit the ground. No give, no burrowing into the ground from the impact. Like I fly hitting the windshield of a speeding car I splatter. Every bone in my body shatters from the impact, my blood pours over the ground as it seeps from hundreds of wounds all over my body. I twitch as I try to move, choke as I try to breath, whimper as I try to scream.
Flat on my back, I lay still. Unable to move or scream, pain shooting throughout my whole body, helpless, utterly helpless. With my thoughts I begin to mend myself, taking in breaths as my broken ribs slide out of my lungs, the puncture holes healing as the bones leave. Next I numb the unbearable pain, flushing my body with an icy coldness that dulls the pain to excruciating.
While my body heals my mind begins to race, my eyes begin to wander, and my mending body gains enough feeling to move just slightly.
It doesn’t take much to figure out what I am. In His room. The cage I made for Him so many nights ago. How the hell did He get out? Where is He now?
Fear prompts me to stand, but I don’t get very far. My legs still broken in to many places to support even a tenth of my weight.
With a focus of a thought one of my legs mends, and then the other, the cracking of the bones echoing off the walls in the small room I find myself in.
I can do this. This is my dream. I can do anything here. I try to stand again, moving slowly to my knees and then to my feet, numbing the pain with my thoughts as the still mending bones begin to splinter as I try to heal them.
Now on my feet I realize I am leaning to the left. With each movement my upper body flops from side to side. My spine must be in shreds.
I focus my thoughts on my back being healed, how it looks and feels when it’s healed, and the alignment of the vertebrae. The noise of my spine cracking makes me cringe, and the pain drives me back to my knees. but it’s healed. I willed it and it’s done.
I get back to my feet and look around the room; it looks nothing like how I left it. An old boxy black and white TV is sitting on a wooden chair in the corner, the screen blaring static snow, casting shadows around the room for me to see.
In the corner sits an old wooden table, rotted and run down, two of the legs missing, making it lean awkwardly. The room has no windows at all. Smoothed concrete walls that seem to be weeping blood line the room, small chunks are gouged out as if someone with razor sharp talons has been trying to claw their way out. With nothing more to inspect I look up, instantly wishing I hadn’t.
From the ceiling hangs human faces, hooks poked through each of their foreheads. All of them look familiar but I recognize none of them. I look from face to face, scared out of my mind but trying to stay calm. Where is He?
“Do you like my collection?” a raspy voice asks from across the room and I turn to find it. Sitting on a stained mattress in the corner is Lancifer, the skin of my face wrapped around his head like a mask.
He hops from his seat on the bed, quickly moving towards me, bobbing his head left and right taunting me with his new face. My face.
After a moment, Lancifer stops bobbing his head around and lets loose a maniacal giggle, his voice cracking first as if he had been holding in this entire time.
“Lancifer.” I say, appalled by the bloody piece of flesh that used to be my face. “Didn’t miss me?” He cackles, parading around me once again with my face pulled tight against his own.
“You know, your face is my favorite!” He says, putting his hands up gestering to his collection hanging from hooks on the ceiling. “Do you like them, Lance? Do you know who they are?” Lancifer asks, tossing my face at me and grabbing another mask from the ceiling. The new mask looks like a man I’ve seen before but can't place where.
I catch my face and stare at it, a sick feeling rising from my stomach. I hold the skin to my face and imagine it healed. I grit my teeth as my face sows itself back onto my skull.
Lancifer watches as I heal myself an amused grin across his face, his blood stained teeth looking vicious in the dim light. “So? Have you figured it out?” Lancifer asks. I look at him, frustration clear on my face. “I don’t give a shit. How did you fucking get out of your cage?”
Lancifer’s grin fades, his lips slowly going flat. And then he rushes me. grabbing me by the throat before I can even think to move. He drives me back up against the blood-splattered wall, his claw piercing the flesh of my neck. My feet dangle as he stares at me, rage in his eyes.
“It will be revealed in time.” Lancifer growls. I try to struggle but his grip holds firm. Holy shit he’s strong. He puts me down and begins to pace the room, resuming his rant about his collection.
“They are everyone we have ever met. People we have seen and forgotten as soon our eyes saw them, their faces doomed to float around our subconscious forever. These are just my favorites.” Lancifer says, his voice playful but then his demeanor turns cold, his eyes lock onto my own. “Not much else to do while your locked in a cage.” Burning hatred in his quite whisper. Time for me to go.
I walk around the room, looking at the smeared blood that covers the walls, taking just a second to find what I am looking for. I run my hand down one of the walls, slicing right into the smoothed concrete like cutting through a curtain.
Without a word, I step through the now open wall, getting only half way through the slit before a claw grabs me from behind. Closing down on my shoulder, the tips of his claws embedding themselves in my flesh right down to the bone. I jerk forward to escape his grasp and instantly blood pours from my shoulder where a chunk of flesh used to be.
Blood pours from the wound as I continue my way through the slit in the wall, trickling down my arm and dropping into the void beneath my feet.
When I come out on the other side it’s almost pitch black, just a little light shines through the window. I know where I am. I created this place, my dream house, just after I put Lancifer in his cage. I am in my room. And that light shining through the window is new. I walk to my door and open it, hardly phased at what has happened to my home.
I slowly make my way down the stairs, decrepit and rotten, broken in every place you can see. Looking nothing like how I left them. Rotted, splintered beams dangle from the ceiling, the walls looks as if at any moment they will fall in around me, dragging the whole house down with them. what the fuck is going on?
Quickly I move down the rest of the steps, the last one caving in beneath my foot. I don’t need to look at the rest of the house to know it is just as rundown.
At the bottom of the steps, the front door stands directly in front of me, dark wooden French doors, once my proudest feature of the home. Now as broken down as the rest of the house, with a note nailed to it.
I snatch the poster from the door and read it: “Welcome to your new home, Lance.“ slash marks gouge the paper, beneath the words written in fresh blood. So fresh the words bleed as I read it. It’s my blood. He’s out there. Waiting for me. Lancifer’s laugh echoes through the empty house, a nightmare in itself that torments me and taunts me at the same time.
I open the door and stagger through, mouth agape at the sight before me. 
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