Mystical 01

Usual disclaimers apply.  The following contains male-to-male sex.
If you are under age or such reading is illegal in your country, 
please go elsewhere.  Otherwise, please enjoy.

The city had gone silent around him; only the sound of his feet pounding on the wet sidewalk and the beating of his heart resounded to his ears through the pouring rain. The man kept looking over his shoulders as he ran. He hadn’t caught sight of the dark silhouette since the first time, but he could still feel it pursuing him.

All he wanted to do was go home, to where he would be safe, but he didn’t even know where that was anymore. The rain was falling so hard it dimmed his sight just like his fear dimmed his hearing. He could barely make out the street lights as he ran by them, the streets eerily vacant.

He saw a sign that looked familiar and suddenly he felt like he knew where he was. He quickly turned the corner and ran down the alley; his apartment building was just across the street at the end of it. Once there he would be safe. The rain lessened and he could make out the lit windows beckoning him.

He hit the chain link fence hard and bounced back, falling to the ground. He didn’t have time to wonder where it had come from; he needed to get around it. He scrambled up and looked around. It went from wall to wall and was twice his height. His only option was to get over it. He jumped as high as he could and grabbed on. He pulled himself up the fence, the links biting into his fingers.

He was almost to the top when he felt the presence behind him. Fear made him loosen his grip and he fell to the ground. He turned and there was the silhouette, half way between him and the mouth of the alley.

“Please” the man pleaded, “I didn’t know. I won’t do it again.” For a moment the man thought he saw a smile in the darkness. “Please, this isn’t fair.”

Let’s get one thing straight. This wasn’t a situation anyone would want to be in, including me. But here I was standing in a living room out of a seventies sitcom with two girls hiding behind me, grabbing onto my leg pants in fear.

“You can’t do this!” I yelled as loud as I could. “I won’t let you hurt my girls!”

The thing in front of us laughed at me. Considering I barely top five ten and a hundred seventy pounds I guess it wasn’t taking me seriously.

“Oh,” the ghastly creature said, “once I’ve taken you I’ll be daddy, and daddy will play with daddy’s little girls.”

I called it a ‘creature’, but that wasn’t accurate, things like that weren’t really ‘here’. Only a small part managed to make it out of hell, whether through a crack that could occur naturally or because of a careless wizard. This one looked like a collection of vaporous bones. They were scary the first time I encountered them, but after a while I just couldn’t get worked up about them anymore.

It just laughed again. I steeled myself for what was to come when it made contact with me. One moment it was coming at me its ‘hand’ stretched, the next it was in me.

Being a psion comes with many advantages, but one *big* disadvantage. We were easy to possess. I mean easy as hell, easy as a hot knife through butter easy. No psion went around advertising that’s what he or she was unless he could afford some sort of protection against possession.

Mine was a Virgin Marie medal given to me by my god father, a voodoo priest my dad had helped move to the US from Haiti. It was currently in an iron case in the pocket of my jacket, where it didn’t offered me any protection what so ever. That was okay — part of the plan actually.

“Hello girls,” it said through me, distorting my voice in a way I knew I’d pay for when this was all over, and turning to look at the four and five year old who had been using me as protection, “daddy’s home.”

They shrieked and ran for the opposite side of the room. The creature recoiled as it felt the pain from my ears at the strident sound. Once it had gotten over the surprise it tried to go after them and learned that there’s a difference between possessing someone and controlling their body. It took most of my will power, but my body didn’t move.

It roared in anger, rattling the windows, scaring the neighbors and probably scarring my throat. I used some of the will power I had left to get control over my voice while the creature was too busy trying to move.

“Girls,” I said, my voice raw, “do you still have the bracelets I gave you earlier?”

They both nodded and lifted their arms, making the beads on the strings click against each other. The youngest one had two on one arm and one on the other. Her sister had the other two. They were all loose on them since they were made for me.

“No,” I croaked. The creature had just given me the psychic equivalent of a kick to the balls. I took a moment to cement my focus before continuing. “You need to put them on me like I showed you.”

“Okay,” the youngest said happily and took one off her arm. She waited for her sister to do the same and then they placed the bracelets on my wrists.

The yell that escaped me was as much from my pain as the creature’s. The enchantments were binding it within me, but they were also searing through my psyche in the process. When I was able to open my eyes again the girls had moved back against the wall and were holding on to each other.

I couldn’t say anything as I fought the creature for control. In that silence I heard a door open and me and the creature moved together, turning my head to look down the hallway where it had come from.

A man came out of a room and looked at me. “Things have gotten quiet, is it safe to come out now?”

For the first time since appearing here the creature realized that there was no blood bond between me and the girls. It had been blinded by how easy I was to possess and hadn’t bothered checking. But now that the man was outside the room the creature could feel how everyone here was related, or not, in my case.

The surprise made me lose control. With a surge of rage the creature launched itself at the man and my body lurched forward. Looking at it from the outside I probably looked funny with my arms stretched before me and staggering forward like a zombie out of a fifties’ movie, but the danger was extremely real. We crossed half the distance before I had regained enough control to stop moving.

This time it was my anger that wrestled control away. “Get the *fuck* back in that room and don’t come out until someone lets you out!” Did that idiot think that all the protection and veil items I had bought and placed around his bedroom were just for show? If the creature had managed to make contact with him it would have been all over.

The bracelets I had on prevented it from just leaving my body, but with physical contact to someone else it could simply slip out of me and into them. Until the binding was complete the danger of escape was very real.

With one spike of will I forced myself to turn around so I could see the girls. Of everyone in the house they were the only ones protected. That no being of evil could even attempt to touch a child was a decree of God. Many a neophyte demon had learned the hard way that He wasn’t kidding around with that one. It’s just too bad the decree only affected supernatural creatures.

“Girls, you need to finish putting the bracelets on now.” I said through clenched teeth before the creature set about pounding my psyche around.

I couldn’t do anything other than stop the creature from moving me as the girls lifted my left foot and placed the bracelet around my ankle. The pain that washed over me was almost a relief from the beating I was getting, but it was short lived. It came again as they put the other bracelet on my right ankle.

At this point the creature knew what was going on and was fighting as hard as it could to get out, it even tried to let itself slip back to hell, but the bond was too strong for that now. I watched at the girls pushed a plush chair close to me and climbed on it. The oldest took the last string of beads off her sister’s arm and undid the clasp. It wasn’t a bracelet, it was a choker.

The creature became so desperate that it did something so surprising I lost some of my hold on it; it reached for the girl as she slipped the choker around my neck. Her hand touched my skin and the creature jumped for her. She jerked dropping the ends of the choker and I grabbed hold of the creature trying to pull it back inside me.

In reality there was very little I could so, it was slowly slipping into her. The Word of God doesn’t make it impossible for evil to affect children, it’s just supposed to scare them in not doing it. This thing was now more afraid of being trapped than being punished — Showed how little it knew.

What saved us was that the clasps to the choker were magnetic. As they fell out of her hands they came close enough to snap together. There was a flash of pain and then I was lying on the floor. The binding was complete. The creature was trapped in me and we were both prevented from moving my arms and legs. Since I didn’t have to work at keeping the creature contained anymore I had an easier time protecting my psyche from it but I couldn’t stop it from raking through my memories or throwing my nightmares at me.

The creature was focusing all its strength on hurting me so I had free reign of what was left of my control over my body. I opened my eyes. The older girls and sitting down holding her hand as if she had burned herself. Her sister was watching me.

She pulled my cell phone out of a pocket in her blouse and pressed the speed dial like I showed her. “Who’s this?” she asked after a moment in her sing-song voice. “My name is Beatrice.” She said a moment later. “Mister Jake said to call you.” . . . “Don’t know why.” . . . “No, he can’t come to the phone, he’s on the floor and he can’t move.” . . . “Well, there was a foggy monster that went inside Mister Jake. Then we put bracelets on his arms and legs. And on his neck too. Then he fell and couldn’t move.” . . . “No, I’m not suppose to tell strangers where I live.” She looked at me. “Is the lady on the phone your friend?”

“Yes,” I whispered. The creature was assaulting me with a particularly horrible memory from my childhood I’d forgotten.

“Okay. Our house is the big red house with the black roof. My house is at five-two-three Humberton road,” she said carefully, her father had obviously made her memorize their address. “Okay, see you soon.” She closed my phone and put it back in her pocket. “She’s going to be here soon. Can I let daddy out now?”

“Not yet,” I whispered. I knew I was being petty by leaving him there to wonder what was going on, but I didn’t care. The next twenty minutes were interminable as I fought with the creature. Well, more like fought the onslaught of attacks it sent my way.

I didn’t know Jen had arrived until she turned me on my back. “Dear Gods, Jake why do you always get yourself in these situations alone? You should have called me first.” I smiled at her. Jen was beautiful, international model beautiful; tall with golden skin, silver hair with azure eyes which unfortunately she kept hidden behind sunglasses. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” she asked caressing my cheek.

I shook my head. She’d developed a crush on me since I’d helped her break free of her enslavement. She knew nothing would ever come of it, but she hadn’t quite gotten over it yet.

She picked me up like I weighted nothing, and to her I didn’t, really. “Are you all done here?”

“No,” I said and flopped my head to the side so I could look at the girls. “You can let your dad out now.” They jumped with joy and ran to the bedroom while Jen carried me out.

She carefully placed me on the passenger seat of her silver corvette and buckled me in. “I swear,” she said as she started the car and peeled off, “one of these days you’re going to do something like that and we won’t be able to get to you on time.” She pressed a button. “Call Chris,” she said after a beep. There was three rings before the answer.

“You tell me. He’s wearing the binding beads, he can’t move and he can barely talk.”

Chris cursed. “Fine, give me twenty minutes. I have to get my clients out of here.”

Exactly twenty minutes later she was carrying me inside Chris’ house. It had been a manor two centuries ago, but now it didn’t look any different from all the other large houses the rich people in this neighborhood had. Of course, his was really old while theirs just looked old.

“You’re lucky you called when you did.” He said as he escorted us to the basement. “Five minutes later and I would have been in the middle of a fertility ritual and you really don’t want to stop one of those midway unless you want blue balls for the rest of the month.” The basement was a large open space with altars and work tables along the walls. The floor was made of ash wood; tiles arranged in patterns to create three foot by three foot squares.

The floor looked to be as old as the house, but it was one of the few things that wasn’t. Chris had it made because ash wood was the best way to mask magical signatures left by, say . . . a warding circle. Like the one hidden under the patch he and Jen lifted up. Warding circles weren’t illegal, but Chris had already attracted enough of the cops attention so he didn’t want them looking into what he sometime summoned within those circles.

Jen placed me in the middle of the circle and Chris activated it with his blood. The archaic lettering around and inside the circle glowed. He snapped his fingers and the string holding the beads on my arms, neck and legs broke allowing them to roll free on the floor, and undoing the binding spell that was holding me and the creature captive.

The creature was the first to realize something had changed. I was barely conscious at this point from the barrage of mental beating I’d received. It stood and ran for the stairs, only to hit the side of the circle like it was a concrete wall. It bounced back and started bashing on it.

“Come on Jake, you got to do the work now.” Chris said. I heard him, but nothing really registered at this point. I’d been fighting the creature for all my life it seemed and all I wanted to do was rest.

“Jake, you son of a camel, if you don’t get out of that circle right now I’m going to walk myself to the first djinni I find and let him take me right back in.”

It took a few moments, but that did sink in. Considering how hard it had been to get her away from them and how desperate she was to stay away I didn’t have any choice but to wake up.

I was already standing, that was a good first step. I was already heading for the barrier, a good second step, but I wrestle control away from the creature just before we hit it so that instead I came to rest against it.

This circle was made to only hold supernatural creatures, in normal circumstances I would have been able to walk through it without any trouble, but right now the creature was inside me, intertwined with my being, physically and psychically. That was how the barrier was able to hold me up. It took me a few minute to work up the strength to try to push through. Nothing happened at first, but then my fingers started sinking past the edge of the circle.

The creature noticed it and thinking we’d found a way out put its strength behind mine. I had a leg and arm through as well as half my torso when it realized I was the only one stepping through. It pulled at me and it was now twice as difficult to move forward.

Chris and Jen couldn’t help me. If they touched me the creature would slip pass the barrier through the contact and even Jen, who wasn’t human would be an acceptable receptacle for the creature.

I let myself fall forward, pulling more of my body through and then crawled ahead. With each inches that was leaving the circle the creature’s hold on me weakened and then, suddenly, I was free.