I am, The Demon - Roger Skeen (no david read aloud TXT) 📗

Rage didn’t even start to cover what was enveloping my mind. I glared out of my cover, ready to breach its defenses for the first time in a long time. They had me surrounded, and out matched. I was sick of being cornered by society. I was ready to live the way I wanted to.
The dark arts guarded me. A black aura surrounded me as I took the first step into daylight I have ever taken. The angels drew their swords. I was ready, they had already lost, I had foreseen it.
I unsheathed my soul-reaper. My scythe with half a handle and a strange blade on the other end gleamed darkly in the light. My pitch-colored eyes bounced from one of them to the other.
They charged. Blood colored the street, feathers spun around in the wind. The now dead angels lay strewn amongst the rubble of the collapsed, post-apocalyptic buildings.
Now the truth of my situation reveals itself. It will tear at the comprehension of your mortal mind. It will break the fabric of wool woven over your eyes. The truth is, your “angels,” those winged incarnations of saving grace, have no interest in your life. All you are is a speck of dust for them to blow out of the way. They only care about impressing their maker.
I am a demon. Oh yes, I feel that instant hatred for me. I have “fallen” from the path you deem just, and moral, but haven’t all humans? The difference between a human damned to hell and a demon is; a human doesn’t have wings to break.
I was one of them once. The angels you are witnessing at my feet. Tortured and mutilated in the fires of hell. My wings shattered when I disobeyed him. Sent to stop a human from making others divert from his path, I wouldn’t take the life. We were told, at one time, to guard your mortal lives, even if it meant giving our own.
Lucifer released me, knowing I wouldn’t allow the apocalypse to destroy you all. I was shackled in a pit of sulfur. Fire with the intensity of the sun seared my flesh to incomprehensible char. My once beautiful face, was gone, in its place was burnt muscle, and barely contained eyeballs. My once beautiful golden hair, was stuck to itself with the pitch they dumped on me, it now had the color of ash. My once glorious wings were broken and bent into undefinable shapes. Blood dripped from my body in random areas where my still healing flesh cracked. There were deep gashes in my back from the toll man’s whip.
I came to save you. I might be the demon,and despite what you have heard about demons, I am not the bad-guy. Now, come with me, or fall to the angels. They will not show you mercy. They worry only about impressing their god.

I came to save you, and, unlike others, I am not bothered by your contempt. I fear my own reflection too. You look at me and feel fear, not because of my appearance, but because of what it means. You could look like this. You, could be tortured until all your human features are gone, replaced by the scars of your suffering. In the end, that suffering would be at your own hands, because of your own hands.
I found you in that prison. Tracked you based on memory. You were the one, the one I was supposed to kill. I spared you, not once, but twice. Yet, still you glare at me from the comfort of your campfire. Still you see me and feel anger. You hate me for what you have been taught I am. Even though you have never believed in me before now.
I am the only thing standing between you and the supernatural powers your calculating mind never conjured a belief in. You have heard the stories of millions fighting over the pettiness of religion. Wars have surrounded it, and you viewed it with the same annoyance as a dog would view a flea. A petty plight on the human condition. These were among the thoughts you had on religion.
What do you think now? You see me in all of my glory. The winged legions of heaven marched on the earth. Do you still think that you were right? Does it change your outlook at all? No. It hasn’t. You still believe that this is a dream. That at some point you will wake up and all of this will have been a dream. It won’t.
Your world is burning. The human race is falling into the darkness. The only thing preventing you from falling with it is one soul, lost to the rest of the world a thousand years before your time, one that your history and myth would tell you is the bad guy. I did not sign up for the title demon. It was given to all angels that stray from his command. Whether he is right or wrong in our mind, we were required to follow his orders to the letter. He taught us to love them, then he taught us to kill them.
My love for humans was born not by his doing, but by example. Taught by him that one random act of kindness is worth seven faults, I set out into the world. He sent us all out to experiment. To push you around like one would poke at bacterium under a microscope. I tested the geniuses gone rogue, like yourself. I pushed in front of them opportunity to do right. You were testing the system, killing again and again, just to prove you were too smart to get caught. I placed before you reason to change. I saw in your mind your instant acceptance of a different life. Old habits passed you by and you resisted.
He sent me to take you to your final judgement and I stalled. I had seen the spark of good in you, and I wasn’t going to kill the fire that I had kindled. I spared your life, and in doing so damned my own. I suffered for you, but you won’t understand fully until the whip comes down on your back. My greatest fear is, when the time comes, I’ll be the one holding the whip.

Death, was only the beginning...
The concept of it chills your body to its very core, and yet: you are still so fascinated by it. The final judgement was harsher than the pits of hell itself. Your whole life is roll out in front of you. Every deep, dark, secret thought you hid inside you; revealed. It makes you feel naked, exposed to everything and everyone.
Up until that point, disobeying Him had not made me feel guilty. As the life He had given me flashed before my eyes, I realized, He deserved my servitude. I felt like I had betrayed the only thing that had given my life meaning, and in doing so, I failed myself. Then He hurt me. Breaking my will and slamming it into the dust of this world.
As my eyes reeled in my head from the hit, all before me went as black as the void. I felt my wings crack in multiple places, never again was I to fly to His gates. I knew my time had come, and for a moment, I resisted. The attempt was futile. Lucifer himself came to claim this prize. He bound me in chains and shackles. An angel that had disobeyed Him, was a soldier for the dark one. Or so, he thought.
The chariot of fire bore us down. Down. Through the very crust of Earth we rode. Once we broke through the rock, a field surrounded us. Sulfur was the only standing formation. Magnesium burned, its white flames everywhere. All around me were pits. Demons, and other things that crawled in the dark of this world surrounded them. They pleasure themselves by using the whips, and other devices to twisted and evil to have been of this world, on the tenants of the pits.
They scalded the dead with pitch, dumping it over their heads. It pours slowly down their body. They could suffer, they could burn, but they could not die. They survived in unending agony. The demons cackled evilly as they tortured the hell-bound. I knew chances were I would be their next victim.
Lucifer stopped us in front of his mansion. He pulled me out of the chariot by my shattered wing. I twisted in agony, and fractured dignity. I turned and followed him as he yanked the chain that bound my shackles together. My foot came down onto the burning ground, and instantly I felt the skin on my foot melt off after blisters formed and popped. Every step I took left a pool of blood that caught fire. My path was burning behind me. As we passed into his house I lost all security, every thought I had of hope was left burning at the door step.
“Bow before