∞ Colin ∞

A part of me just wants to go to bed and forget about everything, but I can’t. I must use this opportunity to finish what I started weeks ago.

If I am lucky and everything works out as planned, I will be locked in the cellar room, and an antique specialist will take care of the remaining stuff I have put in several deposit boxes, every time an email is sent out to him. Everything will be taken care of; my little brother, and this estate.

The clock is ticking.

I might not get another chance like this. I must act. This must end now while Rab is sleeping.

As I enter the house, I disable the security system I installed myself a few weeks ago. No one knows the code, and I’ve sent Jax an email that I sold the place, so he won’t try and get in. I decide to change the key to unlock my prison again and choose a random eight digit combination so I won’t remember it either, and because of that Rabisu won’t know it as well.

I’ve been avoiding memorizing everything in my head so that Rab won’t know it. It took me months to figure out how to get things past him, but I found a way. I created a map of my house with its own code names for locations and furniture. All from the top of my head, while watching lousy soaps. When I hid the stuff, I hummed songs I hated, thinking of anything else but the thing and the spot.

Now, I get the map and locate the translator sheet, so that I can go through with the ritual. I had planned to execute this at a later time of the month, but there won’t be another chance like this, with Rabisu being under like this.

I scattered the items and ingredients all across the two-story house including the cellar. Because of that, it takes me some time to gather everything and wrap my head around the ritual, which is in Babylonian.

It’s strange that I seem to be able to get through this without Rabisu waking up. Usually, he explodes into action every time I try anything that might harm him or me.

Not this time.

Maybe having sex with Jo in my truck knocked him out for good this time, since the only thing I can sense is this additional weight, this chain around some invisible part inside of me. It’s not the heart, not really, I guess it’s where the soul is.

I cannot distract myself with thinking about that right now. I must follow through with this quickly, as long as I have the chance. There’s a test that will show me whether he is toying with me or not, yet I don’t dare try it because I might wake him by doing so. Also, there is a part of the ritual that requires just that. I’m getting more anxious with every breath I take, and that passes. There is no going back now.

I’m sorry, Jo.

After putting everything at the right place in the cellar, I kill all the lights in the house. The only place remaining lit is the large room, which will become my prison for maybe all of eternity. I’ve put up black candles at the outer corners of the seal runes I had worked into the ceiling and floor by using mosaic tiles and mixed all the strange ingredients into the mortar before I sealed it with see-through acrylic to make sure that both seals withstand Rabisu’s rage or any natural disaster.

He will not be able to free himself.

The ritual I will be reciting has three parts. After I have finished the second part, Rabisu will wake up and try to fight me with everything he has got. But I must pull through and complete the final incantation which will activate the mystical powers of both the seal runes and the ingredients. Once the ritual is complete, Rabisu and I will be locked away forever.

As long as no one destroys both runes at the same position, which could only be done by a human with a pure soul, as that person is the only one who can cross these magical lines. But no one gets past the security system.

The first part I have already used several times, and Rabisu didn’t care since it is a spell for protection and cleaning out the house from any spirits and energies. This will make sure that I am not disturbed when executing the other two parts of the ritual.

When he stirs and wakes while I am doing this, he probably will go back to sleep right away, because it is plain annoying to him. And I am counting on it. I did my best to bore the hell out of him and if I am lucky he won’t even notice that I am sitting in the middle of a nine-foot-times-nine-foot rune in the cellar of my house. I also sound bored to my own ears as I recite the words.

I feel Rabisu slithering around my heart and soul like the snake he is, but I don’t pause and merely continue lifting the bowl with the smoldering herbs and woods, drawing another rune with the smoke. He stops after a while, and I try to remain calm, hoping he will blame the accelerating of my heartbeat on me sensing him waking up.

It’s a matter of seconds. I can’t wait too long, but I cannot act too early, or Rabisu might stop me.

Quickly, I pull the antique silver dagger lying in front of me from its sheath and get onto my feet, pressing the sharp tip against my chest just two inches below the base of my neck.

In front of me is a mirror. It’s small and even older than the dagger. One of Rabisu’s souvenirs. I put it there pretending that I liked it, but I only did it since I needed it for this exact moment. There is no time for hesitation, harming yourself takes a lot of strength and resolve. I push the weapon and pierce through my skin drawing blood. Rab will feel this, and he will wake up. While speaking the Babylonian incantation through my gritted teeth, I continue to cut into my chest mirror-inverted. I have only managed to finish the first symbol when I sense the demon waking up. I must hurry, but I also must get these ciphers right. Since I was too afraid Rabisu would find out what I was planning to do, I never practiced drawing these exact cryptograms, which slows me down. After I’ve cut the second one into my body, I can feel how the demon is reaching out into my limbs getting ready to take over. I know only the positions of these symbols are important but not the sequence in which they are drawn, so I instantly jump to the one that means as much as ‘weakness’ in English. My hands start to tremble, and I am not sure if it is the rune or Rabisu. I jump to the one that means ‘pain’ next.

I feel as if I am growing weaker, and as if the pain is growing stronger with every breath taken that passes. It makes sense that the sigils will affect me too. After all, many of my abilities come from the demon residing in my body or are increased by Rabisu. To me that only means it works.

After the cryptogram is finished, I return to the sequence and cut the symbol that stands for ‘control’ into my skin, ignoring the ache the silver blade causes. It’s nothing compared to the jolt of electricity that shoots through my nervous system as Rabisu now tries more forcibly to take my body from me. I have to slow down to make sure I draw these ciphers right since I have to cut them mirror-reversed.

The next one stands for ‘lock’ which is the most important one. It will lock Rabisu within my body, and that will prevent him from jumping into a new one should he fail to keep me alive or my soul within his grasp.

Jumping into a new body would not really help him as long as the sigils on the floor and at the ceiling are intact. But better safe than sorry. The bastard is stuck with me now. Well, unless I don’t manage to finish this rune and fail to complete the third part of the ritual. It is only a matter of seconds until he’ll try to make me fail. I must brace myself and hurry at the same time.

Once Rabisu knows what I am up to he will come at me with all his force. And right now he will be at the peak of his strength and power. I must use the time that is left until he realizes the situation and I finish the seal on my body.

 

∞ Rabisu ∞

The familiar scratching wakes me from my slumber and leaves me confused. I do not sense pain like most humans do, at least not when I am not in full control over my host's body. It is somewhat like an annoying itch more than pain. What confuses me is that I feel that at all because it means that Colin is hurting himself which would be the stupidest thing he could do right at this moment. And, he is aware of that. I will only heal him and bring him back should he try to kill himself. After all, it was him who gave me the extra dessert before doing the silly cleaning ritual again. No entity will dare come close to me, so it is unnecessary, but I like to give my slaves some sense of freedom. However, it seems that Colin used my generosity against me.

Being fed so well has made me slow and sluggish, and I realize what my host is trying to do when it is almost too late. He is even more prepared than I dare to expect as he jumps back and forth cutting sigils into his chest that slow me down and worse.

I knew he was up to something against me, but I underestimated his resolve and his determination. I was soft and gave him freer rein than I should have, yet I was under the impression that he had settled for just complaining, self-pity, and looking for a way out, and not locking me inside him forever. How could that get past me? I must be getting old.

Using his eyes, I can see in the mirror he put up in his cellar what kind of magic he is conjuring, to make his body my prison. I do not quite worry about this spell, as the sigil he is carving into his chest can be destroyed. It’s not the first time someone attempted this. The problem with it right now is that if I try to heal the cut, it will only scar faster but will not vanish. It must be finished and then broken first.

I do not worry about this because even though it will weaken me and slow me down, I am still strong enough to overpower Colin. What I need to find out is what his next step is. He gathered a lot of various ingredients which make no sense to me, and Colin’s memory is scattered as if he knew I would try to get the necessary information from him.

What I need is time. So, I do the only thing that will help me get more time: I must slow Colin down while rummaging through his mind to find the answer I am looking for. He will let his guard down if I seem weak to him and maybe I will see the right hint.

Colin is smart. All I can find in his memories are snippets of strange ciphers I have never seen, and all the stuff he gathered: Some of them are familiar, others seem to be things from the centuries I have missed out on. It makes no sense.

I fight against him for the control over his limbs. I make his hands tremble as he now uses both of them, to continue cutting himself. Now, I realize that I can either try and work on his mind or stop him from finishing that stupid magical lock. I choose the first and work backward in his memories, to see what of the ingredients and artifacts he has collected from the hiding spots, only to realize that he took all of it.

I stop at the very moment when he replaces the code of his security-system from his mother’s birthday to a supposedly random one. Five, triple six, two, double six, two. That is not so random. I thought that very moment I would only play a joke on him. Lucky for me, I did, and made him type J-O-A-N-A. Should she come looking for him – and I am sure that she will – she might be smart enough to try her own name, to get inside.

Now, I must continue and go further down Colin’s memories, and he allows me, which only helps me speeding through them faster. However, I have the terrible feeling that I will not find anything helpful but gibberish snippets of what looks like a map.

When I realize that he has been tricking me, it is already too late for me to stop him from finishing the lock, or prevent him from drinking the poison he has prepared to weaken me even more. It is a dangerous potion, a mixture including Quicksilver and salt from the Dead Sea. Those two ingredients would kill him separately if it were not for me. It is my instinct to work against the poison, to fight it and heal his body. I did not see that coming. I did not expect Colin to drink these things that can protect from or confine mythical entities. Lore says evil ones.

I invest a lot of my power in saving that stupid human, and I realize too late that he uses my instinct against me. Colin knows that it is more straining for me to bring him back to life than rescuing him. Also, he deserves to suffer for this, feel the agony he puts me through just to save his sorry ass.

I still have some aces up my sleeve.

 

∞ Colin ∞

Now comes the hardest part.

I know I can count on Rabisu’s arrogance.

He won’t do the smartest thing because he is spiteful. This cocky demon always chooses to hurt me and to get back at me over the more reasonable choice.

And tonight is no different.

He won’t let me die, but he won’t resolve the several toxic liquids I ingested, and which are eating through my stomach either.

The pain is more horrible than I expected. Acid reflux is nothing in comparison, it doesn’t even get close, at all. Describing actual acid dissolving your body from the inside is hard if not impossible. I don’t know how I manage to do it, but after falling to my knees as my body tries to throw up the disgusting soup, I mixed, I slowly get up again and swallow it back down through my dissolving esophagus.

I need to continue because I have no idea when Rab’s intelligence will overcome his arrogance and spite. My voice is croaking as I start to recite the first words of the ritual that will create the cage to seal the two of us away for good. Silently, I pray to whoever might listen, that I won’t have to swallow that stuff down again and lose my voice for good. Without it, I can’t recite the words. If I am lucky, I might only need to mouth and think them. Fortunately, thanks to Rabisu, I understand every single word I am speaking. I just hope that the spirits I try to conjure to help me create the cage still exist. I added some alleged arch-angles and saints for good measure, as well as some good gods from other religions earlier. It won’t change the sealing ritual if they don’t show, but it doesn’t hurt to have some additional help.

Despite the agonizing pain, I somehow manage to progress faster than I expected, but the second I feel something like hope, it gets crushed relentlessly.

I must have pissed him off more than I intended.

Rabisu is too busy trying to heal the damage the toxic agents I ingested so he can use his favorite toy to its full potential again, and it still has its terrible effects. The cellar I am in vanishes, and I find myself in the living room instead. The image is like a veil being thrown over the actual place I am in, but it is still distracting, especially since I am not alone, and it is a memory.

At least I think it is, but I can’t let it distract me. If I stop reciting a verse or pronounce a word wrong, I have to start that part all over again. It’s twelve verses.

Rab brought back this memory, so many times it almost feels as if it has lost its impact on me. My dad creating bruises on my mother’s upper arm because she burned his steak after a long day of nursing my little brother Jax and me back to health. It was the same thing with everything Mom allegedly did wrong. And when she didn’t make mistakes, my father found a reason to hit her anyway. This memory is the day I came downstairs and told him to stop hurting her.

“Your mother needs some decent beating ‘cause she won’t stop whoring around,” I hear my late father yell at me.

I knew then already that he was the one forcing her to have sex with some of his friends because he lost all his money betting on stuff, or poker.

I can’t quite recall anymore.

I need to ignore this.

Yes, I might have grown a bit more numb towards this memory, but it still stings deeper than the acid in my body.

I don’t have to listen to the hallucination to know what my father bellows and what will happen next. That night he ordered me to not move an inch, or he would hurt my mother even worse. That night, he raped her in front of me, barking that this is what whores deserved, and I shouldn’t forget it. I should remember how to treat whores.

I grit my teeth and continue reading the words from the piece of paper at my feet while mixing exactly twelve different herbs and woods into the bowl with which I cleaned my house from spirits. As I recite the next line of the verse, I light the contents on fire, and a cryptogram on both floor and ceiling starts to glow.

It is working.

My mother’s screams and whines mix with the sobs of my ten-year-old self. I close my eyes to drown myself in darkness and at least shut out the images, but it only makes the sound worse.

My mom’s scream of agony forces my eyes open, and I know he’s now abusing her anally.

I catch myself trying to think myself away as I did back then, but I can’t allow myself that luxury. I need to continue the ritual. The next cryptogram and verse can’t wait.

Ironically, I am almost grateful for Rab projecting that memory in front of me, because the hurt of seeing this again numbs the pain from the toxic potion eating away at my body. Somehow, reciting the next verse seems less complicated than the first one.

I follow the maps I scribbled and pull out the next piece of paper on which I put down the second verse. I gather all the ingredients from the bags I positioned all around the room and start speaking the words.

When the noises around me change, I know that I’ve relaxed too early. I do my best not to look at the scene that hasn’t changed, only the sounds. One voice to be exact. I ignore it determinedly, concentrate on the agony within my body and recite the second verse as I put the ingredients together and light them up with fire.

I know that voice. I know it far too well.

The second cryptogram starts glowing, but I only see it from the corner of my eyes. I can’t help it. It’s the curse of being human that you just must look at something terrible happening.

My resolve shatters into countless pieces as Rabisu has replaced my mother with Jo.

Jo, who is looking at me, her face battered and bruised, bleeding from the nose and one corner of her mouth, her eyes smeared with black, while my father is defiling her.

Rage is blazing inside of me, and I growl.

I clench my hands into fists and turn towards my father. My stomach feels as if it is a kettle and the content is boiling. It is bubbling right back up my throat, and I manage to swallow it down before it reaches my vocal chords.

Somehow, I tear myself away.

This is an illusion.

Rabisu knows that I care about her.

He tries to make me stop.

He’s scared, I tell myself, desperate.

 

∞ Rabisu ∞

I know fear and despair are none of what I feel right now. This is all part of the punishment for trying to imprison me once again. Colin won’t be able to finish this ritual, and I will use the time he attempts to futilely detain me once again.

Making him see his father raping Joana had just the right amount of impact on him, but not enough. He needs to suffer more.

So, I make him relive this night again, behind the bar, Joana up against the wall, shouting my name and not his. It stings Colin just enough to make him angry which is precisely what I want him to be because it makes me stronger.

After I have disintegrated these toxic ingredients, I will make him suffer even more for attempting this pathetic excuse of an evil trick. Yet, I must applaud the fact that Colin has gotten this far. Let’s see how much further he succeeds to pull through.

I am not very surprised because after all, I picked Colin because he is a fighter, passionate in both war and love, although he might not agree with me on that. His anger slowly turns into rage and then fury, which is all I need. And all I need to do is imagine what I would like to do to Joana using Colin’s body to unsettle him.

Unfortunately, I must distribute my powers to different fronts, which means I must forgo reading his thoughts about all of what he sees, but not feels. I guess that is the real triumph. And that is what I tell him.

When this is over, and Joana comes to see him, I will not allow him to take the reins, and I will allow him to watch how I make her repeatedly orgasm while he will not sense a damn thing. I will make sure that Joana comes back for more.

Often enough that I will be fed from her pleasure alone and his futile war against me. Maybe I will start a life with her. It will be me waking up next to her in a white room drowned in sunlight bedded on clouds of feathers. I will be the one who can feel her fingertips touching my face, drawing the lines she likes so much. Joana will smile at me, fall in love with me, maybe even marry me, and Colin will be the one confined in a cage, doomed to witness and watch, powerless.

I was soft with you, Colin, generous, reasonable, and understanding. Now you have lost my goodwill.

You will learn what it feels like to be a prisoner, in solitary confinement, swallowed in darkness, losing all sense of time, space, and life. You only caught a glimpse of it through my memories, but you do not know how it really feels. I will teach you. It is up to you how many lessons you will have to go through.

 

∞ Colin ∞

I can hear Rabisu continually nagging at me in the back of my head. He still doesn’t believe that I will be able to pull this off. It annoys me. It makes me angry, but not as much as the images he shows me of Jo enjoying his company. His and not mine. But there is no us. Jo and I aren’t an item. It’s all in my head, and in hers.

I knew he would use that daydream of hers to try and torment me. I humor him by getting mad.

The only thing he isn’t aware of is that I’m not mad at him. I am angry at myself because I am giving up on a chance at something ordinary. Despite having a frigging demon inside of me. I’ve seen and sensed his reaction to her. I’ve felt how much stronger she made him. He would allow it.

His fury speaks volumes. But I am about to take that all away. I never believed that I would have a chance at a white-picket-fence. But on the day I sacrifice myself, my future, and my dreams to imprison a demon, I get a glimpse of just that.

I am doing this to protect everyone, to protect my little brother, to protect Jo. The world can spare me. I have done my duty. Jax is going to be taken care of by the income this old Babylonian garbage is going to supply.

Is this Rabisu? Or is this me? Making me believe that I could have something ordinary with Jo. I would have that if not for Rabisu. He is evil. He spreads suffering, agony, and war. I am doing the right thing.

Aren’t I?