How to be Badass (2nd Draft)

When Mimi was seventeen years old, her family, guild, and life was torn apart by demons.

The first time, it was a shock. She remembers it viscerally, the tearing of the fabric between the human world and the demonic realm, the crashing of half-demons from their world to hers. She saw the fabric between the two stretch and break, and in the shocking absurdity of the situation she remembered comparing it to putting oil on a condom. The half-demon tumbled through in front of her, where she stood on the stairs to the mess with her sister. It had taken a moment for them to respond, and really it was thirteen year old sister Mila who responded first. “We need to get to the armory!” she’d yelled, pulling out the two knives she kept on her, even to breakfast.

They’d tried to get to the armory, but within minutes the things were everywhere. She remembers flashes of images; Mila’s teacher putting himself between her and the half demon, eyes serious and issuing orders; a streak of blood in an otherwise empty hall as Mimi scrambled to follow them; the body of one of her guild mates on the steps outside the building, face down so that Mimi didn’t have to see her face. She had tried not to run her mind through who it could have been but she couldn’t stop herself. The list wrote itself in her mind. Was it Erin? Kaellin? She didn’t have time to stop and check. She didn’t want to stop and check. She called for reinforcements before rushing back in to try to help fight off the swell of half-demons.

Reinforcements didn’t come in time. At first she thought they had; she’d been backed into a corner by the half-demons, and would have been overwhelmed if they hadn’t gotten there when they did. As it turned out, though, Mimi only ever saw Mila once more, rushing into the room with the reinforcements from the New York Master Guild just as she was cut down, beside her teacher.

The experience of watching one of your sisters killed in front of you is undoubtedly a unique one. It was as if Mimi’s breath was stolen from her, and replaced with far too many different feelings; rage, grief, denial. She could feel it shaking through her limbs, and Mimi would have done anything to have been able to fix that moment. Although her father and other sister were killed that day as well, and she mourned them as well, the visceral vision of her sister falling, her blood horribly on the ground, and there not being a damn thing Mimi could do about it was far more potent. Mimi had always thought the colour of blood was striking and beautiful but in that moment horrible was all she could think. Horrible. Horrible. She’d never really liked it again.

The second time hadn’t surprised her in the least, but that was a thought for another time.

This was what Mimi thought about as she watched the TV above the fireplace (a stupid place for it, really). Mass Murderer Strikes Again was the news story, featuring several blurred out bodies and a suitably grim looking news reporter.

“Another one?” Queri asked her, leaning over the couch to rest her chin on Mimi’s head.

Mimi gave a half shrug. “It does seem likely…” though she couldn’t figure out how or why yet. The hard thing about tracking demonic crimes: The culprits weren’t in this world to track. Demons weren’t able to stay in the human world for very long at all, usually however long it took them to kill the vessel they were possessing (either on purpose or by accident), resulting in what was usually a distinct lack of planning behind any activity here.

The incidents of which Queri spoke were of note because they would only be possible with significant planning—or just stupid good luck—involved. Cameras were turned off, police weren’t alerted, experts proclaimed what was clearly murdrous activity (or in Mimi’s opinion, demonic) as an accident, and no witnesses were left alive. It also meant that they were trying to protect the identities of the vessels, which was uncharacteristically thoughtful of demons. Which meant one of two things: either demons were taking their deals with humans more seriously (which seemed unlikely to Mimi), or they were hiding them for their own benefit (which also seemed unlikely to Mimi, but much more characteristic).

The attacks had been going on for nine years, though it had taken the first two or three years for Mimi to become suspicious. The pattern was hard to track, between the changing locations, cover-ups, and differing victims, but the nearest she and her rag tag guild could figure these attacks occurred every week, on a Wednesday.

Nine years.

Thousands of lives.

Anger and frustration pumped through Mimi, welling with her blood, and she narrowed her eyes at the screen. She was what she had been raised to be; a demonslayer. A protector of those who did not know the truth of the world. And she couldn’t figure out how to do a damn thing about this. With a soft sigh, Queri slipped over the top of the couch and curled up beside Mimi, her dark afro brushing against Mimi’s face. “That tickles,” Mimi mumbled, feeling grouchy.

“Oh don’t growl at me,” Queri said, unaffected by her grouchiness. “You know I make you feel better.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Mimi shot back. But she was right, so Mimi allowed Queri to lean into her, head against her own shoulder, hair in her face. It obstructed the TV. Mimi found this somewhat poignant.

“I would never flatter myself, but I will communicate the truth when necessary,” Queri said.

“Don’t use your lawyer voice on me,” Mimi said, but the bite was gone from her words.

“Don’t, don’t, don’t,” Queri said disinterestedly. “How about we get some sushi, hmm? Make you feel better.”

When Allen was five years old, he was told his mother was going to die.

It really shouldn’t have been as much as a shock as it was; she’d been in a coma for three years already. And perhaps it wasn’t, really; he remembered not being able to cry, he remembered the dryness of his cheeks, his eyes, his mind. He remembered the unfairness of it all, wanting to scream as Dad held him as he burst with the weight of it all, but they didn’t have any money left, and they couldn’t keep her alive.

A week later, he was told to say goodbye, and then his father took him for a car ride. It was a long car ride, and he thought maybe he should have fallen asleep, but he strained awake, eyes wide open, the image of his mother lying in the hospital bed engraved in them. He wondered if you looked into his eyes you could see it carved there.

They stopped at a doctor’s office, and Allen couldn’t read the sign because he wasn’t very good at reading letters. They were small and italicized. Inside was a lady with lots of marks all over her body, and Dad made Allen go with the lady, even when Allen finally started crying and said he didn’t want to lose his daddy too. He told Allen that he wouldn’t lose him, he’d see him again, but he sounded scared, and this only made Allen cry harder. The lady stuck a needle in Allen’s arm that made him fall asleep with the feeling of tears in his eyelashes and dripping from his jaw. The needle hurt a lot. Allen wondered if it would have hurt less if he had relaxed, like daddy always told him too for his vaccines.

The next thing he remembered was screaming. It was dark and he was screaming but no sound was coming out, his body was moving in the darkness, moving, moving, but he wasn’t the one moving it. There was nothing else.

It was like this for a very long time. It was scary and Allen had been tired and cold and it was dark. He hated it. He had had nothing to hold onto, no control. The world was slippery, like silk sheets, only he wasn’t in bed and he wasn’t dreaming. He wanted to see, he wanted to hear and feel, he wanted out of this jumbled nothing. He wanted it so badly that he made it happen, through sheer force of will conjured up from nothing but the absolute blind horror of having no control. Hours, days, months later, he could see, he could see a white room. It might have once sterile but now streaked with the blood that oozed from the gouge marks Allen had carved, uncontrollably, into his own skin. The walls were as clawed as his body; black scratches maniacally swerving, broken against the cleanness of the walls.

He quickly realized that his body as well as his mind was in agonizing pain. It seeped and flared from inflamed scratches and deep bruises that pooled like the great lakes on his body. There were so many different kinds of pain; pain from serrations, pain from not sleeping, pain from blunt force, and breaks, pain everywhere that wouldn’t go away. The pain was so much that everything went black again as whatever controlled his body threw itself against the wall with far more power than any five year old could comprehend. No properly functioning human body let itself use that much strength lest it hurt itself.

Demons didn’t care about that.

Allen later learned from his father that he had been possessed by dozens of different demons for three days in that room, an adjustment exercise for what would become his new life. Allen didn’t think he was quite so childlike after this, so trusting. What can you trust in, if not your father to protect you and your body to be your own?

This is what Allen thought about as he sat on a bench in an indoor mall. It’s a sunny day out, he had a knife in his right boot, and he was waiting, like he always was on a Wednesday afternoon, to be possessed. He didn’t know how the people around him couldn’t see the guilt on his skin. To them he was just another kid at the mall skipping school. He attracted dirty looks, but not much else. Allen stared hard at the ground. He didn’t want to see the faces of the people he’d soon be killing.

Flaring his nostrils, he breathed out hard, trying not to panic, even after all these years, as he felt his muscles slacken, face loosen and eyes unfocus. Allen heard and felt himself breathe in, but it isn’t him who’s doing it.

Allen’s body stands up, takes the knife out of his boot, and slashes a passing pedestrian clear across the neck, smatterings of blood flying into both their faces and coating Allen’s hand. He could feel it, hot and wet against his skin, life turning to death.

The massacre begins.

At the end of the hour, Allen felt control return to his body, and he involuntarily slumped to the floor. His limbs trembled as he pushed himself back up. Staying in the location he’d been given for his possession wasn’t just unpleasant, but it was against the one of the few rules he’d been given to follow by his father. At first they’d had to carry him out, his body not yet used to the unique complete body workout that only a demonic possession could deliver.

Breathing carefully from his mouth, Allen navigated his way out of the mall. It had been a bad one; often, it was a small room, a few people. Sometimes it was even just one. Whoever—or whatever—had paid to possess him this week had clearly paid quite a lot.

He didn’t know which ones were worse—the massive massacres or the tiny murders. Objectively, of course, the ones with more were, but there was something horribly personal about there being only one. Those were the ones that made him cry. Ones like these he just… shut down.

Once outside the mall, tried to focus on the bite of the air as it stung his eyes and scraped his skin, unseasonal for early October, as he made his way to a nondescript black shuttle idling in the parking lot. He let himself in, and threw himself into a seat. He didn’t bother with a seatbelt, and whoever it was driving didn’t bother to remind him as the shuttle started moving. I’m doing this for mom, Allen said to himself, more of an automatic mantra at this point than a conscious thought. He pulled his knees up onto the chair in front of him and took out his headphones for the trip home.

The shuttle dropped him conspicuously in front of his house, one in a long line of very similar houses deep in the suburbs of southern New York, and he let himself in. He heard footsteps and a voice in the kitchen to his left and immediately tensed.

“-I need to know the address.”

A work call. His father was a CPS investigator.

Allen knew he had to go through there in order to get upstairs to his room. He leaned back against the front door to close it, and stayed there for a second, breathing quietly. There was more silence, and then, “Yes, I know. Isadora Lisbon, six years old, only child.”

He wondered if he could wait here until his father left the kitchen, but it sounded like he was getting ready to leave. What if he left through here? And then he’d be confronted with his father in the front hall, which was horribly cramped and it would be clear he was afraid and that would be so much worse.

A dull, empty feeling radiated out from his stomach as he realized he had no choice, aside just turning right around and leaving. He considered it—just running away from his fear—but Dustin was in his room and he’d been alone all day.

That settled it. Hunching his shoulders, Allen stepped into the kitchen. His father was there, making a cup of coffee, impeccable in his suit. He didn’t even look at Allen, and Allen tried to reciprocate but his body was traitorous and snuck glances at him as he crossed the kitchen as quickly and mousishly as he could. His father’s hands were the same as Allen’s as he stirred cream into his coffee, as was his thick, dark brown hair as it fell into his face, despite being carefully combed back.

He didn’t look like a bad person. Allen wasn’t even sure that he was. It was a fight he had with himself often. It didn’t change the truth that he was afraid of his father, afraid of his words and his sudden movements, though they rarely struck him.

Once he was halfway up the stairs and out of sight of the kitchen without any sign of recognition from his father, Allen felt the knot of his gut loosen just a bit. He massaged his chest, face slack, as he made his way to his room at the end of the hall. An old label his kindergarten teacher had made for him with his name and some doodles was stuck to the door with a tack.

He kicked the door closed behind him just a little too hard and cringed inwardly. It took him one glance to realize that Dustin did not appear to be inside. It was small, cluttered, and smelled heavily of take out, but Dustin was clearly not among this. This was concerning, since he was a secret.

“Dustin?” Allen said, looking around.

“Oh, hi,” a voice said from under the twin bed in the corner of the room. Relieved, Allen shuffled forwawrds as a boy shimmied out from under it. He looked slightly… strange. His eyes were slightly too blue, his skin and hair too white. And he was wearing five different sweaters as well as being wrapped in a quilt. “Your dad turned on the heat so I was sitting on your heating vent.”

“Ah,” Allen said, voice dull. He managed a small smile at Dustin. “I’m glad. He’s so cheap that he hardly ever does that.”

That single sentence was exhausting enough that he didn’t try to say anything else. Dustin stood up, letting the quilt fall to the ground, he walked over to Allen and ruffled his hair affectionately, looking down at him. Despite the fact that he was both taller and older than Allen, he only made Allen feel condescended when Allen was in the worst of moods. Dustin was an exceptionally gentle soul, and it radiated from him.

As he did every time he was with Dustin, Allen thanked whatever there was to thank (he wasn’t sure if he still believed in God) that they had found each other. Allen couldn’t be sure if Dustin had truly saved his life, but he’d certainly made his life more bearable, and he hoped the same could be said for Dustin as well.

This is keeping mom alive, he told himself again, as another part of his mind started whispering, Weak, pathetic, demon plaything in his ear. This was the deal. He was a vessel for demons addicted to human souls (or whoever was willing to pay), and they paid for his mother’s continued care.

He flopped backwards into bed. He felt like shit. He wondered if he’d ever move again. Maybe he could just not move and starve himself out, and never have to kill anyone again. He was thin enough that he might not even last until next Wednesday. Or maybe he would? He really didn’t know anything about starvation. This helps mom.

After a few minutes of silence, heavy as it was, he heard the gentle clang of strings as Dustin removed the guitar from its stand in the most derelict corner of Allen’s room. He hardly touched the thing, despite the fact that he’d bought it, but Dustin seemed to enjoy it despite a distinct lack of skill.

He felt Dustin settle on the bed beside him, their knees touching, and then heard a couple gentle pings as Dustin tried to tune it. After a moment of listening painfully, Allen tossed his phone blindly onto the bed. Without either of them saying anything, Dustin reached out to grab it, bringing up Allen’s tuning app.

“Thanks,” Dustin said softly. He began playing, so softly. It was a soft guitar. Dustin was a soft person. They really got along quite well. Allen breathed in deeply, as if he could take in the sound of Dustin’s gentle notes and keep them in him as his own personal soldiers.

After a few minutes of listening in silence, Allen got up to make his own soldiers, pulling his saxophone out of its case and sticking the reed in his mouth. As soon as Allen had the sax set up and the mouthpiece in his mouth, Dustin quietly dropped off his playing. He was draped over the guitar, looking at Allen expectantly, which still made Allen blush with self-consciousness after a year of having Dustin around. Playing for someone was always a deeply personal thing.

He started off with a rather unadorned version of Stardust by Hoagy Carmichael, something he could charge with everything he was feeling (and pretended he wasn’t). It was in the rise and fall of his breath, mirrored in the music, fulfilled by lilting vibrato and stagnant pools of sound and unsound.

When he finished he let out his remaining breath, taking a space of time to throw a small smile at Dustin, who smiled back contently, before he launched into something a little more technical, his eyebrows rising and falling depending on the resonance of his instrument and the clarity of the notes. Dustin huffed a laugh, reaching forwards to run a finger along his eyebrows. He had once told him that Allen wore his heart on his eyebrows.

If Allen wore his heart on his eyebrows, then Dustin wore his on his mouth, and the curve of his shoulders. Allen could almost always guess what Dustin was feeling, and even what he may be thinking, from these two things. Right now his shoulders were curved slightly and so was his mouth. He was relaxed, but worried. Probably for Allen.

It continued to be a novelty for Allen, this concern for him. He simultaneously felt bad about causing it, and craved it, because it meant he cared.

Taking his saxophone out of his mouth, Allen said, “Wanna play Portal?”