The Mongers

The terrible sense of Déjà vu swept over him as Billy threw him to the black top. He knew he had been here before as his tormentor mounted him pinning him to the ground. His shrill cries only caused Billy to grin sadistically as he threw the first punch that broke his nose. His piercing screams that had served in his childhood to force his daycare provider to attend to his needs served no purpose in the brutal, adolescent world of high school. Billy set into the beating that would haunt his dreams the rest of his adolescent and adult life. The brute laughed even louder at his feeble attempts to defend himself. He had always been scrawny, and it was a fact that Billy Davis never let him forget.

He knew all that followed. While he cried for help that would never come the scenes of peer mediation filled his head. How the school staff would tell him that Billy had emotional problems, how he wasn’t actually to blame. How he would have to sit in a room across from the tormentor who had mercilessly beaten him and pretend that his so-called guidance councilor’s words meant anything to him, or his bully. How he had to put up with Billy mocking him with each grinning gaze. Each jeering smile saying to him the same thing every week he had to go into that room: I can hurt you anytime I want. The grim realization of his youth came to him in that room, that his councilor’s efforts were as useless as his participation trophies. He never forgot the councilors self-aggrandizing sermonizing, and he never would.

Then the most horrible part of the beating actually came when Billy stopped. He learned much later that the physical pain may have been intense, but unlike the emotional pain that followed, it stopped when the bruises healed. He would have gladly taken another beating again if he didn’t have to go back into that room again and again, every week to see Billy’s cruel grin, to hear his councilor’s cold, arrogant, self-assured droning. Opening that door every week in his freshmen year of high school became his own personal hell.

Then suddenly there he was, outside the door, staring at the knob. He didn’t remember how he got there, and it really didn’t matter. He could hear his councilor’s voice beckoning him into the room. Her soft, sibilant whispers telling him that it was all going to be ok. His anger and contempt bubbled up. His fury at her callous disregard for his feelings and his own impudence, his fear of telling her what he really thought of her, Billy and the school.

This time it would be different.

This time he wouldn’t go through that goddamned door.

He turned and ran. Ran past all the students who either ignored him or laughed at him. Ran past door after class room door where there stood other droning adults collecting their paychecks by spewing out their preapproved lesson plans to kids who weren’t even listening to them. The problem was that the more he ran he never got further away from that hellish door. Every time he looked over his shoulder there it was. He finally ran outside and made for the nearby road which led away from the school. Breathing hard and moving his legs as fast as he could he felt that all he had to do was set his feet on that road and he could set this hell behind him. Then he looked back to see how far away the school was, and he was suddenly back in the hallway again, right in front of that hellish door. He screamed as he realized there was no escape.

He woke up screaming.

Christopher looked over at the alarm clock next to his bed on the nightstand. It was set to go off fifteen minutes from now. At least his nightmare had kept pace with his schedule. He cradled his head in his hands. The dream always came back whenever he was under stress. With the big promotion on the line today it was no surprise that it plagued him again. He knew his chief competition had a leg up. Chad Thomas did not have the software experience or technical ability that he did but what he had was something Chris did not, Charisma. Chad was good with people, and he had the had kind of personality that others liked to be around.

However, he saw it as a detriment. He had seen Chad look the other way on infractions around the office that he would never have let go. Chad was interested in making friends and motivating people, and that had its place, but he wasn’t known for holding his workers accountable to all the expectations the company had. So far as Chris was concerned courtesy was a necessity, but your boss wasn’t supposed to be your friend, they were supposed to be your boss.

To compensate he had doubled down on his strengths in the current project, and that was programming and coding. Along with the assistance of several of his coworkers he had worked hard to provide the best possible solution to their current IT task. They had both submitted their work, and today at the morning group meeting the results would be announced. He knew the majority of his coworkers would prefer Chad, why wouldn’t they, but he also believed that was exactly why management would choose him.

For the first time in a long time he felt something that was a rare occurrence in his life, confidence. Most of his life many had done everything they could to make sure that he never had any. His teachers would tell him how special he was, which was the same thing they told everyone else. His parents had never taken any real concern in anything he had ever done, and their feigned interest only ever served to alienate him further. His so-called friends were never interested in anything that didn’t directly concern them. His bosses from the Gen X and Boomer crowd always judged him and much of his generation too fragile to be worth the effort of encouragement.

One thing he was proud of was that what progress he had made was his own, and not anybody else’s. Lots of guys he knew were still stuck at home in their parents’ basement. He looked around at the so-called luxury apartment he had managed to afford since he went to work for the company. His water would just stop as often as twice a month. The elevators were more likely to be out of service than ever working. Parts of the building’s amenities had been crumbling for months, if not years with assurances from management they would be fixed soon. If he could get that promotion he could move out of this rat trap and into the real luxury housing in Rittenhouse Square. If he could get that promotion it would change everything. It might be the first time something in his life went right.

He quickly got out of bed and got ready. He set the dream aside in his mind and focused on the things he would say if he was picked. He thought about the team members he would select to work under him. He picked out his best clothes, and made himself eat a quick and meager breakfast. The routine gave him resolve, and by the time he was going out the door he was ready to face the day.

The freak in the hallway who was standing just outside his door caught him utterly by surprise. He looked like a cross between a goth House DJ, mixed with wannabe emo-punk. His clothes were shabby though, genuinely shabby, like he had been living on the street. His wardrobe, if that’s what you would call it, looked like he had pieced it together from all the stores the kids at the mall might shop from. He was lean, almost emaciated, and his bald head had a disturbingly skull like appearance. He was tall, intimidatingly so, with broad shoulders and a wiry look that made him seem more menacing than frail. What was worst of all was the mocking smile he bore which instantly reminded him of Billy’s grinning face.

Pretty much instantly he knew he did not like this stranger.

Almost as if in reaction to his repugnance the weirdo’s smile broadened.

“Did you have sweet dreams, Christopher?” The creepy interloper asked with an accent he couldn’t quite place.

“What?” he instantly shot back.

“Did you have sweet dreams?” He repeated. “You just woke up, on your way to your vocation, yes? Did you sleep well last night?”

Christopher had no idea what to say. The weirdo’s choice of words took him aback utterly. That he should just appear and mention dreams this particular morning, and who the hell refers to a job as a vocation? His hostility towards this menacing, alien presence in his midst increased several times fold. Normally he would never care to even make eye contact with a nut like this, but his anger bubbled up. This was his home, his safe space. Who was this freak just standing out in the hall to ask him such bizarre and disturbingly uncanny questions? What’s more, how the hell did he know his name?

“Are you a resident?” he snapped at the skull like antagonist.

“Not yet, but I’m moving in soon.” The weirdo replied.

“Who are you?” Christopher insisted.

“Ludolf, I’m called, Ludolf Aigner, but you can call me Wolf.”

“I don’t think I will,” Christopher replied. Normally he would not mouth off to someone like this, courage on the streets was not his strong suit, but this freak just brought something out of him. However, the weirdo’s inexplicable actions just kept confounding him. Ludolf’s course, cruel grin widened to macabre proportions, like Chris’s distaste for him seemed to actually please rather than agitate him.

“Oh, don’t worry, My Boy, I think you and I will be much closer friends then you think?” Ludolf told him.

“What makes you so sure of that?” Chris shot back incredulously.

“Well,” Wolf told him, “It’s not like you’re this brave with anyone else, are you?”

The insult stung immediately, but was far more disturbing was that this nut seemed to know something more about him than just his apartment number. “I don’t have time for this you hobo. This is a secured apartment, and I will be reporting this to management. I don’t know who you’re visiting, or if you just walked in off the street, but you don’t belong here.”

“You’ll feel different, you’ll come to hate to see me Christopher, you’ll come to think of me as your best friend.” The grinning nutjob told him.

“Why would I consider someone I hate to see my best friend?” Christopher said with utter condescension.

“Whether you love to see me or hate to see me, makes no difference, they’re the same thing.” Wolf told him with a creepy confidence that unnerved Chris to the point that he didn’t want to be here any longer.

“Freak,” Chris spat in disgust and turned to leave. He had too much on his mind and on his plate to argue with some homeless bum. He made his way down the steps as he wasn’t even going to check to see if the elevator was working. Last thing he was willing to tolerate was waiting for an elevator that might never arrive while some psycho was behind him prattling on about the weirdest stuff he could think of.

Wolf watched him go with a satisfied smile. He waited till Chris was well out of sight and then turned and walked towards the wall outside of Chris’s apartment. If anyone had been able to watch they would have been terrified to see him promptly disappear in the midst of a hazy, blue flash.

###

“…And so, after very careful consideration, we are proud to announce that Chad Thomas will be taking the supervisory position on our new Genatech solutions team. Chad why don’t you come up here and address your future team.” The junior supervisor Cindy’s invitation sparked a round of applause and several whistles from the attending associates. Chad stepped out of the crowd and gave a speech that flowed so naturally it didn’t even sound rehearsed. Not that Chris noticed, he didn’t hear anything, he had gone numb. He watched Chad with feeling of detached angst that made all the sound around him seem as though it was flowing through water before it reached his ears.

He watched Chad speak hearing absolutely nothing that he said but noting his fine suit, one he had worn before, one Chris knew he would never be able to afford. Chad had earned it despite his similar salary with several savvy investments in the new crypto markets, something else that management probably considered in his resume. While Chris looked on passively feeling life had once again left him behind, he felt a strange chill moving across the back of his neck. He turned around suddenly and froze.

He stared at the door to the senior supervisor’s office just past the cubicles. The only problem was that it wasn’t the glass door he had come to know the past several years working here. The grey, opaque glass complete with supervisor’s name was gone, and in its place was a wooden door with a small window plastered over by a poster touting the virtues of peer mediation. He looked on in barely contained horror and unconsciously walked away from the gathering and towards the door. It was an act that did not go unnoticed. He approached the door that should not be and the closer he got to it the louder the whispers beckoning him to open it became. A chill breeze picked up until the eerie sound of rushing wind was the only thing he heard. He felt like he was outside on a cold October night walking through a cemetery all alone. His hair stood on end, and the chills became so intense he almost started to shiver.

“Until you walk through it, and bash your way back out, you’ll always be stuck behind that door.” The freaky bums voice told him. He whirled around swearing he had heard the voice come from behind him. He almost knocked Cindy over.

“Chris!” she said in alarm as she jumped back.

“Did you hear that?” he asked with genuine anxiety.

“Hear what, Chad’s speech, which you just walked away from.” she noted.

Chris sharply turned and looked back towards the supervisor’s door only to see the opaque glass was right back where it was supposed to be. He tried to compose himself and gain control of his anxiety. “You didn’t hear that?” He asked again.

“What?” She said in agitation.

“That voice.” He told her insistently.

“Hey, Guy, you alright?” Chad asked as he approached them. Some other associates were beginning to stare. Those around him might have written it off as perhaps some kind of bid for attention, or bitterness in the face of defeat, but Chris had turned white. Cindy and Chad both sensed something was wrong and shared a pensive glance before they stared at him. Chris noticed his actions had attracted a lot of uncomfortable stares.

He finally managed to collect himself and told them, “I’m sorry, there was this guy this morning. I think he was homeless; I don’t know. He was waiting outside my apartment and started harassing me when I came out. I thought I…, I thought I just heard him. He obviously got to me a lot more than I thought. I apologize.”

“Well, what did he say?” Chad asked.

“It’s more about what he knew.” Chris replied.

“Which was what?” Cindy asked in turn.

“My name, he was waiting outside my apartment and he knew my name.” Chris admitted. He wasn’t sure how the story sounded to them, or how his behavior looked to everyone else right now. The truth was he was really freaked out. To witness an illusory door was very likely a sign he was losing it.  He felt in that moment losing the promotion didn’t seem as terrible as the thought of returning home to find that bum might actually still be waiting for him.

“That would freak me out” Chad offered. “Did you talk to the super about it?”

“No, but I will. I didn’t have time this morning, and with the promotion and all I had my mind on other things. When I get home tonight I’m going to security. There are cameras. I’m reporting the guy and I want to see if I can get a picture of him to give to the cops.” He stated.

“I would to in your shoes,” Cindy said. “Listen, Chris, sorry about your issue this morning, I’m sure your super will sort it out. I just wanted you to know that management acknowledges you’re one of the best software guys in our department, and the choice wasn’t an easy one for them. They just felt that after consulting with advertising about our new customer’s progressive, hands-on approach that Chad’s management style would be more aligned with what they were looking for. I hope you understand.”

“Of course,” he lied. “These things happen, someone has to win, right?”

“Well, it wasn’t about any of us winning, it was about the company winning.” She told him with a straight face.

“That’s a slogan I have to remember,” Chad added.

Cindy and Chad shared a laugh, but Chris did not.

“Chris, your talents and work ethic aren’t lost on us, there will be other teams forming, and other possibilities. I was specifically told to let you know that upper management hopes you will consider putting in for advancement again when those opportunities come up.” She told him earnestly.

Chad motioned to her and said, “High praise, Guy.”

Chris thought if he wasn’t so freaked out right now he might be fighting the urge to vomit.

Cindy excused herself and left and Chris was eager to follow her example and tried to leave before Chad reached out and grabbed his shoulder. Chris did not like strangers touching him, for that matter he had never really been fond of anyone touching him. His anger began to surge again but he quickly pushed it back down. This was not the time or place to tell Chad to keep his hands to himself. Especially since Cindy had just snuck in a comment about him leaving Chad’s speech.

“Hold on a second there, Guy.” Chad told him, “I want to talk to you.” So far as Chris was concerned the only people who had the right to use, “guy” as a direct form of address lived in Canada. Yet another thing he wished he had the guts to tell Chad.

“Look, I don’t want any bad blood between us, OK.” Chad offered.

“There isn’t,” Chris lied, “you heard what Cindy said. What’s good for the company.”

“Exactly,” Chad agreed. “Listen, my girlfriend just became my fiancée. We were going to have a little get-together for friends and family to celebrate but now, given that this promotion is going to help us move up our wedding date we’re going to have a bigger thing instead. We want to invite a few co-workers too, particularly the people I want on my team. I’d like you to come.”

In that moment Chris wished he had the balls to just throw away his job and punch Chad right in the face. Sadly, he knew that his fists didn’t pack much punch, and he certainly couldn’t afford to just lose his job either. The last thing he wanted now was to be working for the very same guy he felt didn’t deserve the lead position in the first place.

“I appreciate that Chad, but the fact is after what Cindy said I’m not joining any teams right now as a permanent member. I want to keep my options open if another shot comes up.” He countered.

“That’s why I want you on my team. What Cindy said was true. You are one of our best software guys. Here’s what I’m proposing, come on my team, for a while at least. Help us get our feet on the ground. Then when the next opportunity for an elite software guy like you comes up I’ll be the first one to recommend you for the job.” Chad replied.

“Again, I appreciate the offer, but I have a thing about getting by on my own.” Chris said with perfect honesty. It might have been the first thing he said all day that was the absolute truth.

“Chris,” Chad said with a jocular slap on his shoulder that somewhat hurt. “That’s one of your problems. You don’t really understand how things work.” Chris froze. He struggled not to scream in Chad’s face right then and there. He hated being slapped on the shoulder. Several of his bullies used to do that in school, including Billy. He had learned unfortunately that telling other guys at the office that slaps on the shoulder triggered him only made him look weak. The modern corporate office may promise safe spaces and inclusiveness, but the reality was that once you were marked as a weakling advancing in any reasonably competent company was out of the question. He gathered his will and kept his composure.

“How do they work?” he asked snidely.

“Networking man, what do you think college was really all about. Let’s be honest with ourselves, half the classes they taught were an absolute joke. Did we need art appreciation to get a job in IT solutions? You know they actually taught a class at my alma mater called, Zombies in Popular Culture. Guys like you and I actually have real jobs because we didn’t waste our time or money going to useless classes, and we knew which classes we took were a complete waste of time. Why did we have to take them, because that’s how the college gets paid, that’s why.” Chad explained.

“But it was more than that, Guy. We were there to meet other people who might help get our foot in the door. Professors who would put in a good word for us, and other talented students we might come up with in the job market. That’s your problem Chris, you’re a hard worker, but nobody really knows you. You’re invisible to the top brass, and by that, I mean the execs over upper management. You don’t have any friends in high places.”

“Is that how you got the job, ‘friends in high places?’” Chris asked in a strained tone.

“I got the job because they know my name. You want them to know yours, then come on board and start networking. Look, let’s talk about this tomorrow at my place. I promise I can make the effort worth your while, and there’s going to be some single, hardworking ladies there too who aren’t looking to meet slackers. What do you say? Besides, if you don’t come it just looks like sour grapes anyway. What do you have to lose?”

The last of my dignity Chris thought.

“Fine, I’ll be there. Give me your address,” He relented. Despite Chris’s downcast tone Chad seemed genuinely pleased. They exchanged information and finally Chris could get away. He wanted to be anywhere else but here right now.

###

He sat in his apartment alone with a glassy eyed stare affixed to his face as he gazed at nothing in particular. He had gone to see security. They had taken his complaint. They had gone to the cameras at his request, and what they saw is what set him to staring at his walls like he was utterly lost. They saw nothing. The only thing in his hall talking on the camera was him. For all intents and purposes, the footage appeared to show a crazy man having an intense conversation with an invisible person who seemingly existed only in his mind. The problem was he was the crazy man in the footage. The camera revealed nothing else, no Wolf, no confrontation, nothing.

Chris was beginning to think he had a real problem.

The invisible hobo in his hall, the appearance of his high school guidance councilor’s door at work, creepy voices in his head. If that wasn’t multiple, incontrovertible signs of mental illness he wasn’t certain what else could be. He really needed a drink.

He kept some cheap potato vodka for just such situations as this. He got up and went to the counter in his kitchenette to get it. He decided to hell with a shot glass, took off the cap and downed a good gulp. He suddenly felt a strange breeze and swore that for just a moment a blue light filled the room. Behind him a painfully familiar voice said with a strange accent said, “You should have punched him.”

Chris didn’t turn around. He drank again. There was no need to turn around and see the disheveled specter that was Wolf that had just walked over and begun lounging on his couch. He decided not to give his own mental illness the satisfaction of having a conversation with it and took another swig.

“Stop being a coward, Boy.” Wolf chided. “Turn around and learn to respect your guests. There’s nothing left of manners in this age.”

“I am not going to turn around and talk to a figment of my imagination. Tomorrow I will go into human resources, tell them I am suffering from mental illness, and use my insurance to get therapy.” Chris decided. “If I am going to have any chance to save myself it starts with me acknowledging you aren’t real, and I have to realize that.”

“Oh, that’s good you little worm. Crawl into them the day after your rival humiliated you in front of them and beg them to send you to the der arzt.” Wolf spat at him.

Now Chris turned around and looked at the freak sitting on his couch and said, “What?”

“Der Arzt, the doctor. Forgive me, your perversion of our tongue is not my first language.” Wolf said as he got up and approached him. Chris was surprisingly calm as the skeletal interloper came closer. Since he firmly believed Wolf was just a figment of his psychosis he didn’t think he had any reason to be afraid.

“What language is that?” Chris asked his seeming phantasm.

“German. I come from Austria, Boy, and from a very interesting time in European history.”

“German?” Chris said in surprise. “No one whoever traumatized me ever spoke in German before. Maybe you’re some kind of projection of my fear of Nazis or something.” He concluded dryly.

Wolf snatched the bottle of vodka from his hands and punched him in the stomach so hard he almost vomited on the spot as he doubled over and fell to the floor. While he lay on the ground gasping for air Wolf mocked, “Did that feel like your imagination, Boy?”

“Oh,” said Wolf as he roughly kicked Chris over onto his back and put down the vodka, “don’t speak to me of Nazis, Whelp. I have no respect for the violence of the industrial age. I was born to time when a man could still kill his enemy while he was looking him in the eye. Something your generation knows precious little about.”

Wolf began to move around his apartment examining things like pictures of his family and mementos on his tables and shelves while he kept talking. “We had guns back then. The flintlock had just begun to replace the old matchlock. I hated guns back then to; I hate them even more now.” He said as he turned back to Chris and walked over to stand above him menacingly. While struggling to breath Chris looked up at the horror standing before him and his mind raced. If, “Wolf” was a figment of his disturbed imagination why was he spouting off about the history of firearms, and in German? He didn’t speak German. Chris had never cared about guns one way or another and had never researched much of anything to do with them outside the occasional video game. Why would some sort of manifestation of his subconsciousness know about stuff like that? What was more, why did that punch to his gut feel so excruciatingly real?

“What I find even more infuriating is your generation’s fascinations with Nazis. When it comes to the history of hate they are all you little bastards ever talk about.” Wolf informed him.

“You little pissants act like they were the first ones to ever to carry out a massacre in all of history. Have you ever heard of the Assyrians, Whelp? Or Genghis Khan, who would put whole cities to the sword for merely refusing him. The Huns, who were the scourges of Rome? Have you ever heard of the Sack of Magdeburg, eh? Your generation calls it the Thirty Years War. Have you ever heard of it?” Wolf asked. Chris just stared up at the terrifying being completely dumbfounded. If he was manufacturing this in his mind, then he was way more creative than he ever gave himself credit for.

“We killed twenty thousand Protestants in one day, it was glorious. You can never truly understand hate until you run a man through, or cleave his head in two. Guns, I hate the guns. Far too impersonal a way to slaughter your foe. You put a magazine in the long guns and just pull the trigger. Back then you were lucky to get off two rounds a minute, now you get ten a second. Any unskilled moron can walk into a shop with a modern arquebus and kill thirty people in moments, no effort, no talent, no passion.

Now a Zweihander, Boy, that’s a weapon. The battle sword. Over four feet long, we used them to protect the pike men once the lines closed on each other. If you were good, and strong, you could snap a pike with a single swing. It was my favorite at that time. Halberds, murder axes, I used most all of them, except the pike. I never liked the pike, too ungainly. It was something to see, Boy, real slaughter. Carnage brought about by the strength of a man’s hand, not the pull of a trigger.  But all you pissants scream Nazi, Nazi, Nazi, as though all the slaughter of the Reformation never happened.

I was there in the first big war, when they filled the trenches with the gas. That’s no way to kill a man. I was ashamed of my descendants in Austria-Hungary for using such tactics, not that the Americans or the English and French were any better. Then came your Nazis, which you little goren obsess with. Yes, they killed many, but they used the guns. I wasn’t impressed, Whelp. You want to drive the weak out of war, Boy? Want to make sure that when men set to killing each other, they mean it, ban the guns from the battlefield. Only the men with real steel in their loins will be up for that kind of battle. Takes real mettle to watch the life leave a man’s eyes after you just cut him down with your blade. So don’t mention your Nazis to me again, Boy. I’m a real killer; I was doing it hundreds of years before your Nazis ever pulled a single trigger.”

While Chris looked up at the skeletal psycho standing over him he began to seriously wonder if all this could be real. He didn’t know what to do. There was one thing he felt was true when he said, “They’re not my Nazis.”

“Do you fear them?” Wolf asked.

Chris hesitated to reply to the disturbing specter.

“Do you!” Wolf insisted loudly.

“Yes, of course.” Chris said from the floor.

“Then they are yours, and you are theirs. So long as you fear them you give them power over you. Banish that fear, and they aren’t yours anymore. I can teach you that boy. I can show you how to banish all your fears. Fear is the weakling’s vice, but hate, now there lies true power.”

“What are you, how am I projecting you? You aren’t like anything I would ever imagine.” Chris lamented as he stood back up. “I must be really out of my mind.” He said softly as all hope began to leave him. Wolf smiled and then slapped him in the face knocking him over again. On the ground the strain of it all began to get to him and he wept.

“Oh no you don’t,” Wolf said as he bent down and with one arm picked Chris up and then threw him across the room right into his couch. The sofa almost fell over from the force of the impact. The jarring landing shocked Chris. His fear overcame his despair, and he stared dumbfounded at his skeletal tormentor.

Wolf stared at him and promised, “I will teach you how to overcome your fear, how to crush your angst. I will teach you where your strength lies, Boy. If I didn’t know that you had strength hidden within you I would just have tossed you out a window. You’ve already showed some of that strength right now.”

“What strength?” Chris asked incredulously.

“You think I’m not real. You believe you have gone insane. Very few humans will willingly admit such things to themselves so quickly. That’s your nihilism talking, Boy, and it’s as good a place as any to start. When you first met me out in the hall this morning you overcame your cowardice and insulted me, why?”

Chris recollected back to that moment, and even then he thought it was odd for him to show such backbone. Though now he couldn’t quite figure out why. “I don’t know,” He admitted from the couch.

“I do, and when at last you understand what you really are, you will to.” Wolf told him.

Wolf slowly approached him and Chris tensed up. “Stop that, stop sniveling!” Wolf rebuked. Despite his words Chris rolled up into a ball and closed his eyes in expectation of another assault. Surprisingly it never came.

“You need to trust me, Christopher. You will trust me. First, I must prove to you that I am real, as real as your aching stomach, as real as your derision for your rival who has your job. I will give you…, a gift.” Wolf said to him with an almost inaudible whisper.

“A Gift?” he asked.

“Yes, My Boy, a gift. Something so you cannot deny me, and so you cannot deny yourself. Listen to me Christopher, you will go to that soiree tomorrow, you will attend, you will carry yourself as though all is well. There I will give you your gift, and you will know that I am no delusion. Then we can work on helping you find your strength. But you will attend tomorrow, Christopher. I will be most aggrieved if you are not there, I will be angry. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Chris said trembling from the couch.

Wolf grew agitated with his fear, and Chris swore he would hit him again, but the strange freak did not strike him. Wolf knelt down next to the crouch and looked up at Christopher as he clutched his own legs to his chest. “You will trust me, you will hate me, and you will even come to love me, My Boy. You will put your faith in me, I promise.”

With that wolf got up and gave Chris a horrifying smile. Then as inexplicably as he had come, he turned to leave and just walked out the door softly closing it behind himself. Chris sprang from his fetal position and rushed to the door. He opened it to look outside to see If Wolf went downstairs or up, but the hall was empty, and wolf was gone.

***

Chris held his glass of wine in front of him as though he didn’t really realize it was there. He never had a taste for wine, but on this occasion he would have gladly downed a bottle of the stuff if he felt he could get away with it. He had arrived at Chad’s party with a mostly blank look on his face and barely spoken to anyone. He maneuvered through the party trying his very best to draw as little attention as humanly possible. He did not want to talk to anyone. He wanted this to be over, preferably right now. His situation was simple, he was right back in in own personal hell.

If nothing happened and Wolf did not show then he was absolutely and incontrovertibly insane. This was perhaps the best outcome he could hope for. Because if he was just nuts then Wolf wasn’t real, and that was far more preferable than explaining what had happened yesterday. If Wolf was real he had to figure out how did he get into his apartment without being seen. How did Wolf know so much about him? Was that truly wolf’s voice he heard at work after Chad won the promotion, and if it was had he somehow conjured the image of the peer mediation chamber’s door? None of his bizarre, skeletal tormentor’s actions were explainable in any reasonable way.

So he prayed that he was insane, because if he wasn’t he had to face the unknown horror that was Ludolf Aigner. Ludolf Aigner, apparently a veteran of the Thirty Years War, fought over four hundred years ago. Who looked upon the violence of the Nazis as the work of seeming rank amateurs. Who relished butchering men with swords and axes, but not pikes mind you because they were unwieldly. Wolf, who found that guns were the tools of weak men, without the mettle to really make murder count. If he was crazy, he was really crazy, because only a truly insane mind would cook up Wolf to act as their imaginary bully.

Thus far he had stayed off everyone’s radar. Though he thought some of the other guests had noticed him, they hadn’t approached him. He probably put off an extremely creepy vibe right about now, and they weren’t comfortable around him. It was perhaps the first time in his life he was truly happy to be a social pariah. He desperately hoped Chad would just forget he was here and nothing would happen, and he could just go home. That’s when she approached him. Of all the people at the party he would have longed to avoid more the Chad himself, it was her: Ashley.

She was beautiful and willowy. She had dark, almost red curly hair, piercing blue eyes and was blessed with a womanly form that he knew other ladies envied. She was far more than just her angelic appearance though. She was kind, genuinely kind. She was the type who did not give mere platitudes on social media whenever something bad or terrible happened. She would not virtue signal her false morality to her online peers and then just go on with her day. She would go out and volunteer, be there, and try to make a difference even if it didn’t actually change anything, she was still compelled to try. In other words, in his eyes, she was truly beautiful. That rare angel that usually only exists in movies or TV shows but that you didn’t think existed in real life.

She was something else too, a living regret, and he was sure that didn’t go just for him but to many just like him. To damaged souls like him she was representative of a dream he would never have. He would wager any amount of money she was raised by parents who actually gave a damn about her. She probably had real friends growing up that she had actual fun with rather than people with whom she could share her misery. The thing that was most painful about Ashley was that he knew he didn’t belong in her world no matter how much he might wish that he could. She had always been nice to him, but her kindness had always been laced with a pity that he found condescending. However, he had concluded that he would not resent her for that. No one was perfect, not even Ashley. Furthermore, he knew she didn’t have a clue about all the people like him. How could she if she had never had to deal with issues like his?

Sadly, she was just too naive to get the hint. He had made it a point to constantly try and avoid her. Yet she would always seem to seek him out to extoll upon him her affectionate pity. Despite the fact her actions always seemed demeaning he could never really bring himself to truly resent her for it. He knew it was the only chance he would ever have to get to talk to her. He figured he could live with it so long as their contact was limited. Today was the very last day he would want to deal with her and he figured for the first time he might actually begrudge her misguided if not generous nature.

He considered just being rude and walking away, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He was always surprised that she had that kind of influence over him despite the fact that she was just a stranger. “Hello, Chris.” she said warmly. “How are you?”

“I endure,” he told her, “Just like everyone else.”

“You look pale,” She told him. “You feeling alright?”

“Under the weather a little, nothing I can’t work through.” He lied.

“Yesterday you didn’t look good either. Some people were concerned you might have come down with Covid. I told them a pale face isn’t a symptom. We figured it was just stress.”

“You’d be right,” he told her honestly. She looked at him with a funny expression. She couldn’t quite put her hand on what it was about his demeanor that confounded her. She didn’t know him well enough to be able to tell that when he lied he used a placating tone, but always sounded sarcastic when he told the truth.

“I’m glad to see you here. After yesterday some of the others were saying they wouldn’t show up in your situation, but I told them you weren’t like that.” she admitted.

“Chad was talking about networking, and helping his team get their feet on the ground with the new account. I figured I would at least hear him out.” He stated.

“Well good. How did things go with that guy who was harassing you outside your apartment yesterday?” she asked innocently.

“What?” he asked surprised.

“Cindy said some guy was stalking you outside your apartment, and that he really freaked you out.” She reported.

“Oh, that,” he replied in a strained tone, “I reported him to security. Hopefully I will never, ever see him again.” he said in a low earnest tone.

“Oh, well good, I’m glad. Hopefully that’s the end of it.” She said with a smile.

“I hope so too,” he said gravely. His sudden brooding manner put her off.

“Well, I’m going to go find my boyfriend before he starts flirting with other girls. I’ll talk to you later.” She mused.

“Nice talking to you,” he said dryly. This time when she walked away he felt an overwhelming sense of relief. He looked down at his wine and thought, what the hell, then downed the whole glass in one gulp.

“Hey, Guy, go easy, that stuff’s expensive.” Chad joked as he came over.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, are you from originally from Canada?” He sarcastically inquired.

“Canada, no man, my family is from New York.” His coworker laughed.

“From Niagara,” Chris inquired.

“No, my family comes from Westchester.” He replied.

“Oh, sorry, your accent sort of sounded like this guy I know who lived just outside of Canada.” Chris quipped.

“Nope, New York, born and raised. But that isn’t what we’re here to talk about. First off thanks for coming. I knew you had the stones to be here, Chris.” He finished as he slapped Chris on the shoulder again. Chris immediately fantasized about smashing the wine glass in his face. “I was talking with some of the other teammates that are all eager to work on this. Herb and Stan are actually really excited at the prospect of working with you to help lay down the IT foundations of our initial offer to the client. I already told them that the only way I could get you to even agree to be a part of this is that you are in charge of the coding. So, so long as you’re onboard Chris, and I really hope you are, you are going to be might right hand guy in this. I’m going to concentrate on dealing with the client and of course selling your solutions as well as leading the team. This means that with the code and the programming parameters you’ve already submitted we can leap right in and get a jump. I’ve already written up our first report for the bosses, and I would love for you to review it.”

“That’s a lot of confidence, writing up our first progress report before the project is even underway?” Chris remarked.

“That’s how confident I am if you’re with us. I’m so confident that if you want, you can take it and put it in Old Man Seller’s hands yourself. You can see the report as you hand it in so you know exactly what the Old Man sees. No funny business, no play, you’re right in there Chris. What do you say?” he asked.

“I’d say it’s a good move for you.” Chris replied. “You get access to all the work I put in and get to leave the heavy lifting to me while you deal with the client.”

“If dealing with Clients isn’t heavy lifting, then why aren’t you more eager to do it. You haven’t exactly been known as the go getter type when it comes to client relations.” Chad challenged.

Chris had no reply; he wasn’t wrong after all.

“We can change that Chris, if you can set aside your misgivings there’s on the job training you need.” His coworker claimed.

“Such as what?” He asked his rival.

“Such as handling the client. Chris. Listen, I want you in some of those meetings with me, so you can see how this works. A guy as intelligent as you are will pick up what you need pretty fast. Sure, you might not be as outgoing as I am, but you can make your intensity work for you if you know how. This is the next big step. You get this in your resume and picking up the next lead position is a sure thing. It’s not like you’re afraid to work. You’ve got a lot to gain and little to risk. I’m practically handing you your future promotion here.”

Chad looked on with an almost desperate glimpse in his eye. He tried to conceal it at first, but not fast enough to avoid Chris’s keen sense of perception. He realized that Chad did in fact need him to help expedite the project. It occurred to him to just walk away and force Chad to deal with someone else less talented. He certainly had no love for his rival. The other side of it though was that talking about work soothed him. Work was staid, work was reliable, work was normal. Right now if he could hold it together on an assignment that might take his mind off his possible delusions and help him focus on something else other than his anxiety and seeming mental illness, it might be just what he needed. Plus, as he was pretty certain he was actively hallucinating it might actually be a godsend not to have gotten the supervisor’s position right now. If his illness sabotaged the project he would likely not ever get another chance at promotion again.

Why not let Chad take on the weight? If he could get some therapy while working on the project he might be able to put his head back together again. Maybe Chad was right and this could be a big break for him. What the hell, he figured. “You know what, we’ll do it your way for now. I’m in Chad, so long as it’s a known fact that I lead the coding team.”

Chad smiled and slapped him on the shoulder again, but this time Chris didn’t even mind so much. After all Chad wasn’t punching him or throwing him across the room. “They’re going to know you’re my right-hand man.” He confirmed. He thanked Chris, and he actually seemed genuinely grateful when he did it. Chad excused himself and Chris was only too happy to let him go and with something normal having taken place, and a prospect for some kind of greater future with the company, Chris turned his thoughts away from the perturbing thought of Wolf and towards work.

He grabbed a hard Iced tea, headed off to a corner where a plush chair sat alone in the corner and sunk into it. He tried to be invisible. He did not want to talk about anything, or to anyone. He just wanted to be surrounded by mundane people, talking about mundane things, and contemplating their mundane futures. He actually began to relax. Here, surrounded by what he believed to be rational people it felt like the horror of Wolf was a million miles away. These people, most of whom he had had no interest in at all, acted as his ward. Their seemingly placid presence seemed to keep the nightmare that was Wolf at bay. He suddenly found he didn’t want to leave. He just wanted to sit here, unobserved and ignored until it was time to go.

He watched passively as the rest of the party moved around him talking about things they felt were important in the world and in their lives. After a bottle or two later and he finally felt a little like himself again. All seemed well just for a moment. A sudden bout of laughter caught his attention and he looked over to Chad who, along with what he assumed was his new fiancée, was sharing a laugh with two other couples. Chad went off to retrieve something from his bedroom he had promised to show them, and Chris thought nothing about it all.

The impact that hit the wall behind the couch directly across from him sounded like an explosion. The wall literally buckled out, and hit the expensive, upholstered sofa with such force it threw the three people sitting on it onto the glass table Infront them which immediately shattered. The wall’s plaster split from the impact. Everyone screamed. Many dropped their bottles or glasses. Someone quickly realized that the impact came from the bedroom, where Chad had just gone. The screaming that followed next let Chris know that something was horribly wrong.

Everything around seemed to move in slow motion. People began to shout and rush all about. He sat there, as still as a statue, pasty white. He lost track of time. He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there for. Some of Chad’s close friends or maybe his family began to call for an ambulance and quickly usher people out of the luxury apartment to make way for EMS. Finally, when there were only a few people left, and a woman was screaming inconsolably, he made his way over to the bedroom door.

There, on the ground of the hard wood floor near the wall that had buckled he could see Chad. Chris didn’t need to be a doctor to know that his neck was broken, and possibly many other bones as well. “You can’t be here,” a dark-haired young man who looked like Chad told him.

“I know, I’m sorry, I’ll leave, right now.” Chris blurted out and turned to go.

Just as he was about to open the door the chill wind hit the back of his neck again. He heard a familiar whisper, “You are welcome, Boy.” This time he didn’t bother to turn around, he didn’t want to. He wouldn’t ask anyone if they had heard Wolf speak, he instinctively knew they hadn’t. He knew if looked over his shoulder he wouldn’t see Wolf behind him either, but he knew as surely as he breathed, Wolf was there.

He slowly opened the door and left the apartment without a word.

***

Chris stood outside the door of his apartment afraid to open it. That’s when he heard Wolf’s voice again. “If you want your neighbors to think you’re crazy then by all means just stand there and keep staring at the door.” Once again Wolf sounded as though he was right behind him, and once again Chris knew he wasn’t there. He finally unlocked the door and went in to find Wolf seemingly watching TV on the couch.

The skeletal monster was trying to figure out how to work the remote control. “I liked the moving picture boxes better when they just had the nobs.” he said as he threw the remote control away.

“You killed him.” Chris said flatly.

“We killed him.” Wolf replied, “and good riddance too. He was insufferable.”

Realizing that Wolf could not be a fantasy, and this horror was real he decided to be very careful in his approach to this creature. He knew he couldn’t stop Wolf if he decided to give him the same treatment as Chad. He also knew it was insane to come here, that even confronting this ostensible monster was in and of itself an act of madness. However, Chris had also realized Wolf could find him wherever he went. He had no doubts about that now. He needed to understand what he was dealing with. If Wolf was going to kill him he could have done it easily by now. He needed to understand what this being was. He needed to know why it cared about him at all. Wolf maybe a sadistic psycho, but his actions were not random, he knew that for certain.

“I didn’t touch him. I wasn’t in that room with him when you did whatever you did. I was out there with everyone else. You killed him.” Chris accused with a tone so even that any sane person would have marveled at his composure.

Wolf got up and walked up to him, and this time Chris did not fall back. “Good, Boy, good, you are beginning to control your fear. You see, like I said, you have strength. My gift has brought it out of you.”

“Murder isn’t a gift, it’s just a crime.” Chris countered.

Wolf laughed aloud in reply. “Crime!” He cackled with disdain. “We are beyond crimes here, Christopher. I’m sure you didn’t fail to notice I broke him while he was alone and you were in the room with all the other mortals. Your human constables have nothing their feeble, mortal minds can comprehend. They will do what they always do, they will declare it a freak accident and forget about it. Humans do not like things they cannot explain, they always rationalize such circumstances away. You will see. Our world is beyond them, for us there is no crime, just action. We will do as we will, and they won’t do a damn thing to stop us.”

“You know what, lets skip how you even did it, why, why did you do it?” Chris asked confounded.

“I told you, Boy, we did it. I couldn’t have done it without you. You wanted it, so I wanted it. He wasn’t my bully, he was yours. I drank in your bitterness, your hate when he humiliated you. It was delicious.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Chris objected. “He offered me a job, a promotion. What did he do that humiliated me?”

Wolf slapped him on the shoulder hard enough to make his arm go numb.

Chris froze. He rubbed his sore arm as he shot hateful daggers at Wolf.

“How do you know?” Chris sneered with contempt. “How do you know everything about me!” He demanded.

“Yes!” Wolf shot back with a macabre grin so inhuman that it sent chills down his spine. “That’s it, My Boy, that’s it. That’s what I want, that’s what you want, anger, contempt. We will unleash that hate, I promise you. I know because you tell me. You broadcast it to me, like the TV box does with its moving pictures. In your dreams I see it all. All that you hate most. All that has been done to you. You’ve told me everything. That’s why I came, Christopher.

Do you think my arrival is some random event, Boy? No, your bittersweet dreams of hate and pain summoned me from the fourth world. I feed on your angst and vitriol. They quicken me. I have been searching for one like you for over a hundred years now. Your generation of apathic peons is full of hate and contempt. But most of those little mewling worms whining into their phone boxes and computer machines are weaklings. Many of them never even leave their parents’ domicile. They mewl about how hard their life is, and how they need someone to come and make it safe for them.

You have all their weaknesses, yes, but you have something else too. You have taken all your hate and bottled it deep inside yourself. Your hatred for your bullies, for your apathetic parents, your indolent friends. You keep it there, deep inside and use your hate to fuel your drive to succeed at that meaningless firm. To drive you to do that meaningless job where you hack away on the typewriter attached to the computer machine as though you are truly creating something. You waste your hatred Christopher, you waste your strength. I can give you something far more. I can set you free.”

“If you truly are some kind of immortal monster you couldn’t possibly understand the modern, digital world, and what true creation is.” Chris objected reflexively. It did not dawn on him that the last thing that should matter in the face of this creature was debating about his career choice with some kind of seemingly supernatural killer.

“Creating what!” Wolf challenged. “Creating words on a screen. What if I just smash the screen, Christopher? What happens then to your words, your numbers, where do they go?”

“To the cloud,” He shot back. “You couldn’t understand it you barbarian freak, you primitive animal!”

Wolf laughed even louder. “Is that what they tell you, Boy! That they store it in the clouds. Does the One God hold onto it for you there amidst his angels? Does he scribe it down on a tablet and send it back from the heavens to the prophets when you type on your machine again? So, this is the new religion, God in the machine? Ok, boy, then answer me this, if all the electricity fails what then? Can God send your words back to you on then machine then?”

“God has nothing to do with it you wacko, and we have enough power coursing through the world’s power lines and fiber optic cables to send information all over the world.” Chris spat back at the archaic fiend.

“And if I destroy the wooden poles the power lines hang from, or I crush your fiber cables in my bare hands. What then, eh, what do you do then?” Wolf posed.

“What does all this matter?” Chris demanded. “What does all this have to do with you murdering Chad in cold blood.”

Wolf suddenly slapped him on the shoulder again. “Nothing cold about it. It was done with hate, hate runs hot, you know it, but you want to hide from it. Like you hide from the truth. The truth is you create only a lie. A lie your masters at your beloved company use to forge wealth from your labor as they sell your lie to create more wealth that they control. They laugh at you as they dole at your weekly pittance so you can subsist in this rat hole.”

Chris’s fear of Wolf began to subside as his anger began to rise. No matter how much he told himself arguing over these points with this creature was madness it still galled him to no end that this savage would question the fabric of his life. How could this murdering freak possibly understand what he worked for, why he strived to achieve success at the office? Why his coding and the efforts of all the coders out there like him were vital to the very way the economy developed in the modern era. He didn’t have to justify his life to this monster.

“You’re insane! All of this is bull! You have no idea what you are talking about!” He shot back defiantly. “None of this has anything to do with you killing Chad!”

“Ah, really?” The monster cooed. “What was he, eh, what was he really. He was the lie, the lie that you sought to take for yourself. He had all those things you think you want: A nice home, a pretty wife, wealth and the job you desire. Tell me Christopher, what did these things bring him in the end? Is he any less dead because he had them? If he had lived to be a hundred years old would they save him from becoming a broken, useless old man as he watched his abilities and strength rot away like the world he once knew. I have watched generations rise and fade away. I have watched empires fall. I have seen him a thousand times before, and in the end they are all the same, ashes in the wind, bones in the grave, worm food. You hated him for the wrong reasons boy.”

“I didn’t hate him.” Chris sneered back.

“Oh,” said Wolf and then slapped him on shoulder again. This time when Wolf did it the memories of his high school bullies flooded his mind. The images of them all slapping him on the shoulder as hard as they could when they passed him in the hall.

“How ya doing, Chris,” They would say as they moved past him just before they would strike him.

“Are you sure?” Wolf asked as he slapped him painfully again on the other shoulder. The images of his grinning bullies filling his head.

“Stop,” Chris commanded as the pain of all the fear and humiliation he endured in his adolescence began to come rushing back. He began to feel the physical pain less as the mental anguish started to overwhelm him.

“Was he so different than they were?” Wolf asked as he began to circle Chris there in the apartment. “They wanted your fear, they wanted your pain, he wanted your skill, your talent. The only thing you have that is truly yours. He meant to use your skill with the machine to further his own goals, to stand on your shoulders. You were just a thing to him. Just a stone to step on. He may not have been as cruel as they were, but maybe that made him even worse. What is worse than to pretend to be a friend, only to be a manipulator, a user, a liar? You know him for what he was Christopher, deep inside you understand. His words were sweet, but his mark was the same.” Wolf said as he slapped Chris on the shoulder again.

“Stop!” Chris yelled.

“How did he know, huh?” Wolf asked. “How did he know how they humiliated you, how they dominated you with such a simple gesture. He wasn’t like me, he couldn’t hear your thoughts or see your dreams, but he knew didn’t he. Not because anyone told him, but because it came naturally to him. He sensed your weakness, and he exploited it, with a simple smack on the shoulder to show you who was the alpha.”

“Stop!” Chris warned him as his fear of the monster before him began to dissipate entirely and his rage began to fill the void it left behind.

“And what did you Christopher?” Wolf taunted. “What you’ve always done, you took it. You stood there and you took it like a sheep, like his dog. You just took it.”

Chris left all rational thought behind. He sprang out towards the first thing he saw that he instinctively knew could make some kind of weapon. The lamp on the stand next to the couch was a hand me down he got from a yard sale. It had a heavy wooden base with a metal cap at the end. Chris took it up in a flash and swung the heavy end right at Wolf’s head. It hit with such rage induced force the metal cap snapped in two and the wood splintered. Chris let it go and bent down with alarming speed to pick up the small wooden stand it had stood on and then smashed that over wolf’s head again and again and again until the stand was in pieces. His hands hurt from the effort, but he couldn’t really feel them.

Wolf just stood there and let him whale away, an insane grin of the most twisted kind highlighting his utter gratification at Chris’s hellacious wrath. If any of the blows hurt him he showed no sign of it, if there were any wounds caused by Chris’s assault they weren’t visible. When Chris realized in his fury there was nothing close to grab left he set into Wolf’s face with his fists. He punched him as hard as he could, brutalizing his own hands. This is when Wolf finally stopped him. The monster reached out and caught his wrists with such speed Chris barely even witnessed it, and held his arms with such strength Chris couldn’t even budge his limbs. He struggled against Wolf’s power with all his fury for several moments jerking violently to try and rip his forearms from Wolf’s grasp to no avail. Finally, when he was exhausted from all his efforts and could barely stand Wolf released him and he collapsed to the ground.

The look on Wolf’s face was pure bliss. Chris imagined he would look that happy if he had just won the lottery, got the big promotion and Ashley had confessed her undying love to him all on the same day. He looked down at Chris with such sedate contentment that he seemed like he might just sit down and take a nap. The look of utter gratification faded, and then became something else. Something Chris could not place, something that terrified him.

“You see, Christopher, your hate banishes your fear, your hate makes you strong. That’s your true power, that’s where your strength really lies. Once you let go your lies, once you set these false dreams behind you, then you will see. I will give you the secret it took me decades to learn. Unlike your self-serving parents, I actually care about your future. Unlike your so-called friends I want to help you realize your strength and your true talents, not just profit from them. Unlike your greedy elders I want to give you a legacy that is more than a pittance and a pitiful pension. Unlike your duplicitous teachers, I want to teach you something that isn’t a lie.

Soon it will be time for another gift.” Wolf promised with a terrifying smile. The macabre rictus plastered to his face was so horrifying to behold that Chris swore he changed shape right before his eyes. The skin on his skull became almost amber, like the color of a flickering flame. His teeth became like fangs, his eyes grew massive and turned yellow, and his mouth suddenly filled half his head making him look like some kind of horrendous, grinning skull that had just escaped from hell itself and was cackling in glee at the thought of plaguing mankind.

“No more gifts,” Chris pleaded as he crawled away from the mind-bending horror that stood over him.

“Ssshhh,” Wolf hissed as though he was actually trying to comfort him. “This is for your own good. You will see. Now I will leave you to recuperate. Think about your rival. Think about the feel of his hand upon you as he humiliated you. Think about the fact that now he will never again be content at your expense. How he can never take from you ever again. Take peace in that, revel in it.

But most importantly, think of this: while you meander around the chambers of the firm you prize so highly, I will be out there. While everyday your masters crack their whip over your back to force you to make more lies for them, I will be free. While you scurry about to do their will afraid they will cast you out of their castle if you don’t make their bricks without straw, I will fear nothing. While you hunker down in your little box typing away I will go where I wish and do as I will. While you are slave to others, I am the master of my own destiny, and you can be to.”

With that Wolf turned towards the door and disappeared in a blue flash. Chris sat on the floor of his apartment utterly alone. He knew he could tell no one, who would ever believe him? He knew after literally trying to cave in Wolf’s skull that he couldn’t even hurt him. He knew Wolf came when he wanted and left when he pleased. He knew Wolf was real, no matter how insane that fact now seemed, and worst of all he knew Wolf would be back.

What he did not know was what Wolf was. What was the fourth world he claimed to come from? Why did this monstrous freak care so much about him? There had to be answers somewhere. If he was real were there others like him, was it like vampires or werewolves or ghosts? Could silver bullets hurt him, did he fear crosses and garlic?  He didn’t know how much time he had to try and find out, but he knew he had to try.

***

The next day Chris furiously threw himself into his work and his search for lore about Wolf. Chad’s death had hit the office pretty hard. The cops were still investigating. It was most all anyone was talking about at the office, except for Chris. He stayed on top of his workload, and spoke with Cindy about how to best approach the account in Chad’s absence. For his part Chris was no longer interested in the supervisor’s position. He had far too much to worry about. Cindy hinted around at him stepping up now that Chad was gone, but Chris pointed out that it didn’t feel right taking over the position like this, and he felt it was in bad taste. This was a lie of course, he very much wanted to be promoted. However, the horror and the mystery that was Wolf demanded his full attention and all his effort. What good was a promotion if he was found dead in his apartment with a broken neck?

So, when he was done with his primary efforts on the project he hit the internet searching for any and all information on the supernatural that might pertain to his mysterious new, would-be benefactor. For all of his efforts over three hours of internet searching he found nothing that he felt truly described Wolf or what he really was. The closest thing he could come up with were the descriptions of various demons, which could possibly fit his tormentor. The problem was all those tales of supernatural horrors usually had said demons appearing in their true inhuman forms. Wolf had appeared twice now, and except for that moment after Chris attacked him he looked reasonably human. Then there was the fact Chris couldn’t be sure if Wolf’s seeming transformation was real or just his seriously stressed-out mind playing tricks on him. Even though he was now sure Wolf was real, that didn’t mean he wasn’t crazy. Wouldn’t anyone be a little unhinged after an evening with Wolf?

Still a demon was the closest fit that Chris could come up with, and it seemed right. Wolf was certainly demonic to him. He researched various ways ancient cultures would ward off demons. Many of the concepts seemed ridiculous to him, but some of them seemed to be common themes. He discovered that the pentagram, which he believed to be a cult thing was actually a protective symbol. Some believed that it symbolized the five wounds that Christ received at the crucifixion. He wasn’t much of a Christian, and it wasn’t much to go on, but it was a start. He found an occult shop right here in the city called Metaphysical Musings that sold something akin to what he was looking for. They were closed now, but he would hit them as soon as they were open tomorrow, provided he lived through the night.

In his cubicle he sat back on his chair. He closed his eyes. He was at work, people were mourning the loss of a coworker all around him and he was searching for ways to stop demons. He always knew life sucked, but he never thought it would lead him here. That’s when he felt someone over his shoulder and he looked up to see Ashley at the entrance to his cubicle.

“Hey,” she said with concern. “How are you holding up?”

“Better than most,” he told her without hesitation. “I’m throwing myself into my work. I hate thinking about a tragedy I can’t do anything about. I try to take my solace in what I can actually do. Times like this make you think about how helpless we often are. Especially in the face of things like this.”

“Well, that’s not how I see it, but I can understand your point. You’ve actually been a big help, Chris.”

That took him by surprise. “How so?” he asked.

“Seeing you work even harder than usual has kind of given some of the other associates the feeling that things are still normal, even if it doesn’t feel that way. We all know Chad is gone, but life still has to go on. Some of the others thought you just didn’t care until Cindy told them that you didn’t want to take the new supervisor position like this, and that you felt it would be in bad taste to step up in the current circumstances. That takes a lot of integrity Chris.”

If you only you knew he thought snidely. Under most circumstances her presence would be a balm to him, but he wasn’t making acts of largesse in Chad’s name. She could never understand that he was literally fighting for his survival right now. Her misplaced admiration only served to agitate him. Unlike others who would be glad to bask in her attention he found her naivete unsettling. What a life she had. In the face of death, though she was certainly moved, she was calm and placid. She had not met Wolf, and she could never truly understand his motivations. Still, he found her disarming despite himself. He sighed.

“What’s wrong?” She asked.

“Most everything really, but that’s what life is. Ashely, I want to be honest with you. I’m not working because I’m honoring Chad or anything like that. I’m working because I know there’s nothing else I can do. Work is something I can control, it’s something I understand. It sucks that Chad is gone. I didn’t particularly like him, and he never was interested in me until the project came up. He didn’t deserve to go out like this, whatever the hell happened to him. I don’t like to think about it because his death is representative of how little control any of us really have. The tragedy of Chad’s death is the future that is lost. He was a winner, whether I liked it or not. It didn’t matter how he got there; he got there. All the work he laid down to achieve the promotion. His relationship with his fiancée, his savvy market sense. If a guy like that didn’t make it because of some kind of…, some kind of freak accident what does that say about life?”

At first she had no idea how to respond to his admission. He immediately regretted saying it because if she went around the office and blabbed about what he said concerning Chad his reputation would likely be destroyed. He couldn’t tell if it was the horror of dealing with Wolf, her presence or some combination thereof that caused him to be so blatantly candid.

“That was one of the most brutally honest things I’ve ever heard anyone admit.” She told him. “It’s also one of the most ruthlessly pragmatic things anyone has ever told me.” She added stunned. “I have to admit Chris, every time I think I know something about you, you prove me wrong. I know you and Chad weren’t friends, and there are those who questioned his motivations, we can agree on that. Where I won’t agree is that Chad’s death means life is ultimately meaningless. My boyfriend and I just got engaged last month, does all this mean that we should just call it off because tomorrow something terrible might happen? What happened to Chad was horrible, but that doesn’t mean the sun stops shining, and that we might as well give up on tomorrow.”

“What if tomorrow doesn’t belong to us?” He countered. “What if someone can come in and with a simple gesture and just take it all away.”

“I don’t believe that, Chris, I know you are a glass half empty guy, but if you only ever see life that way you’ll never be happy, you’ll always be afraid.”

“Yesterday morning, I saw in the News there was a guy, a father of three, killed on his way to work. Got caught in a shootout he had nothing to do with, right on the street in broad daylight. There are people who woke up in the roughest parts of the Middle East who won’t live to see the sun rise again because of some agenda they are completely unaware of. I am not disillusioned Ashley; safety is the illusion. I know the odds are that in a city like this we will wake up tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that to just do it all again, but somewhere, everyday there’s someone who doesn’t.”

“Jesus, Chris, if you really believe that why do you get out of bed every morning?” she asked skeptically.

“Like I said, what else is there?” He replied darkly.

She looked at him a long time before she finally replied, “OK, your point about anything can happen is true, just as you admitted the odds of something like what happened to poor Chad are a million to one. But maybe all that angst is coming from somewhere else to.”

“And where would that be?” He inquired.

“Guilt,” she told him. She couldn’t possibly understand why, but he flinched when she said it. It had hardly been lost on him that if he hadn’t been corporate rivals with Chad, he might still be alive. She took his immediate physical reaction to mean she had hit the nail on the head, she couldn’t possibly know that she wasn’t wielding the hammer, that belonged to Wolf.

“You didn’t take the promotion. Maybe that has a lot more to do with the fact that you feel guilty that you are here, and he isn’t. Survivor’s guilt is a thing and I know a guy like you, Chris, won’t cop to that, but maybe you’re not the complete, ruthless corporate ladder climber you think you are. Maybe you should examine your own motives for not stepping up under the current circumstances. Maybe you’re not such a bad guy after all.” With that she suddenly walked away.

He watched her go quietly commending her for her ability to get in the last word. As she disappeared around the corner of the nearest cubicle, he felt that ache he felt every time she walked away. She could never understand what was really driving him, and despite the fact he so often resented her he hoped she never would. Despite her naive condescension she was willing to give him the one thing that most nobody else in his life ever had, the prospect that maybe he could be a nice guy, even if it was a lie. It was then he knew she wouldn’t tell anyone what he had said, it wasn’t in her.

The next several days went by with no Wolf, and each day he had slightly longer and more meaningful conversation with Ashley. He kept telling himself that he should distance himself from her. She was another man’s dream, not his. However, he found her presence a little bit more soothing each day. When he figured out that she actually respected him for his candor he began to contemplate maybe setting aside his feelings for her for good, and just maybe being her friend. It had been a very long time since he had a friend. A week went by and no Wolf.

By the next Monday as he was making his way back to work he was beginning to hope that it was all in his head. Yes, Chad was dead, but the cops had not yet said what had actually happened. He bought the pentagram at the occult shop exactly as he planned, and he even bought a crucifix too, hoping desperately he would never have to use them.

He was making his way back into the office with some small glimmer of hope that maybe it was all just some kind of insane nightmare his troubled mind had cooked up. He knew something was wrong the moment he walked into the cube farm. He could hear crying all over the place. His coworkers were really upset.

He quickly found Cindy as several other coworkers were all commiserating with her. “Hey, what’s going on?” he asked. They all turned to him and at first no one would answer. He could tell Cindy had actually been crying too from her puffy red eyes. She finally told him, “There was an accident over the weekend. Ashely and her boyfriend, they died in a car accident.”

That’s when he felt the cold wind surge up the back of his neck. He could feel the demonic presence of his tormentor in the room with him. Anger and fury filled his heart as he realized what had truly happened. He didn’t know how Wolf had done it, but he knew the monster did it. The rest of the office around him was a show of sympathy, and much of it actually genuine, Ashley had been well liked by most everyone. Chris was one of the first to leave when the supervisors had allowed Ahley’s coworkers and office friends to take the day off. He knew he had to go. The office was a sea of sorrow and he would stand out because all he could feel right now was hate.

###

This time Chris did not waste time staring at his door, he just simply walked in. Wolf was there on the sofa and had finally seemed to figure out how the remote worked.

“I’ve been watching some of the other villagers who share your rat hole operate their picture boxes. I believe I have figured it out.” he expressed nonchalantly.

Chris strode up to him, pulled out the pentagram and thrust it at Wolf’s face. The skull like fiend looked at it, plucked it out of his hand and commented, “They’ve embossed it with Christian symbols, amusing. It was around the nineteenth century some Catholic malcontent declared them Satanic. I have not seen one in a very long time.” He then tossed it over his shoulder without a care.

Chris pulled out the crucifix and then tried to thrust that at the monster’s face, but wolf grabbed his hand, painfully extracted the cross from his grip then tossed it away to. He then got up and slapped Chris so hard it knocked him off his feet. The pain from the blow brought tears to Chris’s eyes, but he would not weep before the freak, not this time.

Chris looked up at the demon that seemed invincible to him, but without fear. He glowered his hatred at the monster that was slowly and surely dismantling his world. Wolf looked down on him and that horrifying grin returned to his macabre visage.

“Good, Boy, good…,” the horror whispered with disturbing satisfaction. Wolf closed his eyes, and inhaled. All around him a blurring effect similar to a heat mirage distorted the air. “You have no idea, Child, what purity is, but you will. Your hate, right now, that’s pure. The kind of purity we search the ages for. I knew I chose well when I chose you.”

Chris stumbled back to his feet and screamed, “Chose me for what you freak!”

Wolf reached out with blinding speed and grabbed him by the throat hard enough to choke him, but not truly harm him. “Shhh,” the monster soothed, “we mustn’t have the neighbors calling the constables now, then I would have to kill even more were they to try and put you in the asylum. I know you don’t want that, yet.”

Chris stepped away from him as Wolf released his throat. With a hand on his aching neck Chris demanded, “What are you?”

“What are we,” Wolf corrected.

“We?” Chris asked in horror about the thought of others like Wolf.

“Yes, we are few, but we are legion. We are the true children of humanity. Born of its greatest aspirations and its darkest desires. Throughout the ages your stories of ghosts, and vampires and werewolves, all of them, they come from us. Throughout history you have called us vice, sin, evil. We are vainglory, we are pride, we are greed, envy, fury, lust, gluttony and sloth.”

“The seven deadly sins?” Chris asked in incredulous awe.

“There are more, you would be surprised, but those are the most potent, but they aren’t the most powerful.” Wolf told him smugly.

“What’s the most powerful?” Chris asked with trepidation.

“Us, Boy, us. Hate is the most powerful. Let me ask you a question. If you were to find the most rotund, corpulent glutton you had ever seen, then you took his food from him, locked him away, and told him from now on he would only ever get a modest meal, what would he do? What would his gluttony become? You see his love of food is exactly that, his love. An empty, vacuous, disgusting love, but it is the only love he knows. Stuffing his jowls with food is his purpose, take that from him and what does his love become, hate. He hates you for depriving him of his delight, his passion. If he cannot have his love, his gluttony, then he will have hate.

Some think the opposite of hate is love, it is not, they are much the same. Love and hate are two sides of the same coin, the coin of passion. The opposite of hate and love is apathy, disinterest. The same can be said of all the sins. Find a slattern…,” Wolf tried to continue.

“What the hell is a slattern?” Chris asked unfamiliar with Wolf’s archaic vocabulary.

Wolf sighed, “English leaves much to be desired as a language, eh?” He accused. “A slattern is a harlot.” The monster explained. “If you were to find the town harlot and shame her, poison the town against her, so no man would have her, what does her lust become? If you were to find the local lay-about and force him to work, what would his sloth become, it would become hate, for you. That’s why all the other sins fear us, because all you have to do is deny them their passion, and then their passion becomes our strength, it becomes hate.

We are the darkness underneath every wile, every sin. We are the universal vice, everyone hates. They may hate those richer than themselves, those prettier than themselves, those more successful than themselves, they may hate someone just because they don’t like the look of them. They may hate someone because they think them weak. You know many of these hatreds, Christopher, you have been victim of many, and fully embraced others.”

“You feed on hate, it’s like food to you?” Christopher more accused than asked.

“Oh yes,” wolf told him. “Rember what I told you, about being free of all mortal bonds. We don’t need food, or water, or even sleep. All we need to grow strong is our passion, or most beloved vice. We have no mortal frailties of any kind. All the stories about crosses, silver bullets, sunlight, all lies. The lies humanity has told themselves to help them deal with horror of our existence. How they convince themselves they can take back the night from us. The lies they’ve told themselves for thousands of years.”

“If you’re not demons, then what are you?” he asked with genuine and mortified curiosity.

“We simply call ourselves the mongers, it’s what we really are.” Wolf gladly explained.

“Where do you come from, you talked about something called the fourth world, what do you mean?” He demanded.

“The fourth world exists beyond. I met a Pride monger once who explained that the fourth world in which we dwell is that which sets us beyond time. We are bound to it, and when we grow weary, we return to it. It separates the three worlds from the other realms that lie beyond. If you cross into the fifth world, you can go to strange places. Sometimes like this one, sometimes not.” Wolf revealed.

“The dimensions!” Christopher exclaimed, “you’re talking about the fourth dimension!”

“As you say, I don’t care what parlance you use, it is the same.” Wolf told him casually.

Understanding more than a little bit about science the fantastic possibilities of what Wolf was claiming thrilled him so much that he almost utterly forgot the monster’s crimes. “What about the sixth dimeson, what lies there?” he asked with excitement.

Wolf’s immediate reaction broke Chris’s armor of fascination and contempt as he suddenly yelled back, “We do not speak of such things!”

Chris jumped back in fright at Wolf’s powerful response. “You are afraid of it. So, there is something that you fear, something that can hurt you.” He declared with grim satisfaction.

“Us, Boy, can hurt us.” Wolf corrected again.

“What, who?” Chris demanded.

Wolf’s vicious grin returned. “You really want to know, Boy?” he dared.

“Yes,” Chris shot back defiantly.

“You might not like what you hear. I have brutalized you, I have pulled back the thin veneer of your wasted life, I have destroyed the falsehoods you surrounded yourself with, but I haven’t lied to you. I won’t now either.” He warned.

“There’s nothing you can say that will hurt me any worse than you already have.” Chris countered. “You murdered a beautiful person, you killed an innocent woman to make some, twisted meaningless point I don’t pretend to understand! You killed my perspective supervisor just to prove your real! What the hell could you possibly tell me that would mess up my life and the world any more than you have already done?”

“I could tell you about the shining ones.” Wolf said with sadistic satisfaction. “Tell me something Christopher, was your would-be paramour married to the man in the car when she died?”

Chris was utterly baffled again by the question. “No, they were going to be married, they were engaged, who cares, you killed her you freak.”

“Yet she shared a bed with him?” Wolf said.

Chris looked upon the horror with disbelief that the fiend would think this was important at all.

“What, were they sleeping together? Yeah, I imagine they were, why, does that shock you? I know things were different centuries ago when they still burned witches at the stake but does it really offend a horrific, seemingly brutal supernatural killer like you that they had an active sex life? Was that why you did it? Are you really trying to engage in a moral debate about your victims after having murdered them?”

Wolf laughed out loud and had to quiet himself when he realized he was now being too loud.

“Righteous indignation, Boy, now that is amusing. However, you misunderstand my point. Centuries ago people still believed in the higher power. Centuries ago people not only attended church, they lived for it, they killed for it, they died for it. Back then the Shining Ones would come past the fourth world far more often than they do now. Now they barely come at all. If your Ashely was so innocent and so wonderful I would never have been able to hurt her. In the days of yore, when the pious were at risk, when prayers were still answered, they would come. If the soul who beseeched them was pure, or so the legend goes.”

Chris stopped and stared at Wolf for a long time trying to grasp what he was saying. “Who would come? What’s out there, what are these shining ones?”

“The faithful once called them the Bene Elohim, but you would just them angels.” Wolf remarked snidely.

“Wait,” Chris said sarcastically, “angels, with wings, and feathers and halos and all of it. Angels, I’m supposed to believe that?”

“Well, you don’t believe in the mongers I assume, eh? How many must I kill to prove to you I’m real, Whelp.” Wolf threatened.

“No, that’s different, I’ve seen you, you attacked me, you killed my coworkers, your real, I see you. Where are these angels? If they’re real why don’t they come? If they can destroy you and they are supposed to be the good guys why do they let you exist?”

Wolf laughed even louder. “Good guys,” said the monster incredulously. “If you ever read the Old Testament you would not say such things. They are not, ‘good guys.’ They are guardians, they are killers and destroyers. Even we fear them. As for them not coming anymore, well maybe humanity stopped calling them. Maybe there’s nothing left worth protecting in the mortal realm anymore. Consider yourself, Christopher, you are a hateful, little, self-serving malcontent who spites the world. Why would they come to you? What about you is worth saving? All the shining Ones would see is your hate and your vitriol. The truth is if they saw you, they would just see me. Why do you think I came to you Christopher? Why do you think I talk about us? Why I say that We fear them. I mean me, and I mean you. You are a monger, Boy. You just haven’t realized it yet.

So set aside any thought of the shining ones coming to help the likes of you, they would surely just destroy you the same as they would me. No one will help you, no one will even believe you, and not just because you would sound mad if you dare to even speak of me but because they don’t care. Your society is full of indolent, self-indulgent worms too busy reclining in their upholstered thrones while they watch their favorite lies scroll across the picture box.

Did your parents care about you while you desperately tried to earn their approval all throughout your youth? Did they ever really appreciate all the hard work you put in at school? Did they ever notice that while your tormentors tortured you that you still excelled in your studies?

Did your teachers ever care about the pain and humiliation the other children heaped on you, or did they just make you sit in that little room with your tormentors, week after week while you squirmed like a coward under the sadistic gaze of your bully? Did your friends ever attempt to defend you or help you in any fashion? Have your overlords at the corporate baronies where you slave away ever done anything for you that wasn’t in their best interest? Has anyone ever truly cared about you at all?

Even sweet Ashely, who offered you her friendship. Would she ever have offered you anything more? Do you really think she didn’t know how you felt about her? Was it generous of her to allow you to bask in her presence knowing full well she would never give her heart to a seeming weakling like you. Was it perhaps something else that brought her to your little cubicle every day to chide you on your wicked ways? Maybe you were just another admirer, just another onlooker longing for what you were never going to have and that amused her. Maybe she felt like she was genuinely doing you a kindness by just gracing you with her presence. I did you a mercy, Christopher, when I slew her. I took the lie she allowed you to believe and smashed it. I showed you what her and all her kind ultimately are, fodder for the grave.

The only thing that matters is this: in all your life the only one who ever took a true and genuine interest in your black heart was me. Think about that, Child, the only thing your hateful prayers could summon from beyond was me. We are the same, Christopher, you hate the world as I hate the world. What sets you apart from all the perspective mongers I have passed by throughout the ages of my existence is that you can truly hate, purely hate. It’s a beautiful thing, Boy. You don’t need a Saviour, you don’t need friends, you don’t need to grovel to your overlords, and you don’t need parents, all you need is me to show you the way.”

“Jesus Christ,” Chistopher gasped in horror. “You’re a headhunter, you’re a goddamned recruiter looking for talent.”

Wolf slapped him again, and again Chris fell to floor. “Don’t say the name of the Son of God. You may not believe, but many Mongers do, and we don’t care to hear such things.”

He was actually growing accustomed to Wolf’s violence by now. He looked back up at the monster as though he never even struck him and continued, “You killed Chad, you killed Ashely for this? Because you want me to join the club?”

Wolf pointed an accusatory finger at him and shot back, “You see, there it is, your strength! I strike you and it means nothing to you when you are wrapped in your hate. When I first left you, you were bawling on your divan like a frightened child. All it took was to remind you of the brutality of your childhood. The pain your nemeses heaped upon you. You know the secret of pain, don’t you, Boy? Unless your enemy can torture you on the rack, you can endure any pain of the body. Unless they visit unyielding agony onto you the body will heal, but the spirit, the spirit not so much.

It’s the fear, the pain in your heart that really hurts the most, isn’t it Christopher. It’s that pain that your tormentors thrust into your heart again and again and again when you were just a child that twisted your spirit into the malignant form it has become now. They didn’t break you, they just made you a monster.”

Chris shot right up and faced wolf without any fear. He controlled his fury as he knew violence against this creature was useless. “I’m not the one who has walked through history murdering innocent people for religious fervor or simple spite. I haven’t visited unending atrocities on the world across centuries. There’s only one monster in this room; I’m looking at it.”

“Yes, you are not the monster, the way you mourned your rival and your would-be paramour’s passing shows to all the world your compassion and your pain at their loss. How you wept for them uncontrollably for hours at a time shows your sense of humanity. How you set aside their murders with glee at the mystery of the fourth world and the revelation of the shining ones. You displayed such intense curiosity and interest in my nature that it seemed as though you forgot about them all together. Yes, you haven’t committed my endless stream of horrors upon humanity, but that’s not because you don’t want to, that’s because you don’t yet have the power to do so. That’s changing though, look at you stand up to me. Look at your strength of will when your hate gives you purpose.”

“This is all useless and your words are just more lies. There’s only one thing you are telling the truth about! That I admit to gladly, I hate you. I hate what you are. Besides the fact that you’re supernatural you’re no different than the rest of my bullies. Your power is waste, to have all the strength and seeming invincibility for what, so you could bully some wimp into joining your little hate fest?”

“Truly,” said Wolf with a snide grin. “Then tell me this young one, have any of your tormentors before me offered you this?” The monster said as he held out his hand for Chris to take. “Come with me Christopher. Set aside your weakness, Set aside your frailty. Let go the vestige of humanity you so uselessly cling to, what need do you have for it? While you slave away for your corporate barons do you wear your humanity as you forsake life to slave away in your cubicle? If you were truly capable of love, would you not have a bride of your own by now? If you really cared about anyone or anything other than your own contempt for the world, wouldn’t you have at least a single friend to call your own?

Did Billy Davis ever ask you to join him, to be his comrade? Did he ever offer you freedom, did he ever promise to show you the way to immortality and true power? Has anyone ever offered you anything, or promised you so much before me?” Wolf finished as he took a step towards him for Chris to take his hand.

Chris stepped back and wore a look of contempt on his face so intense that it brought a smile to Wolf’s face. He pointed to Chris’s angry visage and said, “Yes, there it is, yes! Your hate for me, your disbelief, your righteous indignation, your last defense. When my father came to me and told me these truths I looked at him the same, exact way. I will tell you what he told me. You can’t stop this Christopher; you can’t fight what you are. You called me, remember?”

“Bull, you were poking around inside my head, somehow you found your way into my dreams. So what if I resent the people who bullied me, why shouldn’t I hate them for what they did to me? That doesn’t make me a killer, or even mean I want to hurt them.” He countered.

“Oh Christopher, my poor deluded boy, of course you want to hurt them, and you will.” Wolf challenged.

“You can’t make me.” Chris shot back defiantly.

“I don’t want to make you do anything, I want you to be what you truly are. Like I told you, Boy, I have been where you are, and I know what happens next.” Wolf replied.

“What’s that, another sales pitch?” Chris mocked.

“No, the challenge.” Wolf said softly with a menacing grin.

“What, you’re challenging me to a fight or something?” Chris snapped back in confusion.

Wolf had to control his laughter before he could reply. “We can be defeated, one does not have to be a monger or an angel to defeat us.”

“And you are going to actually tell me how to do that?” Chris asked with disbelief.

“I told you, Boy, I have not lied to you, I won’t start now. There are two ways to defeat a hate monger: not with signs and symbols and ridiculous superstition, but with apathy or love. Now the way of apathy is closed to you. If you were an apathetic soul I would never even have known you existed at all. You are a passionate, spiteful little malcontent like me, so the only way for you to drive me off is with love.”

“You said love and hate are the same.” Chris pointed out.

“They are, but just as Janus has two faces the soul has two halves, the light and the dark. Hate is the darkness of passion; love is its light. If you can actually feel love Christopher, truly feel it for anyone else this would feel like poison to me. I would become weak and nauseous. I have been in the presence of true love before, but only twice in all the centuries of my existence. I avoid those few souls capable of such a thing, one never knows when they might suddenly be enraptured and make me vomit up my vitriol for them.”

“Ok, so I have to show you true love, how the hell am I suppose to do that? Is this going to become like some sort of a romantic-horror comedy? I’m supposed to go out and find a girl and live happily ever after?” Chris mocked.

Wolf sighed. “If you had any chance of even grasping this I would not be the one who would have to tell you how to do it.”

“This is more bull, it’s part of the sales pitch.” Chris accused. “You’re trying to make me think there is no way out but you. That I don’t have a chance.”

Wolf slowly and casually walked past Chris and took a picture off the wall of his apartment and then showed it to him. The picture was of his parents. Chris lashed out and snatched it away from the fiend, Wolf made no move to stop him.

“Leave them out of it!” He yelled.

“Like they left you out of their lives.” Wolf quipped.

“Go to hell, Freak!” Chris raged.

Wolf laughed. “The challenge is simple as are the stakes. We go to your parents’ domicile this weekend. There you show me that you are actually capable of loving them, that you are part of a family, that the picture in your hands is not a sad, pathetic lie. If you can do this, I will leave you be, forever. I will never harm you or interfere in your mortal existence again.”

Chris gave him an absolutely incredulous stare. “That’s it, that’s all there is to it?”

“That’s all there would be to it if you were actually capable of it. Christopher, I must warn you, this will be the hardest part of all for you, realizing the truths you have so desperately denied. You will fail, like I did. I told you I would give you the truth, and I have. If you win, then you can live in peace.”

“If I lose,” Chris demanded.

That horrifying grin appeared again. It spread around Wolf’s monstrous head like a wound that was suddenly gashed open. His face once more took on that inhuman amber hue. Chris couldn’t help but be nearly overwhelmed by a wave of creeping fear that spread throughout his soul. Finally, Wolf answered, “If you fail, then you send me to slaughter them.”

“You mean you’re going to kill them.” Chris asked in horror.

“No, Boy, I mean you will send me to slaughter them.” He repeated.

“That’s not going to happen,” Chris insisted.

“I said the same thing,” Wolf replied.

***

Sundays were usually rest days for his parents. Not that they were Christian, or even religious, it was just the day they liked to stay home and do nothing. Now that they were both technically retired they were usually always out. On any given day they could be taking in a movie, eating at a good restaurant, out at the park, shopping or vacationing somewhere around the globe. Chris didn’t see them much, but then again he hadn’t seen them much when he was a kid either. They both worked, a lot. They had made a point of telling him all through his childhood and adolescence that he had better work for his money the way they had, because they weren’t leaving him any.  The way they saw it they had earned it and they were going to spend it. He had always figured they had a point.

Even now they were still industrious. His dad still did consulting on the side for the insurance firm he used to work for, and his mother loved her dog walking business. She said many times she wished it could have always been her career. She drove a land rover SUV and he had a nineteen sixty-two Chevy corvette. They had sold their larger home after he left for college since they made it very clear that he was never coming back home again and used the money from the sale to buy a Class A motor home they used to tour the country every vacation season.

The fact that they hadn’t helped him pay his way through college had saddled him with the same college debt the most young Americans his age struggled with and had allowed them to purchase the home they resided in now. They said they had done it, and so could he. Granted college tuition had nearly tripled since they went to school, but that wasn’t a part of the equation they had ever really been worried about. The things about his parents that had always galled him the most had never been their seeming greed, but their apathy. He had always failed to be able to explain to him the pain of his youth, or at least he had thought he had.

Still, he had always believed that they were just products of their times. After all, if they had been as bad a set of parents as Wolf claimed how come he had turned out self-sufficient. Many guys he knew from high school had never even gotten off the ground. They went to college, took a bunch of useless classes, and then simply went back home to live with their parents. His parents had been very clear about making prudent choices about his curriculum. They had harped on it. They had said that a good college education was key to his future. Had they been wrong? He was one step away from finally stepping into the bottom rung of upper management when Wolf decided to ruin his life.

Yes, he had no girlfriend, but his mom and dad were already successful when they met. They told him once he had a true career, and a real paycheck, that romance would follow. After all no woman wants a dead beat, and it takes money to build a real home and family. Were they wrong? They were already retired and seemingly enjoying the good life they had earned.

He believed that though they were hardly perfect parents, they certainly weren’t the worst ones. His work ethic came largely from them. It wasn’t like he had gone without when he was a kid. He always had nice clothes, computers, the latest video games, and a decent diet. Thye refused to let him indulge in fast food like so many of his friends had. Now almost everyone he knew of whom had overindulged in that kind of stuff had some kind of stomach ailment to show for it. In the end yes, they had never been overly affectionate, but they had been there. Sure, they weren’t a hallmark family moment, but on the level that counted they were a family. They didn’t run around saying, “I love you,” but they had a bond. He was sure of that, and Wolf couldn’t change that fact.

The thought terrified him that he knew Wolf would be watching them. The horror was that he couldn’t explain to them their lives were in danger, that he was here to protect them. He couldn’t dare to tell anyone the truth. They would lock him away and bury him under mountains of medication. He felt there was one advantage he had, he hoped he wouldn’t be alone. He would be with his parents. All they had to do was be a family, just for a bit, and hopefully his nightmare would end.

He knocked on the door of their Ardmore Park condominium. Though it was just 2 bedrooms, with the second bedroom being their office, it was spacious. Chris was always torn about coming here, not that he came much. He hoped that one day he could afford to retire like this, maybe with a wife to share his time with. That dream had always seemed so far away though, and now it seemed like it was an implausible aspiration, at least so long as Wolf was a part of his life.

His mother opened the door and in her usual manner welcomed him home, “Christopher,” she said as she pecked him on the cheek with a kiss. “Hey, Boy,” his father said from inside in the living room. “Hi Mom,” he said as he entered the home. The moment he stepped in and looked into the living room he froze in fear. All he could see of his father as he sat on his favorite recliner was his feet clad in his favorite Burberry, checked socks. Standing right in front of the recliner, just inches from his father, was Wolf. He was dressed in one of his father’s expensive suits. He grinned at Chris with maniacal delight.

“Chris, Sweetie, what’s wrong, you’ve gone all pale?” His mother asked as she looked at him with concern. He turned his head sharply at her and then back to where Wolf now stood mocking them all with his hellacious grin and his father’s thousand-dollar, Brooks Brothers suit. She instinctively followed his gaze. “What?” she asked as she looked right at Wolf and seemingly didn’t perceive him. Chris looked on in confusion as his father got up, and put on a pair of three-hundred-dollar sandals over his socks. “What’s gotten into you?” he said as he walked right by Wolf.

“They can’t see me Christopher, and they can’t hear me. I’m a hate monger, Boy, you know this. Only those consumed with my vice can see me in the fourth world, and then only those truly filled with hate. Now if a greed monger where here, then they could see him, or perhaps a pride monger, these two I think could be both.” The monster stated as he slowly walked up to the mantle place and leaned on it nonchalantly.

His parents kept pressing him on what was wrong. To them their recently arrived son had just turned white and was now staring off into space. “Tell them about the girl, Christopher, your lady love. Tell her about your would-be friend and superior with the broken neck. Tell them about your losses and how broken up you are about it, Boy. You had best tell them something, lest they think you incompetent, or mad.” Wolf warned.

Though he hated taking cues from his preternatural tormentor, there was little choice. “I’m sorry,” he apologized, “it’s been a really rough couple of weeks. I recently lost two co-workers in tragic accidents. One of them was a friend of mine.” Wolf snorted derisively as his parents offered him condolences. They invited him to sit down and talk about it. So he did. Wolf watched as he explained the strange way Chad had seemingly died since he couldn’t tell them the truth. Then he went into Ashley’s untimely demise. He had never asked Wolf how he had done it, and he really didn’t want to.

When he was done his mother looked to him and said, “You know who died, Sarah Holmes, you remember Sarah, from down the street at the old neighborhood. Lung Cancer, never smoked a day in her life. It’s such a shame when they go that young, Chris, I’m so sorry to hear it.”

“Yeah, Son, reminds me of Albert, was such a shame. He was such a good kid too.” His father offered. Chris tensed up. His knuckles went white at the mention of Albert’s name. In his youth, and throughout his life there may have been only one other person that Chris could have ever called a friend besides maybe Ashley, Albert Chester. They had met when they were both around ten, and because they were both awkward social pariahs, and nerds, they had bonded. They had had many of the same interests in games and computers. The short two years they were friends was maybe the only time in Chris’s life he ever felt he truly belonged anywhere. Chris did not have many pictures he ever kept, even of his parents. The only thing he had approximating a photo album was comprised mostly of pictures of he and Albert. To this day he never spoke of his old, childhood friend. To this day the loss was still too painful. His parents had never understood that.

His parents did what they often did, and went on talking like he wasn’t there. They began to bring up everyone they knew who had died in the last ten years, like that had anything at all to do with the recent or old losses in his life. The look on his face was a pained expression of agitation. Wolf’s cruel grin changed to something else: a strange kind of wonder seemed to grace his repugnant visage.

Suddenly he was behind Chris. He whispered to him from just over his shoulder as his parents prattled on. “What’s this, eh, what’s this. Albert, who is Albert? I saw no memory or image of him in your dreams. Had you forgotten him, eh?” Chris said nothing, he did nothing. He just stared out across the room with a disgruntled, almost empty expression plastered on his face.

“No,” Wolf whispered again, “you didn’t forget. I can feel it, I can feel your pain. You hid it away. The pain of his loss, you locked it away. You locked it away where nobody could see it. Why did you do that, huh boy?” His parents were now talking about some old couple in a nursing home who died days apart from one another.

“Your patriarch, your father, does he realize what he just did. Does he realize how much that friendship with poor, poor Albert meant to you. Surely not, because he didn’t know that the mere mention of the boy’s name was a dagger through your heart. It still hurts eh?” Chris shot venom filled daggers at him. Wolf’s face turned into pure delight, and around him the air began to shimmer. That’s when his parents felt the strange sensation on the backs of their necks, and both stopped babbling about dead nursing home residents and looked at Wolf, even though they couldn’t see him. They then turned and looked at Chris with confusion in their eyes.

Seeing as this was the first moment they had shut up since they started making a list of the dead Chris interjected, “I remember Albert’s funeral very well. That’s where you sold that life insurance policy to Pete Cross’s father. You talked about that for months.”

“Oh yeah, old Bob Cross, still has that policy too. It’s at times like that you think about the future. With poor Albert lying there like that, he started thinking what if something happened to him, what would happen to his family. He bought a whole life policy to, hell of a guy Bob.” His father recounted.

“Oh yeah,” Chris said in a low, severe tone, “it shows a lot of foresight buying life insurance at a twelve-year old’s funeral.”

“Christopher, why do you always do that? When we’re trying to be sympathetic to you you get snarky with us. That policy your father sold that day paid for your retainer, and your new computer as I recall.”

“Do I?” he asked sarcastically.

“Sweetheart, it’s alright. He’s had a rough time. Chris, obviously this is really getting to you. You should take some time off. Get your head together.” His father said.

“Can’t, Dad, college loan payments. Granpa wasn’t there to help me like he helped you, remember. The government wants their money, can hardly afford to take any time off.  I mean you guys have said it plenty of times, ‘your taking it all with you,’ so I have to keep making those payments. You know President Obama once said he was forty-three before he paid off his loans. I’m hoping I’m done by fifty. Maybe then I can afford to get married.” He shot back spitefully.

“Dad didn’t help me, Chris, I told you I pulled myself up by my bootstraps.” His father claimed.

“That’s weird, Grandma told me you sold the old dairy farm in Westmoreland that Grandpa left you and used it to pay off your college debt and to buy your first Corvette. She was always kind of miffed that you guys made me pay my own way. She remembered it pretty well because of the farm hands who lost their jobs, she was pretty agitated about that to.” He had held onto that gem of truth for almost ten years now. He knew it was horrible timing to roll it out now since he was supposed to be trying to literally protect them, but their callous treatment of Albert’s memory really galled him. He regretted the words the moment he spoke, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself.

“When did she tell you that?” His father asked.

“When she was in the home,” He replied.

“Chris, She was angry, and not exactly in her right mind. She couldn’t get around anymore and she wasn’t willing to accept that she couldn’t live by herself.” His father deflected.

I remember she was angry, angry enough to tell me quite a few things, he thought. He looked up as Wolf stood behind his father’s easy chair, wringing his hands as though in horrifying expectation of choking his father to death. He looked over at Chris with a smug look plastered to his barely human face. His parents sat in uncomfortable silence, likely dreading another accusation that was probably true.

Goddammit concentrate or you’re literally going to kill your own parents he realized. He tried to focus.  He broke the awkward silence. “I’m sorry, look, guys, no offense but right now I really don’t want to hear a list of all the people you know who died. That’s the last thing I want to hear. I want to take my mind off Ashley, not think about all the people you know who died before her.” He told them Frankly.

“I’m sorry son. We were never really good at this kind of stuff.” His father admitted candidly.

“Ashley,” his mother asked. “Was she the one who was your friend?”

A long pause followed. Chris shot hate filled daggers of contempt at Wolf. The monger smiled and looked back with sadistic satisfaction. “You’ll thank me one day, Christopher.” Wolf Claimed. He had become used to what he believed was the telepathic communication the Monster used to torment him with. It no longer perturbed him any more in and of itself, Only Wolf himself could do that.

“She was maybe the closest thing to a friend I’ve had in decades, and just like that, she was gone.” He stated in a low, contemptuous tone.

“Ah, still pining for the disdain of your lost, would-be paramour?” Wolf mocked.

Chris grew red in the face and glowered over his father’s shoulder. His dad could clearly see how upset he was, and at first thought he was the target of Chris’s ire, but noticed his son wasn’t looking at him. He leaned forward and looked up over his shoulder to witness nothing; he couldn’t see the monger unless Wolf wanted him to.

“Chris, Honey, you’re acting so strange.” His mother said as she began to become uncomfortable in his presence.

“What are you looking at son?” his father questioned skeptically.

“Nothing, dad, nothing. Just, been a rough couple of weeks. My supervisor died in a freak accident, my friend died in a car accident. The project I’ve been working on for months is in limbo because of all the loss, and I’m beginning to wonder if any of it is really worth it.”

“It’s always worth it, Chris.” His father assured him. “All that hard work is going to pay off. One day you’re going to retire better off than we are, and you and your wife will get to enjoy what you worked so hard for.” His mother rang in with more Boomer words of encouragement extolling the virtues of hard work.

Wolf settled his hands casually on top of his father’s chair and glared at him. “What a wonderful notion, Christopher.” The monster jeered telepathically. “Go find some self-serving shrew like your mother to birth a child with, so the two of can neglect your offspring, like your parents neglected you. You can dress him in adorable clothing and comment on how poche your little one looks to the nurse maids you leave him with when you and your Shrew go off to work and accumulate more wealth. Perhaps he will be cleverer than you and learn how to bully the other neglected children before they learn to bully him. Would that make you proud? You can brag about all the expensive things you buy him to your fake friends while he sits alone in his room searching for the God in the Machine like you did. Do you think that will make him happy? It sounds like a content future to me. Why this city, where your parents raised you, its such a wonderful place to bring up a child. Here, in Philadelphia, where if you know where the wealthy live you can still walk down the streets without taking cover from all the gunfire. I’m sure you can teach him which streets are safe and which are not. That would at least be something more than your parents ever taught you.”

Chris grew angry and shot back right into Wolf’s mind, “Shut up you dick! You said this was supposed to be my challenge, to prove we are a family, instead you keep babbling on in my head! Don’t expect me to take any of your sick games seriously if you keep trying to sabotage me!”

“I’m impressed, Boy, you learned how to speak telepathically!” Wolf complimented with what Chris could swear was genuine appreciation.

“Why wouldn’t I,” he thought back, “you never shut up! All I had to do is listen to you in my head to figure it out! So just shut up and let me be with my family!”

Wolf laughed loud inside Chris’s mind, something that genuinely disturbed him. “Christopher, this is such a sad waste of time, but since you are so adamant about pretending you have a family let me help you, reminisce.” His parents were looking at him with concerned glances while he stared furiously at seemingly nothing.

“What!” He demanded.

“Reminisce you dullard, conjure some happy events in your mind that you shared with these two, self-serving shysters, and speak of them with your so-called parents. Prove to me you were ever a family. Your initial attempts have been pathetic.” Wolf told him.

“Chris, Son, I’m getting worried here.” His father said.

“Honey, are you on the drugs, I mean maybe the kind for depression or anxiety?” His mother asked.

“I wish my problem was just drugs,” he growled bluntly. “It’s just stress, you know what, Dad, I do need time off.”

“Now, you’re talking, Boy. It’s obvious that it’s all getting to you. You know what we need Christopher, we need a drink, come on gang lets hit the bar.” His father said as he got up to lead them to his well-stocked wet bar. Chris followed them while his mother began to sing the praises of Yosemite National Park, New York and California and other well-known Boomer vacation destinations.

Chris sat down at his father’s bar and realized this was the first time he had sat down for a drink with his parents. He wasn’t so much as listening to anything they were actually saying as just trying to enjoy their company. He refused to look at Wolf. He stopped racking his mind for happy memories to reminisce about. He just sat there with his parents, taking solace in their presence. They were far from perfect, but they were his. Yes, they had certainly done him wrong, but he refused to believe it was out malice, it’s what they were, materialists in the modern sense. A sense of belonging even began to slowly creep over him. To hell with Wolf, he would see that though they were not a Disney family and didn’t spend summers in the Magic Kingdom, they were still a family, and the freakish savage would have to accept that. He hoped it would be enough to drive the monster away.

Then his mother began to offer some more of her sage advice.

“You know Christopher, what you need is to get together with some good friends and go somewhere, make some memories. Maybe with a nice girl, get your mind of the doom and gloom.” She instructed him.

“Well, Mom, I’m fresh out friends. Sadly the only person I would have considered some sort of double date weekend with passed away.” He told her as he downed another shot.

“Well maybe go with some of your old friends. You used to have lots of friends, I remember in Junior high whenever we went to school to pick you up there’s was always a bunch of boys who said hi, they knew us by name.” She insisted. “Yup, His father agreed, every time we were there they would say hi.”

Chris put the shot glass down as a wave of agitation swept over him. “Mom, I used to tell you all the time, they were bullies, they used to bully me. They would say hello to you to taunt me. I didn’t have any friends in Junior High, no one would talk to me because if they did they would become targets to.” He replied indignantly.

“Nonsense,” she countered, “there was that one boy, the one you had the tiff with, what was his name again, Honey?” She asked her husband. “Ummm, Billy, his name was Billy, used to always talk to you every time we were at school.” His father replied jovially.

Chris’s hand tightened on the shot glass until his knuckles were white. “Billy Davis?” He asked in a venomous demeanor. His parents were immediately taken aback by the dangerous tone in his voice. A chill wind swept over them all, causing his parents to shiver, but Chris did not. “Honey is a window open, where’s that draft coming from?” She tried to deflect with genuine curiosity.

“The window’s not open, and there was no tiff.” Chris stated with simmering anger. “He beat me senseless. He knocked three teeth out of my mouth and broke my nose. The principal said he should have gone to juvie for that it was so bad, but you refused to press charges. It was weeks before my face was even recognizable again.”

His parents looked at each other not sure what to say. Chris continued not attempting to hide his contempt for them at all. “He was never my friend, I hated him. I hate him now. The beating he gave me still haunts my dreams. Sometimes I wake up screaming because he’s still beating me in my dreams. If there is one person who ruined my life it was Billy Davis. But I have to admit, the fact that you didn’t press charges against him didn’t help either.” He sneered.

“Chris, it was just a fight, a tiff, boys do that, it happens, you always took these things so seriously.” She defended.

“We didn’t press charges because his father admitted he was wrong for what he did. He paid all your medical bills, and even gave you something extra. Remember, you used it to buy your first car.” His father claimed.

“You used it to buy my first car. As I recall you didn’t even bother mentioning it to me until after you picked out that first car you gave me after graduation.” He accused. “That wasn’t the worst of it though, not by far. You left me in the vile, ridiculous joke of a peer mediation course. Where I had to go, twice a week, the rest of the school year, after my face healed, to sit down before some self-righteous, bitch councilor with some fake degree tell us about how keeping our feelings bottled up was the real reason Billy kicked my ass. That was my personal hell, going there, every week, twice, to see him mocking me with his snide grin, leering at me, his eyes saying the same thing every single time: ‘I can hurt you again whenever I want.’ I begged you to take me out of there, but you listened to the councilor instead of me, and made me go back again, and again, and again so that it literally scarred me for life. I still see that room in my nightmares, and you call it a tiff.” He finished with a spiteful hurt tone.

“Chris, It was never like that.” She tried to claim.

He threw the shot glass across the room. His father reared up to yell at him but he looked at his old man with hate that he stopped the boomer dead in his tracks. Behind him Wolf looked on with maniacal glee. His head looked like nothing human now. It was like a giant, reddish yellow pumpkin with a maw like grin that stretched across much of his huge head. It was so horrifying that any normal person who saw would likely go mad. Chris barely even noticed, in his hate-filled ire for his parents he didn’t care.

“Every day of my life that year was like that, not that you ever noticed.” Chris got up and began to leave. His father challenged, “Now wait just a minute…!” when Wolf knocked him down. Chris looked back to his mother trying desperately to help him up as his father was trying to make sense of what had just happened. In their confusion he just turned and left. They must have texted him ten times a piece before he finally just blocked them both, and didn’t really believe he would ever unblock them.

When he got home he sat on the couch for hours just starring out into space. Not watching TV, not attempting to take his mind off what had just happened, he just sat seething. Wolf sat across him, basking in his hate. The strange mirage-like effect clearly indicating he was feasting on Chris’s utter contempt for his parents. He had been around the monster long enough now to recognize the effect for what it was, but he didn’t care.

Finally, after hours of them just sitting there, Wolf spoke. “I have to admit, Christopher, I truly believe you may have even more sorrowful tale than my own. I killed my father, he used to beat me savagely. like you, the pain of those beatings defined my youth. But at least when my father beat me he knew I was there. Your parents utterly abandoned you, in every way. You truly were on your own. Now I know why you hate so thoroughly; it’s the only thing they ever taught you, the only gift they knew how to give.  The most pathetic part about them, and your life, is they are too selfish and too ignorant to even realize what they have done to you.”

“Shut up, freak.” He spat. “Just do it, stop talking about it and just do it.” He ordered as he glared at Wolf without any fear or any reservation at all.

“Good Boy,” Wolf replied with an inhuman grin of sadistic satisfaction smeared across his monstrous face.

###

When the knock on the door came Chris looked over nonchalantly. He knew it wasn’t Wolf, he didn’t knock anymore, he just appeared when he wanted to. He had taken off some time at work since he didn’t feel like hating his life and concentrating on a project at the same time. Given Chad and Ashley’s death they were giving a mental health days to select employees who were considered close to either of them, and he qualified. The fact that Chad had proven useful even in death made him wonder if his would-be rival might have proven useful in life, had Wolf not murdered him.

He got up from the couch and went over to open the door. He looked through the peep hole in his door. There were two men outside wearing business casual suits. He knew them for what they were right away, cops. He didn’t hesitate to open the door. He was well past the point of denying Wolf’s existence, he figured he might get some of the grisly details from them.

“Hello,” he said fatly.

They hesitated, waiting for him to say something more.  Chris knew exactly why they were here, and he had no intention of helping them. He just stared at them making them both uncomfortable.

“Chistopher Hodges?” The older of the two asked.

“Yes,” He replied casually.

“I’m detective Barnes and this is Detective Murry. Sadly Mister Hodges we have some bad news, and we need to speak to you about an incident that took place last night.” He informed.

“Come on in.” Chris replied without concern. He would have tried to warn them, but what good what that do. Chris knew that if Wolf showed up while they were here he might just murder them both leaving him to take the blame. Who would believe in the exitance of the mongers, certainly not two police detectives. He knew that their very presence here put them in danger, but what could he do about it?

Once they were inside they seemed somewhat anxious. Chris imagined his nonchalant demeanor threw them off. Chris walked away from them without so much as a word. They looked towards each other taken aback by his seeming indifference. Chris figured he was going to need a couple of shots to deal with this. He certainly wasn’t apathetic by any means to his parents’ murder, his struggle was his need to resist seeming too smug about it.

He had bought some expensive Wheatly Vodka, because if he was going to celebrate his parents’ murder he was going to do it in style. None of the absurdity of what was taking place was lost on him. He had ordered a demon to kill his parents after it had murdered two of his coworkers and no one on earth who was sane would believe it. So, he figured what the hell, if he didn’t want to get drunk then he actually would be crazy.

He turned around as he downed the shot. “Sorry officers, been a rough couple of weeks at work, and you caught me on a mental health day. So, what’s this about?” He quipped.

“I’m sorry to hear that Mister Hodges, I wish we didn’t have to have this conversation, especially in your current state of mind. Last night your parents were murdered.” Chris held up his finger to stop them much to their shock, then picked up the Vodka bottle and took a big swig. After he put the bottle down he asked, “So someone tried to rob them or something?”

“Not exactly,” the older detective told him visibly perturbed by Chris’s lackluster reaction. “We’re not sure that anything was actually stolen. According to neighbors you were the last visitor they had, and as difficult as this might be, we were hoping you would help us?”

“No,” Chris told them with such an obstinate sense of confidence his reply dumbfounded both detectives at the same time.

“I’m sorry,” The younger detective asked.

“No,” Chris repeated, “I’m not going to help you, not in any way. I’m not going to identify the bodies, or go back to their house, nothing. The only thing I’ll do is answer all your questions to the best of my abilities and that’s it.”

“Mister Hodges, I don’t think that you understand what we’re telling you. Your parents are dead, and they were brutally murdered.” Barnes said.

“I never told you I cared. Calling them, ‘my parents,’ is a very generous description of them. You see Detectives, I’m one of those Gen Z’s with actual boomer parents, not Gen X folks like many of my so-called friends were fortunate enough to have. They used to tell me stuff like, “Don’t get attached to anything you see in our house here because we’re taking it all with us.’ They used to think that was funny. I’m not going to give you the play by play on my very troubled childhood, let’s just summarize it by saying it’s not that they didn’t care, it’s that you would have to notice I was having trouble in my youth to care. They never did. Matter of fact, that visit the neighbors told you about, after that I blocked them on my phone and all my social media sites. I never had any intention to unblock them. Such is my contemptuous disdain for them you won’t even see me at the funeral. My Aunt and Uncle will have to handle that. They can console themselves over the inconvenience by stealing all my parents’ stuff. I was never meant to have any of it anyway.”

“Jessus Christ, Kid, what kind of son are you?” Barnes shot at him.

“No son at all, I’m afraid,” he answered, “you actually have to have parents to be a son. I couldn’t really tell you what that’s like.”

Detective Murry stepped forward and asked, “Where were you last night Mister Hodges?”

“Oh, that’s going to be the biggest inconvenience of all, not for me, but for you. You see I was hear all day long, never left the building. Security has cameras all over the building, including both entrances. Also I was up and down the hall asking the neighbors for sugar.” He scoffed at them.

“You think that’s funny.” Barnes challenged.

“Nope,” Chris replied flippantly, “I really mean it. As you can see gentlemen I have a taste for Vodka. I wanted a nice sugary drink, so I figured I’d mix up some Moscow Mules, but all my soda is sugar free. I don’t keep any actual sugar in my apartment so I went asking if I could buy some from the neighbors because I didn’t want to go out. The guy Ralph, three doors down, gave me a cup. We talked a bit, mostly about how the crime has gotten out of hand in the city, Ironic huh?” He mocked.

Both cops looked at each other incredulously. The older cop Barnes seemed particularly incensed by his callous demeanor in the face of his parents’ murder. He stepped up to Chris with a hostile look on his face and spat, “They literally tore your father in half. Someone beat him until most of the bones in his body were broken and then tore him in half. I’m not even going to mention how savagely they beat your mother. What do you think about that?”

“Sounds kind of farfetched to me, how strong would someone have to be literally tear somebody in half, Detective.” Chris challenged back. “I mean what did these psychos do, pick him up and wishbone him? You’d have to have superhuman strength to do something like that? No offense, but put yourself in my shoes, and that sounds a little hard to believe.”

“Go to the coroner’s office and see for yourself.” The older detective dared him. “We have crime scene photos, and forensic pathologists who have already completed the autopsy.”

“That was quick, figured it would take a couple of days to get autopsy done, especially given how busy you guys with all the shootings these days.” Chris commented.

“This was a special case,” Murry responded. “We’ve never seen anything like this before, this savage. We haven’t even reported the details to the news because our captain thought it might cause a panic.”

Chris filled his shot glass and sat back down on the couch feeling the alcohol start to overtake him. He knew under normal circumstances it was extremely stupid to be drunk around two cops who wanted to interrogate him about his parents’ murder, but that fact was even drunk he wasn’t likely to mention Wolf.  It wasn’t exactly a conversation he wanted to have.

Barnes asked, “Mister Hodges, could we possibly trouble you to not slam down the Vodka until we’ve asked you a few questions?”

“There’s one good thing.” Chris retorted, utterly ignoring the detective’s request.

“What would that be?” Murry asked him.

“Couldn’t be me, even with my seeming rash disregard of my parents’ death, given the camera footage, my neighbor’s testimony, and the fact that me and my barely hundred- and fifty-pound frame couldn’t beat my father in arm wrestling match much less tear him physically apart. What judge or jury would believe I could pull that off, much less believe your story. You guys have your work cut out for you. I mean seriously, Detective, torn in half, how the hell is that even possible outside some kind of automobile accident or something?”

“We don’t know, Mister Hodges.” Barnes told him. The detective looked at him with long and intense glare, and Chris was reasonably certain the cop knew he was aware of way more than he was telling. Barnes walked up to him near the couch so he could glare down at him. “You’re not wrong. The whole thing is crazy. Truth be told, my CO is really leery about this case. The Forensic examiner swears all the evidence supports the extremely unlikely story I just told you, but how’s that possible? Right now my captain, and my chief won’t even let us file a report until we have something reasonable to type. That’s why we’re here. We were hoping somehow, some way you might help shine some light on this madness because if we can’t find a reasonable explanation it is likely this case is going to get dropped, then buried. Your parents’ murder will probably go unsolved, but you really don’t care, do you?”

“Sorry, Detective, I can’t say that I do. I’m really just interested in clearing my own name of any suspicion; other than that, it’s not my problem.” He told them with brutal honesty.

The younger cop Murry walked up besides his partner and asked, “Would you know of anyone else, besides you, who would want them dead?”

Chris looked to the other detective, and with a chilling, smug grin he told them both, “No one in this world.” Given Barnes experience he had to struggle not to react. All his instinct gained from over fifteen years as a cop, and more than half of it as a detective, told him Chris was not lying when he said it, which made no sense to him at all. Everything about this case was freaking him out. Murry kept up the questions, but Chris passed out twice on the couch from the booze, and the second time the younger cop went to wake him Barnes stopped him. “Don’t bother,” he said.

Murry looked at him and asked in exasperation, “We’re just gonna let this little prick pass out on an interrogation? We should be hauling his freaky ass down to the station. He’s drunk, it’s the perfect time to sweat him, he’ll tell us anything.”

“That would likely only piss the brass off.” Barnes told him.

“Why?” Murry demanded, “Why are you being so squirrely about this. I’ve never seen Chief Washington act so weird either. What the hell is going on?”

Barnes looked to his junior partner and said in a low tone, “Look, Tim, listen to me OK. This case is a first like this for me, but it’s not a first in the department.”

“When did something like this happen?” Murry asked.

“About fourteen years ago when I was still on the beat. Jensen caught the case; I was on scene when they were tagging up the crime scene. It turns out there was this love triangle going on between this up-and-coming young exec and two strippers. One night the exec is found across the street, after being hurled out his window.”

“Wait, what,” Murry insisted, “what do you mean hurled?”

“Exactly what I said, hurled.” Barnes told him. “All the evidence would seem to indicate that someone or something threw this guy, who was a buck seventy easy and in good shape, not just out his fifth story apartment window, but all the way across the street. He landed in a deli on the other side. No one else was in the apartment according to all accounts, and the cameras and the neighbors verified that. The strippers weren’t even suspects for obvious reasons. Two weeks later, one of the other strippers was found dead in her house, with every vertebra in her back broken, and the third stripper, who again wasn’t a likely suspect, disappeared. Vanished without a trace, we never found anything on her ever again.”

“What the hell,” said Murry. “Jesus, that is as weird as this mess.”

“That’s not the worst one, not by far. The worse one was back in the eighties before my time, Jensen told me about it. Back then Vinny Scarfa was running the Philly Mob. He had a trigger man they called Sammy Six.”

“Six?” Murry asked.

“Yeah, short for six guns, apparently, he liked revolvers.” Barnes informed. “Story goes Sammy was one of the best hitters in the city, even the bikers were afraid of his guns.  Turns out one of Vinny’s Captains, a guy they called Tommy Gee, didn’t want to pay him for a job. The situation got ugly, but Tommy was a made guy and Sammy wasn’t. Well one night all hell literally breaks loose. Calls come in all over from Ninth Street. Half the city says they hear gunshots and screams coming from Tommy’s club.

By the time PD rolled up with SWAT, everything was eerily quiet. Jensen told me you could hear a pin drop, there was nothing. What they found inside made the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre look like a tea party. Everyone was dead, I mean everyone. The cooks, the waiters, the hookers who were working the party, and Tommy as well as his whole crew. Half the people had been shot in the eyes, one of Sammy’s calling cards. The place was a blood bath, and keep in mind the shootings were the less grisly kills.”

“Meaning?” Murry asked with tense interest.

“They other half had their heads caved in. The medical examiners swear their skulls were crushed in with a pistol butt, a wooden one.”

“Another one of Sammy’s calling cards?” Murry inquired.

“A .357 one to be exact,” Barnes told him. “He was known for carrying a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight and a Rossi .357 with a wooden grip.”

“Why am I not surprised,” Murry snorted. “So what happened, did Sammy get got, did we catch him, I don’t ever remember hearing about this one.”

“You won’t, like I said, it was one of the ones the old timers don’t like to talk about.” Barnes stated.

“Why,” Murry inquired.

“Because it made no sense, just like the stripper case. Inside the club they had shot the hell out of the place. Some people were killed just with the crossfire. One of Tommy’s boys pulled out an Uzi and hosed the place down with full auto. All the rest of his crew were armed with nines, forty-five’s, hell even a double barrel twelve gauge. All their guns had been shot multiple times, some were emptied, and others had been reloaded. They must have put out over two hundred rounds at Sammy, and nothing.”

“What do you mean nothing?” Murry asked incredulously.

“I mean nothing. We found no trace of Sammy except spent casings we knew came from his magnum and the thirty-eight as well as a bunch of speed loaders, but that’s it. If he took a hit, he never sought medical attention for it. Furthermore, he utterly disappeared.”

“Let me guess, without a trace,” Murry offered.

“More than that. word on the street was the Scarfa family put out a hit on him with a good pay day. Legend has it that anyone who tried to collect was never seen again. If you try to ask anyone in the Philly mob about it today they’ll pretend they don’t know what you’re talking about. No one ever saw Sammy Six again, just like the mysterious stripper years later, gone, seemingly forever.”

Murry looked back at the sleeping Chris on his sofa and said, “The goddamned audacity, to just get drunk and pass out while two cops are questioning you.”

“Jensen said the stripper in the old case, she didn’t make any sense either. She was weird every time he interviewed her.” Barnes remembered. They both shot long, irritated stares at Chris’s sleeping form. Barnes broke the silence, “Why do I feel like this kid is going to disappear without a trace in a week or two?”

“Who would miss ‘em?” Murry replied. “So, we just let sleeping beauty here nap?”

“Yeah,” Barnes agreed. “Let’s hit up the neighbors, I’ll talk to this Ralph, you knock up on the other doors and see what you can get. Once we have statements we hit the security office and ask for the camera footage from all the relevant shots they have, hopefully they don’t make us get a warrant.”

“Letting this guy just skirt like this, that just doesn’t sit well with me.” Murry said.

“Nothing about this is going to sit well.” Barnes told him as he was about to open the door.

Chris woke up at that moment and groggily asked, “You two leaving?”

Barnes shot him a disdainful glance and sarcastically told him, “I think we have everything we need here Mister Hodges, and we wouldn’t want to interrupt your Vodka nap. I would offer my condolences about your parents if I thought it meant anything to you.”

Chris spoke up just as they were about to open the door. “Can I ask you just one question, Detective?” Barnes didn’t answer, he and Murry just looked back at him. Chris continued, “If some guy out there was literally strong enough and savage enough to beat my parents half to death and then actually, physically rip my father in half, do you really want to find him?” Neither cop replied, they just both shot him dirty looks. Then they both left without saying a word.

###

Chris returned to work a couple of days after the cop’s visit. Wolf had for the moment stopped coming to his apartment and now tormented him at his job. While Chris would try to work he would tour around the office telepathically revealing what he hated about each of his coworkers and asking him which one of them he wanted dead next. Of course, he was in the fourth world, and no one could see him but Chris.

For his part Chris decided that he would use the hate the Wolf loved so much against him. Anyone else would likely be driven mad by this game Wolf played. Chris refused to break. He refused to acknowledge Wolf with anything but contemptuous glances when he became too annoying. Wolf would not shatter his mind by haunting and hounding him, out sheer spite for his very existence Chris gathered his will and out of sheer hate for Wolf he carried on every day, seemingly unphased by the monster’s constant mockery and sadism.

It went on like this for over a week. The longer the sick game continued the more the strange haze would indicate Wolf was feeding on his hate. Now the strange mirage-like effect was always around him. The constant emotional state of concentrated spite began to take its toll physically on him, and he started to feel exhausted. He would drink himself to sleep or take pills to get enough rest to continue to defy Wolf. He knew his hate was what the beast wanted, but he didn’t care. He would never let him win. So far as he was concerned Wolf could have all the hate he wanted, but he would never break his mind. It never dawned on him that choosing to play a demon at his own game would likely be viewed as less than sane by any normal person who could but glimpse the nightmare that his life had become.

One night as Chris’s shift began to wind down he was staying late to both finish a project and spite Wolf. He intended for the beast to understand he was not afraid of being in Wolf’s presence anymore. What would Wolf do, kill him? At this point he didn’t even care about his life.

There were very few employees left in the department, and only one near Chris’s cubicle. Wolf watched him from the fourth world, standing over him glaring with his inhuman smile. He had been doing this for hours. Suddenly the monster phased through the fourth world, in a dim blue flash, reached out and grabbed the pen Chris happened to be writing with. Chris reacted violently, trying to viciously jerk the pen out of his grasp. His meager human strength was a joke compared to wolf’s supernatural power, and he could barely get the monger to budge.

“Let go, freak!” Chriss hissed out loud.

“Huh?” his coworker in the nearby cubicle asked.

“Not you!” Chris sneered.

Wolf telepathically snickered inside his mind, something he had come to loathe.

“Be careful, Christopher, you’re beginning to crack.” Wolf thought smugly. “You wouldn’t want your coworkers to believe you lost your mind, would you?

“Bite me, Freak!” Chris thought back to him.

Almost as in answer to Wolf’s mockery the other coworker gathered his things and began to leave, obviously uncomfortable with Chris’s hostile demeanor. As he walked past Chris’s cubicle Wolf thought, “Too late.”

“Go back to the hell you escaped from,” Chris snapped.

“Not alone, Christopher, not alone,” The monster promised.

Suddenly, a long awkward pause settled over them as Wolf began to stare at him with an eerie, gratified grin. “What are you staring at,” Chris questioned vehemently inside his mind.

“Beauty,” Wolf thought back introspectively.

That caught him off guard. He looked up at the monster and asked telepathically, “What are you going to propose to me or something?”

Wolf replied inside his mind, “You are a creature of perfect hate and contempt. I don’t believe in over four hundred years I have ever witnessed another like you. Any other man or woman would have gone insane by now, but not you, Christopher. You gird your will with your pure, perfect hatred. You fuel yourself with it, defying me every moment you are here. You have forgotten your fear, you have forgotten hope, you have forgotten your own human frailties. Your very soul wrapped in a perfect blanket of pure vitriol. Eventually, if I let you keep going on like this, it will kill you. Your will is too powerful for your frail, imperfect mortal form.”

“Then I’ll die,” he spat back mentally.

“No, no you won’t, that I won’t allow. To see your frail, physical form broken, to see you end would be like breaking all the stained-glass windows of the Sainte Chapelle in Paris. It’s as though Satan himself wrote your story, like you were an image of hateful perfection painted by the Moring Star. You were not meant for the mortal world, time for you to realize that. We are almost home, Christopher, you and me. The next step is obvious.” Wolf declared.

“I don’t care,” Chris spat back mentally. “I’m not going to cooperate no matter what you do. I don’t care if you kill me. If you try and torture me I’ll just kill myself. You just made a mistake, Wolf, and I’m going to make you pay for it.”

“Oh, said the monger with genuine interest, “and what egregious error have I committed?”

“You told me the one thing you don’t want, that’s to watch me die, and that’s all you’re going to get. I will never join your club; I will never willingly come with you. It’s the one thing you want, and the one thing I’ll deny you. Every day I’ll come here, and I’ll work this meaningless job for my promised pittance. I’ll waste what little is hopefully left of my miserable life, and I’ll make you watch me knowing how much you hate being here. I’ll die of exhaustion, hating you. I’ll drink myself to sleep every night with a handful of pills, until it kills me. That’s my purpose, to hate you, to deny you what you want most, me. I hate you so much that I’ll gladly die to spite your pathetic attempt to recruit me to your meaningless cause. I will make sure all your work is for nothing; I’ll take from you your pathetic hope of an apprentice the way you took away my hope for a real life. I’ll give you all the hate you want, right up until the time I stroke out, or die of a heart attack, or exhaustion. In my last moments I’ll laugh in your disgustingly ugly face, I’ll spit on you with my dying breath, I’ll treat you like the freakish mongrel you are, and when I go to hell I’ll take my hate with me, denying you your apprentice and the rich meal I’ve given you. That’s all you’ll get, the fact that in my dying breath you wasted your time, that your immortal existence is more meaningless, useless and pathetic than my mortal life ever could be. My miserable life will end, that’s the power of being mortal, you’ll be useless forever, and I’ll leave you here to that last, undeniable fact. Fuck you, Wolf.”

The monger grew silent. His visage changed from a look of delighted amusement to stunned awe. Then a sickeningly genuine smile spread across Wolf’s inhuman face. The grin he bore wasn’t the amused look he always had when he tormented Chris, but one of deep reverence. He got up from the office chair he was sitting on and approached.

Chris rose and squared up to Wolf in a clear show of defiance. He desperately hoped that at long last he had gained the upper hand in their game of hatred, that he had found the words that would set Wolf off. Chris hoped the monster would just kill him, that was the only victory he knew he had left. He had lost all fear of death, or pain and now longed to just end it, but he would never kill himself. It didn’t matter how long it took or how much he had to suffer Wolf’s sadistic attentions; he would make the monster kill him or watch him die. He would win, even if death was his only victory. Chris smiled at Wolf sensing his death was near, and with that his spiteful, vindictive victory.

Wolf reached out with his freakishly long hands and grabbed him firmly by the shoulders. Chris’s maniacal, venomous grin grew into a smile that would have terrified any normal human who saw it. He didn’t flinch or shy away from the monger at all. There in the office where Chris had labored for a better life for years, he stood ready to throw away what little time he had left with spiteful, acrimonious joy. A strange heat surged from Wolf’s malformed hands and seemed to burn its way into Chris’s flesh. The strange shimmering appeared all around them, and Chris suddenly felt uncomfortably warm, but he didn’t care. He stood his ground and stared Wolf down with perfect, fearless contempt.

Wolf whispered in Awe, “You are the child I could cherish for a millennium; you are the son I have sought for centuries. You stand in my grasp now viewing your own life with all the hatred you bear me, you know no fear, only pure perfect vitriol. Pain, anxiety, threats, they have no power over you anymore. You are ready. Time for your last gift, Christopher, time for you to join me in the fourth world, where you belong.”

“No,” Christopher refused. “I’ll never do what you want, you’ll just have to kill me.”

Wolf fully transformed before his eyes, abandoning all semblance of humanity. He rose up to stand almost a full two feet over Chris as he transmogrified into the horror he truly was. His impossibly long limbs were thin, yet laden with powerful, chorded muscle that looked like they could snap steel. His skin transformed into some kind of rubbery substance. He took on an amber hue that seemed to resemble the crackling transition of a dancing flame. His fingers and toes grew gnarled, sharp looking claws and talons. His head became bulbous, like a pumpkin, his huge yellow eyes stretched out across his elongated, monstrous skull. His ears became just two holes on the side of his mutated head and his nostrils became dark pits under his massive eyes. His smile was the crowning horror of his demonic form. Filled with jagged, sharklike teeth his maw was gigantic, and looked like he could bite off the heads of two full grown men at the same time. His smile was a monstrous rictus of horror that displayed his absolute delight in his hatred for all existence.

Still, Chris showed no fear as he looked up at the Monger, and this seemed to please Wolf even more. “Christopher, My Child,” he spoke softly with a voice that was in no way human, “It was never about what I wanted, but what you need. You will realize that. It is inevitable. You are no longer a true part of their world, every moment from now on you come ever closer to mine. You think I am trying to force your hand, but you will see, My Boy, I am only giving you what you have always wanted. I know your heart better then you do, and I know the gift, the last perfect gift, that you cannot and will not refuse.”

“Bull,” Chris shot back as he glared up at the beast defiantly.

“Your hate blinds you, My Child, but don’t worry, I will guide you home. I will give you the final truth your black, hateful soul longs for, and then, together, we will reap the bounty of this despicable age, side by side, father and son.” Wolf told him with such intense conviction Chris could not help but genuinely believe him. Before he could say anything else, Wolf released him, backed away, and disappeared into the fourth world with his signature blue flash. Chris looked at the spot where the monger just stood, once again Wolf had robbed him of his certainty and confidence, but this time with an overwhelming sense of credibility rather than fear or pain. Chris knew in his dark, bitter heart, Wolf meant every word and despite his own hate filled resolve that shook him to his core.

###

It had been little more than two weeks since he had seen Wolf. He had followed his routine belligerently refusing to deviate from any of his everyday activities until work forced him to take medical leave two days ago. He knew that Wolf found his mundane life detestable, and so he wanted to live that life as long as he could. Believing the monger might be watching him he did nothing that would bring Wolf joy. He was perfectly polite to all his coworkers, all the while he came to loathe each and every one of them. He went to work, paid his bills, obeyed the law, he was the model citizen, the perfect sheep because he knew Wolf hated every aspect of his seemingly meaningless life, which every day he prayed Wolf would end. Every moment he feigned being a normal person he came to loathe every element of his existence maybe as much as Wolf did, but he endured it through hate.

It did not last however. The stress of dealing with a demon who was haunting him, the deaths of his family and coworkers, all the alcohol as well as the drugs he had been taking over the last few months to get to sleep had taken its toll. He was deathly pale now. He was always thin, and he had lost weight. He now looked almost like a skeleton.

He knew his employers and his coworkers couldn’t stand to be near him anymore. They had of course discovered his parent’s death. Such was his contempt for them that his veneer of practiced civility could no longer truly disguise his hatred for them. He could hide it with his words, but his eyes betrayed the truth. Between making them uncomfortable with his unrelenting malice, they also knew now that all the people who had died recently had been connected to him. The police had gone to his employers and interviewed them, and rumors of the nature of his parents’ death had leaked to everyone at the office.

He looked like death and he was surrounded by death and they were all afraid of him now. He knew they were right to be. On some level maybe they could sense Wolf’s presence at work hovering over him before he departed several weeks ago to engineer Chris’s next, “gift.” His very presence was unnerving to normal people now. They told him he was barred from work until he treated his exhaustion and forced him out on paid medical leave. They hated giving out paid medical leave to anyone without serious cause, they never hesitated to give it to him. They wanted him gone. Human Resources had even contacted him and told him not to worry about his finances or his medical bills, they would all be covered. He knew that’s not how his insurance worked, but they were so frightened of him he knew they bent the rules just to get rid of him. The mortal world had rejected him utterly. He had no friends, no family, and a job that would pay him to stay home rather than to unnerve them with his very presence. He was all alone now.

The monger had done his job well.

He waited every day for Wolf to return, and he knew with absolute certainty he would. Chris stayed up hours wondering what coup-de-grace the monger was cooking up, and this time he knew it would be big. When the monster came back Chris felt it was likely going to end his life as he knew it. The waiting was the worst part of it all. The constant anxiety of wondering what would happen next truly fostered his hate for the monster. Not knowing when the beast would appear again, and what he would do when he did infuriated him. It was his sheer will, driven by his black hatred for Wolf that drove him on, refusing out of sheer spite to give up. He would rather die than break. Chris realized that was likely Wolf’s plan. The monster was centuries old, and he had likely done this before.

The police had been back. They had verified that Chris was indeed home the night Wolf slaughtered his parents. That was the one thing he couldn’t help but feel a certain sense of bitter gratitude to the monger for. He was certain detective Barnes knew he was somehow behind his parents’ murder, but what could he do, he had no evidence of any kind to prove it. He took a sadistic glee in the fact all the cops could do was glower at him. It gave him malevolent joy that the police, the supposed authority that enforced the so-called law of the land, had no power over him at all. He knew that if they had dared to try and arrest him in any case, they would almost certainly meet a grisly end. Wolf wouldn’t allow two mundane, mortal cops to rob him of his plaything. Those two detectives had no idea how close to death they actually were. If they ever did get close to proving anything Chris knew they would both be found dead. Hell, what would stop Wolf from just wiping out half the local police precinct and then just stepping back into the fourth world. There was nothing they could do to stop him. Chris knew mundane weapons wouldn’t harm the monger. He began to wonder what kept them, those other monsters he knew were out there like Wolf, from just launching a mass slaughter against mankind?

While Chris sat consumed with his unyielding contempt for Wolf he thought about what kept the mongers at bay. It dawned on him that the angels Wolf seemed so afraid of must be real, or at the very least the Mongers all believed they were. What else would hold them back? They seemed to have no need for food, or sleep or shelter. Did they care about material possession of any kind. He supposed that if greed mongers existed they likely would. What manmade, manufactured thing did society create that they needed? The only thing from mortals they seemed to want was their vices. They could attack and destroy civilization by destroying all the power plants and sending humanity back to the stone age, and it wouldn’t even inconvenience them. It might actually suit them better than the modern era to take everyone back to the Dark ages. They could rule the night openly then. What really stopped them, he wondered? In the end it was all just conjecture. He realized he would likely never truly know, and concluded it was probably best that way.

He sat on his couch, wasting away, waiting seemingly endlessly for Wolf’s arrival. He hoped this time it would be the last he would ever have to deal with the monster. Chris could sense instinctively he did not have long left in this world, and he was grateful for that. His waiting ended with a sudden terrifying jolt as a stylized, double headed axe was slammed into his new end table. Chris jumped up with more strength than he knew he had left. The axe had what seemed to be stainless steel blades, and a nylon grip that was over two feet long. It was intricate in its crafted detail. Chris had seen something like this on those websites that sell swords and knives. He looked over and there was Wolf with a huge, monstrous grin on his ugly face.

“What the hell is that?” Chris demanded pointing at the axe that was now stuck in his cheap end table by one of its seemingly very sharp blades.

“A tool, a good and proper weapon, you’ll need it.” Wolf told him.

“To do what. Look at me, Moron, I’m skin and bones. I barely have the strength to stand much less swing that. If you expect me to chop someone up with that you’re dumber than I thought.” Chris shot back snidely.

“My Ignorant Whelp, your strength is no longer measured by your muscle, but by your hate. Embrace your vitriol, Christopher, and you will find you have the strength of a hundred men.” Wolf informed him with the same sense of absolute confidence he had when last he left.

“I embrace the fact I am about to die, and you can’t do anything to stop it. Why don’t you take that axe and lodge it in my skull. It’s the only pay off you’re ever going to get from me, I’ll never do what you want.” Chris declared defiantly.

“Foolish boy, it was never about only what I wanted, I told you that. The axe, it’s so you can chop down the door.” Wolf informed him with a grin even more evil than his usual horrifying grimace.

“What door?” Chris snapped.

“That one,” Wolf said as he pointed behind him.

Chris already knew exactly what he would see if he turned around. The guidance councilor’s door, with the peer mediation poster plastered to it. The chill breeze hit the back of his neck as wolf conjured the image. Chris didn’t know if the monger could actually create the door whenever he wanted, or it was some elaborate illusion. Either way he wasn’t turning around, not this time.

“Go to hell,” He spat at his tormentor. “This is it, this is your gift, and axe to chop down the metaphysical door that represents the angst of my childhood? You loser, talk about transparent, this is really lame, Wolf, purely low end. What did you do, read some Freud or something to prepare for your big moment and this was the best you can come up with?” Chris mocked.

“The door is the final obstacle; it’s the gate to the prison of fear you have built in your mind. You no longer fear me, and that has earned you my admiration. You may not fear me, but you fear that door. That’s why you won’t turn around, not out of rebellion against me, but out of fear.” Wolf accused with a sinister glint in his eyes.

“Bull,” Chris challenged.

“Then turn around and prove me wrong.” Wolf countered.

“No, I’m not going to play your game, I won’t accept your pathetic Freudian gift.” Chris stated as he stared at Wolf right in his yellow colored, flickering eyes.

“I told you, Boy, the door is not the gift, it is an obstacle, your final challenge. The axe is just a tool. The gift is on his way upstairs, right now.” Wolf said calmly.

“What, who?” Chris insisted.

“You know who.” Wolf taunted.

“What did you do?” Chris demanded.

“First, I killed his daughter’s little dog. Broke its neck. She was quite upset when she found it. Then I vandalized his vehicle, and his home, multiple times. The finishing touch, the Coup-de-grace, is when I pushed his wife down the stone stairs leading up to their home while she was coming home from the merchants with the vitals. That time I made sure he saw me.” Right before Chris’s eyes Wolf transformed in a smooth fluid motion. His body seemed to become like rubbery clay, and he took on a shape Chris immediately recognized as his own. Accept Wolf’s copy of him looked healthier than he did now. “But when he saw me, he saw you. He chased me with all his hate filled ire. He was a delicious meal. He might have made a good monger. Despite his seeming affection for his wife and daughter, the malice in his soul was still there, even after all these years since the time you both left school. Then I watched from the fourth world as he tried to console his family and swore vengeance against you. He used the computer machine to talk with God in the clouds and found out where you lived. It was so easy. In my youth when you lost someone it was likely you would never see them again. Now all they have to do is reach out to your cloud and pluck the knowledge from the machine. I think I finally understand why the world seems so much smaller to your generation than it did to mine. He’ll be here any moment now.” Wolf told him with affectionate malice.

Right on que the door resounded with the heavy blows of large fists from out in the hall. His old Bully’s voice rang out with hate filled fury, “Hodges you little pussy, open the door!” The door bulged at the bottom where he kicked it.

“Billy,” Chris whispered, “Billy Davis.”

“Of course,” Wolf told him, “Your final gift.”

Wolf walked over next to the door right on the side where it opened and stood there waiting for Billy to smash his way into the room, and that’s just what he did. With one final kick the door flung open, but what Billy did not notice was it did not slam into the wall. He was too angry to wonder about that. Wolf had caught the door as effortlessly as he might tie his shoes. He stood behind it where Davis could not see him.

Billy stormed into the room and locked his eyes on Chris. At first his face was beat red with his righteous anger. He was panting, and his right fist was bleeding from having punched the door so hard, but he didn’t seem to notice it in his fury. He was dressed in a blue suit, not unlike one that Chris would wear to work. He had gotten bigger, and his shoulders were even broader than Chris membered. He had stayed in shape to, and Chris could see the pronounced muscles in his arms even in his suit.

Billy’s furious anger quickly turned into confusion as he glared at Chris. Just yesterday he believed he had chased him down three city blocks before the little bastard had out run him, but the man he looked at now could not be the same person. Billy glared at Chris’s pale, emaciated form trying to make sense of what he saw. There was no way in a mere twenty-four hours that he could have gone from the hale, incredibly quick coward he had just chased through the residential streets of Philly to the deathly bag of bones he now witnessed before him. He stepped all the way into Chris’s living room and stood feet before him and looked on in confusion.

“What the hell?” he declared utterly bewildered.

Chris stood there looking at his childhood terror. This man had once been as much a monster to him as Wolf had ever been. It dawned on Chris that in a real way, Billy had been worse. Wolf had given him some respite in between the horrors he had brought to Chris’s life. It hadn’t been until the last two weeks when Chris had become completely consumed with his hatred for Wolf. Wolf had at least claimed that he cared about Chris, as ridiculous as that had been, the monger seemed to truly believe that all the murder and terror he had brought had been for Chris’s own good. He knew the demonic creature was insane of course, but Wolf seemed to actually believe he was a benefactor.

Billy had only ever been spiteful and sadistic. He offered Chris nothing but fear and pain that whole year of his life. Now, knowing what wolf had done to his family, Chris felt no empathy or remorse for this man before him. He felt satisfaction that at long last after all these years he now had to understand fear and pain. Chris could have cared less that it was his family Wolf had made suffer, there was nothing left human in him that could empathize anymore. All the angst and fear that Billy, his parents, his colleagues and Wolf had heaped upon him had burned it out. All he found he could feel at the suffering Wolf had caused Billy’s family was genuine amusement, satisfaction even.

Wolf looked almost ridiculous hiding nearby. He peaked past the door like some sort of malicious child playing hide and seek with a gloriously malevolent grin plastered to his malformed head. He was clearly eager to see what happened next. Billy was clearly trying to understand what he saw. His mind struggling for some logical explanation as to what was going on.

Billy’s tone suddenly changed. “Hey,” he stammered, “Hey, I’m sorry, I clearly got the wrong address. Look, I mean it, I’m really sorry. I’ll pay for the door. I’ll make it up to you, I swear. I’m a salesman, I sell cars, you looking for a car, I’ll do a deal for you like you wouldn’t believe. I’ll pay for your door, and I’ll set you up with an incredible deal. If you’re not looking for a car, no problem, I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll give you a trade in on anything you want. My boss, he owes me some favors, he’ll swing it I swear.”

Chris looked on in sudden disbelief. Was this the other side of Billy Davis? Was he showing mercy to the poor beleaguered soul whose home he had just invaded? Did he take pity on the obviously frail creature before him. That wasn’t the Billy he remembered. His former childhood bully stood there with a guilty expression on his face. A long silence fell over them as they stood there staring at each other.

Billy’s look of vulnerable contrition made him seem so human to Chris, and in that moment Chris believed that he maybe hated him more than he ever had before. Where was that mercy and guilt when he needed it. Where was his pleas for forgiveness all those years ago when it would have meant the most, before Billy had helped destroy his life by irreparably scarring him. So far as he was concerned his parents were dead now largely because of the actions of the man he was glaring at. His inability to trust others that had doomed his chance for any real relationship was because of this man.

In that moment Chris did not want his mercy.

He did not want to forgive Billy, and he refused to accept any forgiveness from him for whatever Wolf had done.

He wanted one thing from Billy, the only thing he felt they truly had in common: hate.

“No Billy, you’re not wrong, its me.” Chris told him.

“What?” His former Bully asked.

“It’s me Billy. It’s Chris, Chris Hodges. I was that boy you tortured for a whole year. I was that boy you put in the hospital. I was that boy you mocked and beat on with all your friends. I was the boy that brought you all so much amusement back in eighth grade. I was that boy you permanently, psychologically scared. I was that boy who never made friends again after that year because you turned the whole school against me. Even if they had tried to be nice to me it wouldn’t have mattered. You made me feel so alone that I never trusted anyone again. You are the monster that ruined my life. You, more so than my parents, our teachers, my employers or anyone else are the reason why I’m dying right now.”

“I hate you.

I’ll die hating you.

That’s what you did to me, and I’m glad I had the chance to do it back to you.”  Chris lied.

Wolf smiled ear to ear.

“What?” Billy repeated. “What the hell are you talking about you, Lunatic. That’s what this is all about. That’s why you killed my daughter’s poodle! That’s why you attacked my wife! That’s why you caused thousands of dollars of damage to our home and our cars! Over junior high kid’s stuff!”

“You never listened to well, so I’ll tell you again. I did all of that stuff because you ruined my life. I mean I figured if I was going to die, then the very last thing I should get out of life is a little justice.”

“Justice? You always were a freak, Hodges. That’s why we used to rank out on you so bad! You think any dumb kid stuff we did to you back then justifies what you’ve done?” He demanded.

“Of course, you just proved it. My life, my pain, my fear, it meant nothing to you. Just a game for you and your friends to enjoy. You never cared that every day I went home I loathed my life because I knew I would have to come back and put up with more the next day. The weekends were even worse, Saturday gave me false hope, a whole blessed day of no one mocking me or hurting me, but every Sunday knowing Monday was just a day away. That when I walked into school there you would be, ready to hurt me again. I hated my life, every single moment of it. What act of retribution against you wouldn’t be justified?” Chris explained with an unnerving calm.

“You attacked my wife over kids’ stuff!” Billy hissed threw clinched teeth. His face was growing redder. His hands clinched into fists, and Chris knew he was ready to strike. Some of the neighbors began to come out of their apartments given all the racket Billy had made. Wolf closed the door softly behind them. Then using his supernatural strength he pushed the door into the frame, lodging it in place so that it would be practically impossible for any normal human to open without battering it down. Billy was so furious he didn’t even hear it.

Chris then felt it; a wave of Billy’s hatred swept over him. His natural instincts kicked in, and he inhaled deeply. He drank in Billy’s contempt like it was sweet ambrosia. All around him the shimmering began making it seem to Billy like Chris was standing in a heat mirage. Davis was once again confused. He stepped back with an angry, befuddled expression on his face. Chris felt his former bully’s hate flow through him in a pleasing wave that made him feel warm joy inside. It was like nothing he had ever experienced. It suddenly felt as though he had never been afraid in his life. All his physical pain and discomfort just fell away. His doubts, his anxiety were all forgotten, like they had never been. He closed his eyes and swayed back and forth like he was drunk.

“Are you….,” Billy stammered again, “Are you stoned or something?”

The hate suddenly stopped flowing through him. Chris’s eyes shot open. My god, he thought, this is what Wolf feels. This is how he feeds. This is why he wouldn’t leave me alone for all this time, this is what I have been giving to him.

“At last, Boy, at last you begin to understand.” Wolf intruded upon his thoughts telepathically. “Yes, My Child, this is the joy, the perfect bliss, the magnificent nourishment you have been giving me. Now, at last, I can share it with you.”

“It stopped,” Chris thought back as he stared at an ever more confused Billy. All he could think of was feeling the perfect wave of sublime enmity from Billy. He forgot his pain, his loneliness and his angst in the wake of this new sensation. Even what wolf had done to him seemed trivial in the face of this new discovery. All he wanted in that moment was to have that perfect feeling of utter gratification and bliss back.

“Of course, he is beginning to sense something is not right, his human instinct is beginning to understand you are no more human than I am. Humanity has developed that instinct over thousands of generations of us preying on them. He knows something is wrong, but he lacks the understanding to grasp what. Give him something, make him angry, rekindle his hate.”

“With what, how?” Chris pleaded.

He could feel Wolf’s absolute jubilation at his dark awakening to the world the monger came from. “Tell him his wife’s screeching as she fell down the steps was hilarious. Tell him that once you got away you couldn’t stop laughing every time you thought about it.”

“I have to be honest with you Billy, I think I owe you that. My favorite part wasn’t vandalizing your property, that was just the warmup. It was even killing your daughter’s dog, it was hearing your wife scream when she fell down the steps. Her pathetic screeching was utterly hilarious. After I outran you, when I finally caught my breath, I couldn’t stop laughing. I laughed so hard I couldn’t walk any more, much less run. In my absolute joy at her pain, I was actually afraid. I knew that if you caught up with me I was dead because I was laughing too hard to outrun you. It was kind of exhilarating actually, I’m almost grateful.”

Billy was so shocked at the sheer cruelty of the statement that his eyes widened in surprise. He couldn’t believe that Chris had the gall to say such a thing when he was so close to maybe outright killing him with his bare hands. It only took a moment for the words to sink in, and Davis could no longer contain his fury. His powerful fist sailed through the air with practiced brutality. He landed a blow right in Chris’s face. He didn’t stop there, he continued to slam his right fist into Chris’s head with all the murderous force he could muster. He punched Chris until his fist hurt so bad he switched to his left. He rammed his other fist into Chris’s visage cursing and swearing manically in absolute fury.

He punched until he couldn’t punch anymore.

He doubled over exhausted from his furious efforts.

Then he fell to his knees, his chest heaving.

He looked down at his hands as they began to hurt. He realized now as his senses returned to him the damage he had done to himself, he couldn’t imagine what he had done to Chris. Both his fists ached terribly and were covered in blood. It was agonizing to even open them. He looked up at Chris and gasped in dread filled awe, “Oh, my, God.” Chris was surrounded by a shimmering aura. His face was covered in blood. Billy began to realize it wasn’t his own but had come from Billy’s battered hands. Chris stood there, surrounded by that glimmering mirage that seemed to take on an almost orange hue utterly oblivious to his surroundings. The look on his face was pure ecstasy. He didn’t even notice Billy was there, and despite the fact that he had nearly broken his hands on Chris’s face he didn’t seem hurt at all. What was even more unbelievable was that Billy could swear something was happening to Chris’s body, like he was changing. He seemed taller, and his skin seemed to take on the color of that strange aura all around him. His face looked distorted beneath all the blood Billy had left on it.

He began to realize that none of this was right and that he should never have come here. Whatever the hell was happening to Chris was far from normal. Billy decided Hodges was anything but human. Suddenly the look of euphoria disappeared from Chris’s face and he looked down at Billy. The weird, shimmering field slowly faded away as Chris opened his eyes. Billy’s jaw dropped. Chri’s eyes were a monstrous, inhuman yellow.

He had had enough of this nightmare and Billy shot up off his knees and bolted for the door. Given as he was in such good shape it only took him seconds to cover the distance to the door. The problem was the door was jammed shut. Despite all the pain in his bruised and mangled hands he pulled on the doorknob with all the strength he could muster. That’s when he flew across the room. He saw a flash of orange and yellow, and then something big seemed to hurl him through the air. He hit the wall with such force he shattered the window from the sheer impact. He slid down to the floor crashing with a loud bang. He could instantly feel several of his bones were broken. He was pretty sure more than a few ribs had cracked, and he thought his left leg was injured.

He moaned painfully as he began to try and get back up. He stopped when he looked up and saw what had thrown him. Wolf was in his true form again. He must have stood easily over seven feet tall, and his massive head almost touched the ceiling. His limbs were ape like, and freakishly long, filled with sinewy muscle that obviously contained supernatural power. His skin was an orange yellow hue of burning flame. His eyes were a deep shade of amber. His fingers were topped with long, gnarled claws and his toes with cracked and dangerous looking talons. The most horrifying part of the monstrous creature was its huge maw-like smile. Its gigantic grin was filled with jagged, sharp fangs.

What sanity Billy had managed to hold onto slipped as Wolf stalked slowly towards him. He pointed up a Wolf and began to cry and sputter incoherently at what his mind refused to believe was real. He was paralyzed with sheer terror and could not rise. His legs simply refused to obey him.

“He will be no more use to you know, Christopher,” Wolf proclaimed loudly. “The terror has driven all the hate from him. The mighty warrior has been reduced to a sniveling coward in the face of true power, our power.” Wolf turned back towards Chris who was now examining his hands. They had elongated, and so had his arms, but not to their full length. The transformation was not yet complete.

Wolf smiled and walked over to his prodigy. “Now, My Boy, do you finally understand what I have been offering you all along?”

“Chris looked up at him with venomous wonder. He had almost forgotten Billy entirely for the moment. “It was magnificent, it was glorious, it was perfect, and I want it back.” Chris told him as he began to long to drink deep of Billy’s hatred again. Wolf cackled maniacally in response. “All of it?” Chris pleaded. “Chad, Ashely, my parents, you did all of that to show me this, to give me this?”

“It is hatred, pure and perfect hatred. It is your bread and your butter now, it is all the nourishment you will ever need, and the only meal you’ll ever have again. No mortal can know the true ecstasy of sin, that is reserved only for the Mongers. Yes, Christopher, all of the gifts I’ve given you were exactly that, gifts. This was my plan, and your destiny all along. When I told you I was the only one who ever cared about your future now you know, I was never lying to you. Now you know, I have been telling you the truth. I am the only parent you’ll ever need, I’m the only family you have ever truly had.”

“How do I do it again, what do I have to do?” Chris begged.

Wolf grinned with murderous pride. “You have to complete the transformation, and to be worthy, you have to break the chains that bind you, you have to smash down the door. You must banish your fear. Fear is not your way, cowardice is a pathetic, lowly failing, not worthy of a monger. Those eternal worms out there who prey on fear, they a lesser creatures, far beneath us. Your hate must be perfect, Christopher. To worship hate, to be hate, you must be free of fear, you must be pure.”

Realizing that the creature before him was far more than just his tormentor Chris’s whole view on Wolf shifted. He stood before a beast that was centuries old. Who had murdered and terrorized his way through history, and he was offering that power to Chris. “All right, Old Man, I relent. You win. I’m listening now. Just tell me what I have to do.”

Wolf’s face took on a terrifying aspect of absolute, monstrous joy. “Good Boy,” he replied. “The first part is easy, My Son.” He pointed to Billy jabbering on the floor by the now shattered window. “In order to truly embrace sin, you must break the sixth commandment, you must take a life with your own hands.” Wolf told him.

Chris smiled.

He looked over to Billy and began to move slowly towards him. Wolf followed closely behind. Billy had begun laughing insanely, pointing at Wolf and sputtering incoherently. Chris actually found his mad antics amusing. While Chris stood over him looking down on the man who had tortured him during his miserable youth the memories of all those beatings, the torment, the fear came back to him.

“Good, My Son, good. But be warned. A monger may find no hatred more pleasing then his own, but you must be careful. Remember, your hate is your strength. If you spend it all you will become trapped in the fourth world too far away from humanity to be able to feed on their vice, on their hate. Then you fade away. You can burn yourself out like a falling star if you ever completely lose control. Spend only what you need. I will help you; I will stand by your side and pull you back.

Chris looked back at his new father and nodded gratefully. He then looked down at Billy. “He’s standing in your way, like he has all your life. The fear he instilled in you has kept you from living, end him and end his power over you.” Wolf commanded. On some level Billy began to understand what was about to happen, and his insane laughter began to give way to frightened sobbing. He began to beg, “No, no, no, no,” over and over again.

“How does that feel, Billy? How does it feel to be helpless in the face of no mercy, no pity. I’ve waited years for this, and now I’m going to kill you.” Chris told him with malicious zeal. Billy began shaking his head and waving his arms empathically like he was trying to signal a plane not to land and screaming, “No!” as though he could will Chris to stop.

His pathetic state, his annoying screaming, his ridiculous, desperate gestures, all made Chris loathe him even more. Where was the bully who so confidently tormented him now? Chris’s anger gave way to his pure vitriol and without further thought he struck. He balled up his gnarled mishappen fist and reared up punching down with all the force his body had to offer. The titanic, supernatural effort was grisly to behold. He punched right through Billy’s chest, through his lungs, through his ribs and his shoulder blades, and right through the floor beneath him. Downstairs the neighbors beneath his apartment began screaming hysterically as his blood-soaked fist came through the ceiling and Billy’s blood began to pour like a crimson rain spout onto their floor.

His hate flowed through him like a massive tidal wave might envelop a city. All the years of pain and loneliness bubbled back up and drove the power of hate into his monstrous limbs. He punched down again, this time right through Billy’s heart, killing him instantly. Beaneth them his blood gushed all over the floor downstairs, and the occupants of the apartment fled screaming in horror. Despite Billy being dead Chris punched again, and again, and again, until Wolf pulled him back.

In that moment he did not know peace, but the gratification he took in his savage bloody vengeance was the single most satisfying thing he had ever experienced. He partially calmed himself and stepped away from Wolf regaining his composure. He looked towards his new father and said with true unadulterated sincerity said, “Thank you.” Overwhelmed with hateful, sadistic joy Wolf embraced him in a sick, twisted parody of a loving parent sweeping up their beloved child in their arms after having finally been reunited after a long separation.

When Wolf put him down the transformation was complete, Christopher now resembled a smaller version of Wolf. There were frightfully few differences between their mutated, hideous forms. “Now, My Son, one thing remains, listen, remember.” Chris grew quiet as Wolf conjured the past within his mind. The old monger pointed towards the door that had remained projected on Chris’s wall this whole time. The chill breeze blew, sending chills down Chris’s back, even in his new form.

“There, that fear, it is still with you, and that will not do.” Wolf told him sternly. He lumbered over to the end table and snatched up the axe, then handed it to Chris.

“Now Christopher, I’ve given you the power of the monger, and in your pure, perfect hatred you have made that strength your own, but this I cannot do for you. You have to batter down the door, you have to break the chains of fear, you have to free yourself of the mortal restraints your previous life placed on you. Wolf stepped behind him and pointed him towards the door. “You have to chop your way through, and end that voice, that soft, sibilant voice calling you back to that place where you were weak and helpless. Only you can do this.”

Chris looked at the sharp blades of the weapon in his hand. He looked at the door that even now still brought him such dread and pain. Then he heard her, that insidious witch, his so-called guidance counselor, calling him back to another horrible session of peer mediation. “Call on your hatred, My Son,” Wolf told him. “It is and always has been stronger than your fear. Control your hate, use it, it’s your power, and it will crush her. Chop it down Christopher, end that voice, end her, break the chains of fear.” Wolf urged.

Chris gripped the axe tight. It wasn’t until now he realized that he could barely remember her appearance. In his nightmares she had become a faceless apparition to him. In that moment here and now he couldn’t even remember her name. Just her voice, her horrible, beckoning, poisonous voice. Lying to him, her faceless, self-serving hypocrisy telling him how it was all ok, that Billy wasn’t such a bad guy, that she was there to help him.

He remembered that room, sitting there, having to look at Billy smiling sadistically at him, only this time something was different. Now Billy had no face, and where his face used to be there was a hole, a hole that was bleeding. Billy’s body slumped there, in that seat, dead. Somone had punched a hole right through his head. Chris smiled. All his hate welled up with his gratification at the macabre sight before him. His mind reconciled the horrible vision with his sense of satisfaction. Billy was dead, he had no power over him now, and neither did she.

Wolf stood behind him, with a look of genuine anxiety on his horrific face, almost like a father who was anxious his son would fall after he took the training wheels off. He heard her voice calling to him again, to come in, to sit down, to talk about his feelings, and Listen to Billy talk about his. His hatred welled in him, his hand tightened around the axe handle.

“Not this time, Bitch.” He sneered.

Chris didn’t bother using the axe, he knew he didn’t need to, his hate gave him all the strength he needed. He simply charged right through. The door burst inwards as it was reduced to splinters by the power of his supernatural might. He heard her screaming as he smashed through the door. In his vison Billy’s lifeless body fell off the chair. He looked at her with that blank, featureless face, shrieking. He froze for a moment as she continued to scream. There he was, in that room again after all these terrible years. This time though the fear was quickly replaced by his inimical hatred. His darkest, most vitriolic contempt rose up inside him consuming the fear this room once inspired in him with unmitigated, murderous contempt. His monstrous visage betrayed a look of furious hatred, and then he saw her. Her face seemed to magically reappear. Suddenly he remembered her name: Misses Mills, Debrah Mills. She screamed in horror at the sight of him, and as she succumbed to fear all her power over him just melted away.

Then he did something that made Wolf howl in gleeful pride. Something the old monger thought would be beyond the ability of a young hate monger just born to the ever-night. Chris reigned in his contempt. He wanted to make this count. She screamed and screamed and as she did so he flipped the axe in midair and caught it in just the right grip. He knew that he could cut her in half, break her bones in a single strike, but he didn’t want to obliterate her, he wanted her to feel it, and he wanted the world to see it. He slammed the axe down right in her face with just enough power to cleave right through her skull and into her brain, killing her instantly. She collapsed into a lifeless heap onto the ground. Suddenly he heard his father rebuke him, “Christopher, what have you done, Boy!”

He turned towards his mortal father with immortal fury never questioning in his spite filled rage how he had returned from the dead to plague him again. He pulled the axe of the guidance councilor’s skull then threw it right into his father’s head slaying him on the spot. He then stepped over to his father’s corpse and pulled the axe out of his mangled face and began to mutilate his body with swing after hate filled swing until the axe could bear no more of his supernatural strength and the handle broke. Chris threw the broken handle away in contempt then looked around at the carnage he had wrought.

His eyes widened as the illusion Wolf had projected into his mind faded away. There, lying on the floor around him were the Emmerson’s, his now dead neighbors that he had just slaughtered.  There had never been a door on the wall he had just crashed right through, and in the place of his dead father, Mister Emmerson’s mutilated corpse.

“It wasn’t her, I didn’t actually kill her.” He said with bitter disappointment, but no remorse at all for his murderous actions.

“You Will,” Wolf told him as he strode through the hole in the wall Chris had just made. “Remember, My Son, I could not find her. Your fear blocked her out of your mind. I had no way of knowing who she actually was, but now we know, don’t we, My Prodigy. Now that we know, we can find her. You want to kill her, My Boy, then you will. If you want to kill her a thousand times over the next hundred years, we can do that to. You’re free now Christopher, You’re truly free. You had to kill her in your mind, you had to free yourself from that room to free yourself from her power, and you have. Now, My Son, you are truly a monger.”

It was at that point that the door to the Emmerson’s apartment burst open, and in ran one of his more obnoxious neighbors. Stan, Stan the Man as his friends liked to call him. Stan was one of those athletic types who was convinced that so long as he could bench press several hundred pounds he could beat anyone in a fight. Chris had always hated him, perhaps because he reminded him of Billy. Stan wore a mullet and loved muscle shirts and came in with a baseball bat held high screaming, “Jane, Joe, you guys good?” He stormed into the apartment thinking to save his neighbors with bravado and a bat. It was precisely the kind of thing Chris would have expected of him. Stan was not the brightest bulb, and his macho belief in his own invincibility had likely just doomed him.

Stan looked around drinking in the horror Chris had created all around them, first seeing his neighbors’ dead bodies, and then seeing Chris himself staring at him. Stan nearly dropped the bat as looked up in disbelieving horror at the monster Chris had become. His absolute terror amused Chris, but Stan had not seen Wolf. His new father was less than thrilled by the sudden interruption of Chris’s rebirth. Wolf lashed out with incredible speed and slammed his huge hand down over top of Stan’s head with a vice like death grip. Stan shrieked in agonized terror as wolf effortlessly picked him up, and then as Stan’s legs kicked in pain filled horror the old monger crushed his head like he might squeeze silly putty in his hand. The sum contents of Stan’s skull, including of course his brains, squeezed through Wolf’s fingers like greyish red mud might through a child’s hand while playing in a puddle. Before Stan’s decapitated body could even begin to fall Wolf swatted the headless corpse across the room and right out the window. Below he could hear passersby begin to scream as the glass hit the ground surrounding the grisly remains of Stan the Man’s now headless corpse.

“Goddamned pissant,” Wolf swore as he moved to the door, slammed it shut and wedged it in the frame like he had just done in his apartment. “I truly do despise mortals,” he announced as he turned to face Chris. Outside they both heard nearby police sirens approaching.

“So, what now, Old Man?” Chris asked him.

“Now you cross over with me, to the fourth world, and we begin your training. I will teach you how to open and close the doors to the realm beyond. I will teach you how to feed on hate from the hidden world. I will teach you all you need to know as my real father taught me four hundred years ago. As I teach you, My Prodigy, we will make our way across the world, wherever we want to go. We will maim, murder and mangle wherever we please. We will inspire hate in the hearts of malcontents all across the globe, and we will drink deep of their malevolence.

Come, My Son, by following me into the fourth world you leave all that is mortal forever behind you, weakness, fear, infirmity, none of it will ever touch you again. Christopher, this is not where your story ends, this is where our story begins.” Wolf held out his hand for him to take. Christopher smiled. He felt as though his whole life was building up to this moment. He felt like finally, after all his pain and loneliness and angst, at long last, he had won.

He reached out and clasped Wolf’s hand enthusiastically.

“Whatever you say, Dad!” he quipped malevolently.

They disappeared in a blinding blue flash to the sound of Wolf’s maniacal cackling, leaving bloody carnage behind them in their wake. Everyone all through the building had heard Wolf’s monstrous, inhuman laughter. He didn’t just bellow it aloud for them to hear, with all the hate he and Christopher had saturated the environment with he now had the strength to project it right into the mind of every person in the vicinity. All the tenants that could ran from the building screaming into the night. The ones that couldn’t flee tried to hide or just broke down into terrified tears. Deep inside them all they knew on the most instinctual level, that for a terrible, terrifying moment a true monster was in their midst. Some would go mad, and for the ones that didn’t none of them would ever be the same again.

It was Wolf’s parting gift to them.