So. Demons. They’re real. And no, they are definitely not the big red guys with the long horns and the goat hooves. Most of the time.

I’ve been in the demon-killing business for the last 15 or so years, and that makes me practically ancient by the standards of the industry. I’m what we in the know call an “industry professional,” and I’m the one they send out to handle the ones that are too big for the new people but too small to call in the task forces. I’m sort of the middle management of demon murdering.

Which, for the average woman in her thirties might be a little weird, but I make it work. They aren’t particularly picky about who decides to work for them when all is said and done. They mostly just need a few warm bodies to keep the demon population in check.

“Who’s they?” you might be asking. Well, they’re a little like the occult version of the police. They have a bunch of agents that mostly sit around in an office filling out paperwork and occasionally go off to kill a bunch of nasty little denizens of hell. And yes, they are from hell. We asked them, and they were pretty vocal about it. At least the ones that can speak.

That’s what demons are, by the way. Creatures from hell that typically have a nasty craving for human flesh, brains, or any other part of the human body that their type happens to be fond of. The flesh crawlers, for example, are partial to human skin, and the heart-wrenchers are fond of hearts, believe it or not. All of them within the category look different, but they always prefer one part of the human body more than anything. Except for the exceptions.

The exceptions are the class 6’s and up, who eat pretty much anything and everything, including souls, in case they needed to be more terrifying. But most demons are nowhere near that powerful, so it’s a more minor issue than you might think.

I mostly deal with class 3’s with the very occasional class 4. That’s what I thought I was dealing with yesterday. A class 4.

They’re incredibly rare, with maybe one or two roaming the continental united states at any one time. What makes them a class 4 is the system that the OODL (that being the group i work for, the Occult Operations and Demonic Liason department, normally shortened to oodle), uses to classify its demons. Size, intelligence, and abilities.

A class 1 might be as big as a dog and as smart as your average potato, but the jump in each class is staggering. A class 2 might be as big as a bison if it’s not particularly smart. Class 4 is when the demonic abilities start showing up.

I got a call at my desk at around midnight (and yes, we work at night. That’s the time when demons show up, ok? It’s not our fault.) I was filing a report about a recent flesh ripper i’d had the pleasure of dealing with when my phone rang.

I picked up the phone and heard the monotone voice of the receptionist on the other end, which probably meant she was one of the taken. That certainly didn’t bode well.

“Have I reached agent swallow?” she asked.

“You have” I replied, while internally cursing my call sign. They gave it to me because I was the only woman in the local office. I remembered to find Alex and kick him a few times because of it. Not that he’d been responsible or anything, but he certainly enjoyed making fun of me for it, which was reason enough for him to receive a good kicking.

“There is a report of a class 4 approximately 30 miles from your location,” she said in the same eerie monotone. “You must eliminate it,” that last bit was punctuated by the more than a little abrupt ending of the call.

The Taken call operators rarely waited for any sort of confirmation from the agents they spoke to, and there was a bit of a superstition around the local office that they only ever called when they were sending you to your death. Otherwise, they would have given you a human operator instead.

I was a little worried at the idea of facing a class four, especially one nearby, without my partner here with me. Alex was a rat bastard, but he was one of the most competent and experienced agents in our branch, and when there was a class 4 nearby we normally worked on it together.

Alex was nowhere to be found today, and most of us at the office assumed he’d had one too many drinks the night before and decided to skip work for the day. That meant that I’d have to deal with a class 4 by myself for the first time.

I moved down to the ground floor before heading out. The office of the more experienced workers like myself was on the third floor of the building, with the first two floors being made up of fresh workers straight off their first or second job. Which was necessary given the incredibly high turnover rate at most OODL locations.

The basement of the building was blocked off from the elevator and wasn’t available to anyone except the task forces and the branch’s manager. It was left for the holding cells and their occupants which were mostly the friendlier demons who wanted somewhere to stay, and a few speaking varieties who the head office felt were “important” (read: they could torture for information on locations for high-class demons).

At our branch, we also had a singular named demon. Those were the guys that the head office thought were so dangerous that they needed a code name and specific restraint conditions. Ours was called “Horse Rider”. I had no clue why and I was nowhere near high enough on the chain of command to find out.

I made my way out of the building to my company-designated car, an old Toyota that I sometimes thought was more dangerous than the demons I hunted with it. It was covered in dents and scratches from all the action it had seen, including a recent confrontation with a class 3 sight-taker that left it without its left mirror. It was also possible that some of the red paint wasn’t strictly paint by the general definition. It was hard to tell, though so I could get away with it. No one wanted to visit the cleaners. A shiver down my spine was enough to confirm that notion.

Inside the car was a screen I’d use to find the demon which marked its current location, category, and class. It was a black iPad-looking thing that was just behind the gear shift, and it made the whole car look not unlike a taxi, or an uber.

Displayed on the screen will always be a map of the surrounding location, the demons class, and category, as well any special abilities in the case of class 4’s and above.

One look at the screen and my heart fell. It had the class alright, and even the category. A class 4 bone gnawer was a bad day in anyone's books. They almost always had harpoon-like hooks with claws that could make even a butcher jealous. They were easily one of the most dreaded categories to deal with. Only Vampires (no, not literal vampires, they just like blood) and builders are more colloquially hated (the builders liked to take people's fingers and toenails, often while the victim was still alive. Nails, like the construction kind. Hence the name)

While the category and class were bad, it was what wasn’t on there that really topped it off for me. In the section labeled “special ability,” there was absolutely nothing. This meant that either the creature didn’t have an ability at all, which would make it so obscenely massive and smart that it seemed unlikely, or that the ability hadn’t yet been discovered.

That meant that I was probably a scouting agent. It would be my job to go in there, get a good look at the ability and send that information to HQ, and then die horribly while the demon removes and then eats my bones. Hooray.

It wasn’t a long drive to get there, at least by the standards of the job, but it was one made in silence. Taking on a class four alone wasn’t likely to go too well and I knew it. Especially if I was just sent there to die.

The location pulled me up to an abandoned farm just outside of town. It was so cliche that I was tempted to believe this might be some elaborate plot by some crackpot at the head office if it weren't for the silence.

You see, there’s almost always some noise out there. Wind, crickets, birds, anything like that. But there was nothing. Not a single peep. The air was so still it felt stale, and it cast a stillness onto the grass and overgrown fields with it. It’s so subtly unnerving, to see grass so still. It’s an unconscious sort of thing, I figured. It makes it look fake. Dead.

It also meant there was a demon around. It’s one of the signs of demonic manifestation we’re taught to recognize in order to properly perform our duty. Inside my head, I went through the checklist just to be sure.

No sulfur smell, that could be bad. The air was a little hot. Bad. my mind wasn’t clouded at least, so thats good. The sky was a little tinged with red. That was pretty bad. All the signs pointed to a class four, and a pretty bad one at that. It probably meant that it had manifested its ability and would probably start seeking out humans within the next few days.

I let out a long and somber sigh. I was probably going to die, but first, the part that every Oodle agent hates more than anything. Looking for the damn thing. death would come in good time, but finding the damn thing came first. I had its general location, and it was more than likely on the farm somewhere, but it could still be almost anywhere. hopefully, there was a barn nearby.

I started off by gathering my equipment in full. Since I was a little on the small side, that mostly included guns. Handguns, shotguns, even a rifle just in case. All of them were loaded with the requisite holy ammunition that you needed when taking on a demon. Additionally, I had some holy water and a few holy “artifacts”.

All of this holy stuff was just anything that Oodle could get blessed by a “member of the faith.” Technically speaking that could be any faith at all, and it often included those who were not, strictly speaking, ‘real’ religious believers. So it was that I held in my hands a handgun with bullets blessed by Frank, the local subway worker and faithful member of the sect of the Great Sandwich.

I figured that the most likely place the demon would have gone would be a barn. It wasn’t a strict rule of demons that they would always be found in the most dramatically appropriate place in the area, but it held true more often than any agent wanted to admit.

This was especially the case in regards to the higher class demons, who were smart enough to seek out sheltered and dark areas to do all of their evil demon shit. Like eating human skin. Or bones, in this case.

I almost felt lighter thinking of some poor class 4 demon wandering aimlessly in a completely open field without anywhere to enact its blood rituals. Still, my sympathy for the creatures didn’t extend far enough for that. And, honestly, I was still a little upset that I was probably going to die. It was something that every agent was prepared for, but few scouts ever actually realized they were scouts. Oodle normally sent out the fresh agents to this sort of thing, but in the case of a class 4, it seemed like they weren’t sure a newbie would survive long enough.

I’d have applauded the practicality of it if I weren’t nearly pissing myself with fear. You might think I’d be used to being this damn scared, 15 years isn’t a short amount of time, after all. But I’ll let you in on a little secret. Consciously going to fight the denizens of hell, who you know for a fact will be attempting to eat your bones in the next 10-15 minutes, never quite loses its impact. Especially on the bladder.

Instead of following that blessed instinct, I followed the more learned thoughts given to me by over a decade of experience. Every knife, gun, and religious relic I had on hand was within easy and convenient reach. I went through my mental checklist once more before finally heading toward the shape I assumed to be the barn.

It stood tall among the fields and cloaked all of its surroundings in even more complete darkness than the night provided. The moon's brightness didn’t penetrate into the domain of the demon. Even mother nature had little sway in the face of a creature of hell.

I was more conscious of my footsteps as I finally reached the barn. it loomed higher and wider with my approach (were barns seriously that big?). Once I was close enough to finally make out the iconic rust-red paint of the damn thing it felt like I would go deaf every time one of my feet made contact with the ground.

I was hyper-aware of my breathing because that old, irrational fear that somehow, someway, the demon would hear it and claw me down on the spot was too ingrained to overcome.

Add that to the stillness of the surroundings and it felt like a miracle the demon hadn’t come out to rip me open and relieve my skeleton of the burden of my flesh.

Where the thick darkness created by the shadows of the barn’s shape was undeniably dark, the gaping maw that was the barn's entrance looked to be an entrance to hell itself. It was a darkness so complete that even my torch wouldn’t have gained any purchase. It was like looking into a pool of ink, and it felt like if I were to take a single step into it, I would be swallowed.

So with one last goodbye to my ever-fleeting will to live, I stepped inside the demon’s lair.

I was right. It was the demon's lair. It was fairly easy to tell, despite the darkness. Even without my eyesight, I could smell blood. It was like when crossing the threshold I was hit by a wave of metallic-smelling death.

This was the final, and most important, confirmation of a demon’s presence. Whatever is inside their domain is theirs to control. Only so long as I had the religious relics on my person was I immune to that effect. That meant it could conceal the smell of blood outside of the barn, and in theory, it could have instantly removed my skeleton as well.

I remembered to thank Frank and his holy sandwich-related wisdom if I lived to see tomorrow.

The darkness was still the most immediate threat for the time being. The smell was an important confirmation, and given the absence of rot, it likely meant that the demon had only set up shop recently.

I shuffled around in the hay-encrusted floors of the barn for a few seconds while I tried in vain to get my bearings. I had hoped my eyesight might adjust enough to start making out shapes once I got inside, but I couldn’t even see my hand inches from my face.

That meant I would continue penguin-waddling myself toward my general approximation of the center of the building. I did my best to follow the smell of blood since I hoped the smell might be strongest where the demon had made its home, but it was equally as pervasive in every direction.

As I waddled through the hay I could practically feel my nerves reaching their limit. Something about being unable to see any attacks that might be coming, the thought of being torn apart at any second by a demon that I can’t see, fills me with dread. Every time I shuffle my feet through the hay I pause again. Was that a sound?

It felt like every step carried me closer and closer to a painful and meandering death. I kept shuffling along.

I finally heard it after a few minutes. A few agonizing minutes that I felt would never end. The metallic smell of blood was no more strong there than anywhere else in the barn, so far as I could tell, but the sound of my boots hitting something wet was unmistakable.

It was only a light nasally breathing coming from somewhere to my right. That was all. The creature's shape was still blessedly absent from my view, and I counted it as a small blessing. For that small time, the demon was only light breathing to my right. It wasn't a demon yet. Just breathing. It couldn’t last, of course, but it was still nice to imagine.

After all, if I was right, this might be the last good thought I might have. That revelation certainly soured the experience for me.

The next few moments were the bane of every demon hunter on the planet. Sneaking up on the beast was always the simplest part of the operation. Of the few things that remained constant to demons, poor awareness was one of them. It was the only thing that gave me any hope as I reached for my flashlight.

My hands shook slightly as I reached for the pack tied at my waist and pulled out the metal cylinder. I was terrified. More viscerally than I’d ever been in my life. Without Alex here to confront the demon, with the knowledge that I was completely alone, I felt so scared.

It was a feeling reminiscent of being a little girl again. It was the feeling of hiding under the covers until my parents came and told me it would be alright again. It was a feeling I hated.

The anger at being afraid bolstered me as it always did in moments like these. While I shook and fumbled to turn on the flashlight, the seething rage at the demon for causing me this fear carried me. I wanted to kill that damned demon at that moment, and it was the anger that made it possible.

Click

Blindness followed immediately. The darkness made way for an all-consuming flash of light. It tore away the inky blackness like the parting of the red sea. In the center of that bright light, as soon as I could make out its shape, all of my fears were made manifest.

Scaled red skin met matted black fur in a quadrupedal body. Hooks extended from each digit on its long, bony hands. The demon reminded me of a diseased dog as it released a screeching cry. It tore its gaze away from the light and I saw its eyes for the first time.

My anger faded in an instant.

In my hand, the gun I had reached for fell out of limp fingers. It wasn’t quite the demon's ability, as would have been the preferred case. It was the acknowledgment of the inarguable fact that I was going to die in the next few seconds.

Oh, I knew I was going to die. It was almost an inevitability when I realized I was going to be the scouting agent. But this was different.

Those matte black eyes would mean nothing to anyone less experienced or knowledgeable than I was. In fact, they would have meant nothing except to those who had been accepted to the specialty training seminars given to prospective members of the demon elimination task forces.

They meant that the demon I faced was a class 5 or 6.

As I felt my gun fall out of my hand it mattered little to me which it was going to be. I was dead either way. In taking on a class 4 alone I was still the smallest bit hopeful. I still believed that maybe, just maybe, I might live through to the end of the night.

As the demon finally turned to face my torch, and I looked at its maw of lacerated teeth, I gave up on that notion immediately. My death was coming swiftly. I had half a mind to close my eyes and accept it immediately, but that same fear of not seeing my attack coming stopped me from doing so.

It felt so childish to wait for the demon to eat me, staring into its eyes because I was too afraid to blink, but it was all I could do. It snarled at me before opening its jaws, and I got another long look at its pointed teeth. Before I could scream my final scream, I was silenced as the demon spoke, for the first time.

“Human” it snarled in a bestial voice.

I froze up even completely. It had spoken. That was much, much worse than any immediate death would have been. If it’s smart enough to speak, is it smart enough to enjoy inflicting pain?

I’d heard that some of the higher-class demons would torture surviving task force members for days before finally finishing them off. And a bone-gnawer? Those hooks would tear into flesh like butter.

“Human!” it repeated.

The angry voice snapped me back into the situation. The demon's face was twisted into a snarl, and I could almost feel the sweat falling off of me as it stared me down. I fumbled for a response. Something. Anything.

“Demon”

Anything but that. Anything, any single conceivable phrase, but that.

“You dare mock me human?” it questioned.

Its snarl didn’t even falter as it said it. I felt its gaze on me like a deer facing down the headlights of a truck. I was too stunned at my own idiocy to even speak, and I defaulted to the only thing I could think of.

“And you dare sit there covered in blood, and talk to me like I’m the one in the wrong here!”

Fuck.

“Puny human. You dare-”

“And not only that. You probably already thought of killing me, didn’t you? And you want to talk to me about daring to do anything!”

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

“Hold on a second you mortal filth. You dare address m-”

“How about you hold on a second you dick! I’m not the one sitting in some creepy-ass barn waiting for people to show up so I can eat their bones!”

ImSoDead ImSoDead ImSoDead ImSoDead

“And what the hell is all this ‘human filth’ crap about!? You’re literally covered in blood”

The demon hesitated. It looked down to see it was, indeed, covered in dried blood. I was mostly still thinking through all of the seventeen ways I was probably going to be gruesomely murdered and eaten. Not necessarily in that order.

That was until the demon started laughing. Which was an incredibly odd sound coming from the vocal cords of a wolf-ish creature. More disconcerting was whatever the demon found so funny.

It occurred to me to try and find my gun to shoot it while it laughed, I reasoned it wouldn’t do all that much to a class 5 or 6 anyways. it would have been far more likely that I would draw my gun just to find my neck being gently removed from my spine.

“Umm. do you feel like clueing me in on what’s so damn funny?”

Yep. those will be my last words. “Samantha Goodall- she died as she lived. A sarcastic bitch”

“Never. Not once in my thousands of years of being- not once- has a human spoken to me with such guile” the wolf demon wheezed out between fits of laughter.

“We are gathered here today, in remembrance of Samantha Goodall” I wonder if they’ll actually say that at the funeral?

“Well, I didn’t know what to say!” I shouted back to the demon, to which it only laughed louder.

“Well, I suppose you wouldn’t, little human.” the demon wheezed between chuckles.

Once again I'm struck by how abnormal the laughter sounds from a demon of all creatures. Who knew they could even laugh?

“Who the hell are you calling little!” I shouted indignantly.

The corners of his mouth turned up into an expression mimicking a smile, and even I could see the demon was holding back a laugh. I frowned at the wolf thing.

“My humblest apologies Mrs…?”

“Samantha”

The wolf-demons lips twitched again.

“My humblest apologies Mrs. Samantha. It has been many centuries since my last expedition into the human realm. You must excuse me if my manners are a little… lacking.”

Did a demon just apologize to me? I think I’ve had too much to drink.

“Better than having my bones eaten I suppose,” I said as flatly as I could manage. “But now you know who I am, who the hell are you?”

Did I ask a demon their name? Yes. yes, I did. Looking back, it wasn’t my smartest move.

“My name? It is an old and powerful name. It is far beyond a mortal such as you” the demon said in a haughty tone.

“Sure it is. I bet it’s steve or something. Or maybe dave. Oh! Maybe it’s Mr. Fluffles!” As far as ‘final words spoken to a wolf demon in a blood-covered barn’ goes, Mr. Fluffles isn’t too bad. And I do have to admit, without the scaly-looking skin and the hooks for claws, he does look quite fluffy.

“You dare! You refer to the mighty Leonard! Bringer of the dammed, architect of the cruel and dark, bringer of dea-”

“Did you just say Leonard?” why in God's name did I decide to make fun of its name? Do I want to die? I don’t remember having a death wish, but at this point, I’m already convinced it’s over either way.

“My name is ancient and powerful, puny human!” …

…

…

…

The conversation went on for another hour before I had to make my report to Oodle. It turned out my first class 5 wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Although I’m fairly sure Leonard tried to eat my soul at some point. I’m pretty sure it was after I told him about Air Bud.