A True Story, More or Less

This is a true story. What was true in the moment, and what was true on reflection, turned out to be two different things. Nevertheless, it’s still a true story.

In the summer of 2019, in the final days before the joys of the pandemic, I had a fight, at 4am, with a 6”8 demon that had appeared in my kitchen.

His real name was Ashley Michael Coles. He was a local heroin addict who had broken into my house one night when he saw that one of the downstairs windows had been left slightly open. However, all this only became the truth later. At the time, he was a 6”8 demon.

Ashley was 6”4 barefoot according to police reports. With a pair of stolen Air Force 1s on he was 6”6. With a beanie on and his hood up, he was a solid 6”8. He also had on at least 5 layers of baggy clothing, as those who are forced to sleep rough often do. The effect of all this was to create a ginormous, demonic silhouette, waiting for me when I walked into the kitchen at 4am, butt naked, on a Tuesday night, to investigate the bump in the night that my girlfriend had heard, that I was sure was only our cat Bella trying to headbutt her way out through the locked cat flap again.

Thus, my fight with the demon began.

Another thing that only became true later, was that Ashley initially tried to run past me to escape through his entrance, the open downstairs window. In the moment however, the truth was that the colossal demon that had been waiting there immediately charged at me. At this point I assumed this was a fight, not only to the death of my physical body, but also for the eternal damnation and destruction of my soul. It seemed logical given the circumstances.

I let out a panicked scream and try to punch the charging demon in its face as hard as I could. My girlfriend heard this from upstairs and let out her own hysterical scream. Ashley screamed as well, so as not to be left out.

Unfortunately, due to the demon’s false height given by the hood, I missed the centre of his face and instead punched him directly between the eyebrows, in the middle of his forehead. As anybody who has ever boxed or trained martial arts will tell you, punching somebody in the skull is an absolutely terrible idea. My hand broke on impact with a sickening crunching sound.

Despite the misplaced nature of the punch, it did take the demon off his feet. The sheer panic and adrenaline behind it meant it packed a shotgun-blast force. Enough to shatter one man’s fifth metacarpal and give one demon two black eyes for his mugshot. Despite this, the inertia of the demon’s charge meant he fell into me and we both went tumbling to the ground.

At this point the demon’s hood and hat combo had been punched off, revealing a gaunt face ringed by a mane of greasy shoulder length hair that flew about as we wrestled, doing nothing to dispel my notions of the beasts’ origins.

Then, something else happened that was entirely true in the moment. The demon summoned a smaller and furrier demonic helper, which launched itself at my face, scratching and clawing at me in a brief but violent attack that drew blood, before vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared.

I later realized that Bella really had been trying to get out of the locked cat flap, probably startled by our unexpected guest. When her owner had started naked wrestling with the giant creature in the doorway to the kitchen, blocking the only exit, she had attempted to leap over us, and had parkoured off my face on her way to the safety of the bedroom.

This sudden secondary assault disorientated me and allowed my initial opponent a chance to escape. He took it, fleeing suddenly into the front room. I heard a loud bang and then complete silence. I stood, with blood beginning to run down my face, with one hand throbbing and already beginning to swell, and slowly opened a drawer, pulling a large kitchen knife out with my left hand, trying my best to minimize the metallic rustling sound of the cutlery. I crept towards the room, holding my breath, as each soft footstep on the hallway carpet seemed to echo like high heels on a church floor.

I swung into the front room and slapped the light switch with my broken hand, the knife wavering in front of me at arm’s length, clasped firmly in my one working hand. Pain shot up my arm and my eyes ached as I blinked in the harsh light. The room was empty. The demon had vanished, leaving behind only an icy chill and a faint scent, no doubt a sulphureous after-trace from one of his spells.

When the police arrived shortly afterwards, we found one of my photo albums nestled in the flowerbed outside. Ashley had used it to prop the window wide open and had knocked it out during his hasty exit. It’s strange how things seem to make so much more sense in hindsight than in the moment, in the light of day compared to the dark of the night.

I had been the one to let the officers in, as my girlfriend was still locked in the upstairs bathroom and communicating with me via WhatsApp, refusing to come out until she felt safe. My appearance must have startled them, with one hand twice the size of the other and dried blood all over my face. I immediately launched into a description of what had happened, wanting to waste no time and get all this over with, in an attempt to ground myself back into my pre-demonic life.

At one point I suggested they take some fingerprints from the window sill so that they could find the culprit.

“This isn’t CSI mate,” laughed one of the officers.

“Well, what will you do?”

“Based on your description of a,” he checked his notebook, “6”8 demon with long hair and baggy clothes, we’ll probably just find Ashley tomorrow and arrest him. Tell him we know he did it and that’ll be that.”

“So, you know the perpetrator?”

“We’re pretty confident, yours isn’t the only house that’s been burgled today and our man was spotted in the area. He’s distinctive looking, not exactly the inconspicuous type is our Ashley. He’s probably after 3 hots and a cot, he hasn’t even tried to cover his footsteps on his latest crime spree.”

I felt that they were underestimating my opponent, the notion that he was in some way demonic had yet to fully dissipate. However, things played out pretty much as they predicted. Big Ash, as he was known to the local police, was picked up within 24 hours at a local haunt trying to score, and confessed to a string of break-ins when confronted with a slew of irrefutable evidence.

“I see. Well, if I can’t be of any further help officers, I should probably go upstairs to coax my girlfriend out of the bathroom. She seems shaken up by this whole ordeal.”

“No problem, we do have one more question for you though.”

“Of course, anything I can do to help.”

“You said the break-in happened 2 hours ago?”

“That’s correct, give or take. It was all a bit of a blur.”

“I understand, we were just wondering…” he looked at his colleague who quickly looked away. “We were just wondering, why are you still naked?”

I looked down and to my horror saw, beyond the blood that had dripped into my chest hair and dried there, beyond the small gut that had been growing steadily for the past few years, my flaccid penis, still very much affected by the combination of the fight and the cold weather, retracted back to a position of safety.

“Yes, I see. I guess I’ve just had other priorities these past few hours.”

“No worries mate, I’ve seen stranger things in the line of duty. We do odd things when we’re shaken up.” He gave me a patronizing smile and a wink. Behind him the other officer’s face was contorted in a painful grimace as he tried to suppress the laughter.

I let them out the front door after thanking them profusely. As I walked up the stairs to coax my girlfriend out of the locked bathroom, I could hear their footsteps make their way down the driveway and back towards their police van. I heard the soft thump of the van doors closing one after the other and then the muffled but unmistakable sound of hysterical laughter. It lasted for several minutes, and when it finally died down, I heard the van’s engine rumble into life and then fade away down the road.