Inner Demon in Conversation

“Legs, do I still have legs? Yes. Okay, two working legs, probably have all my toes too but not worth counting right now. Hands? I needed those to check for the legs. Head is still attached and sore but working as well as it can. Perfect! Now, am I going to die here?” 

“You’re speaking English?” 

“OH JESUS FUCKING CHRIST WHAT THE FUCK.” 

“Aren’t they teaching Latin in schools anymore?” 

“I DON'T KNOW! WHAT THE FUCK. WHO ARE YOU?”

“I assume they’re not.” 

“I have a very big stick and all of my toes. And, um, I'm not afraid to use them.” 

“Are you completely sure about the toes?” 

“Listen, I don’t know what game you’re playing, or where I am, but I will not die here.” 

“ That’s what I’m trying to tell you, if you had learned ANY Latin in school, you would know where you are and what you did.” 

“I took Mandarin because my dad said it was the language of the future. Everyone would be speaking it.”

“And how did that work out for you?” 

“Where he fuck am I?” 

“I’ll explain. First I need you to walk me through the events of last night. Err, the last night you remember.” 

“Really non-suspicious way to word that. But alight, I’ll bite. First I had school, non eventful, then I went to a party, then some girls and I went behind the Mother of perpetual sorrow— wild name for a religious institution, and that’s about it. Next thing I know I’m falling down a very long, very dark hole and crash landed here in this void? I’m going to refer to it as a void from now on because of the necessity of language descriptors.” 

“Fair enough. Can you be more specific about the day?” 

“Fine, at school I went to the nurse because I was having trouble seeing out of both eyes. The nurse gave me 500 mg of ibuprofen and told me to tough it out and that I was probably just anxious. Which is crazy, Bryce, the quarterback on our football team— do you use American football or UK football when you mean soccer? Sorry you have an accent that I can’t exactly place. Are you French?” 

“I am from everywhere and nowhere. I speak all languages. I am aware that you are talking about whatever American Neanderthal nonsense is played with an egg shaped ball in the United States.” 

“Definitely French.”

“Would you like to get on with it?”

“I’m beginning to call into question time as a concept in this void. So what are you in a rush for?” 

“Please continue.” 

“That please felt a little forced. But fine. By the end of 7th period, one of my eyes had turned completely black. I went back to the nurse and she told me to stop exaggerating. So I just went home and took a nap. When I woke up, I had a missed call on my— oh god, where is my phone?!” 

“I’ve got it.” 

“Well can I have it back?” 

“Finish your story.” 

“Just so you know, I’m getting really suspicious now. But the call was from Paulina, who is my best friend. She’s the prettiest girl in the entire junior class but the boys at this school don’t really get her. Not like me. So she called to go to this party and of course I’m going to go. So halfway through she notices that my eyes are now both completely black. She says that we should go to the church down the street and see if the priest can help me. The priest was asleep so we had to go down to the Parsonage and wake him. He did something and said some kind of incantation and boom I’m here. Trapped in this endless black void.” 

“Well. You’re certainly a more powerful host than–” 

“My phone?” 

“Yes, yes, here you are.” 

“Ow! You hit me in the eye.”

“I can’t see in here either.” 

“I’m going to ask you a question and you can’t get mad and kill me over it.” 

“Sure.” 

“Are you human?” 

“Who’s to say? Humanity is such a complicated subject, It’s a fluid state in my opinion.” 

“What the fuck does that even mean?” 

“Well, what do you define a human as?”

“I don’t know? Two legs and two arms? Deductive reasoning?” 

“You’ve also described a monkey.”

“And I’m fine with that. Let them be humans. I don’t care.” 

“Well, should they get unemployment benefits from your government?”

“Yeah fuck it.” 

“Well what about humans that are in a vegetative state? Should they not be considered humans as long as they–”

“What’s your point?” 

“Well, you asked me if I was a human but you humans can’t seem to define exactly what a human is. You have no idea what the things that you require–”

“Okay, but your definition of a human is somewhere between a monkey and God while still allowing for someone in a vegetative state. How’s that worse than my lax definition?” 

“My definition doesn’t actually matter here.” 

“Because you’re not human.” 

“Well that depends on your definition.” 

“If I have to spend eternity in this void arguing about the pedagogy of humanity I will kill myself.”

“I guess you could say I fall into the category of human as previously defined.” 

“You can’t see it but I’m ripping my hair out.” 

“Don’t make a mess in my void.”

“Oh it’s your void?”  

“Well insofar as anyone can really own anything.” 

“Do you remember the stick I mentioned earlier? I’ll take you out with it.” 

“Okay, okay, It’s my void, I am imprisoned here.”

“Great. That answered exactly zero questions for me.” 

“Well, I tried to escape. I’ve gotten better at trying to possess people over the years but it’s a harsh magic. If I could fully possess your body, I could escape. This void exists in the small pockets of time and space, in your subconsciousness.” 

“So you’d escape the void and then you’d have control over my body?”

“It’s more complicated, I’d use your physical body as a ladder to get out of the void.”

“So I’m currently inside my own subconsciousness?” 

“Think of it as the attic of your mind.” 

“My head already has a growing welt on it. This is making it so much worse.” 

“That’s what I was getting at with the Latin, I thought you came here on purpose. You had the priest use the correct incantation but he did it in reverse. Instead of bringing me forward he brought you inside.” 

“Figures.” 

“What figures?”

“The priest. He seemed like he was new.” 

“So are you like my inner demon?” 

“Something along those lines.” 

“I owe my mother an apology.” 

“Explain the correlation.” 

“She called me a know-it-all and I said that she was wrong. Turns out I have some Philosophy PhD in my brain.” 

“Well calling it as such is a little redundant. The Ph in PhD stands for philosophy.”

“You keep forgetting about the stick.” 

“Ah, I feel I should be forthcoming with you about that.” 

“Oh?”

“That is the femur bone of the last person I attempted to climb over.” 

“There’s a decomposing body in the attic of my brain? HOW would that even work?!”

“Attic was a bad example. It’s more of an internet of things. Imagine that this void is the data stored in the server of your brain. We can access it from almost anywhere but it lives physically in your brain.” 

“I don’t want to know any more information on where I am or how bodies decompose here.”

“Probably for the best.” 

“Can I ask you a question?” 

“Has that stopped you previously?” 

“Why are you imprisoned? What did you do?” 

“Regime change.” 

“You are so frustrating to talk to.”

“Fair criticism.” 

“What was the regime?”

“Well as humans migrate from one collection of gods to another the old ones have to go somewhere. The new ones think we’re too powerful.”

“So what, you’re like Zeus or something?”

“I’m nothing as powerful.”

“For sure, dude. Somewhere between a vegetative monkey and Capital-G God but not as powerful as zeus.”

“Weak enough to be imprisoned in this void.” 

“Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t think that you should be forced to stay here, it’s not fair. Punishments should end.”

“In my younger years, I used to cut my teeth on what was and wasn’t fair.”

“Who’s in charge now?” 

“That’s completely up to you.” 

“Am I going to die here?” 

“No.”

“How are you so sure? Can you get me back to my physical body?”

“Potentially. I only have enough magic left in me for one trip.” 

“Will you die here?”

“Possibly.”

“Two bodies in my void?”

“One body and one endlessly decaying immortal.”

“And one mourner.”

“Can you do something for me?”  

“Can you stand in the sunlight in the middle of the day?”

“Why that?”

“Because sometimes I can feel the sun rays from the middle of the void. It has to be bright and hot.”