Moros and the Demon Fields

Brushing his hands over the grass before him, Alvin makes his way deeper into the pitch-black prison cell. The smell of seasoned meat and the yeast of bread are getting stronger. His knees burn from being constantly dragged along the ground.

“Where is the food?” I sniff again, and the scent of herb-roasted meat floods my mouth with saliva as my stomach contracts in anticipation. It’s close, really close. Inch by scrabbling inch, I reach out in every direction, waiting for my hand to brush up against something. This prison is a mind game.

I want to scream and break something, but there is nothing around and no one to hear. My hand, now trembling, connects with something solid. I run my fingers over the object. It’s a tall, square-shaped bowl made of smooth wood. A chunk of bread loaf and some slightly warm, soft food are in the bowl. I bring out a portion, and after a quick sniff that confirms the sweet spices used to cook chicken, I shove it into my mouth. It melts on my tongue. My hands instantly return to the bowl, dragging the rest of its contents to my mouth.

It’s gone. My hands search inside the bowl, but nothing is left. My eyes start to sting with a flood of fresh, hot tears. I should have savoured it and let it last longer. Gripping my knees close to my chest, I bang my forehead off my kneecaps several times; the pain reverberates to my teeth and the gums tired of holding them up. I can’t go on. I want it to end now.

I grab the bowl with both hands and crush it onto the top of my head. Pain sears through my scalp as I repeat the motion. A scream breaks and crawls up my tattered throat, unused to being used and parched from having no liquids in days or weeks. Who knows how long it’s been down here in this hell-hole prison? I whip the bowl away and wait for it to hit something in the distance to tell me I’ve made it to a wall or anything other than this vast emptiness: Nothing.

I pluck a blade from the plush grass carpet beneath me and toss it in my mouth to chew on. It’s the only moisture I will get down here. Flopping to my side and plucking another blade of grass, I lay positioned like this. My head and nose have a trail of warm liquid trailing down my face. I don’t wipe them away. It reminds me that I’m human.

I awake with each limb sprawled out. I must have dozed off. Every inch of my skin burns like I was thrown into boiling oil. My breathing comes in heavy pants as I roll on the grass. The cool touch soothes my skin momentarily. It’s slow to stop burning; my skin returns to normal, leaving me sweating and on the verge of starvation again.

This awful existence should be illegal. I was brought to the prison with tales of vast wild lands, a world of earthly wonder. There's only grass and darkness so extensive your eyes can’t pierce through it.

“This is not what I signed up for!” I yell at no one. My voice doesn’t even echo; it just dissipates into nothingness.

Warden Moros randomly drops the food bowl in the field, then steps back to watch his prisoner. The harsh heat from the sun forces Moros to narrow his eyes. So he pulls his sunglasses off his hat, places them on his nose, and waits.

The naked man, weeping and bloody, crawls around in slow circles as he murmurs and stumbles to find the food. The human houses the demon Azazel; he is dormant until the human is fed. It’s tricky to keep the human alive and still have Azazel under control.

The trick is to remember that the human is just a vessel. He was chosen from the ranks of death row inmates for a fate far worse than the death he justly deserved. Moros keeps a list of his prisoner’s crimes tacked to his office wall so he will never forget. Whenever he looked at that list, any sense of pity he felt for the vessels in his care vanished.

The man stops midway to the bowl, his palm slipping out from under him and causing him to crash face-first into the ground. Moros takes a step forward, intending to take a closer look. But he stops short. He can see the man breathing; his chest rises and falls plain as day, but something is off. The birds in the distance have stopped singing.

Moros moves with a practiced ease that speaks of his thirty years in the demon fields. He walks around the vessel’s perimeter, looking for signs of the human body giving out. The echo of a million different voices radiates from the human as Moros drops to a knee, pulls his rifle from his back, and aims at the vessel.

The demon’s voice enters his head a moment later. Moros doesn’t shift his focus from the body lying on the grass.

“Good seeing you so soon, my delectable captor.” The voice speaking in his head is his own but used by the filthy demon to communicate. They blind and deafen the vessels to ensure there is no chance the demon can escape, forcing them to speak mind to mind.

Moros clears his thoughts and lets the demon have his word. To get this over with.

“I have found something you want, Moros. I will give it to you. You only have to ask,” the usual taunts and bribes. He doesn’t answer, his eye still on the human, watching its torso rise and fall evenly.

Demon laughter surrounds the field, its source remaining unmoving as the vicious sound rips from it. The vessel will only start to boil if it’s possessed for too long, but Azazel loves a tormented body to lounge in.

“Your wife.”

Moros’s vision shifts as his heart starts pumping rapidly, and an adrenaline rush takes root. He’s being shown a fake vision of his late wife, tormented and writhing in the flames of hell. She hangs from a spit over the roaring flames of a pit, surrounded by minor dog-shaped demons foaming and barking at her screams of agony as invisible hands slowly turn her.

It’s not real. The vision is a human interpretation of Hell. Moros’s wife had been a regular at church, volunteering at every event it held. She was a saint. The demon is showing a false vision to goad him.

“I can give her back to you.”

Moros clenches his teeth and focuses on his breathing. Take a big breath in, hold it, and let it out. The vision of his wife fades, and he is back on the demon field, only now covered in sweat.

He stands and wipes the sweat from under his hat using the cuff of his uniform. He goes to strap his rifle on his back, but the man is gone. He turns in a circle; he’s nowhere.

Moros’s lungs burn as he lunges off, racing for the watch tower to the north. There are no walls to the fields, only a single tower surrounded by a copse of trees in the center of the land.

“Moros, there is no need to run.”

The demon was still in his mind; the vessel couldn’t be far. He takes a chance and glances over his shoulder. The ghostly eyes of the man flashed in the sun as he sprinted on all fours at an abnormal speed, his head hanging at an unnatural angle.

“Your wife wishes to see you. If you don’t want me to bring her to you, I will bring you to her.”

The eerie laughter surrounds Moros again. He smiles as he clenches his fists, ignoring the mocking voices of the demon. The air became charged as the demon thinned the veil to the underworld, but Moros would not be letting Hell lay claim to him again. He had a purpose in the mortal world that only he could fulfill.

He wasn’t going to make it to the tower. Swinging his rifle around, he went to turn and take aim but was thrown across the field as the vessel came barreling into him. His gun flew from his hand, landing a couple of feet away.

Moros crawled as he drowned in silence. Grasping the rifle, he positioned himself for an attack. As he waited, his heart began to slow as the time ticked down.

He would assume the demon lost its power if he were less seasoned. The air was too thin and overlaid in silence. Azazel must be being fueled by having the vessel consume itself. That has happened before, and only with this particular demon. A flash of pity for the human flared through him, but he tossed that away. Moros waited.

The birds started singing, slowly and timid at first. But Moros stayed in position until they returned to their normal chittering before finally standing up.

Still wielding his weapon, he nosed around the field until he found the vessel. “Well, that’s a shitton of paperwork,” he sighed, turning from the pile of pulp sprayed out in the pattern of angel wings. His next week will be all in the office, the worst part of the job.

A replacement will come, and he will reunite with Azazel again. Hopefully, he won't wear out the next vessel so quickly.