The Night with Friends
The view was nice here, not many bars in the area had an open area and the ones that did didn’t normally look very good, but this one was nice. Naomi, Jane, Alyssa, and Bri had decided to go out after their duty hours were over. They sat at their table for a while, chatting and nursing their drinks. Dusk had fallen by that point, and the humid air lay heavy in their lungs causing them to become drowsy.
“My classes have honestly been going pretty well,” Jane said, head resting on the palm of her right hand while she held her drink in the other. Her black hair tumbled down her shoulders, hovering a centimeter over the surface of the table, “At least I’m taking them, right? I never thought I’d have a chance to get into college.”
“Same,” said Naomi, “It wasn’t ever really a thought I had. My family never had enough money. I think the only reason my life is anywhere as stable as it is is because of joining the military, I wouldn't have been able to take my classes without it.”
“And we all met each other because we joined,” Bri added.
“That too.”
“Oh tell us how you really feel, Naomi,” Alyssa teased, swatting at her shoulder.
Naomi rolled her eyes. “Shut up,” she said.
The other people in the outdoor area of the bar filtered out, leaving the space significantly quieter. Naomi watched as the last one left, suddenly getting a chill. The shivers ran down her spine, and a pit opened up in her stomach.
“You good?” Jane asked, brows furrowed in concern, “You looked upset all of a sudden.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. It was nothing,” she said, but she knew it wasn’t nothing. It never was.
A low humming came from behind her, slowly moving to her left. She tried to ignore it, but the sound was ever growing. A horrible, loud buzz like a thousand flies all grouped together. In fact, when she caught a glimpse out of the corner of her eye, she knew it was exactly that. A moving mass, all individuals yet moving together all the same. A million kaleidoscopic eyes staring at her. Her ears began to ring as the headache she knew so well began to start up.
“Hello,” the thing said in a thousand voices, “I can see you. I know you can see me.”
She stared, wide eyed at the thing behind Alyssa. It was grotesque, nothing exactly like she had ever seen. It moved, changing shapes every few seconds, but each shape was made only of the flies. They buzzed, but they screamed as well. Each fly was being contorted, forced to move as one being. They were in agony, a colony of pain and despair. Huge, but made of such small creatures that they couldn’t even comprehend that pain and despair is what they were feeling.
“Naomi,” Alyssa snapped in front of her face, “What’s wrong?” Jane and Bri exchanged a confused glance.
They couldn’t see it, no one else ever could. Only ever her. As a child she would scream. She would cry and beg for someone to get rid of them, but her mother would say they weren’t real. That the things she saw all around her, the monsters, weren’t there. But they were, she knew it because she could feel the rake of their claws on her back and the tickle of their breath on her neck. She could feel the hot blood that would pour from the wounds they gave her. When she showed her parents they said she must have accidentally hurt herself and not noticed. She was the only one who knew, who actually knew.
She tried to gather her strength, to force it to leave like she did with countless others after she learned how to. Go away, she thought, projecting the words towards the thing. I want nothing to do with you.
“You want nothing to do with me?” It said, “You have no importance to me. I was simply greeting the first person I’ve met in hundreds of years that could see me.”
Leave, she told it, hoping that it would decide to find someone else to torment.
“You, little girl, are being very rude,” it growled. Suddenly it swarmed upwards, a stream of flies twirling into the air. It hovered, moving in circles around the head of the table. Naomi stared upwards at it, transfixed and unable to hear the unsteady murmurs of her friends.
All at once, it flew down in an arc. Alyssa’s body stiffened, fingers outstretched with her hands at her sides, shoulders tense and her neck slightly upwards as the horde of pests forced its way into her mouth and down her throat. Her eyes were wide, stricken with fear, darting vigorously around as if trying to find a source for what was happening to her. A strangled scream came from her throat. Her body snapped backwards and her jaw clamped shut as the last of the flies entered her mouth. She sat still, head hanging limply down, her chin resting on her chest. Her light brown hair hung in front of her face, obscuring the sight of the others.
“…Alyssa?” Bri asked, hesitantly reaching over and touching her shoulder. She snatched her hand back quickly, and Naomi noticed that under the spot Bri had been touching there was a tiny, bead shaped ball under Alyssa’s skin.
The ball began to move, and others pressed up from under her skin, covering the surface of her entire body. They wiggled and squirmed as if trying to break free, then slowly one by one the balls faded back down and left her skin smooth. Alyssa’s head snapped up, eyes open. Her pupils had fully dilated, the black completely covering the green of her eyes. Her face was blank as her eyes moved across the table, taking in each of their stunned faces. For the first time, Naomi realized that the things she’s been seeing all her life might not only be a threat to herself.
Naomi glanced around, trying to find a way out of this situation. The bartender in the building didn’t seem to have noticed anything wrong, and there were other people scattered about in there, but they were the only ones in the outside area. The only exit was back into the building, but would they be able to run? She had no idea what this thing was, let alone what it was capable of.
A knife slammed into the back of Naomi’s hand where it was resting on the table. She screamed out in pain, but the music from the bar drowned it out. “Don’t look away from me,” the thing that had taken control of Alyssa said in its thousand voices, “Escape is not an option.”
Naomi noticed a new sound that was added to the amalgamation that made up the thing's voice. Conjoined with a thousand others, Alyssa’s voice rang out amongst the buzz of the flies that reverberated through her throat. It had taken her body, as well as taken her voice, keeping it with what was, no doubt, the voices of its other victims.
The thing grinned a manic grin, twisting Alyssa’s face into something unrecognizable as it eyed the horrified faces of the others at the table. Slowly, it pulled the pocket knife from Naomi’s hand, relishing the pain it was inflicting with each small movement. As soon as it was out, Naomi pressed her hand to her shirt as quickly as possible, flipping the shirt over and holding her hand from both sides to try and stop the bleeding.
“What do you want from us?” Jane whispered, barely audible against the blare of the bar music.
“To be your friend,” the thing said with a wry grin, “I greeted the blonde here,” it pointed at Naomi, “but she declined my offer. Very rude of her,” it pouted.
“Well then,” Jane said, trying to gain some confidence, “I’m afraid you will just have to be rejected again.”
The thing's eyes darkened, and in a breath it lunged across the table. Jane toppled from her chair as the thing came down upon her. Bri and Naomi were quick to rush and try to pull it off of her, but it elbowed Bri in the face with strength that couldn’t have possibly come from Alyssa’s body, crushing her nose with a sickening crunch. She fell back onto the ground, and blood began to pour from her eye sockets. Her features began to droop as Naomi realized that the thing didn’t just break her nose, but it had shattered her skull. Bri didn’t move.
Someone screamed from inside the building, Naomi took that as an indication that they had finally realized what was happening. She continued trying to pry the thing in Alyssa off of Jane, and was met with a sudden sharp, stabbing pain in her lower left abdomen. She stumbled backwards as the thing pulled the pocket knife out of her. Her vision began to swim from the pain and blood loss from both her wounds. The sound of the commotion from the bar became muffled as she swayed. She almost believed it was over, that she was about to simply collapse and die. That was before she heard Jane scream.
She snapped out of her haze just in time to see the things raised fist plunge downward into Jay’s chest, dragging the blade downward through her flesh after it first entered. Blood spurted from the gash it had made, and she gurgled as blood began to fill her throat. Naomi lunged towards the thing, knocking it to the side. The knife fell from its hand, clattering on the floor and slinging off a foot to the left.
Underneath her, the thing grabbed for her throat, its other hand reaching for the knife. She punched it in the face, attempting to grab the knife before it could. It grabbed her forearm, nails tearing into her flesh.her fingers grazed the edge of the knife, and she stretched as far as she could without letting her guard down to grab it. The thing smiled, Jane’s blood dotting its face. Behind her, Jane stopped gurgling. Naomi jabbed the knife down into its throat, watching as the thing spasmed beneath her. Eventually the twitching stopped, and the thing lay still.
The balls pierced through Alyssa’s skin again, wriggling just as before. Before Naomi’s eyes, the flies began to crawl out one by one from Alyssa’s throat. As the minutes passed more began to flow out, crawling from her ears and eye sockets as well. The buzzing filled the air again as the flies began to reform into their mass, hovering over Naomi and the corpses of her three friends. It wasn’t dead, the only thing Naomi had killed was Alyssa’s body, and the thing was still here and it was still angry. She made peace with the fact that she wouldn’t survive this experience. She rolled backwards off of Alyssa’s body, lying parallel to Jane. Her hands clutched at her abdomen, the adrenaline gone and her wound now throbbing with pain again. She could feel the blood pouring from between her fingers, pooling underneath her as it did under Jane.
“Stop!” a voice shouted. Naomi opened her eyes and could hazily see the silhouette of a tall woman in the doorway of the bar. The flies stopped swirling around Naomi, instead turning towards the woman.
“You,” it hissed, “What are you doing here?”
“Protecting what’s mine,” the woman said. Her voice was hard and sharp, but with a melodic flow that made Naomi calm, almost tired. It felt like the roar of waves crashing onto stone.
“Yours?” the thing said.
“Yes. Mine. She was made for me, Naomi Wolfe was. In the beginning, when each of us were assigned a human strong enough of mind and soul that they would be able to channel us.”
“Your vessel. But you made your own form, just as you had made my original form, out of clay and wire. You have no use for her.”
“Not as a vessel, no. But she may have other uses yet. I regret that I was late, and that you harmed the others with her, but I am here to put this to a stop, Beelzebub.”
“Oh, Samael. Have you been chasing me this entire time? I never thought you cared,” it said, sarcasm dripping from its voices. “Well, you are too late for her, I’ve already done my deed,” it laughed.
“No, you haven’t,” she paused, “As I said before, she is strong of mind and soul. Her body is capable of pulling through tremendous traumas as long as she remains strong willed.”
As she spoke, her words seemed to have a commanding effect as Naomi was pulled from the brink of unconsciousness. She groaned as she attempted to move. The woman smiled, and the thing, Beelzebub, buzzed louder.
“Even so,” it shouted, “you cannot kill me! You have tried before!”
“No, I can’t. Not right now, but I can cast you away. I can cast you into hell, to places you’ll never want to be again.”
The thing growled, and all the thousands of flies swarmed towards the woman. She waved her hand, and in a flash of red light all the insects disappeared. The night was oddly quiet, for the first time in what felt like forever, it was empty of the buzzing of flies. No one was in the bar, no woman was in the doorway. The only thing Naomi could see was the flashing lights of police cars bouncing off of the walls and the approaching sirens coming down the road, and the corpses of her only friends around her. She turned her head to the right, eyes landing on the blood spattered, shredded figure of Jane Ortiz beside her. As her world began to fade to black, Jane was her last thought.