Demon Rising

Misplaced prologue

A/N: This was the short story submission that started this book. The submission requires an author to create a suspensful, scary, horrifying story in 500 words or less. Being me, I simply had to put a supernatural twist on it.

Chapters will generally be longer than this, it's only short because that was the submission guideline.

Prologue

(short story submission)

I look at the crowd gathered in the seats of the funeral home, before glancing back at my hands that rest on the podium. Everyone waits in a damp and dark silence for me to deliver my speech, but I'm at a loss for words. If only they knew how big a roll I played in his death...

Hector was my absolute best friend throughout all of high school, and up until this year. Our freshman year of college.

But then... he changed. Became more violent. His beautiful green eyes would seem to glow with anger at the slightest of things. At first, I thought he was just having anger management issues. I didn't think much into it, and just tried my best to be supportive. I was, after all, deeply in love with him...even though I never admitted that to anyone.

But then, one Saturday at around three in the morning, I got a text from him.

I need your help. Emergency. Meet on the edge of the woods outside of the dorm houses.

Of course, caring for him as deeply as I did, I disregarded the red flags of both the time and the meeting place, and went straight to him.

As I had approached the edge of the woods, I saw him. But he didn't look like my Hector...he was covered in blood, and a look of remorse was settled on his face.

It was shortly thereafter that I found out he had killed a man he had a disagreement with.

I know now that I should have turned him in then and there. But I was so madly in love with him that I didn't want to risk never seeing him again.

So instead of doing the right thing, I helped him bury the body and get rid of all the evidence. We swore to never talk about it, and he promised that this would never repeat itself.

He broke his promise.

Less than a month later, I got the same text. The same thing had happened, just with a different person. And so, yet again, I ignored my inner moral compass that screamed at me to turn him in, and helped him bury yet another body.

This went on for months, him killing someone every few weeks and me helping him stay free. Over time I watched as he stopped feeling remorse... and would simply kill to kill. So one night, when I received his text, I didn't respond.

That night he showed up to my apartment and tried to make me his next victim.

So I killed him and staged it as a suicide.

Forcing myself back to the present, I offer a sad smile to the crowd. Just as I'm about to open my mouth to deliver my eulogy, the doors to the funeral home slam open.

In the doorway stands my best friend. The one that I killed to protect myself.

A chilling smile rests on his beautiful features.

"Miss me?"