Real Estate

A new, twisted take on Eminent Domain

It was then that he knew everything he’d seen was a lie. And he was the next target.

     It was a quiet afternoon when Jimmy came home from school. Out here in the woods, the journey from school to home was a simple but slow trek. But it was ample time for the killer to strike.

     Jimmy was no more than twelve at the time of the incident. He'd come home from school to his parents (together at home for once) in the kitchen about to eat a meal. Despite the oddity, the school day had been so good that the high of previous events made him forget the impossibility of this development.

     They ate an early dinner. The conversation was light. He was so happy to see his parents happy. Things had been so rough after the divorce. But it seemed that co-parenting and cohabiting, whilst still being single, had done some good for them.

     Jimmy caught his first tell that something wasn't right. His mom, usually sweet, started to scream at him. His dad, usually a disciplinarian, tried to comfort him. “This is how your mother was when we were together,” he said. The other tell clicked into place. They were ambivalent to each other. They were cordial, but the hurt was always at the front. Yet they became friendly in a matter of hours as if nothing had happened between them. Then they began to twitch violently.

     Jimmy defenses kicked in. He backed away from the table. His parents’ faces began to shift. Their eyes had turned black. Their mouths were agape. Those black cavernous maws were even darker than their eyes. The arguing came back. It was louder, distorted, deeper. Their rage was amplified. Discernable words fell apart as they were spoken. The insults slurred and turned into deep, bellowing wails. The demons no longer resembled his parents. And then they charged.

     Jimmy ran away in search of a place to hide. As he ran through the family farmhouse, he found the walk-in closet he’d hide in as a child. Without thinking, he ran into the darkness. It felt surprisingly safe in there despite the threat behind him. But, the closet seemed deeper than he'd remembered. Something inside had a fragrance to it. He felt his mother's skin and a sticky substance which textured her arm. Before he could react, she grabbed his hand. He looked into his mother's bleeding face. “Run,” she gurgled with blood spilling from her mouth. He shot out of the closet before running for the shotgun above the master bedroom door.

    Jimmy's short stature rendered the firearm useless when he only had seconds to react. Out of the closet, the demons sprinted. They could bend space as they saw fit. He darted back to the kitchen left untouched by the hell spawn. He grabbed the biggest knife he could find from the block.

     Then the back door burst open. A man, dressed in a long black raincoat with something attached to it, stood in the doorway waiting patiently. Jimmy immediately ran away from the stranger. As he crossed into the living room, the house began to decay. He charged up the increasingly dilapidated stairs to his bedroom. 

     Out of his mom's room to his right, the demonic imposters charged again. Bolting left, he dove into his room and slammed the door behind him and flicked the lock to keep away the evil. The demons began pounding on the door with ever-increasing intensity. It was only a matter of time before the barrier would break. Jimmy ran to his window and opened the latch. With adrenaline-fueled speed, he opened the window and climbed out onto the roof.

      The door exploded as the monsters burst through the lintel. The force of the blast wave and the shards of wood were enough to send Jimmy tumbling off the roof and into the woods behind him. Though painful, his supple body didn't break. He got up and ran for the shed.

     As he burst through the door, the demons were waiting. Jimmy remembered where his dad left the ax and charged the demons. With one swift stroke, he cut a hole in both of them. They staggered back toward the sink. He hacked and hacked away at the evil before him. But the meat wouldn't stop moving. The chunks of viscera rapidly require a more precise tool. He grabbed the knife and approached the area. 

     But as he stepped closer to his destination, the artifice dropped. He wasn't killing demons. He was killing his parents. The guilt and fear flooded his body as he fell to the floor weeping.

     Before he could turn around, the man in the raincoat put a hand on his shoulder. Clipped to the man’s chest was a distorted badge which declared him a government agent. Jimmy turned around and saw the pale white face tower over him. “Thank you, boy,” the possessor said. “I think I love my new home.”