What to Do When A Demon is Talking Shit at You by Cindy Phan

Sarah Jackson -

Content warnings

Violence. Gore. Verbal abuse. Estrangement. Bullying. Self loathing.

You’ve been fighting this thing your entire life.

Also, it’s been 15 minutes.

It’s hard to tell, really. That’s the nature of a fight, isn’t it? Lifetimes amassed and spent within each second—every moment a moment to react, reflect—and each and every moment that ugly mofo takes a swipe at you, rips away at you, spewing blood and bile, an eternity in itself.

Bodily fluids and pain are pretty much all you know right now.

But, yeah. The sun has barely inched toward the horizon between the time this final showdown started and where you stand now screaming, crying, throwing up as the demon rears on its splayed legs and slaps its naked thighs, leering as it talks shit at you with its long, forked tongue.

So listen, and listen good:

I. DON’T PANIC

I’M GOING TO FLENSE YOU ALIVE, SUCK YOUR SOUL THROUGH YOUR EYE SOCKETS, DRIVE A PIKE THROUGH YOUR BITCHASS MOUTH AND DRAG YOU LIKE A SKEWERED PIG ALL THE WAY TO HELL…

Wow. Okay. That—that is a lot.

But listen. All that stuff that demon says it’s going to do to you while it touches itself and crackles, all those fucked-up things it says it cannot wait to inflict upon you if you persist in fighting it?

It’s going to do it anyway, no matter what you do.

That laugh, that fucking laugh. How it simpers and smirks and blows phlegm-filled, blood-streaked raspberries in your face. How it screams, snarls, beats itself, capering, trying to get you to blink, shrink, submit.

You cannot hope to join this sadistic dance and win. You cannot succumb to it without being destroyed all that much faster, so:

II. BREATHE

Inhale. Exhale.

Oh no. The demon just bragged about carnal relations with your dead mother. A brutal blow indeed… and so detailed. It sneers at you for being such a miserable little shit to her while she was alive, for bringing her so low.

NASTY CHILD. UNGRATEFUL WHELP. SORRY SHITSACK EXCUSE FOR A HUMAN BEING.

Relentless!

But hardly accurate.

Inhale. Exhale.

Honestly. Your relationship with your mother was complicated, strained in the best of times. You don’t really feel bad for cutting contact all those years ago. You’re kind of glad she’s dead!

If the demon knows you knows you as it proclaims—you and all your weaknesses, all your secrets, all the very stuff of you—why go there of all places? That’s basic bitch shit.

Before the demon, what was there? Beyond the demon, what is there?

A whole world where it didn’t exist. And another in which it doesn’t have to.

Inhale. Ex-

Oh, gross. Bile doesn’t come out of that orifice. That stuff’s, well… it’s not bile.

Was your mouth open?

No? Good.

Yes? Suppress your gag reflex and:

III. FOCUS

Look at the fucking thing. Really look. See the horns, claws, that festering skin, all those yellow fangs, those fucked-up eyes?

Big fucking deal.

Consider: why is the demon talking shit at you? Cruelty, yes, the cruelty is the point. But is it strength? The demon delights in watching you suffer, it relishes inflicting pain (it’s the only way it gets off, that thing is so fucked up), but if it could kill you easily as it says it could, grind you into nothing, why hasn’t it?

Because it can’t. Above all else, the demon needs to be seen and heard and known. Otherwise there’s no point to it. Otherwise it has no need for you.

Yes. The demon needs you.

Oh my shit. Did the demon really just grow another head out of its ass to double shit talk you? Now its—they’re—calling you a freak? Calling you out for being no good, unlovable, better off dead. Right for the killing.

It’s loud. So fucking loud.

And yet, here you stand, still.

And yet, here you are.

So:

IV. REMEMBER

The demon truly flatters itself if it thinks you haven’t run up against this shit before.

All those people—loved ones, so-called; all those shitty teachers, bad friends, horrible exes, whoever—all those assholes who made you feel worthless, convinced you that you were wicked and depraved so you’d destroy yourself trying to prove them wrong?

They were so afraid. So afraid you’d figure it out.

That you’d come to know—as you do now—that it’s best to show them just how right they are.

The demon has no idea. No idea.

Everything you could have been, and aren’t. Every bad impulse, every selfish decision, every shameful indulgence you should have denied, abhorred, but didn’t.

You know all these things, and the demon, even if it knows them, doesn’t. Doesn’t know what it’s like to live with all that shit—to embody it, use it, redefine or reject it.

Doesn’t have a clue that with every choice, there is another choice—you’ve made so many—and now you’re about to make another one because:

V. KNOW

No one is coming. You knew this all along, have always known this to be true.

The instant the demon wavers, uncertainty in its movements, doubt in its eyes, that is when you’ll strike, matching it blow for blow.

The demon always wavers.

Fuck it. Before the demon wavers, you’ll throw sand in its eyes, shatter its kneecaps, smash its face.

When it scrabbles on the ground, crawling away on its belly like the coward it is, that’s when you’ll grab it by the pathetic little tail jutting out by its broken, ass-end mouth and drag it back into the fight, no longer a fight, but a slaughter.

When it begs for mercy, wails, THIS ISN’T YOU! that’s when you’ll rip into it, tear it apart at its joints, digging fingers, nails, teeth into rancid demon flesh.

The demon is a demon. But you are no angel.

You are a monster.

The demon will make you so much more than that before the day’s through.

16 minutes.

Sun’s really moving now.

You got this.

END

Author’s note

It's not enough for our demons to hurt us, they have to mock us too? If the Evil Dead movies taught us anything (it was while watching Evil Dead Rise that inspiration for this story hit), it's that when the cruelty is the point, then rage is the answer, always.

Cindy Phan

Cindy Phan (she/her) writes about the everyday fantastic, in which the boundaries between the tragic and the absurd shift, transform and misbehave. A Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize-nominated author, Phan’s fiction has appeared in Augur Magazine, Baffling Magazine, khōréō magazine and others.