Late one day, before the sun had set, I was walking home from
school.  It was turning to spring, and I had stayed after to complete
a science project I've been working on.  It's kind of a double project
for me.  To my chemistry teacher, it's a study on the impact of
commonly found plants and commonly used kitchen spices.  To me, its a
study in an art I've been long attracted to.  I use a special little
book I found one day to help me create my experiments.  It shows many
wonderful things that I can do beyond expanding my intellect, and I
intend to make some of them work.  There has to be a basis, and as
long as I'm allowed to work at school, I'll make extensive use of
their materials.
    Today I had a breakthrough, in mixing certain materials that by
all rights should have fizzled and dried out, instead began to glow,
and quickly bubbled over the edges of the tube.  I got some on me, but
there was no real noticable affect, so I wasn't bothered.  I stored it
in my padlocked partition, and wrote down everything I could remember
about the experiment and the reaction, and went home.
    Partway home, I encountered a group of people I tried very hard to
avoid.  They considered themselves a crime sydicate of the teenage
variety, and never missed a chance to harrass me.  They seemed to be
ignoring me until they were surrounding me, then they suddenly
stopped.  Jeff, the leader of the group, asked me what scientific
breakthroughs I'd made today, and told me he wanted his share of the
royalties.  Now.  The rest of them snickered, but Jeff merely glared
at me.  I had no money on me, so it wasn't a choice of whether to give
it to him, but what to do.  If I didn't give anything to him, they
would leave me behind in no condition to finish walking home, and I
could never prove it. I fervently wished for some form of help, as if
there was a real superman who'd come to my rescue.  But it didn't look
as if it would happen.
    Just then, Jeff slipped, on a rock I suppose, and fell backwards
into the street.  I thought of making a break for it, but knew I could
not outrun them.  Just as I was preparing for him to get back up and
vent his rage on me, A car screeched further down the road, and went
spinning towards us.  Everybody scattered.  Everybody but Jeff, he was
not exactly in the right condition for running.  We all watched from
safe vantage points, and the car tumbled over and landed on Jeffs
head, crushing the skull, and leaving a mark not unlike a water
balloon had been dropped upon that point.  A few of the group fainted,
others turned away and wretched up on the lawn, but most, upon all
these sights, wwent running, not wishing to be found at this scene.
When everybody else was otherwise occupied, or gone, I noticed that
the car had no driver.  Now I ran towards home as fast as possible,
this is not something I want to get caught up in, my mother would
kill me.
    When I got home, nobody was there, my sister spends her days in a
daycare till mother picks her up, and my brother no longer lives at
home.  When I checked the messages, I found that there was a gathering
of a few friends tonite, at an abandoned site we used for other
"experiments" in matters we didn't want others to find out about.  I
dreaded it tonite, because I couldn't just sneak out as I had before,
my mother would be up with her friends, so they would probably notice
my departure.  I called her to ask if I would be allowed to go meet
with a few friends, for a little harmless "studying" for some school
subjects ( My chemistry projects were a school subject now, weren't
they? ).  She said I could not, she needed me to help her out tonight.
 When i tried to argue, she threatened to ground me from all
activities, and if I tried to leave, she would call the police, and
she hung up.  I was obviously upset over this, I fumed for over an
hour, yelling at anything or anybody I could blame.  I wished she
would die, so that I could do whatever I wished.  Then she was home,
with my bratty little sister.
    Almost an hour later, when I would normally be getting ready to
leave for the meeting, my mother's first friend arrived, and my mother
had me start to cook snacks for them.  I was incredibly upset, and I
was of course highly sloppy in making them, so when I presented them
to my mother, she gave me a haunting look, and I feared she would
ground me right then and there.  Instead she and her friend took them
and ate them, my mom since she was the host and her friend obviously
merely for courtesy.  I asked to be excused, but was not allowed, she
humiliated me by calling my clean-up work a mess, and demanded that I
reclean the kitchen.  Bitch.  Now, the kitchen is seperated from the
room they were in by a solid partition, so I couldn't see or hear
them.  When I walked back in, both were pure white, and seemed frozen
in place, my mother partially eating one of the snacks, and her friend
halfway into one of their stupid chitchat gestures.  I was shocked, I
didn't know what to do.  I figured I must've put a bad ingredient into
the food.  But to kill them?  I became frightened, associated with
three deaths at one time, I gathered a variety of items up quickly,
and rushed to the meeting place, taking my mothers car (which I was
never allowed to drive while she lived).  I met my friends, and told
them of what had happened, and of the eight, two were scared to death,
and said it was because we were trying to do things we weren't
supposed to do, so they ran.  On their way out, we meet in a second
floor office in an abandoned (not condemned, just not rented yet)
office building, we heard a loud noise.  When we rushed out to see
what had happened, one of them had slipped on the stairs and seemed to
have broken his neck, the other stood staring, looking as if there was
something more to the accident than we saw, he merely stammered
unintelligably, and looked at us, then down the stairs.  We spent
about half an hour trying to calm him down, but he just stood there,
gaping.   Suddenly, he ran screaming down the hall, we followed him,
and he stopped at a window.  This particular window led to the
warehouse that was attached to the building, upon shoving the window
open, to our horror, he jumped through the window, and headed towards
the ground, face first.  It was a safe assumption that he did not
survive.
    We just stood around looking dumbfouded, till one of us suggested
something that seemed almost normal after what happened to me and to
us that day.  Some of the things in the book called for certain uses
of humans and parts of them, blood and hair and so forth, and since we
now had two dead bodies, why not use them?  One of us look frightened,
and said we were going too far, that he wanted to go home now.  After
reminding him of what happened to the last two the left, he quieted,
but look ever apprehensive.  Most of the others were not thrilled, but
were not squeamish, and I figured I had nothing to lose now.
    We took our collected "tools" and the grimoires we had gathered
throughout our year of meetings, and we went down to the warehouse
partition, taking the first body with us.  The one who suggested it
performed the main parts of the ceremonies, the general incantations,
and then we decided on what we would do.
    Had we known what the title of the book, written in strange
letters, was, we never would have tried, but the content was readable,
one had said it would grant the assembly the powers of all-knowledge,
the strength of titans, for the price of a single life.  After
reading, we decided that the life had been paid, twiceover, and that
we had nothing to lose.  That is, most of us decided that.  When the
original procrastinator began to stutter again, we had threatened to
use his life in the process, and he quickly quieted.  By now we had
begun to take on a blood-thirsty approach, none of us cared for our
soul, or previous life, we seemed caught up in what we had only played
at before, such close deaths had done something to us.
    The intense experiences associated with this black service are too
strong to relate, Let us just say that it caused within ALL of us, a
bloodlust that ended with us gleefully parting our former friends
chest for his heart.  Once his heart was out, it began to beat, and
blood covered us all, its burning caused all the blood remaining in
our friends body to burn within the veins, the skin melted like
plastic, but the smell was of decay.  All I remember of what was next
is that we cut his remains to slivers and began a tapestry of bone and
muscle, and horridly we consumed the rest of his burned and destroyed
corpse.
    After that, we had all turned towards each other, with a hunger
unquelled.  We did not realize that the single life was our own, and
we only found out as each of us in turn, faced death at one anothers
hands.  I emerged victor, but soon found out how the prize was
awarded.  A powerful apparition appeared and grinned at me, I could
not understand its words, but its intent was obvious, it wanted me,
now I was to pay my price.  I suddenly became sick, and my mind came
back to me.  The nights glees I now remembered, and became sickened, I
prepared for a death I thought would be quick, but it was not death I
received, but that which we had sought in this ritual.  The demon
entered my body through the spot my experiment had touched me on, and
gave me strength.  Strength of a beast long forgotten to man, the
beast of the devil.  The rest of the deal was relative, The knowledge
I gained was that of how to kill my victims.  How to delightfully maim
them and drink of their fear and passions before I devoured their
bodies, before I controlled their souls.  I write this, because even a
demon must sleep, it has souls to return to its master, and I have
time to myself then.  I've tried to die.  I've tried every way I know,
and everyway I've learned, everyway I've convinced others to sacrifice
themselves to me, but I cannot die.  I do not live, I sacrificed my
life, as did the others, but I was the only one to receive the desire
we all wished.  It was my experiment, I seek now to learn the secret
of that experiment, so that I may stop this, so that I may die.  I
fear it may encounter my efforts one day, and learn how the age old
rite we had tried had allowed it freedom in the world, a freedom they
have not known before, to roam full this world.  If It finds my
experiments, we are doomed, for then the world of demons will become
our own, and it earth will truly become hell, with all innocence
destroyed by these monsters.  I go now, may this be found that I be
absolved by at least one soul.  That I be forgiven, maybe that may
help, may I be forgiven, to leave, to strand this demon without his
bloodlust host.