The boy was my everything to me. While not a son of mine by birth, I raised him from infancy as if he were my own. I never told him this, for I had no reason to. His parents were never known to me, and he believed me as his father.
I had a life that many would have sought after. A strong family, a profession that paid well, and a very comfortable home. But that all changed when she died. She, my wife, the boy’s adoptive mother, suddenly passed in her sleep one evening. Nobody ever knew how it happened, and the boy became very distraught.
His performance in school began to fail, he was repeatedly disciplined for violent behavior, and he was hardly ever home. Such is what you would expect from a young man losing his mother, but he never recovered. After he graduated from school he procured a position at a top banking company and was becoming very successful. His life had returned to normal, or so I had thought.
As I had grown in my years I bought a small home out in the country. I was getting old and alone, and I reasoned that would be the best place for me.
It had been several years since I had heard from my son, until one day I came home to a peculiar smell. It was not pleasant at all, and made me want to vomit. I went into the kitchen in my search for the source, when I saw my son standing there, cooking something on the stove.
“Hello, father. It is so good to see you.”
“Why, this is quite the surprise. I had no idea you were coming. What brings you here?”
He gave me no reply, instead silently flipping a piece of meat in the skillet. Meanwhile, I catch another strong whiff of this terrible odor, and yet my son does not seem bothered by it in the slightest.
I asked him what the smell was, and he continued to ignore me. I found myself quite puzzled.
He placed two plates on the dining room table, told me to eat with him. I complied, but the whole ordeal was making me uneasy.
The meat was revolting. It smelled like nothing I have ever smelled before, and I immediately felt sick to my stomach when I put it in mouth.
“How is it, father?” My son asked.
I could not reply. My mind was being overtaken by some incredible force. I felt like there was some little demon inside that was just running around punching and stabbing everything it could find, when the assault suddenly ceased.
“I feel...different,” I told him.
“Very good. Now I would like to show you something.”
He led me through my house to the basement, where I finally found the source of this terrible odor that plagued my home -- there were about half a dozen human bodies strung up in various forms of dismemberment.
At first, I was appalled; but then a wonderful feeling of understanding overtook me. My son explained to me how these people had been a terrible blight upon the earth and by consuming their flesh into our bodies, we were able to help cleanse them and make ourselves stronger.
I thought this was a wonderful idea, and we decided to embark upon a quest to purify the world of terrible people like the ones my son had cut up in my basement.
But suddenly, that terrible being took over my head again, screaming at me that my son was so very wrong. It told me that he could not be trusted, that all humans were to die and be consumed into my body to feed its power.
I no longer had any love for that terrible thing standing in front of me. Thinking he could make himself better by destroying the people in this world? No, we are but a tiny part of a much bigger stage in the universe.
I knew that the time had come. The boy had to die. I picked up a large knife from the table of carving tools next to me and ran it into the boy’s gut.
I twisted it around, pulled it out, and then slowly put it back in again. Over and over, stabbing this terrible thing in front of me. His screams went on and on, his blood covering every inch of me. I found myself actually enjoying it. When he finally fell silent, I ripped out his heart and drank from it deeply.
The demon, as I now know it to be, congratulated me, and it was right then and there that I knew I had set myself on a very dark path that I could never leave.