666 Words

~ Dan Dillard

I’ve never had a pure thought in my life. At least none I can remember. I can live amongst the usual sinners, but I have a darkness that I can’t shed. It started when I was young, perhaps an infant, and long before any of you were born. The minister at our church was arrested for raping and murdering children when I was eleven. He was also my uncle, William. I often wonder if he is the root of my evil. He baptised me.

If one can bless water and make it holy…can one also curse water to make it wicked? If so, I think that may be what he did. A wise man, his death was a shame, and I do miss the times we spent together, at least those I haven’t forgotten.

There are bits and pieces of things I can remember. Now, I would call them rituals. At the time, I don’t think I had words for what they were. I can’t describe them thoroughly, but they involved blood, skulls, and the pitiful cries of animals. The room was always dark when things carried on the way they often did. The only light came from candles, black themselves aside from the flickering flames. Then they would extinguish, and the smell of hot wax and smoke from the wick would fill my nose. If my eyes adjusted quickly enough, I could watch that last faint ember go dead cold from its living, molten orange.

I still know right from wrong, but choose wrong more often than not. People will tell you that evil is the easy path, that it’s more difficult to be righteous in the eyes of God. I’ll tell you that is bullshit, and those people have never tried to cover up a triple homicide. They have never looked into the face of a loved one as the knife slid in and watched as betrayal became horror and then acceptance and then a lifeless hunk of meat. They’ve never tried to choke down a piece of undercooked human thigh. These are difficult things.

It is the meat I crave…the source is inconsequential.

I’ve been called a demon, an angel of death, a monster, a madman, a psychopath, and a murderer. All of those things are true. I deny none of it. I have solidified my position in hell, and I will be upset if anything less than a throne and full-time position are waiting for me upon my arrival.

And so here I sit, at what should be the end of my life, and instead look to the future. The past hundred years have been a learning experience, but my needs have waned. I wonder what violence might reinvigorate my soul, might bring me back again to my prime and excite the jagged things within me long ground smooth. I’ve sipped from war and famine,  I have feasted on disease and I’ve starved myself of affection and affectation. Love is a made up emotion, a primal need based upon hormonal imbalance.

I do miss these things. A belief in love gave me many pleasures. Pleasures of the flesh, pleasures of disappointing others, watching them suffer, watching them die at my hand…there was a rush of adrenaline that used to come with each sin, the anxiety of being caught, the ironic disappointment when I wasn’t, when I realized that getting away with it was easy…it was corralling the nerve in the first place that most lack.

There is truly nothing left under the sun for me. You might wonder, even aloud, if under the sun is where I dwell, and it might shock you to know that I do indeed. That I live everywhere you are, in your home, next door and at your office and those places you shop and in the people you trust. It takes very little to bring me to the surface, but so much effort to put me back once I am there. Remember that above all else.

 ~ Dan Dillard

© Copyright 2013 Dan Dillard. All Rights Reserved.

Published by Dan Dillard

I write. Well, I type... so I'm more of a typist than a writer. You decide if I'm any good at it--it's really none of my business.

21 thoughts on “666 Words”

  2. Pingback: 666 Words by @demonauthor | The Endless Chase

  4. There’s a lot to like in this tale of warning. I’m particularly fond of the being’s playful fascination at death’s transition: “watched as betrayal became horror and then acceptance and then a lifeless hunk of meat.”
    Thanks for cursing us… I mean, sharing with us, Dan!

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  5. Dan, this is absolutely the best thing you have written for the Damned yet! I love it. The characterisation is excellent, the voice confident, and there is some elegant use of language here too. Dark, reflective, unrepentant and more than a little menacing… Brilliant.

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  6. Dan, this is really a superb piece. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and am very glad you wrote it and shared it with us. Sorry that I’m late to the show, but that doesn’t make the piece any less fantastic. I especially enjoyed the 4th paragraph and the false concept that ‘evil is simple.’ Brilliant. Thanks for sharing this page from your diary, Oh Demonic One. *daemonic grin*

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  7. An excellent, excellent piece, Dan. Truly evocative of the drained emotional value of your character. As dark as it is nearly lackadaisical in its tone. I genuinely enjoyed this one. Nicely done, Damned Demon Author!

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  9. Gee Dan this guy could live in my basement
    very could development and what you’d expect in the creature whose calling card is 666
    sorry I took so long to comment was sick last week

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  10. Hey Dan! I read this obviously during edits, but as you can see, my summer has pushed me waaaay behind in all things horror lol But I loved you story 666 WORDS…it was concise & delivered a punch & was damned as damned should be!

    Great writing, Dan!

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