“I’ll head down to the basement. You’re starting dinner?” Joan asked, already feeling much calmer than she was a few minutes before.

“Yes! I’ll start dinner. You go bang some weights around and then afterwards, I want you to look at this book and see if there’s anything interesting in it.” Holly handed The Devil’s Uprising to Joan and she held it firmly in both hands.

“Sure. I’ll take a look at it after I’m done lifting,” Joan nodded and departed, walking down the stairs to the basement.

She ran down quickly and tossed the closed book on to a nearby table and flipped on the lights. Their basement was not full of state-of-the-art weightlifting equipment, but they had a bench press, a few dumbbells, and a small unsecured rack for squatting.

Joan surveyed the room, thinking about where she wanted to start first. She considered the squat rack, grabbing a couple dumbbells, but ultimately decided on the punching bag.

She decided this was the best way to let out her frustrations and started punching the unsuspecting bag relentlessly. She didn’t even bother to put on gloves of any kind and bare knuckled it at her leisure.

Pretending the punching bag was the librarian, she continued taking quick and heavy swings at the bag, bouncing it around in several directions.

Joan once wanted to be an MMA fighter and took up boxing classes and competed in tournaments during her summers in high school. She also competed as a competitive wrestler in the Women’s wrestling league in both high school and college.

She later gave up that dream as she decided beating up on people wasn’t her only passion. Learning more about herself during college, she learned that despite how much she hates dimwitted and annoying people, she ultimately wants to make the world a better place by making other people better.

In a way, her goals were ironically selfish. She felt like people were inherently weak and could use her mentoring to be better and unfortunately, punching them wasn’t the way to do it.

As she began to drip heaps of sweat from her face and body, she opted to turn the air conditioning on in the basement. She set the temperature to a comfortable 58 degrees and reached into her pockets for her Iphone to play some music.

She connected her Iphone to a Bluetooth speaker she had in the room and selected her “Workout” playlist which was composed of a lot of mid 2000s hard rock and metal.

With the music playing loudly, she continued to tirelessly punch and kick at the punching bag with explosive blows, knocking it all around the room and dancing around it in response. She moved quickly, acting as though she was in a real fight in a real ring with a real person.

She imagined being on the mat with a tough opponent, pretending to dodge incoming strikes and grunting modestly at every punch and kick she threw at it.

Feeling exhaustion from her burst of cardio exercise, she began to slow down, throwing very weak jabs and hooks at her imaginary opponent. Deciding to give the bag a break from its merciless beating, Joan plopped down heavily on the couch behind her.

She then turned down her music slightly and looked over at the book she brought down with her. Studying the cover and the layout, she realized that it was a very strange and interesting size. It didn’t seem to hold many pages, but all the pages were very large like a big children’s picture book.

She didn’t give it another thought and returned to her exercise, focusing on the dumbbells now. As she picked up the dumbbells, she noticed a song that started playing that she didn’t recognize.

The song didn’t seem to have very clear lyrics as the lead singer screamed in an incredibly raspy voice, and the instrumental was oddly peculiar. There was some heavy guitar and fast paced drums that she didn’t seem to mind very much, so she let it continue to play in the background while doing a set of triceps extensions with a fifty-pound dumbbell.

She counted eight reps, struggling slightly on the last two, and placing them back on the floor. One down, two to go, she thought. Taking a very short break while the strange song continued to play.

She began nodding her head to the rhythm, genuinely enjoying this interesting track that she knew she had never added to her playlist. As thoughts began to rush into her mind, she realized how strange it was that a song she never added was currently playing in her workout list.

Unable to hold back the curiosity, she had to find out what the song was called and reached for her phone. Demons, Darkest Hour. She smirked and shrugged, setting her phone back down as a wild guitar solo started up.

She then picked her dumbbells back up and powered out the next eight reps and the song ended almost simultaneously.

Oddly enough, however, the song started up again as though it was on repeat which startled Joan. She was confident that she hadn’t put anything on repeat, but let the song continue to play as she powered out her last set of triceps extensions.

Now that she was done with her set, Joan reached for her phone again and selected random on her playlist to make sure that something else played while she finished up her workout.

“Back off. I’ll take you on. Headstrong to take on anyone!” Joan sang at the top of her longs, all the while setting up the bench for her next workout.

As she laid down beneath the barbell, she felt a cold wind blow through the basement, that made her stop what she was doing.

A draft? She thought. We never get drafts down here. Joan looked around the room suspiciously, feeling a bit uneasy about the odd occurrences.

She continued to sit in silence, looking around the room as though she was searching for something or someone to present themselves. Anxiety began to build up in her and she felt as though she was being watched by someone but couldn’t confirm that there was anyone there.

Her heart rate picked up subtly, and she could feel and hear it thumping in her ears at an excited pace. Her skin broke out in goosebumps as her body continued to feel slight chills coursing through it.

In the dead of silence, Joan continued to survey the room, unable to shake the ominous feeling that there was another presence in the room. She even turned down her music, no longer humming the rhythm of Headstrong.

In a sudden unsuspecting outburst, her speakers cranked back up in volume and the song, Demons continued to play from the chorus, “And one of these days we'll no longer betray ourselves

In any way—”

Joan’s heartbeat pounded and she freaked herself out, feeling blood rushing through her skull and crashing through her ears like a harsh wave slamming against the broadside of a wooden boat.

“Shit! Jesus Christ!” She shouted in an uncharacteristic panic as she closed Spotify from her phone and threw it on the couch across from her bench.

Continuing to sit quietly in the dimly lit room with her arms and legs shaking unwillingly, she slowly began to calm herself down, thinking, It’s nothing. It’s nothing. Technology isn’t perfect. I probably hit something while I wasn’t paying attention.

Joan just wanted to get back to her workout at this point, but the feeling of having another presence in the room continued to daunt her, but she didn’t let that stop her. Climbing back underneath the barbell, she started her first set of 135-pound bench presses.

She counted the reps out loud “1..2..3..4..5..6…7.” Struggling on the last one, her arms shook beneath the bar, and her face cringed as she forced it out, “8.” Grunting and exhaling, she placed the bar back on the rack and sat up.

After a couple minutes, she wiped off a bit of sweat and continued to her second set. On rep number 6 she began to struggle and before she could force it out—

Joan

Her heart pounded and sunk to her stomach as she heard a cold and unfamiliar voice whisper into her head like a hissing serpent.

She racked the bar again in a panic shouting, “Shit!” again as the strange voice freaked her out and made her shiver, feeling as though her chest was pressed against a sheet of ice.

“One more set. Just one more set and I’m done. I’m done. I’m done. I’m DONE!” she muttered to herself and laid back on her benching. She hadn’t taken a break between the previous set and felt premature fatigue, causing her to struggle on the fifth rep.

She had three more to go, but she felt as though she couldn’t get them. With incredible struggle and maximum effort, she managed to get rep number six.

Not having a spotter made the decision to finish a set like this very dangerous as she could drop the bar on herself without having a good way of getting it off. However, being irrational, Joan pressed on, going for rep number seven.

Struggling even more than she had before, she barely managed to squeeze out this rep, holding it high above her with arms fully extended as she caught her breath and contemplated the next one.

“One more. I can do it.” She said aloud, lowering it slowly to her chest and barely touching it. She began to push with every ounce of strength she had left.

*Thump* The sound of something falling startled her and she dropped the barbell down towards her neck and panicked. She closed her eyes, bracing for the inevitable impact.

But it never came.

She opened her eyes, realizing that she caught the bar in her hands, and it felt weightless. She slowly lifted it up and racked it with considerable ease. It was like slicing through butter for her, leaving her astonished and confused.

Not only that, but she felt incredibly cold. Her hands were freezing. Her chest was freezing. Her stomach was freezing. Every inch of her broke out in shivers and she felt as though she had just jumped into a pool of ice water.

Shivering violently, she wrapped her arms around her freezing body, and ran over to where she heard something fall on the floor.

It was the book.

The book had fallen to the ground and opened to a page about halfway through it. She picked it up quickly and sprinted up the stairs with the page still open in front of her. She rushed to the kitchen with Holly, still dripping sweat with her hair absolutely drenched.

“Wow. You must have been going crazy down there!” Holly exclaimed, acknowledging Joan’s excessive outpour of sweat and must.

“I just had a horrible experience down there. I’ll talk about it when everyone else is here,” she promised and sat down at the table, dripping sweat all over it and the seat.

“Ah Joan,” Holly said quietly, adverting her attention from the book. “Can you maybe not do this in the kitchen while you’re a walking sweatfall? Sanitary reasons. You know?” Holly spoke gently, trying not to offend her friend.

Joan agreed and walked out of the kitchen and ran upstairs to her room. She left the door open and sat down on her bed staring at the open page of the book.

There was nothing but illegible symbols – written in some strange language that she didn’t recognize. But, she continued to stare at it curiously as something seemed to draw her to it.

Flipping through the pages, she realized there was nothing else in it. This was the only page with any sort of writing on it and she couldn’t even read it.

This made her incredibly frustrated and she slammed the book down on the bed next to her. “Damn it, Holly. I wish you would have grabbed a useful book,” She said to herself as she laid back in her bed.