Bruno was able to smash the door off the hinges without any difficulty at all. It shattered as it sped through the room. He took one step in with a wide smile on his face but it immediately turned upside down.

There was blood everywhere.

Like an entire bathtub of blood was spilled across the floor, then someone came with a mop made of intestines to scrub it in deeper. The walls were red and shards of bone pierced through wood. Even the ceiling was splattered, and threads of red hung like stalactites of a crimson red cave. Bruno was not someone with a weak stomach or heart. No, not at all. He was a psychopath who didn’t care about anything but overpowering others. He crushed the skulls of women and children the same as fully grown men. But this…

This was a new level of debauchery that caused his jaw to drop and his mind to go momentarily blank. Incomprehensible violence that disturbs the senses.

Standing in the center of the room, covered in blood, were three people. Staring at Bruno. They weren’t shocked at all. Rather, their faces were cold and blank stares of death. The room suddenly felt unbearable cold to the massive murder fanatic.

“Yo! What ya’ spacing out for, boss?”

Rolly, standing right behind Bruno, had no idea what was going on, so he slapped his boss on the shoulder.

“Nothing,” Bruno said slowly. He aimed an eye at Rolly, then his mind returned to focus. “Nothing at all.”

He grabbed the gun from the front of his pants and pointed it at the group of people in the center of the room. A sawed-off shotgun. The type which can’t normally be shot like a pistol. But Bruno didn’t have any trouble with that.

“Get on the fucking ground,” he said, stepping into the room without hesitation. The blood was deeper than it looked and splashed with each step. “GET FUCKING DOWN!”

The back door for the bar was kicked open and Jack entered from that side. He didn’t say anything, like a classic africalos, but held two pistols out. Rolly was the last in the room. The two men hesitated upon seeing the blood, but with their boss taking lead, were quick to recover.

“Get down!”

The shouting snapped the three in the center of the room from their stupor, and their eyes widened. All three dropped down and begged at the same time.

“I surrender!”

“It wasn’t us!”

“Please don’t shoot!”

Among other things. They didn’t stop repeating themselves, even with their hands on their heads face down in fresh blood. It was getting annoying.

“Shut the fuck up,” Bruno said. Suddenly the room became very quiet. He looked at Rolly. “Go grab me some wine. There’s gotta be some around here. It is a bar.”

“Why the fuck do I gotta do that?”

“Just fucking do it,” Bruno replied, shutting his friend down. “Now, for you three. I only gotta take one of you, and I’m just gonna let the other two live. Well, if you make it easy for me. I’m looking for some mother fucker named Max. Which one of you is it?”

The kid in the middle gasped at hearing his name, and his friends looked at him.

That was easy, Bruno thought. “Get the fuck up kid. Before I blow your fucking brains out.”

Slowly Max started getting up to his feet, head still facing down. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and cracking. He was stuttering but trying not to.

“W-what do you w-want?”

Bruno grabbed Max by the throat and forced the kid to look him in the eye. While the tiny man struggled against the gangster’s grip, it didn’t do much. Bruno’s entire hand was large enough to wrap around Max’s throat, and Max was incredibly weak. They had no choice but to stare at each other to the sounds of Max gasping for air when Rolly brought over a bottle of rum. Bruno returned his sawed-off to his pants.

“Here ya’ go, boss.”

“Thanks,” Bruno said. He popped the stopper off with his teeth, then swigged a mouthful down. He took another mouthful, swished it around for a second, then spit it into his hostage’s face. “Wipe your fucking face off. I gotta make sure you look like the kid in the picture. You better fucking hope you’re the right one.”

Max did what he was told. Bruno handed the bottle back and pulled a small picture from his pocket. He compared the faces.

“What do you think, Rolly?”

“Looks like a match to me, boss. I think we’re fucking good.”

“Yeah, this has got to be a match,” Bruno said. He slipped the photo back into his pocket. “Kid, I got two fucking questions for you. Each one you answer wrong and I blow out a kneecap, ya digg?”

“P-please…”

“First question: are you some rich senator’s kid? You got rich parents who’d pay big wads of cash to get you back?”

Max gulped down air.

“Yeah.”

“Bingo. Second question: you gonna try and fuck with me? Or you gonna let us tie you up and bring you back to our base?”

Nobody had noticed, but the two people at Bruno’s feet had been whispering to each other. Immediately after asking his second question, they enacted their plan: try to run out the front door. It was a mad sprint and the only person who reacted in time was Jack, who opened fire at the two, his bullets barely passing by his friends.

“What the fuck!?”

Bruno slipped and fell back in the blood, accidentally slamming Max’s face down on the ground hard. The kid went limp in his hands.

“Jack what the fuck are you doing!? Rolly, you chase after those two mother fuckers and kill ‘em. Don’t come back unless they’re fucking dead, you hear me?”

“Fuck!”

Rolly did his best to sprint after the two runners.

***

--Five minutes earlier--

The sweat droplet from his nose fell down. Before it hit the ground, something stepped into the room. From the center of the circle, a creature entered from a two dimensional line, from every viewpoint as though it were hidden behind an invisible wall. It was a tall and gaunt man, completely naked, with pale white skin. Instead of a regular head, a black lion’s mane wrapped around a human’s face, with purely red eyes and black ornate tattoos wrapping around that hairless face. Around his arms and legs were slithering snakes, however, none of them had beginnings or ends; these snakes had nothing but tails and didn’t seem to end no matter how long one followed their length with eyes.

When he spoke, it sounded like a whisper. But it was booming enough to shatter all the glass in the room and pop everyone’s eardrums. Blood leaked from their noses.

“Good evening, someone called for me?” The devil asked. He took one step forward, out of the area designated for him on the circle. “Oh, you seemed to have made the binding incorrectly.”

It pointed down at the lines of blood.

“You see, right here?”

The blood separated itself. It had been perfect, but it didn’t matter. The devil simply chose to ignore the restrictions the circle was supposed to impose on it, and there was nobody in the room with the authority to prevent him from doing so.

“Well, I can’t say that I don’t mind being summoned. All this decoration, and all this work, it makes me happy. I’m always so glad to know that my being lives on as a vestige in the heads of pathetic humans. When I return to hell, I’ll make sure to bring your souls along with me. Then, me and all my devil friends will laugh at you. Funny, isn’t it? You’ve all taken such precaution, but it all amounts to nothing, doesn’t it? Okay, well, first thing’s first. I’m going to kill 90% of you.”

In an instant, 26 people exploded, their gore showering the room in viscera. None stained the devil. He took another step, and it became clear that it wasn’t that the showers of flesh didn’t touch it. Instead, the human material passed right through him to spill on the floor below.

Max was one of the survivors. He couldn’t speak. The devil’s voice serrated the inside of his throat and all he could do was cough up blood. He spat some into his hands. Ah, this isn’t good, he thought. In his hands were pieces of lung.

“Congratulations,” the devil said, clapping his hands together in a mock display. The snakes hissed inaudibly. “You four are the survivors, and for the sheer virtue of being lucky, I’m going to reward you. Of course, I should first introduce myself, no? I know all of your names and deepest secrets, so it wouldn’t be fair for me not to offer some courtesy at the very least, no? I am the 59th Regent of Hell, 11th Great Marquis, That Who Presides Over Flesh, Oriaxs. It is I who is currently here before you, and upon your death, I will be the one to take your souls and pleasure myself with them. If it excites you to know, my normal torture for souls involves coverting your body into a blob of flesh without outer facing eyes or ears or any moving parts, then dropping those nuggets of man into pools of flesh eating roaches. Over the course of many ears, your body will be feasted on, as vermin burrow deeper into it, laying eggs and forming colonies like ants do within sand. Then perhaps after a few dozen centuries of this, they’ll finally enter your core, where you have a face, and will be able to scream and cry all you like. This is only one of the few tortures I enjoy damning people with. I can personally guarantee that every single one of your companions who recently died will be going through that. For the four of you, however, I will be doing something special. Of course, I won’t be telling you, because that defeats the purpose of surprise. What I can assure you though is that it will be far worse.

“So I might recommend you try to live your life for as long as possible. Those sweet memories will serve as tools to help you hold on to your sanity while suffering in my domain of hell. And because I’m not an unfair master, I will be making it a bit easier to do so. At this moment, you can all claim to be my daemon.

“Daemon of Flesh...that has a catchy ring to it, no? Ah, you’re all a weak audience. How boring, if you ask me. I prefer the talkative ones, as rare as they are. But I guess it makes sense that none of you can speak, after all, my mere presence destroyed all of your internal organs, and the only reason you’re even capable of standing right now is because I’ve paused all of creation to keep your bodies alive. As soon as I return to hell, you will all begin dying. Unfortunate. Sorry! But don’t worry, there’s one easy way to survive!

“The blessing I granted you. From this point until you die, you can do whatever you want with anyone’s bodies that you touch! Mold ‘em, shape ‘em, turn ‘em into dogs or plants, or even heal em; I don’t care. It can help keep you alive, too. Say goodbye old age. Keep yourself young forever, doesn’t that sound nice? You could avoid meeting me in hell that way. Turn yourself basically immortal. Of course, there is a catch to this. Any use of my blessing requires you to have a digesting intestine full of flesh from a still living human. So, before I leave, if you all can choose one of your friends to devour, then you can heal yourselves back up to perfect health. Since time is frozen, I’ll make sure to stay for 2 hours to make sure you don’t just die before digesting the flesh...however, you better act quickly. And pray you don’t have a full-”

Before Oriaxs could even finish his lecture, Max was in action. He grabbed a chair leg that had been set on the bar counter and slammed it on the head of the closest person he could find. Before they even hit the floor, the other two cultists in the room rushed over to the downed person and were chewing at his unconscious face.

“-bellies. Huh. Well, okay, I’ll admit it, while I wasn’t impressed at first, that was pretty good right there. Not expecting immediate betrayal before I even said go, hah. Who was it? Maxwell Vasquez? The delusional failed brat from a family of pathetic losers? Interesting. I’ve got high hopes for you, kid. You better not fuck it up, yeah? You know what, I don’t want to waste any time here, so I’ll just take this guy right here from you. You’re all just gonna munch on him, and that’s a waste of time, plus I’ve got things to do.”

Benny’s body disappeared.

“And I’ll just heal you all up. Alright, stand up, all together. Chop chop!”

The three limped to the center of the room. Max hadn’t paid any attention to the other survivors until now, but he realized one of them was Eren. The other was one of the few female cultists, Lisa. They were grouped together, all silent.

Oriaxs snapped his fingers and the snakes wrapped around his hands.

“There, perfectly healed. Well, I guess this is about the time I should be getting out of here. Yeah, have fun, but just remember that at the end, you’ll be coming back to me.”

The front door was kicked across the room.

***

--Ten minutes later--

“What the fuck...where the hell did they go?”

Truly, it was incomprehensible. Rolly was chasing the two out into the maze of alleyways in the city, and it shouldn’t have been difficult to catch either of them. For one, they were both covered in wet blood, and the drips were obvious. The other, more telling factor would be that one of the two escapees had been shot. Rolly saw it with his own two eyes.

And while he had been chasing them, one was limping, forced to be supported by his friend. That was how even with a head start, he had been gaining on them. But now he had lost their track.

How?

The bloodtrail led directly to a dead end. Three walls, from buildings, lifting at least five meters in the air. For a few seconds, Rolly considered whether someone could clamber up it, but that just wouldn’t be possible. Especially with a bullet wound to the leg.

There were no doors. There was no sewer entrance. There weren’t any dumpsters or containers to hide in. No windows that could’ve been open. It was a truly miraculous disappearance.

“God damn,” he said. “What am I supposed to do now?”

An order from Bruno was one you needed to comply with. When he told you to kill someone, he wanted you to come back with proof.

‘I need to know, 100%’.

That stubborn asshole would make his life impossible. Rolly brushed his mustache in thought. There was a possible solution that came immediately to mind, but it was quite a risky one. Even if he succeeded in pulling it off, there was no guarantee Bruno wouldn’t just find out some other way.

What he was picturing was:

First, finding three homeless people. He would beat the shit out of them, then shoot them in back a few times each. It’d need to be in a place where people wouldn’t call the cops over gunfire, but in this part of town, he was pretty sure he’d be fine. Once he finished doing that, he would take his knife and cut the jugular of the third person and drench the other two in blood. Or at least their heads. Then, he would saw them off with his knife and toss all three into the river. With two bloody heads, if they were beaten and bruised, Bruno would probably just take him at his word.

The biggest risk was if someone else saw the bloody people running after that. If they happened to stumble across the two later, the jig would be up.

Considering that, he found a solution.

He just needed to pretend that it took all night to find the two escapees. The Big Boss’s plan was to stay cooped up at the warehouse for the next few days doing the hostage plan, so it was unlikely that they’d accidentally run into the two. On the other hand, if those two were actually good enough friends with Matt or whatever, maybe they’d figure out how to botch the job?

“Huh, well, I guess it doesn’t matter, in the end.”

Ultimately, he had no choice at this point. They were long gone. Too much time spent standing in one place thinking to himself.

Rolly stretched himself out and decided to spend the rest of his night leisurely trying to find three homeless people sitting close enough to each other. No point in trying to work his brain when there wasn’t anyone who would notice.

***

“Damn, there’s gonna be blood everywhere,” Bruno said, slamming the trunk shut with the unconscious body of Max inside. “This better pay well. Yo, Jack, what the fuck do you think happened in there? With the blood and shit?”

Jack was a man of few words. Most africans are. But this was one of the few situations where he spoke, revealing his bizarre mishmash of an accent.

“Iza dark shit. Dat da type o’ shit with demons.”

“Demons? Fucking hell, you think this kid was doing that shit?”

Jack just shrugged and the two men got into the car. There was no reason to wait for Rolly. He could find his way back to the hideout on his own, and neither of the two Gordoli members had any doubts about their friend’s killing ability. When it came to hunting in the streets, there wasn’t anyone better than Rolly the Roller. Before he was a Gordoli, Rolly was a punk who sliced apart mafia members for fun.

What was currently on Bruno’s mind was the scene of macabre from the bar. A demon, huh? If I was able to do something like that, would people see me as a demon?

He smiled to himself.

That type of simple pleasure was his entire reason for living. The drive back to the warehouse was pleasant and the radio played jazz.