“Asmodeus.”

I whisper the name, letting each syllable roll over my tongue, feeling the weight of a name that dripped with hate and fear and pain.

I grab Veronica by the shoulders and tell her, “You need to get out of here.”

She can see the worry etched across my face and she nods.

“But it was just some story a punk kid working at the grocery store told,” the other me says.

“I don’t think it’s a story now,” I say as I pick up Eleanor the Third and deposit her into his arms.

“What are you going to do?” Veronica asks.

“I have no idea.”

Stepping into the hallway, I watch as they go down the stairs. They grab car keys, phones, half-filled water bottles, and snacks before turning the corner to the garage and disappearing from view. I can hear the garage door open, the start of the car’s engine, but it isn’t until I hear the garage door close again that I step back into the bedroom and close the door.

There is still an inky darkness floating in the corner of the room.

As I did before, I focus my will, this time pushing it into the darkness before I start to reach into it, but it doesn’t give. The darkness doesn’t give. Sliding the lamp from the dresser I angle the light towards the darkness, but the darkness doesn’t dissipate. It absorbs the light instead; turning the violet-blue blackness even blacker.

Setting the lamp down on the floor, I step back a few feet and sit down on the floor, facing the darkness. I focus on the lamp, willing it to permeate the blackness; to obliterate it. After a while, the lamp’s light starts to glow with an almost rainbowlike brilliance, taking on the colors strewn around the room. I watch the steady succession of colors emerge—pinks and purples, blues and greens—pulsing and fading one after the other.

There’s a strong barrier there, but barriers can be broken.

“Come on,” I whisper. I can feel a restless energy growing inside me and push it out and away from me towards the darkness. The lamp shudders as the darkness resists; wobbly sparks appear as the light dims until it joins the darkness.

It’s quiet, but I can feel something—someone.

I hear a giggle, just over my shoulder. It begins low, growing in volume and pitch. It makes my blood run cold. I can hear it say something, but I can’t make out the words. The intonation, the cadence is familiar, yet different.

I turn to look, expecting to see someone that looks just like me, except a little bit more perverse and perhaps a lot more murderous, but no one is there.

I wait. I don’t engage. How do you engage with someone who isn’t really there or at the very least, isn’t fully there in this multiverse—just one foot, one toe in. Enough to project a piece of himself, but still stay hidden. How do you capture a voice—waves of sound—and hold it fast?

As black as the darkness is, I can still see ripples. It’s moving in and out—very alive—sucking and pushing. It seems to thin and thicken, but still remains shapeless. It’s curious and unsettling at the same time. It’s blurring and sharpening as if you can see more and more and then less and less.

I break my gaze from it. I have to see what is in front of me, not what’s beyond. It’s black and clear and doesn’t move at all. I can feel it pulling at me again; the gravitational force of a black hole pulling me towards it until my legs unfold from underneath me, lengthening till they’re straight and I am standing—no, resting—at an impossible angle, my toes scrapping the carpet trying to cling to this realm and the mirage of control I have over it. I can feel it pulling at my head and I feel that if my toes don’t let go of the carpet that my head would be pulled from my neck and I will tumble into the darkness with only my mind intact.

I close my eyes and push out all the air in my lungs, relinquishing my hold on this world. I can feel the darkness pull me in and I tumble through it, head to navel and around and over again till I open my mouth and gasp for air and find myself in the world again.

At least in a world.

Instead of traveling between worlds and ending up in the same location I am someplace unfamiliar and foreign. Pushing myself to my feet, I turn, taking in my environment: the concrete floor and walls, the fluorescent lights, the pile of blankets, the teddy bear missing a cliched eye. This was where she lived.

“Eleanor,” I whisper.

She lived here. For how long? My poor baby.

I turn my head to look behind me and I see him. I take in his long hair and patchy beard, the burn marks across his naked chest, the scabbed over holes in his feet and hands. The stigmata or some twisted form of self-harm?

The image of him and the thought of Eleanor with him pulls at my heart and a sob breaks from my lips so suddenly and violently that I’m shaking with fear and anger.

A sick smile curls his lips at the sight of my pain. “You deserve it,” he says, “after being such a tight, dry cunt and taking her from me.”

I wrap my arms around my midsection and chest, holding myself together as my breathing calms down. “Asmodeus,” I say.

His smile grows even wider as he bows to me, sweeping his arms back grandly. “The Destroyer of Worlds,” he finishes.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“I am you and you are me, but I am something different,” Asmodeus says. His eyes are wide and bright. He keeps his gaze fixed on me as he stalks around me like a predator. “I was born of flame and sulfur. Fallen down to the abyss and fighting and clawing my way to the top for millenia. You haven’t seen me. You haven’t heard of me. A mortal playing with the greatest of stakes. I am your old flame.” It’s the ramblings of someone not fully in control of his mental faculties. He sucks in a long breath, letting it fill his chest, puffing it up and pushing his shoulders back. “She was my flesh and blood. Not really, but I wanted her. Her lips were as perfect as the mirrored mask of my mask. I wanted what I was taught to do. To rule her. To bring her to heel—heel to heel—click, clack, not in Kansas.” He throws his head back and laughs at this. “I wanted to know everything about her, but she didn’t have much to share. It was all I wanted. I wanted her to fear me. I wanted her to hate me; just as much and more as my Eleanor hated me. And she did, but not as much as she could—not as much as she would have—and you snatched her from me.”

He steps closer, assessing me, sniffing me. “Where did she come from? Where did you come from?” I don’t answer. “You must have been in a dream. You must have been in the past. You must have been in the future. You must have been in a nightmare—had a nightmare.”

He reaches for me, but I knock his hand away, spitting out, “Don’t you dare touch me! Leave me alone!”

“Alone?” Asmodeus laughs. “Alone you’re a cock and asshole on two legs stumbling about in a world of hopelessness. Pissing. Shitting. Shitting and pissing. Pissing and fucking.” He jerks his hips back and forth, humping the air. He laughs again.

“Alone,” he mumbles. “Alone, alone, alone. Alone you’re lost. Always hating, loathing, loving unlove and unloving love. If you were ever able to find love, it would be as if you’ve taken the pain of what happened to you and placed it elsewhere, so that you could feel again. If you were lucky, by the time you found what was needed and were able to forgive yourself, you’d be able to love again. It’s like discovering the secret of life: the thing you would have hated if you’d known it. It's easy to discover. Its discovery happens in the most ordinary ways. You put your head in your navel—right there,” he jabs a finger in my stomach suddenly and I jerk away from the touch, “—and you breathe in deep and you say to the world, ‘I like my own smell!’ The pain you’ve hidden from your past is there and I’ll reveal it to you. And after I do, I’m going to haunt you until I find your little girl again and bring her home to me.”

“You’re not going to lay a finger on her!” I push against him, but he pushes back, harder, knocking me down to the floor with ease, stepping into the space I had held to tower over me.

“Why would Eleanor cling to you?” Asmodeus asks. “You discarded her. You sent her here. ‘Oh, Daddy!’” he cries, micking her. “‘Daddy let me go. He put me here. He doesn’t love me.’”

I must have reacted to this, because he smiles, squatting down to my level and jabbing a finger into my chest. “There’s your soreness; that piece of your pride that will proceed you to your death. Look at your hands. Feel the pinch of your insides. Why did you send her away? A little girl needed her daddy. She called for you. She cried for you.”

He reaches up and cups my cheek gently. “Was it because you felt shame?” he asked. “The shame of a father who failed? Or the shame of your sex—your dinky-winky—when you’d wake up hard in the morning only to discover that she had crawled in bed with you. Pressed against you, unaware of how much shame you felt about your nature.”

Images that weren’t real flashed in my head of Eleanor sleeping. The softness of her skin. The part of her lips and the rising and falling of her chest while she breathed. I shake my head, dislodging his hand and chasing those thoughts away.

“How hard you must have cried to keep that beautiful darkness inside you—buried deep. A day isn’t enough for you to cling to the warmth of the little things when the darkness chases to consume you. The night is a battle to bear. When you slumber, the feeling you feel is less powerful but you can still feel the sharpness of its teeth and you’ll hold on to that feeling like a rabid dog; like a hyena on a dead zebra, devouring the rectum first.” He laughs.

I can see the burn marks on Eleanor’s arm. The dark bruises. The dark circles under her eyes. “Did you hurt her?” I ask.

“Yes,” Asmodeus responds, pridefully. “I wanted her to fear me; to know me. To know why she should fear me. What I was capable of.”

I roar, bowling into him, knocking Asmodeus to the floor. He laughed as my fist pummeled his face over and over again.

Exhausted, I roll off of him, wiping my bloody knuckles against my pants.

Asmodeus, pushes himself up, resting on his elbows. He spits a mouthful of blood up at me, the glob landing on my shirt. “You hit like that pimply boy with no cock and heavy glasses. With your rosary and your no ma’am, yes ma’am, no father, yes father, bless me father for I have sinned.”

“I’m going to kill you,” I gasp out. He laughed. “You’re a fucking monster.”

“We’re all monsters!” he spits back at me. “We’re all fixed the same. Life is nothing but a big fat dick in a sea of hormones. Life is just smells and screaming and shouting and jabbing and pulling and jerking! Life is nothing but a big, fat fuck. Nobody ever sat on your face and told you, ‘Don’t eat too much!’ It’s always sex. You have to get it all the time. Life is nothing but a giant cock; just a series of huge pricks poking you and me and everyone else. All those sexy pleasures and pressures all around.”

He crawls over to me, grabbing hold of my leg to pull himself up. “Do you remember the girl who made you sweat? The one who’d say your name and you’d feel the very center of your chest clench and flutter and move deep within your core? The first time you heard her say the word ‘love?’ That was one of her favorite sayings when she thought she was in control. She never liked being in control though. But she was so beautiful and so was her body. She was so close that first night when you sprayed inside her and you knew you’d never forget her. The very next night you did a complete 180, shivering every time you saw another girl in a skirt; she was no longer first in your thoughts. It was then that you realized that women were the sea. You were just a little fish; a little fish swimming in a little sea. Sex was life. The whole fucking universe in a woman’s womb.”

Who was this version of me?

As he spoke, images flashed in my head. Of him—me. We were different, but also the same. He was the darkness that brewed within me for years. Were these images real? Dreams? Memories? Nightmares? At what point did our paths diverge and I became him? At what point did the darkness take over?

Asmodeus ran his tongue down the length of his hand and used the spit and blood to push the hair out of his eyes, leaving a streak of red up his forehead and into his hairline. “Do you remember the first girl you touched? You never touched her again because you touched a ghost that wasn’t real. Do you remember the first girl that ever shoved herself at you? When you saw those dark hairs glistening off her thighs. Her moans and your heaving. Did she ever mention how your scrotum tickled the inside of her thighs as it slapped, slapped, slapped? Or did you just fuck in silence? Her face was so close to yours; kissing the side of your neck, sucking at your salty sweat as you stabbed within her and as she closed around you like a mother snake swallowing her son. Tugging you in and releasing and tugging you in again. I remember my first time. I thought I was stuck between her and my mother; between death and rebirth. I took her arms and pulled her bridegroom’s yoke to the side. Straddling me she wrapped her thighs around my legs, turning her calves, and I pointed the tip of my cock through her towards the picture of my mother I kept next to my iron bed till I collapsed on top of her, her breasts feeling so right beneath me. She felt so fucking right between us. Do you remember her? I can show you her. She’s here, there, over there. She’s that finger sizzling in your asshole.”

I wait for him to begin rambling again, but he doesn’t. He watches me, pacing back and forth; waiting for me to react.

When I don’t, Asmodeus lunges towards me. I stumble back. He sees my fear and he smiles. Then, in the midst of my confusion, I see white, and then he’s there right in front of me. He grabs me by the hair and punches me in the stomach with his free hand, driving me to my knees and he’s there again, inches from my face. My blood is surging, my hands trembling in panic, but his eyes are sharp as knives.

I don’t know if he’s going to kill me in the next moment, but I speak as slowly and as calmly as I can. “What do you want?”

He grins, blood in his teeth. “I didn’t know what my purpose was until you brought Eleanor to me. Before she came, I walked the Earth alone like Cain. Years before, I knew I needed to make a name for myself, so I went to the moon like so many others before me. There I found an abandoned ship on the moon’s dark side with the name Asmodeus written on the side. It whispered to me and told me that when I kill my family I will not be cursed as Cain; that when I kill them I would rise and become the right hand of god. To destroy was power. To destroy was death, but also life. When I came back to Earth, my family looked at me with joy at my homecoming. But their eyes turned to sorrow and pain as I killed them. The ship told me that I had to save them from themselves—my Veronica and my baby, Eleanor. But then when they were gone, I was alone and I no longer heard the voice of god.”

“You killed them?” I whisper.

“Yes,” Asmodeus whispers, “I did. I had to. I killed my wife and my daughter and then I killed everyone else on my little blue planet, until there was no one left in this lonely existence.” He walks over to a pillar and swipes his fingers to reveal several lit buttons. He presses one of the buttons and three of the four walls that surrounded us began to become translucent.

We’re surrounded by darkness. Tiny, flickering orbs of light flicker in the distance.

“Where are we?” I ask.

“In the vastness of space,” Asmodeus replies. He points in the distance and I can see an orb, glowing and flickering. Its surface was red and orange, but it looked alive, like the sun.

“What is that?” I whisper, but I already know.

“Home,” Asmodeus says softly. “At least it was.”

We stand, watching the Earth burn in silence.

“You are not me,” I eventually whisper.

“What?” Asmodeus asks.

“You are not me,” I say again louder.

He laughs. “Oh, but I am. I am your unrealized potential. I am the shadow that’s been attached to your back since birth.”

“What do you want?” I ask.

“I want Eleanor.”

“No,” I say. “She’s back home. She’s safe.”

He smiles. “You can keep her. I have an infinite pool of Eleanors to choose from. Yours isn’t the only one.”

I search his face for the lie, but it isn’t there. “What do you mean?”

“What did you do that sent your Eleanor here?” Asmodeus asks in return.

“Her mother, Veronica, died. I sent her to another multiverse to live with a version of her mother that was still alive.”

Asmodeus places the palm of his hand against my face, patting my cheek gently before shoving me away. “You fool. Every action, every decision point we arrive at, every decision we make, creates paths that form different variances of the multiverse. When you decided to send Eleanor into the multiverse, you also decided not to send her. But in the multiverse where you took Eleanor and pushed her towards the multiverse you intended for her to go, you set her being on a path that didn’t have just one choice or two, but many.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Because when she appeared in my humble abode, there were ripples. Ripples that only one who has traveled between multiverses can see.”

“How many multiverses is she in?”

“This ship logged data of about a thousand different universes, but then I heard of about ten thousand more. And then found out about another ten thousand, but then I realized that maybe only two hundred and fifty exist. Would you like to see them? I would do that for you. I have searched through multiple different alternate universes and have mapped two hundred and fifty where their realities match our own, but who knows? If your actions caused these ripples, if you go back to the beginning of consciousness and mapped every decision ever made by every person in existence, you could come up with a number that hasn’t been counted into existence.”

“How do you get to the other multiverses?”

“You have to start with self discovery. You have to tell yourself, ‘First you must be yourself, find yourself, know who you are.’ And then when you discover what drives you, what is part of your nature, and understand that it is as necessary to your existence as birds sing, as water flows, as fire burns. Because if you don’t itch that itch, you can’t breath, live, sing, love, fuck or do anything. So then you start singing and crying and crying from lack of breathing, of love, to love. And suddenly you’re whole and you’re beautiful and you’re complete. Take off your mask and you will see that you have never been a problem in any way. Because the moment you stop seeing yourself as a problem, you’re free. And when you’re free, you’re free to feel happy and that is the end of suffering. You can live life to the fullest. You can make every decision final. No take backs. Live, finally live, from that decision. Settle it. Explore it. Be it. And the creation of more universes won’t stop with you.”

“What’s your itch?” I ask.

“I destroyed my world. And when I find another Eleanor, I will use her to destroy your world. And we will keep at it until there is nothing; nothing in this universe and the next. Time will fold in on itself and everything will start anew.”

It was at that moment I knew I had to kill this version of me: Asmodeus, the Destroyer of Worlds.

“How much could two multiverse travelers destroy?” I ask.

I could see his eyes widen.

“You would join me?” Asmodeus asks.

I step towards him, brushing his hair from his face, and pull his mouth to mine. He groans as he kisses me. I let my hands drift across his naked chest, my fingertips tracing the burn marks, the holes on his hands, disarming him with a charade of affection.

He moans, pushing against me. “Are you going to fuck me?” he asks. “It’s been so long since I have felt the touch of man. I want you. I want you to destroy me. I want to be fucked so hard that I can’t even breath. I want to be fucked with so much force, that the skin of my asshole is torn away and there’s blood everywhere. Can you do that? You will have to do this for me before we go and find our Eleanors. I need it so bad. You can do whatever you want to me. You can cum in my asshole over and over again. I need it so bad. I need it so bad. Will you?”

As an answer, I turn him around, kissing between his shoulder blades and then, when he relaxes into me, I snake my arm around his neck until my elbow is at his chin. I pull tighter, grasping my wrist with my other hand. Realization dawns on him and he begins to swing his arms, reaching around, trying to grab me. He pulls my hair, my ear, but I shake it off, kicking him behind his knees till he falls to the ground, but he bends forward, throwing me over his head and my grip breaks.

Twisting I pull away but quickly circle back towards him, kicking and grabbing and punching until I am sitting on top of his chest. His arms are still scrambling and scratching, but I push them down again and again until I get an opening and punch him in the nose. Blood erupts in a spray that covers his mouth. He sputters in surprise before recovering. He smiles through bloodied teeth and laughs saying, “So you aren’t going to fuck me, you fucking liar? You’re a liar, you fucking liar. You’re a fraud, a phony!”

“You are never going to see Eleanor again!” I scream at him.

“I will find you again,” he says. “I will always find you. And I will find her. I will always find her.”

I punch him again, silencing him. Asmodeus starts punching and kicking and rocking, trying to knock me off. Pushing his arms down again I lean in, using my weight to pin his arms as I press my forearm against his throat.

I slam my forehead into his. My vision goes red for a moment, but slowly things come back into focus. I see tears welling up in his eyes. His lips are curled in a viscous snarl, red bubbles of air, saliva, and blood being pushed out from between them as he struggles for more air.

With my free hand I continue to punch whatever I can connect with until I hear the snap of bone in his jaw and see the red meat of his tongue explode in his mouth as he bites through it.

He’s still alive. Breathing what tiny bits of air he can breathe through all the blood he was slowly choking on. “El… an… or… I… will…”

Gasping and crying I dug the heels of my hands into his eye sockets and pushed till I felt his eyeballs pop, the fluid sliding down the sides of his head: red and white becoming pink. Asmodeus screams a gurgling scream and I continue to push and squeeze until there's a loud, sickening crunch and his head splits open, revealing the crackling, hot blackened organ beneath. His legs give a final shudder and are still.

Rolling off him I lay on the ground gasping for air. I am panting and weeping and shaking all over.

The reality of what I just did slowly came over me and I heaved what remained in my stomach onto the bloody, broken corpse beside me.