Josh

The blaring sun sends rays of heat that almost singe my face. I stretch my muscles outside the car, as do the others. I can see the heat simmering from the asphalt.
"So frickin hot here dude," Jenna says as she opens the car door. She raises her hands high above her head to stretch herself. Doing so causes her shirt to show her belly. As I look at her belly I notice a scar that stretches from her belly button to the side of her hips. I look back at the city lied out on the horizon. I can't see it too well because the heat makes the scene blurry. Tan deserty hills put us in something like a giant clay bowl. It feels like I have seen this place before.
"Las Vegas?" I ask.
"Right over there," Mitch points toward the city. I nod. "Now I'll get you guys some treats from that gas station over there if you go pick some out,"
"Treats?" Jenna questions "What are we your little children?"
"Everybody likes candy though I thought it would be something nice to do," Mitch shrugs.
"Everybody likes candy," Damian nods his head.
Jenna and I walk over to the gas station and walk in. As I open the door it his a little bell causing a ring to sound. A bald Hispanic man with a fat neck and a green polo shirt shoots us a grin. We split down different aisles. I walk over to the part of the aisle where the sweet fruity stuff is, and she goes to the chocolate section. I pick up a bag of gummy worms and look up. Out the window was movement, I swear. It was more than just Damian and Mitch. Then a loud screech pierces the air.
I run outside, dropping the gummy worms inside with the door bell ringing once again behind me. The car is still there, all the doors still wide open, but Mitch and Damian nowhere to be seen.
"Huh?" I grunt.
"Where did they go?" Jenna asks me. We hear fighting, but can't see where it is coming from. Jenna yells out "MITCH!?"
Suddenly from behind the gas station a pair of wings fling up, and a figure takes to the skies. Mitch and Damian come rushing out with their weapons.
"What's that?" Jenna yells.
"Some sort of evil bird man!" Mitch yells. "And its trying to kill us!"
They both throw us weapons, Jenna gets a machete, and I get a spear. Lucky me lol.
"What?!" Jenna complains. She takes a good look at my nice long Spear. "Trade??"
"Nah," I shake my head. A screech peirces the air and I look up. The birdman is dive bombing down toward us.
"How do we kill it??" Jenna stares at the thing, as of she is analyzing every part of the monster's body.
"Don't get hit just, kinda," Mitch thinks. "Just don't get hit, protect yourselves we'll handle this,"
"Boring," Jenna says. The birdman swoops down and as he passes by I catch a glimpse of it.

It has a man's body, quite muscular but not quite too toned, wearing brown rugged, ripped, and dirty cloth as pants. It has a very hairy body and wings sprout from his back and instead of regular feet bird-like talons replace them. The most horrifying part, is that where the head should be it looks like someone enlergened a crows head and glued it on a guy.

it dives right past Jenna, who spins out of the way and whips her blade up into the birdman. But at the same time I notice that its claws dig into Jenna's side, and string out her skin as it flies by. She screams and her hand quickly covers her hips, but I still see blood spurt from between her fingers.
"I told you to let us handle this!" Mitch yells angrily at Jenna. All she does is collapse to her knees.
The birdman swoops up and perches itself on top of the gas station. It sits there, and stares us down. The scar on its side begins to fade, the grey sand ceasing to roll down its side.
"Why can't I do that??" Jenna puts her hand up and grunts. The birdman then leaps off of the station and I see that its eyes are one me.
"SHOOOT!" I turn around and Sprint away, but the birdman does not give up his target.
"Don't run!" I kinda hear Mitch say. "Dodge it!"
"How!?" I stop to turn around, and it is closer than I thought it was.
Just for my credit, I thought of the idea to dive out of the way before Mitch yelled it out.
the birdman dives right past me and I come out unscratched. Wait why didn't I just use my spear? I look around to see what is going on and I see that Damian is tackling the birdman. It shrieks and Mitch comes up and starts to hack at it, chopping of its wings and limbs.
it screams and convulses as Damian tries to hold it down. I start to rush over but as I do it breaks free.
even without its wings (and arms) it is crazy fast. It zooms away from the two. I happen to be in its way and I manage to stick it into the chest of the birdman. It screeches another time and I push the spear in more and cause it to fall backwards, causing a dust filled hole to incave. I feel bad impaling an almost limbless creature, and have to look away when Mitch crashes his blade down into the creature's skull.
When I look back, no birdman, just a layer of dust above the concrete. I stare at it, and a subconscious pang of sadness hits me. I just killed something, once was alive, now dead.
Everyone starts toward the car, even Jenna, who manages to stand herself up and limp toward the car. I go up to her and hook my arm around her to help her.
"I'm fine," she leans away, pushing my hand away.
Wait what did I do?
she climbs in the car with everyone else. I look back at the dust pile. Then I open the car door scooch in, shutting it behind me.

>>>
 

    The city lights are releasing a yellow glow, mixing with the blackness of the night. The cityscape is like a painting under me through the clear glass wall. I could imagine hearing all the sounds of car alarms, yells, and whatever I would hear looking at Las Vegas from a tall building. The glass blocks all these sounds though. I place my hand on the cold glass, contemplating if I could dive or punch through the pane. I lightly smack it, the thumping sound getting louder as I hit it harder.
      "What are you doing!?" Jenna exclaims as she paces back and forth in our hotel room. "Mitch left us at like two o clock, it's nine-thirty and instead of wondering where he is your banging on windows!?"
    I look back at her with a frown. "Well, he told us to stay here,"
    "Whatever he's doing he would have told us if he'd be this long!"
    I sigh, "Well what do you want to do go find him?"
    "I think that is actually a great idea!" Jenna puts her hands on her hips.
    "You're supposed to be sitting down for one, your frigging guts almost fell out a couple hours ago I don't see why you would even want to." I tell her. "He has Damian with him I'm sure they're okay, those dudes I'm sure watch over themselves all the time,"
    "Well they can't be Almighty, there is always something bigger and or badder that got them,"
    "I don't think I'd want to get near whatever that could be,"
    "So you are staying here in cowardice?"
     "You know what if you really want to go we can, I really don't want to go, but you do what you want and I'm not going to let you go anywhere alone," I tell her.
    "So you're coming?" She raises her eyebrows as if she is surprised.
   "Yeah I guess,"  I walk toward her. "Let's go,"
    "Alright let's go," She says. I stand in front of her, and she sits still. Right as I open my mouth to say something she turns and walks out the door, with me behind her.

>>>

I look behind my shoulders at the group of kids laughing, passing around a bag full of a green substance and a pipe. The Las Vegas streets are much hotter than I expected. I feel like I'm walking in a giant Sauna Dome. We turn into an alleyway, and I start to question whether I should really follow Jenna. Probably going to get me killed. The side of the buildings are completely covered in tags, and run down and even boarded up house catch my eye every so often.
     "Where the heck are are we going?" I say quietly. "What if Mitch is back at the hotel??"
     "I'm pretty sure he's in trouble," Jenna looks back at me "fifty bucks, I gotta feeling,"
      I swear, if we die in going to pissed at her. Ok, I admit maybe not. Maybe it would be nice to die
     We keep walking down the alleyway, and at the end of it I notice an old man sitting against one of the buildings. He has a scruffy dark beard that has leaves, dirt, and all sorts of stuff tangled in it. He coughs, quickly moving his arm to cover it, and I jump back in alarm.
     he laughs, realizing he startled me. I stare him down as we exit the alley way and into another.
     I look at Jenna, who I almost have to jog to keep up with. She seems to be walking to a place, as if she knew where Mitch was.
     "Where are you going?" I question her.
      She turns around and looks at me. She peers into my eyes, but with concern. Her mouth opens, and instead of her voice, a muffled scream sounds. She averts her eyes and jumps. We look around.
     "It came from down there," Jenna points at a manhole a few feet away.
     "I don't want to go down there." I say, eyeing the manhole.
      "Too bad," She says as she bends over the manhole and lifts it. A wave of dark air filters out with a hollowing whisp. Inside is a dark abyss, in which I can't see.
     "Do you have a flashlight?" Jenna asks.
     "Ummm," I think. "No,"
     "Shoot,"
     "Well, looks like we probably shouldn't go down there," I shrug my shoulders.
     "No, I'm sure we can find a flashlight somewhere close by," she motions her head toward the old man.
     "Why would he have a flashlight?" I ask.
      "I would if I was a hobo,"
       "Alright, good idea!" I proclaim. "Go see if the gentleman has a flashlight.
     "Nah, you're closer to him,"
     "Really, you're that lazy?!"
     "Why don't you be a gentleman"
     "Why are we even going down there? I thought we were looking for Mitch!"
      she stays silent and turns toward the hole. All of a sudden form the end of the alleyway a loud snorting sounds.
      "Perfect!" Jenna says. "Should be a lot easier with him asleep!" I grunt and walk toward the man. As I get closer to him I look to see if he has a flashlight. No flashlight. I notice a small backpack that he is using as a pillow. I turn and look back at Jenna. She is turned the other way.
     I approach the man and his backpack. I reach my hands out, and I notice snot dripping from his nostrils, and saliva in the corner of his mouth. Dude what if he wakes up? What if that snot or slobber is infected with something?
      "Hurry up!" Jenna yells,
       "Chill! I gotta do this my way at my pace if I'm doing this!"
       She grunts. Ok how am I going to do this? I pick up a dirty rag which is on the ground and wrap it around my hand like a glove. I then carefully place my hand on his head, which is a matted mess of graying hair. A thousand bucks this guy has lice. I lift his head off of the backpack and swipe his backpack away. I let his head down nice and slow. Then I hurry away.
       "You actually got it!" Jenna musters out of a laugh.
      "Yeah I'm not a complete woose, I'm just not use to this,"
      "Seems like your getting there," she smiles at me. We unzip the backpack and she dumps everything out.
      "Yes" she picks up a flashlight from the pile of stuff.
      I spot a wrench form the pile, and snatch they too, I am not going into a hole of darkness without something like this. "Why does this guy have a wrench?"
      "Same reason you're bringing that down there," Jenna says. "Oh yeah, he had two, so lucky for you!" She hands me a flashlight.
     "Let's go," Jenna walks toward the hole, and clicks her flashlight on. She descends down into the manhole, then I do.
     The ladder down to the sewer is shaky, and I check to look where the bottom is first. Nine feet down,- ish. I climb down.
     Jenna is waving her flashlight around, checking the area. Large stony walls stretch down into the darkness, with little sideways between the walls and the river of, well stuff. 
     "AAAK!" My hand shoots to my nose as a foul stench almost kills my sense of smell. "That's just..."
    "Get used to it Josh," Jenna tells me.
    "Ugh," I say. " which way do we go?"
     "This way," Jenna starts walking down into the darkness of the sewer. I follow her. I spin to walk backwards to watch the back of us, then I spin to make sure there is no new obstacle for me to trip on. Then I spin to the back again.
     "What are you doing?" Jenna seem annoyed with me.
      "What do you mean we gotta watch our backs!"
       "In pretty sure we'll be able to hear anything walking behind us,"
       "Pretty sure some things can be pretty sneaky,"
        We walk awhile in silence, listening for any sound that is other than the echoes of our shoes against the stone tunnel.
      "Where do you expect to find Mitch and Damian?"
        "Hmm, I don't know, probably at the end of the of this tunnel singing next to a pot of gold!" Jenna spits.
       "Sheesh," I say, deflated. "Wait why am I always the enemy?"
      "What the, what do you mean by that!"
     "Well you're always yelling at me and I barely know why!" I exclaim.
     "Because!"
     "Because what!?"
      "I yell at everyone like this, especially when they do/ say something dumb!" She raises her voice.
      "You treat me like an idiot," I say.
      She stops, "Holy crap," She mutters.
     "Ok, I'm just going back to the hotel because you really don't want me here," I turn and start walking.
     "No Josh wait!" She says, wait wtf, now she wants me to stay? Probably because she wants to yell at me more. "Look at this,"
      She shines her light on the wall near to us. I was too distracted checking everything else and yelling at Jenna that I didn't notice the giant Pentagram graffitied to the wall. Well, I don't know if I should classify this as graffiti. It is a dark maroonish-brown, and I get the feeling it is dried blood. I can feel as if there is an evil presence, and I look around. There is something about the Pentagram that radiates cynicism and Dread.
     "Jenna I gotta bad feeling about this..." I say.
      "What the hell..." Jenna utters. She walks down that tunnel more, and shines her light on dusty old door. She puts her hand on the door knob.
      "Careful!" I yelp "that thing is probably cursed or under like a spell,"
     "Too late," She pushes the door open, with a eerie creek. "It's probably just a maintenance room anyways,"
       She shines her light into the room, revealing a small rectangular room with old pipes and metal containers with gauges on them aligned against one both walls. I follow her in there.
     "Over here, she turns right, and I notice there are a couple of stair steps with red railing that leads to an even creepier door. The door's wood is rotted and there is not even a door knob, just a hole where one should be. 
    Jenna walks down the stairs and pulls the door open, and wanders in. I follow her again. I don't know why I'm doing something so dangerous.
     it is a larger square room about eleven feet by eleven: with an old wood board flooring, and more solid concrete walls. Nothing seems to be in the room, save old oxygen and the four walls.
     "Dangit, nothing interesting," Jenna sighs as she takes one last look at the room.
    She exits, but I take my own look around and notice there is a slightly bend board on the ground, and I have a temptation to go to it. I walk toward it and bend down at it. I grab at it and realize it is deathly cold. Like, It was as if the board were made of freshly carved ice from the Arctic or something. I quickly pull the  board away, and I see a steel handle in a hole casted its shape. I pick at it to get it up, and once I do, I pull real hard and the boards go up, and reveals another hole.
 

   "Jenna!" I holler. "I have better eyes than you!"
      "Bullcrap!" She says, walking back in, but when she sees it though, her eyes drop in disappointment. She looks at me, and mocking my voice says "Josh there is probably a demon down there,"
     "I got a wrench bro," I laugh. There is a red light emanating from the hole, and from the hole radiates more Vileness than the Pentagram. I descend into the hole. 

"Don't call me bro"

     I find myself in a small room, and I can't tell the color of the walls because they are too tinted by the dim red light. I hear a small crackling, and I turn around to see a floating fireball, which is a pure dark red, unlike the regular bright reddish-orange fire is.
      emanating from the fire are eerie whispers, and I can't make out what they are saying. They flow from one unconscious syllable to the next, and it is almost hypnotic. I feel the slight pull of influence, and I start to lift my wrench up, my fist clenchig harder on the grip. it would make a very good weapon against J...
    I quickly stop my self and turn my focus from the whispers.
       it floats above a pure black rock Altar, before an old wood table. Carved into the table is a Pentagram, glowing red with an evil aura. Lines sprawl from the Pentagram to different symbols on the edge of the table. There are gross things laid out on the table, like bloody chunks of meat.
     I gasp. "What the,"
     "It's like some sort of Alchemy table..." Jenna says from behind me.
    "Let's probably get out. This place is bad," I warn Jenna.
     "I feel it too, but this stuff could be useful," Jenna pulls a book off a bookshelf above the Alchemy table, and I cringe as she reaches over the Pentagram and Fire, as if it might reach up and suck her up into some evil dimension.  She opens the book and starts to read it.
    "What's it about?" I ask.
    She starts to recite words from the book, but with some words that kind of sound English but I don't understand. "Ingredients, rat arterial blood, black mold, waste slime, burned chalk..." She keeps listing off random substances half if which I don't really know.
     "What are those even for?" I ask Jenna.
      "Effect: Amnesia," she looks up and grins. She starts flipping through the pages." Combustible fire, invisibility, Gel Ward, dude you know how cool this is!?"
     "What is 'Gel Ward'?" I ask her.
      "I think like a giant bubble shield or something!" The grin remains on her face.
     "Dude that's cool," I say.
      "Do you know how useful this could be??" Jenna holds the book out, grinning at me.
      I feel something behind me, and Jenna's grin turns to horror. She chokes, but I can't find the courage to whip around. Jenna cocks back her arm and chucks the book right above my head. I duck, and then whip around.
    in the darkness I hear a growl, and  I barely make out an almost human face. It hisses and steps toward us, into the light of the red fire. It's face is mangled with piercings: bull nose piercings, in the eyelids and and a bone thing straight across the nose. Tattoos of overlapping Pentagrams all over his face, and depictions of Hell maybe? Whatever it is it covers the rest of his body. He takes a look at my wrench and looks behind his shoulder and screeches.
     Deep in the darkness many screeches sound in answer, and then a horde of footsteps echo through the black.
    "Run!" Jenna yells as the thing lunges at me. I step back as its hand reached for me. I swing my wrench toward it and it crashes into the side of the man's mouth, sending two or three of his teeth flying out of his mouth. He quickly recovers and stares at me with pure hatred.
     Jenna pushes on the top of the wooden latch but it doesn't budge. "It won't move!" She climbs back down.
     "Get away!" I wave my wrench at the disfigured man.  He hatefully growls at me with glaring eyes, shuffling away from me. He swats at me but with no avail, as if he is trying to distract me.
    "Follow me!" Jenna yells and runs away through another hallway. I follow her, running from the horde of footsteps. We run through a windy hallway carved into sharp black rock; having to be very careful because of very random sharp turns that we can barely see because of the very low lighting.
    I hear hisses, growls, shrieks, laughs,  and a whole lot of footsteps following us. "WE'RE GONNA GET YA!!" A crazily maniacal voice calls after us.
    "Keep going! Don't look back!" Jenna yells me. I follow her, cutting to new directions as she does. The sounds behind me seem to be getting louder, as I feel that the people chasing us are faster than us. It would make sense, because they could go full speed because they probably  know the tunnels.
  The tunnel then opens up, and Jenna stops and gasps. I stop right behind her and join her in gasping. The tunnel opened out into an enormously gigantic chasmy cylinder. At the bottom is a giant bonfire, and the people surrounding it are kneeling. All the people are much like the man we saw in the tunnel, disfigured by metal piercings, body implants and their skin color erased away with tattoos covering all you can see of their body, which is a lot because none of them are wearing much. Our tunnel is a half tunnel that extends down to where all of them are.
    On the other side of the fire is a Dias, with thrones sculpted out of bones. There are two of them, one on the right and left. The one on the left is much larger, and the bones are burned to the point of blackness. Two men sit on both of them, and they are both much larger than the rest, I don't know if these are just Spectacularly large men or the rest are possibly children. It is hard to tell up on this ledge.
    I look back, and the first man crashes into the side of the black wall, then turns to look at us. He screeches and starts to run toward us.
     "Let's go!" I yell.
     "Where? Down there!?" Jenna points down to the fire pit.
     "Uhhhhhh," A thousand thoughts fly through my mind. What the hell can I do?
     More maniacs come around the curve. We are already outnumbered by far if we go in the hall. But wait.
    I run to the tunnel opening and draw back my wrench.
     "What are you doing?" Jenna yells from behind me.
    As the disfigured man comes close to me he holds out his hands yelling,  I hack down at his hand and jam his fingers. He doesn't hesitate for any pain and doesn't let out any sound. He grabs the wrench with his other hand and I bring my fist into his face. When I see that he hasn't let go of the wrench I palm his face and try to push him away as I try to rip the wrench out of his hand. He screeches and I finally pull away and we both stumble back.
    he falls and I recover faster, and I quickly run up to him and hack the wrench down on his head. Instead of standing back up he collapses into a laying position and doesn't move.
    Did I just kill him? I stand still. I barely notice the other maniacs very close to us.
     I cringe as the next maniac carelessly steps on the man's face and the rest trample him all over. I can't think quick enough to start hacking again. My instincts kick in when in it is too late, and one of the maniacs tackle me. I feel the wrench fly out of my hand along with my breath. My head whips back onto the hard stony floor and my world flashes a blinding white while my head instantly hurts.
      The pain occupies my head too much to realize what happens, while I feel a flurry of feet and a pinch on my body in various places. Is the maniac biting me? Wait is he a frickin zombie!? I think I might have heard Jenna call my name out while this is happening, and then her screams but it was on the back of my mind.
     I am picked up by my arms and legs. I know I should pay attention to what happen, but I am far too disoriented and it would probably cost what life I have left in me to do that.
      I know I'm dead. I'm about to meet The Devil...