Disregarding Dev's warnings, I found myself staring at my laptop screen dead into the night like a zombie starved of flesh, pondering on the big decision ahead of me. It would only take one click of the mouse, a simple 'book now', and then there would be no going back. 

I would be following clues from one of the most unreliable sources present in the entirety of the universe. 

No wonder I felt reluctant. 

With all of the mistrust and evidence stacked against The Oracle, I just couldn't bring myself to jump in and leave my fears and doubts behind when there were so many of them. Any information I missed whilst I was away could jeopardise my general existence, let alone my job and the power that came with it. 

The internal conflict within was becoming exhausting: I just wanted a problem where the correct option was obvious and not full of secrets and ulterior motives. It didn't seem like much to ask for. But then again I supposed I should stop moaning. I'd come across many tense situations before and I'd dealt with them fine back then.

Every demon left standing had. Being the epitome of evil wasn't easy, especially for someone who felt the deep desire within to do good. 

Even now, I still struggled. I still had that war on my mind. And there was a time in every demon's life where they felt something akin to that, which was a thought I clung close to in the lonelier hours of the moonlight.

And that moonlight had drifted in through the open windows of my study for what felt like eternity, as my fingers drifted over that all-important button. The night was clear and strangely cool for a summer on the West Coast, and the crisp air was inviting, seductive, comforting: a fresh whisper against my warm and tired skin. 

I felt myself drifting, and drifting, and drifting; further and further from reality as my subconscious dragged me away from troublesome times ahead, only to encounter the trouble that I faced in my sleep...

Someone was screaming. I felt panicked and disorientated and I couldn't see. The darkness around me was the only thing that was visible and I couldn't get past it. Couldn't break into the light. 

My body was moving. But I wasn't steering the hull. Something was dragging me upwards, dragging me through the black and I wasn't in control. I didn't like it. I was scared. I was alone. And the screaming was getting louder. 

Sight and sound was not comforting to me, so I reverted back to my other senses. I tried to smell, but I was immediately repulsed as the air of decay and sulphur wafted in through my nostrils. There was nothing to taste and I tried to feel something, anything, around me by the simple brushing of my fingertips, but...nothing. Nothing distinguishable. 

Where was I? 

But before I could think about my situation any further, everything began to intensify in no more than a split second. The screams became louder; the decay became even more potent and light suddenly began to filter in to combat the surrounding darkness. But this light was no emissary of hope: it was crimson and vivid and made my eyes sting, bringing pain instead of relief. 

I shied away from the harmful rays by closing my eyelids...but I was forced to open them almost immediately as I felt myself fall onto something that seemed to be the tough and earthy ground. 

I allowed my gaze to become accustomed to the red light before I moved one single bone in my body, and as soon as it did I wanted to be blind again. 

I knew this place. 

The crimson smoke from the volcanoes of suffering billowed through the atmosphere to create scarlet skies of harshness, hovering above the carnage beneath to represent the burning superiority of Lucifer himself. Every breath I took was a choking struggle of survival, as poison and death combined with oxygen to become a detrimental factor in the game of life Satan planned to play with us. This place was the beginning, or the end, of a difficult journey in which all morals were forced to bleed out and into the confining atmosphere of decay. 

The terrain surrounding me was perhaps even more menacing than the sky of violence above: I was standing on an earthy field as big as a football pitch with nothing on it but holes, holes that had small and ugly creatures popping out of them before sealing themselves up. I knew that currently I was in the body of one of these small and disgusting creatures. I knew that these animals were in fact demons straight from the womb of Lucifer; and I knew that half of these defenceless beings were doomed to lead short and agonisingly-painful lives. 

Was I to be one of them? Could I die in this dreamland that was all too real? 

I nearly died in my last dream...How many chances did I have left? 

Fear crept into my bones as I registered the screams in the distance, increasing in volume and coming ever so closer without any chance of dying out. I had to remember that The Birthing Grounds were safe only momentarily and my predatory kin were on their way, our flesh the sole desire of their carnivorous minds. I shivered even though Hell was always consumed in a blistering heat, and tried not to think about what was to come. I needed to move but this wasn't my body. I had no control over my actions. 

The birthing of demons and the blood bath of the Fields of Ahaz was something I had been lucky enough to miss out on, and the rare anecdotes I'd heard concerning this place were always surreal horror stories, inducing terror that I couldn't shake off. The powerlessness of it all brought to life a true fear inside of me, and I was completely facing that now as I waited for powerful foes to hunt me down and devour me. 

I needed to get out of here. I needed to run. The black bushes surrounding us were starting to rustle. They were coming. They were here. 

Why couldn't I just bloody move? 

In the midst of the paralysis, I started to panic. My body was burning with the heat of Hell but I was cold with fear, unable to absorb any kind of warmth. I couldn't do this. I didn't want this.

From my vast surroundings appeared the sound of a savage cry that burned with the desperate notes of animalistic thirst, seeking tirelessly to fulfil deadly desire for the blackest of days. 

The body I was in twitched and got to its feet, the owner showing a morbid curiosity perhaps of what was to come. I desperately tried to convince the limbs to make further movements, but foolishly they did not obey. The panic within started to become unbearable. 

All of a sudden, the bushes stopped shaking and an ominous silence consumed the air around me, acting as the calm before the storm; the thin veil of deception that hid the Armageddon to come. 

A murmur of noise descended to start the process that would disrupt the quiet completely. The newly-birthed demons around me were now all on their feet, sick and twisted bodies standing together in unison for perhaps the only time of their lives.  

But this reaction was perhaps too late. In the distance tall, black figures could be seen coming out of the dying shrubbery, approaching swiftly in the form of shadows. My head swivelled uneasily around to see that these shapes were coming from all sides meaning, of course, that I and my fellow new-borns were cooped up like chickens ready for the slaughter.

This was always how it started. I'd watched it from afar.

The shadows were coming closer and closer, and their blurry shapes began to become distinguishable. The new-borns were starting to back away as if they sensed the impending doom, and we became one massive huddle in the middle of the field with me at the centre. I wasn't sure if my position was good: I'd be hard pressed to escape, but I wouldn't be the first demon on their menu.

It could go either way. I had no idea what the body I was in was going to do next.

The blood of demons contained both poison and power, and this was reflected in the appearance of the cannibals as they closed in on us. Instead of burning red orbs, these demons had eyes of vibrant amber that shone savagely against their black, oily skin which was as thick as tar and drenched in ominous blotches of crimson. Their mouths were constantly open and wide to resemble an on-going cry for power, with dagger like teeth pointed and sharpened in preparation for the blood of their kin. They hunted like animals with four legs on the ground instead of two; doing anything they could to optimise their killer technique.

Even by demonic standards these beings were deformed. Every part of their bodies' demonstrated disfigurement and any kind of dignity they may have had previously was utterly dead and irretrievable. 

They had traded it all for power. In the thrill of it all greed had blinded and destroyed them, creating a handful of mindless killers that Satan used as puppets in his master plan. 

It was what I could've become. 

And in this world, they were but another possible reality, another possible path, another possible future. I had no idea the closed doors of my past could come back to haunt me so literally.

The waiting game was ending. They were ready for the hunt, ready for the flesh. 

It was starting.

5. 

I had seen these horrors at their worst but I was powerful back then. I could defend myself. Now I was nothing but a victim, nothing but flesh. 

4. 

I didn't know the body I was in. I couldn't recognise it. And because of that my fate wasn't certain: was the demon I was in made of the right stuff? 

3.

 My fellow new-borns were afraid. Their red eyes were wide and glistening and I found myself feeling oddly sympathetic for the honest emotions shining out of them, fear and confusion sparkling like crimson arrows. They had no idea of what was to come.

2.

The cold dread within me began to turn into ice, and I was shivering. The cannibals of my kind were here- they needed the flesh I was in to enhance their power- and there was nothing I could do about it. 

1.

My deepest fear was upon me. 

0.