(some mature-ish stuff)

I timidly followed this strange entity's requests to the final letter.

Once it was all set up, he simply began barking towards, well, nothing.

While they were just light noises at first, a strange humming became much louder.

It even came to the point where I could muster no more, covering my ears with the palm of my hand.

He still kept barking.

Suddenly, I felt as if time was not passing, nor had it ever passed, to begin with.

I was vaguely aware of a black mist pouring over me before I faded away from consciousness.

The dog.

The dog just kept barking.

His barking was now a shrill yelp, becoming more blood curdling over the non-existent time.

Then he suddenly finished.

"Ah, I see you've finally awoken," he said to me.

I had indeed awoken, but I had a nagging feeling that I was still within my psyche.

It had to just be a dream.

I forced myself to wake up, but a sharp pain would stab me every time I tried.

The dog seemed to notice this.

"Don't even try."

After that, I tried no more to attempt to leave the hellish dream.

The canine beckoned me to walk with him.

So I did.

Right in the center of the room, though, the carpet opened up, and I fell through.

As quickly as I had entered, I came back to existence, where I looked over an odd looking room.

It seemed to made almost entirely out of wood.

A man was sat at the lone table, looking over something.

I was confused.

"Why did you bring me here?" I asked.

The dog simply grunted in response.

I rolled my eyes and watched.

The man suddenly picked up a knife.

His hands, his head, everything, shook.

Almost as if he had seen a...

...ghost.

Then the man was being thrashed about by an unseen force.

He began screaming at the top of his lungs.

I could also distinguish a second noise: growling.

My eyes went wide.

I spun on my heel, facing towards the dog once again.

"What did you do?"

The dog chuckled.

"What you never will, my boy."

I backed up, daring not to look at the blood that had coated the wooden room below me.

I could slowly feel my hands curl into fists.

The dog snarled.

I gave no warning; I lunged at him, trying to grab his neck in hopes that I could strangle the demon.

The dog simply danced around me, besting me before I could land a strike.

He chuckled.

"You have no idea what you've just done."

"But I know what I'm gonna do to you."

He jumped forward, knocking me over onto the invisible ground.

His jaws snapped at my neck, trying to taste skin.

I pistoned my arms in an attempt to shake him off, but he instead chomped down on my hand with his long, dagger-like teeth.

I let out a cry as he resumed his brawl.

My left hand was now virtually unusable; I was now at the mercy of this dog's rage.

I closed my remaining hand again and smacked the dog in the side of the cranium to get him to desist.

It seemed to work, as the dog caterwauled off my body.

I let out a sharp breath, staring at my gored hand.

All feeling began to escape me then.

I felt nothing.

But I could still hear the dog.

I craned my head around.

There he was.

Staring at me, almost licking the blood - my blood - off his lips.

I tried to plead but my voice had been slaughtered, along with most of my other functions.

He laughed yet again before baring his teeth at me one last time.

Then he cocked his head a couple times before finally laying down his calling card.

"DO YOU BELIEVE?"

I didn't know what he meant; I wouldn't get to, anyway.

He started tearing at my neck.

Flecks of skin and blood rose from it, spraying my head and the dog's face.

I weakly tried to move my hand in an attempt to hit him, but I was frozen.

Amazingly, after a few seconds, I was not dead.

In fact, I felt nothing.

But I could still do nothing but lay witness to the dog's murder.

Within moments, he had reduced my neck to little but bone.

My head lolled faintly on the floor, and I could slowly feel myself fading from this world.

The dog knew this.

He knew that he had won.

Before I lost all contact, he walked over to me and spoke again.

"DO YOU STILL BELIEVE?"

I tried to nod my head no, but by then the real world began to come back to me.

Bright lights flashed before me, making my eyes sore, until the journey was finally over.

I was shocked to discover that I was not dead, but still very much alive, and that I was leaning on the corner of the wall.

I stood up and brushed myself off.

Instinctively, I raised my left hand to see if it had still been chomped.

It had been scarred with light red streaks, but it was all there, my hand still intact.

I breathed for the first time in a while.

It was all a dream... I hope.

But all the items that the mutt had requested were still on the ground.

I tried to reason with myself that the second part had all been fake, but I still had a nagging feeling that something had actually happened.

I walked over to the center of my room and began to pick up the candles and the single dog bone.

Yeah, kind of cliche, but he still demanded it, and it seemed to work.

But then I began to realize that it was midnight.

The dog said he would be taken back to his purgatory when the clock hit twelve.

I supposed that I'd sacrificed myself long enough for the dog to not make it to the real world.

Still, I was in no fit mood to celebrate my success.

While I had, in theory, stared down the devil and beaten him, I felt like I was in real danger.

I really didn't know if he was watching or not.

Trying to push that out of my mind, I began to put out the candles.

I also made a note to toss aside the bone that still resided in the center.

It was probably haunted.

As I blew out the last candle, I felt a shiver roll down my back.

The dog was still here.

I whipped around, but I saw nothing.

I still had a feeling that he was watching.

Waiting.

Wondering when I'd finally let my guard down.

It was as if he had a noose tied around my neck, and he could tighten it at any time.

Much like the noose I stared down right now.

I could hear him:

"DO IT."

"YOU CAN'T ESCAPE ME ANYWAY."

"YOU'LL ONLY BE HELPING YOURSELF."

Then I finally realized.

He had been the one tormenting me.

All this time, and I had never noticed.

I was the puppet, and he was the conductor.

It was all his fault.

I took a step forward.

Then another.

And another, and so on until I was within touching distance of the rope, the rope that held my very fate.

I could still hear him.

"WHY ARE YOU FALTERING?"

"I'LL JUST COME DOWN THERE AND MAKE IT EVEN MORE PAINFUL."

After I spent several moments just staring at the knot, he snarled at me once more.

"I'M GOING TO GIVE YOU 10 SECONDS."

"I SUGGEST YOU TAKE THEM."

He drew in a loud breath.

"10!"

I gasped.

He wasn't joking.

"9!"

I inched closer.

"8!"

I took one last step.

"7!"

Was I really going to kill myself with this dog at the helm?

"6!"

I kept thinking as he counted down more.

"5!"

I faced the noose now, looking right through it.

"4!"

I just couldn't take my own life.

I wanted to live.

"3!"

I only had one option.

"2!"

All that I could do.

"1!"

Staring down the devil.

"0!"

To his surprise, I was not hanging from the ceiling.

"Oh."

"I see."

I glared.

"So be it."

The same whirring noise began, and in a moment, he was there, looking at me.

I had to do it now, or I never would.

Nearly instantaneously, he lept at me from his hind legs.

In that same instant, I managed to rip the noose off of the ceiling.

I held it directly in front of me as the dog reached his last destination.

As soon as his neck was in the center of the rope, I pulled with all my might.

It seemed to work.

The dog was lifted up and gagged as the noose wrapped around his neck.

But it was at about then when I realized that I didn't really have a second step.

So I tried flinging the dog over to the side, which partly worked.

It gave me enough time to rush away.

I decided to run upstairs.

I had a gun in my room.

I could send him back to his land if I killed him here.

For the moment, though, I was just hightailing it to my bedroom.

The dog was on his feet now, chasing me down as fast as he could.

I slammed the door and ripped my closet door open, grabbing the gun case.

The dog had made it up the stairs and began scratching at the door, desperately trying to kill me before I could load my pistol.

I fumbled around with the bullets until I had three in the mag.

With shaking hands, I shoved the magazine into the gun and pulled the slide back.

The canine had resorted to bashing the door in with his head.

I almost thought that he had knocked himself out when he finally stopped.

Cautiously, I crept towards the door, my finger dancing on the trigger.

That was when he struck again.

The door swung open and I was knocked aside.

The gun fell out of my hand.

The dog scanned the room for a few seconds before he saw me, doubled over in pain.

I blindly flailed around for something, anything to use as a weapon.

He chuckled again.

"Nice try, boy."

As he pounced on me, I grabbed something on the floor and thrust it at his head.

It was a mirror.

The glass cracked, and the dog backed up, taking in the pain of being stabbed by many little spikes.

This gave me enough time to get up and search for the gun.

To add insult to injury, I threw the bloodied mirror at the dog, which probably just made him angrier.

I saw the gun lying on the ground a few feet away, which I quickly scooped up.

The dog seemed to have recovered from my attack.

He turned around to stare at me through crimson-red eyes.

"GO ON."

I was still in such shock that I couldn't pull the trigger.

"I'M DEAD ANYWAY."

Tears began to spring from my own eyes.

The dog began to stagger towards me.

His fur was matted red, which only made me even more afraid.

I still couldn't shoot him.

He drew closer.

It was at that point that I could finally see it.

I saw the torment - the pain - the anguish - the hatred in his eyes.

I felt something within myself.

That drove me to action.

I rose my gun.

The dog growled.

I could still see the rage in his eyes.

That same rage fueled me to pull the trigger.

BANG!

One shot was all I needed.

The force of the bullet knocked the dog back slightly, and he slumped to the floor, motionless.

I had done it.

I had beaten the devil.

I could already hear police sirens in the near distance.

I'd have absolutely no way of proving that there was this crazy dog that wanted to kill me.

But then I realized that the dog might have been right.

I might have had no choice but to kill myself.

Besides, I knew the truth: while the dog would never inhabit the living world again, he'd still haunt me from below the grave.

Then I noticed the dog.

I hadn't killed him.

He scrabbled his paws on the carpet before getting back up on his feet.

But I could tell that he was badly wounded.

I imagined that I had actually messed something up within him.

While the fire was still in his eyes, his movement was almost non-existent.

He very slowly padded his way towards me.

I wouldn't let him get any closer.

I flicked the trigger a second time.

BANG!

I heard a strange, squishing noise, as if the bullet had gone clean through his brain.

He gave me one last look, then his eyes went blank.

I wanted to make sure he was dead, so I unloaded the third bullet into his head.

BANG!

He was dead.

Then I turned the gun on myself.

I clicked, but nothing happened.

I moaned and threw the gun against my dresser.

The police sirens were getting closer now.

I quickly got up, sorted my gun case, and took out a single bullet.

I then retrieved my pistol, slid out the mag, and loaded in the projectile.

My mind began to swirl with thoughts as I went back to sit across from the dog.

I was literally watching the last seconds of my life unfold.

Nothing was said as I cocked the slide back.

I heard knocking on the front door; probably the police.

"Oh, lovely, an audience!" I said to no one.

The cops must have heard me yell that because they began to yell back.

"HEY! WHO'S THERE?!"

I simply laughed as I pulled the gun up to my temple.

In a moment, no one would be here anymore.

I took my last deep breath and set my finger on the trigger.

Right as I was set to end it all, something went off in my head.

It was the dog's rage.

Suddenly blinded, I pulled the trigger on myself, missing my head and instead getting a bullet lodged in my neck.

I gagged and collapsed to the ground, blood spilling out of my wound.

Shocked and still incapacitated, I half-sobbed with the rest of my strength as I slowly began to die.

I, truthfully, hadn't won.

The dog had.

All that time, I thought the dog was in my grasp, but I was wrong.

The devil never dies.

As my eyes began to flutter closed, I heard the dog in my head. I would hear nothing else.

"GOOD NIGHT, OWNER."