The Missing

Sep 5, 2008 by Andrew Kunz

“It had been a nice day out, the day he left me and Kristi behind, and I was heading home from work with Kristi, after picking her up from school. The sky was clear, not a single cloud hung above us, just the sun beaming down on us like a spotlight on the world,” she began, “I had been promoted that day as well, so I was excited to go home and tell Damien about it, maybe go out somewhere fancy for dinner to celebrate,” she paused and took a deep breath, clearly still upset about what Damien had done to her, if that Damien was the father, at this point Andrew wasn’t sure if he was just a roommate or not.

“He got off work fifteen minutes before me and was always home before me, waiting for me to hold me and kiss me, but not this day, this day was different. Something must have happened at work because that was the first time I had seen him that obsessed with whatever he did at his work, he never did tell me,” she continued, “I hadn’t make the conclusion that he worked with this kind of stuff from his rambles every night about it, I thought it was just a hobby he had come to enjoy, but I followed him to work one day, and then it all made sense to why he acted the way he did some nights, but it didn’t explain the way he acted that one particular night,” she paused again and took another breath. Andrew stayed in the kitchen, preparing their midnight snack while he listened.

“I unlocked the apartment door, but instead of walking into my cosy two bedroom apartment that I had always loved, I walked into Hell. Damien had trashed everything in a furious attempt to do something; I didn’t know what it was at that point. He had painted some symbol on the floor in white; he claimed it to be a demonic summoning symbol that he was going to use to summon a demon from Hell to do his bidding,” she said as she stood up from the couch and began to walk around the living room, marking with her finger where the circle was, it had taken up almost the entire living room, if hers was the same size as Andrew’s.

“He was sitting in the corner, knees to his chest, gripping a thick black and red book, and he looked like he hadn’t showered that day, which was odd because I was woken up that morning by him singing in the shower,” she said as she now stood in the corner of the room, indicating that was where Damien had been, she had smile on her face for a brief moment as she remembered Damien singing in the shower every morning, she had simply adored his singing voice, she was certain she still would, but she didn’t want to be anywhere near him to hear it ever again.

“I stood just outside the circle he had painted, holding Kristi still, afraid to let her go, in case he had already summoned something and it would attack her if I let go of her, and I just stared at him, in complete shock about what he had done, or was about to do for that matter. After a few minutes of staring at one another he finally got up and stepped into the circle’s center, stepping over the paint marks like they were sacred or something,” she added as she moved to the middle of the room, playing it out in her head so she could remember it all exactly as it happened.

“‘Stay back!’ he ordered me as he opened the book to a random page. Suddenly he became very serious, like if I didn’t do as he told me, he’d seriously hurt me, so I did as he ordered and stepped away from the circle, backed up against the door,” she continued, pointing a finger at the door to Andrew’s apartment, “He then began to chant something, I couldn’t understand it at all, probably was in Latin, and I never took Latin in High School, I took Spanish, seemed more logical than learning a dead language no one spoke anymore. Anyways, he began to chant something in Latin in an attempt to summon some demon from Hell that he could control,” she paused for a moment to take a breath as she was out of breath.

Andrew placed the food on the table and beckoned her over; she took a seat next to him, but continued to tell the story between bites of her sandwich. “After he finished casting his spell, he stood in the center of the circle for a few minutes; I still stood against the door holding Kristi in my arms, afraid that any minute the floor would tear open and fire would reach out of the holes in the ground and some kind of demonic creature would crawl up and stand in front of Damien, but after what seemed like forever, nothing happened and then he began to freak out,” she said as she paused to take another bite of her sandwich. She didn’t continue for a while though, she just sat there and ate the rest of her sandwich.

“He tossed his book to the floor and ran over to me and started yelling in my face, I don’t think he cared if Kristi heard him curse, but I did. I tried to cover her ears, but he just screamed louder, calling me names and a whole bunch of other things. He apparently believed that because I was in the room with him, that his summoning didn’t work, but it didn’t work, because it’s impossible to summon a demon, they don’t exist,” she said as she stood up from her chair and moved over to the fridge to see if there was anything to drink.

Pulling out a bottle of water, she cracked the lid and took a long glug before continuing. “The look in his eyes scared me more than anything had ever scared me before, it was horrifying. I felt like I was looking into the eyes of an actual demon, it horrified me. Then he pulled a small dagger out of nowhere, it had some weird inscriptions on, probably in Latin as well, and right in front of Kristi, he dug it into me,” she said as she lifted the back of her shirt to reveal a fairly large scar on her side, just above her waist. Andrew looked over to where she was standing and looked at the scar she had from where Damien had stabbed her long ago.

“Ouch.”

“At first it didn’t hurt,” she continued with a nod of her head, lowering her shirt and taking her seat at the table across from him again, placing the bottle of water in front of her. “At first I just stood there, shocked that he had just dug a knife into my side, the pain didn’t trigger until after he pulled it out and I felt the blood pouring down my skin. ‘You just had to be here didn’t you? I could have succeeded had you not shown up!’ he yelled at me as he pushed me aside and swung open the door and walked out into the hallway. I didn’t know what to say, I wanted to stop him, try to help him, but he seemed so distant from me,” she said as she took a pause to drink from her bottle of water. Her throat must have been dry from telling this entire story like that.

Andrew didn’t mind her pauses; it gave him some time to attempt to process it all in his head before she started again. “‘You’ll pay for this!’ he yelled at me before he took off down the hall towards the stairs at the other end. I haven’t seen him since. I changed the locks on the apartment and have been living there with Kristi ever since,” she finally finished. It was a very strange story indeed; at least Andrew thought it was strange.

The name’s Andrew, I’m 18, turning 19 in February, I love to read anything I can get my hands on, and write anything that comes to mind; People say I’m fun, exciting, and interesting, to say the least; I’m an addict of music, can’t live a sane life without it, and I listen to quite a lot of different genres; and I love to watch Movies. My website’s called Anime Gallery. You can read more of my writing there.