Making a Demon: Distillation

Screams, hundreds of them, howled in waves. Sometimes they joined together in choral unison, almost like a hymn, sometimes in overlapping layers clashing to be heard. It was as if the tortured voices from every hospital and from every war zone that had ever been were replayed at once, running together.

It was hard to get a sense of where they were coming from. There was only darkness that stretched forever in every direction in a black and endless void. They sounded like they were coming from everywhere; echoes of myself.

There was such absence, such space. And there was pain. Sometimes the pain was a relief from absence. Sometimes it went the other way. I felt it all: burning, aching, white hot and electrifying. Bitterly cold. Unbearably itchy. The spinning falling of vertigo. Poked, prodded, stabbed, cut. Sawed. Punctured.

When the pain went away, there was relief but not for very long. Relief only gave way to foreboding while I waited for the pain to begin again as I knew it would. As it always had.