And The Heavens Fell Silent by Maria Louise (beach read TXT) 📖

        It was all apart of sacrifice. The devil had somehow deceived all theses people into thinking that they needed to sacrifice blood and pain in order to follow him. The worst part of it all was, that these people would trade their very flesh and blood to follow a god so wicked that he craved their pain.

        Oh, God. Please help these sick people. They need to be well again. And Lord, please help me to. I do not know if I want to continue living in a world so wicked as this.

I fell to my knees dry heaves racking my body. The child slowly pulled himself from my arms and snuggled back into his mother's murderous one. His mother seemed shocked and a little disappointed that I would not sacrifice her child.

        I was pulled upwards from the filthy ground. I did not struggle nor even blink as the woman who had captured me roughly pushed me forward into a trance like walk. She scolded and beat her son who gave me the food and she yelled and slapped me to. None of which I felt nor even heard. I was hollow and empty. Like a grave that had been dug, but left alone. Never to be fulfilled with a body. Never to know its purpose.

        I was so far gone that I could barely hear the cruel lady tell her son, “Now get ’er cleaned up in that stream, then will take ‘er to the auction. People ‘ere lika the freak type o’ girls. She will be da’ best price in da’ biddin’. Make a nice breeder this girl.”

I was brought out of my trance when I felt the dreadful feeling come upon me once again. The feeling of ever impending doom.

      Someone was watching me. Waiting for the right moment to take my life.

        I gazed across the crowd of hundreds, trying to find the deadly eyes of my stalker. It was impossible to single anyone out though. They all wore the same scars and the same hungry expressions, wanting greedily to possess me, and have me as their own. They wanted to enslave me, a curse worse than death.     

        The building I was in was magnificent and horrific, just like every other part of the city. It was a huge rounded stage with hundreds and hundreds of rotting velvet seats lining the stone walls. The ceiling I could not see. It was nothing but a dark abyss. The room in general was dark. Only a few torches flickered about the room. Most the lights was directed around the stage so that the bidders could gaze upon the prize. Besides the magnificent room, the most dominant feature of the place was the thick, eye watering stench of ammonia. My gaze faltered and I averted my eyes when I noticed all the dark urine stains across the wooden floor. This must be where they bring all the people they catch to sell. Like an animal when backed into a corner, horror overrides your logical thinking leaving only fear.

          My hands shook and my chin began to wobble as the men's teeth flashed hungrily, like the wolves in the dead forest. That must make me the week rabbit, whose flesh would be torn until there was nothing left but the stench of death.

        The bidders continually cat called and mocked me as I stumbled across the stage. Finally I could not bare the weight of their stairs any longer and collapsed to the wooden floor and settled down into it. The safety of my cloak had been stolen from me, so instead I used my hair as a stringy shield to hide my from their piercing eyes. The chains on my hands and ankles clanged together like bells and weighed me down so that I could barely move.

        A man with a missing leg and a crutch thumped onto the stage next to me with a greedy rotting tooth smile. I could smell his raw stench from four feet away.

        “This red girl here will start off at three pounds!” bellowed the smelly man, his voice carrying across the whole crowd. All hands flew up at once. They were not used to hair the color of blood, but more accustomed to the malnourished mass most of their sickly woman

had.

          “One at a time, gentlemen!” demanded the legless man. After that, he started talking so fast I could hear nothing but random number of pounds spitting out of his mouth. What did he mean pounds? Pounds of what? Most likely meat, and I did hear pigs snorting about the town. I knew pigs were one of the few creatures that survived the flare, because like humans, they would eat anything, even their own kind.

        The bidding wore on until my price was raised to ten pounds, then abruptly a large man walked into the dark stadium-like room. The man had more scars than anyone I had seen yet and also had what I thought was latin writing tattooed from head to toe. The man made me shiver. He had a presence of evil so strong I could feel it radiating in icy waves flooding the air. Everyone bowed down and dropped to their knees so quickly I knew they feared the person more than the devil himself.

        I sat up and glared at the evil man, knowing in my heart that he was the one who started the sacrificing and murder. A cat like smile curled up his scared inky skin revealing pointed white teeth, as he noticed my glare. He must file his to look more intimidating, but he did not need any help.

        “We heard you finally had a girl worth bidding for. We came to see if the rumor was true... We see that it is!” He said nodding towards me. “We will pay ten pounds, a loaf of bread and a old relic of the before time in trade for her.” His voice was like thousands voices speaking at once. I could not decipher whether it was low or high child or adult or even if it was loud or quiet.

        His voice made others around him whimper and cry out in terror. No one dared to bid against him.

        “Y-Yes my lord! I am sure the slaves previous owner will be just fine with your price!” squeaked the legless man. The woman that captured me stepped forward onto the stage and mumbled wide eyed into her chest, “Yah, that’ll do your most graciousness. I am much honored that ya’d buy my slave!”

        The man waved them off and they quickly scurried from the stage, leaving me alone.

        The evil man walked closer to the stage so that he was directly below me. His pupiless black eyes gleamed with mirth.

        “Stand up fire girl! We want to have a look at our prize!” said the evil man acting as though he owned me. Rage boiled my insides and it was nothing as meek as the bad temper I was accustomed too. A red haze fell over my eyes.

        “Futue te ipsum!” I spat at him. I quickly realized that what I had spoken in Latin, however, I did not know how speak it. Latin was the ancient language of the Devil.       

        I clasped my hand over my mouth, my eyes going wide. What I said to him was so obscene that I was in shock with myself. It was so awful that I even said a silent plea to God to forgive me for saying such words.The shock I felt was much the same as the wide eyed people around me. 

    I did not regret standing up for myself for one of the first times, but I was still ashamed for saying such things. If mother was here she would have given me a good talking to.  I squeezed  

my eyes shut and diminished all thought of her. I mustn't think of mother. I needed to stay strong for the ordeal that I knew was ahead of me.

        The evil man's face was flushed red with anger and his teeth were bared revealing their carnivorous tips.

        Be brave Yram. Mother would have wanted you to be brave.

        “Stand. Up. Now.” growled the man of a thousand voices.

       I felt my monster rise. For too long I  had hung my head low and let people walk all over me. For too long I had submitted. A new powerful side of myself kept surfacing, as if it had been patiently waiting until I was at my weakest. Either way, his words heated my blood, making it so that I could not control what I said next.

        "Discedere ad inferos!" (Go to hell!)

        “Oh crimson girl,” said the man, “you are already here with us.” I did not realize until just then he had been speaking, like me, in Latin the whole time.

        With a shock, a veil fell over me. The veil tightened its grip and wrapped itself around me, suffocating me. It then, burst into flames.

        While fire licked my skin and melted it off my body, I arched my back in pain and let out a animistic, blood curdling scream. I had just enough sanity left in me to realize there was no inflamed blanket on me. He was playing with my mind. A man was making me burn alive, though doing me no harm physically. A man wasn't suppose to be able to do that. Though the thought terrified me that he was not human and that mother had been right about demons all along, but it also gave me strength. I was not actually burning alive. I was safe from all but my mind, and I had the power to control that.

        Once I understood the burning sensation was only that, a burning sensation, I could think around it.

      If my mothers preachings were correct, the man of a thousand voices was possessed by multiple week demons. Demons that were not strong enough to make form so instead used someone else's body as a shell, or hide for them to live in.

        “Stand up!” said the possessed man confidently.

        I did. I would let him think he won, for now.

        A huge toothy smile was wide upon his face as he told me, “Now come to us, little crimson girl. You are ours now.”

        Oh, if only he knew just how wrong he was.

        I suppressed a dark smile of my own.

        What had I become?

Leadership ... the ability to see what no one else sees, to listen when others talk and the ability to be optimistic when others are pessimistic. -- George W. Cummings

  Darkness, that’s all I could see. Everything around me was dark, except for a small pinprick of flickering light that lay at, what I could only assume was, the end of the road. I’m still not quite sure why I kept walking, what possessed me to go the last mile. My body was so tired that I could have curled up and fallen asleep on the dead grass that lined the