Daimon by DANIELLE BOLGER (e reader .txt) 📖

though every so often one would lunge forward and have a go at pushing me toward the threshold.

The Horizon. I wondered how much longer I had before I reached it.

This was not a safe place to be. I had to escape, and soon, if I wanted any chance to save my captive friend, but where was the exit and how could I escape from these cage bars?

Someone came from above with two hands clamped together as if holding an imaginary hammer. I tumbled through space and curved back around her so that my feet shot into her lower back, but just as I did, I felt a blow to my head so strong that I heard a crack resound in my skull. I can hear nothing out here except my head being pummeled, I thought dryly.

I turned to counter, but he shot a fist into my stomach and then grabbed my head with one hand and forced it down into his knee. As my nose collided, I felt the cartilage dislodge from the bone, the skin of which just contacting my cheek. He twisted my limp form and shot me backward with a sharp elbow. This sent me flying closer and faster to the black mass.

It was a bowling ball now, one of complete density.

I put on my brakes, but they struggled against the gravity of the mega-force. In front of me, I could still see light; behind me, I could still see light. Please let that mean I haven’t reached it yet—the horizon.

Dual attackers sought their next victory. I fought these both desperately, not allowing either to get the upper hand, but then there was an old woman who turned up out of nowhere, screaming silently. This shocked me so much that I failed to even see the guy at my left. He struck with a powerful front kick, and after colliding with his shoe, I soared like I was no more than a football, or some spoiled child's unwanted toy.

A ball, a toy, that's right, my snakelike voice analyzed. You're nothing but a form of amusement for Rose. If you fail here, he will be so disappointed that he never got to have a play.

“No!” I yelled silently. “If I can defeat Smoke, I can defeat his subconscious.”

The slithering voice interjected once more: You only won because you tricked him. He was always so much more powerful than you. Now you can see why. Now you can't do any dirty strategies to free yourself. You're a fool to think that you could ever possibly conquer this power.

I believed evil-snake-subconscious me. Fifty daimons, plus the Smoke core himself? Besides Rose himself, I doubted there could have been a more powerful culmination in existence.

No! I pleaded with who-knows-what. I have to get out of here. Please, help me. Zach? Somebody? My deceased friend remained silent for this battle. He had helped me out so much already that I felt he was here, beyond the grave, protecting me, but that was pure foolishness. Why would he protect a person that stole his heart away? Cruelly, and truthfully, I hadn't only done it in the crudest sense.

Help me, Zach. Help me! Whatever essence served me before had abandoned me now. With good reason, too, I assented.

Strikes came in from the right, the left, from out in front; I fought and blocked, but all the while, I kept getting moved inward. As long as I was fighting, my stance had me in the black hole's immense gravity, and this sucked me ever closer.

I needed to escape, but I wondered: as I fought and simultaneously lost my ground, or space I supposed, how could I achieve that? Worm holes could jump you through space in an instant, but the only place they have been postulated to exist that I knew of was within the core of a black hole. I could gamble that the hole would take me to where I needed to be. Inside, maybe there was just another layer that I could tread. Because this was all part of a subconscious battle maybe I wouldn’t be instantly crushed, but something told me that was all wrong. It was the pull, it wanted me too much, and I knew that anything that wanted me so badly would result in my death.

The event horizon was the end point. Whatever avenues remained beyond it would not have mattered if forces were great enough to collapse the atoms of a body.

I fought off another sweeping kick, which raised me upward and straight into another aggressor. He took hold of my shoulders and plunged a knee into my gut. I ploughed two fingers through his eyes before he was instantaneously sucked away by the black mass.

Okay, so, I'm in space. ET wanting to find home, how can I do that? Then a thought occurred: maybe earth was home, the exit to the madness, with the black hole the path to hell.

I panned through the endless glitter of space. Right, now where is dear planet Earth?

Such a gorgeous view; so many pretty stars; so proud of their glory they were not even twinkling. The number of yellowish stars was too great to count. The yellow star I searched for, marking the center of our solar system, could have been any one of those.

Chuck me a bone, I demanded to the universe. This is just nasty. How am I meant to survive without a single semblance of help?

I fought off a few more of them. Their blows were getting more powerful; either that, or I was getting weaker. All the while, the black spot swelled to the size of a soccer ball.

No help was coming—I was just beginning to realize that, which meant all was failed, or it was all up to me. I remembered my father's words: you can't rely on others to save you; because when you'll need it the most, they won't be there. You're all you've got. You have to fight your own battles; no one else will do it for you. No one will come to your rescue. You have to be strong. Use the fighting skills I have taught you, but also, the mental ones—they're the most important. Intelligence wins over force every time.

What about those kids at school? I thought in response to my father’s words. Who excelled in math, but then failed to see because some bully broke their glasses? I never said that one out loud to him, I already knew the answer: they were already resigned to defeat, that was why they lost.

My father was right, I decided, just because I was losing did not mean that I should give up. Even dying, I had to continue to fight.

Someone above my head tried a heel at my face, which I dodged. Then a girl to my left did a sidekick right towards my skull. Great flexibility, but the stretched movement gave me enough time to grip her ankle, twist it, crack it, and uppercut her in the ribs. Just as I was about to toss her aside, some guy jumped me from behind and wrapped his body around me.

I did a quick turn. The black sphere was now almost a meter in diameter. The core was still a long way off but its gravitational pull increased exponentially to my vicinity from it.

I had experienced a great number of rips in the surf of the Blue Coast. It boasted volatile beaches with shallow, yet powerful, dumping waves that on numerous occasions had me leaving the surf with a bleeding nose. However, even with the rough water movements, the outward pull of the surf was the beaches' scariest thing of all. Its rips were so powerful that, in a matter of minutes, those red and yellow flags were no more than a blurry hint at the shore. In fact, I had a close call once, with a rip so powerful that my angled stroke to the coast still would not direct me to safety. It was not until a very lucky wave broke, which I rode or was dumped by, that my feet were finally delivered back to the contact of the blissful, coarse sand.

This moment was similar, and yet the powerful drawing force was far greater than any other. Fighting the pull of the black abyss, fervently now, I could not even manage to gain an inch back to recover some distance. It had me; the gravity of the black hole finally had me. I saw my science teacher's face in my mind's eye then, floating behind me and fading away.

The daimons, my aggressors, stopped fighting me. Quite a few were being drawn like me and yet they were not fighting it. Why should they? They were already consumed by the darkness. There were others a little further off, and interestingly their images appeared stretched.

I looked at the black space, which had swelled to almost the length of my own body. I fought against the tide, yet it kept gaining momentum.

Ignoring my condemned outcome, I muted my senses so that I was able to take in that twinkling presence again. I was not surprised to find that all was reticent around me. My foes emitted no golden glitter since they were not living. The stars also went silent, which I supposed meant that my sensing ability applied to humanoid beings only. I panned around, looking for just the faintest of whisps, some trace of the planet I once inhabited, but discovered nothing.

Too far, I rationalized, too far from Earth to see any daimons sparkling, ushering me home.

This whole time, I fought against the gravity of the black hole, but I was lost to it. It sucked me further so that now it looked to be the diameter of my height; a friend, a fat and hungry one, that wanted to gobble me up.

They're out there. The real daimons will be sparkling with their monstrous auras.

I concentrated hard on my target—that blond boy who seemed incapable of harm and yet he hurt me greater than any other in my broken life. I only met the youth for a moment, a moment where he inflicted unbelievable pain upon me, but there was some feeling he left there, like a signature. I thought that maybe I could use this strange feeling he left me with, use it as an anchor in which to pull myself back home. I remembered that ethereally glowing figure in Zach's photograph, its vibrancy like looking into the sun itself. It was undoubtedly Rose; his power, his life force, so intense that it could sting from sight alone. With a force so potent, it was feasible; slim, but possible, that I could use it as a beacon in the depths of Smoke's subconscious to return home.

Ping. It was there for a second, no greater than that, but it was there. It was Rose; the beautiful boy situated on Earth some millions of light-years away. He was there, Earth was there, but I was far away, ensnared by this massive dark gravity. So then, how could I possibly reach him? How could I reach home?

The black sphere finally grew larger than me, and morphed into the diameter of a car. I gulped.

I had to get there; I had to get to that barely twinkling spot. The black was growing. Part of me accepted that I had reached that point-of-no-return, but another, more stubborn, part - the one that I had inherited from my father - argued that I was not there yet. Looking around me, light still shone brilliantly, even if eerily arched. Where there is light, there is hope, I decided.

That single-storied building was swelling into a two story flat.

Everything now—all of it. I commanded every photon into my feet and hands, and pointed them all towards that menacing darkness. As that energy shot from me, it appeared like golden ribbons extending deep into the darkness. There was a point where it stopped stretching, a point where it hit a black wall. That had to be the event horizon. Elated, I took comfort that I was not there yet, but I was not as far from it as I would have liked. I held far more mass than light, and thus was compelled by the force with a terrifyingly stronger grip. I hadn’t reached the point of hopelessness yet, but that didn’t necessarily mean my salvation wasn’t hopeless.

I continued to draw more energy, and with no restraints, it expelled from me in enormity. It pushed against the massive force valiantly, but it was still not enough. I had slowed my course but failed to reverse my direction. I stared in horror at the growing darkness—the boogieman's true form—and knew that this time he would win. He was about to swallow my light whole.

In my despair, I thought I could feel my mother's warm embrace. I may not be under the covers with you, but I will always be holding you, protecting you from the darkness. My mother's celestial glow flowed into me, giving me greater strength, which I poured to my limbs before finally shooting it out in a last mass release.

My hands and my feet were like volcanic mouths; hot, thick glowing power erupted from them. These tightly packed rivers of energy shot forward with fury and plunged deep into