Entry 1/1/2012 - I know what the sun is.
For the past five years I have been "hunting" down these horrifying creatures. These devils as I like to call them are all different in appearance. The only thing they share is that they all cause events of great disaster. The weakest ones are usually responsible for airplane turbulence. Not to say they can't take lives. Planes crash for a reason.
The worst ones can be seen by other humans. The strongest hoard values and exploit those below them, all with a smile on their face. Much like in nature, their smiles are of aggression, and they take at nearly every opportunity.
These ones are often guarded by many of my own kin, though slowly their protectors are corrupted by their mere presence. I call these infected puppets, for though they too accept my offerings they bring no grand disaster with their death.
As for their masters, I've only gotten three in these five years, one was youthful, it took the form of a politician, as many of its peers do. The second owned many businesses, all within the same field and all highly exploitative of its workers. The third though not so directly high profile as the others was active in human trafficking.
All three of them were found passing down the street with no protection, a clear sign of their youth. It was simple to identify them purely through physical appearance. No matter how good they were they still showed through the holes in the noses and their open mouth smiles the foulness of their wretched forms.
I only needed to take the clay that I've learned to keep on my person and throw it at them with some hair forcefully molded in. My offering speech was fast as well. "Oh foul wolf who knows only voraciousness, take this alm and leave, your hunger will not be satisfied here."
As for the disasters they left behind, one had the crime rate skyrocketing for one whole month, another had suddenly engineered an economic depression in the area, and the other had brought many humans to suicide with its death.
Beyond these disgusting things I've encountered many exotic devils in my travels. In the sands of the desert I've seen a shimmering mass of limbs, human and not, which released a powerful heatwave upon its departure. In the great seas I've seen flying devils that brought about the fiercest of storms. In the cities I've encountered packs of false children who've already consumed and disguised as their counterparts, these devils held husks as they stole the lives of many. Their departures did not bode well for the families of the victims.
Near the dry grasses I've found false quadrupeds. Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. They were not ducks. Their infernal hunger releases grand fires as I release them from this mortal coil.
In my first year I had allowed one to simply grow, to fester and to erupt as I believed that the disasters caused by my "hunt" would take too many lives.
I was wrong. Even now I cannot shake the horror I felt when that devil released itself. The skies were dyed with the red of the sun for months. This was the first catastrophe that I've witnessed with my own eyes. In the roar of the flames I searched for the devil, and I saw it, always in the center of the fire, its eyes showed hunger beyond belief and yet it couldn't act on it as it had already expended its full self in search of an offering.
That time was also when I first saw signs of the earth mother waking. I saw the grounds crack, I saw them shake, quake in pain. I heard the groans of the mother as I fell to the ground. No other could sense it, much like how no other can see the devils that I see
I remember it so vividly, the ground itself being consumed by the fire. The trees shrieking ghastly cries as they burned. The innocent children of the father and the mother hauntingly restrained by the fires as they screamed for help. Their cries muffled by the flames.
The flames parted around me, this devil could not claim that which I didn't offer, knowingly or unknowingly as long as I didn't step into them without care I could not be taken whole.
All of California fell, and I watched helpless as the devils that were still there left to prey upon more. I needed to hunt, I needed to be able to find them.
So I learned. I learned to chase after these devils, to sniff out their burrows, I chased their tails until I collapsed. I found their lies and traced them. I looked at their causality and hunted them.
Enough of this.
After the first catastrophe I resolved myself to seek as many of these devils as I could. My offerings of clay and hair to be distributed across the world.
I've done much to cull these devils and have spent the last five years restlessly chasing them. In all this time I've learned their rules, that for every offering they receive, they must give the offerer an equal offering. So to the hurricanes of the east I offered my body.
Admittedly I had nearly given in to despair. But in return I received a body, weaker, yet faster and way more convenient for my goals. So I offered, I offered and took as much as I could.
It was never enough. Over these five years there were only more and more disasters happening around the world. Monsoons, typhoons, hurricanes, hailstorms, more wildfires, volcanoes, and human made ones with nuclear power plants around the world facing catastrophic failure. I could not be in every place at the same time. For every one disaster I thwarted, three others would have already exploded. That I could hold out for the earthmother for all these years is a miracle in and of itself. I could tell, that when the earthmother wakes these disasters will rise in full and leave nothing behind for us children of the holy father and the great mother earth.
I did not know what would happen after, but I do know one thing. In all the chaos of my hunt I know for certain. I saw the sun blink, and when it did, I felt three things from its descending presence. Malice, the loss of all probability, and something that I can only describe as entropy but not exactly entropy, because how can entropy come with malice?
This journal has the blessings of the holy father and the earth mother, if nothing else it shall survive even if the mother and father disappear. I hope that another who can see them will discover this, and that it will help them in releasing the devils from this plane of existence.
When I am the last human alive, I will see what happens when I offer something to the sun.
This will be my final journal entry, I will not live to see the tomorrow of this wretched life.
-Alex Stern
______________________________________________________________________________
"Hey Lex!" A familiar voice called out.
"Michael, I thought you died long ago." Alex responded.
"I wish I did too pal, global warming is really insane, I can't believe all this shit happened in the past five years." Michael said.
"What luck, that we're some of the few last humans on this rock."
"Tell me about it." Alex leaned onto a wall, staring at the sun.
Michael smirked. "How'd you survive this bullshit Alex? last I heard you decided to take a trip off your pills and left the state."
Alex laughed.
"Ha! I could show you, but I don't think you'd want to see it."
Michael changed his posture forward.
"Oh? What did you do? you gotta show me man, I've just been lucky getting here before the others. You're making it sound like it wasn't luck for you."
Alex smiled.
"You'll never unsee what I'll show you, are you sure you want me to do this?"
Michael shifted a little.
"Man if you're gonna mercy kill me just do it already, I just gotta know.
Alex sighed.
"Right, then don't move."
Alex took his eyes out, they fell out easily. His eyesockets now hold an endless abyss in place of his eyes. He turned his hand over to Michael's face.
"Hey hey! What the fuck is going on!!?!"
Alex smiled, "You wanted to see didn't you? You'll keep your eyes, don't worry."
Alex placed his eyes before Michael's and they were superimposed upon Michael's eyes.
"What in the fuck."
Michael blinked, his mind trying to process what just happened.
"There's worse buddy. Look at the guys over there."
Michael looked over. What was originally just a gang of the encampment bullies were horrid creatures of rot and corruption, the man in the center being the foulest of the batch.
Michael nearly keeled over to vomit, but Alex stopped him.
"That's just one of them, look at that tornado in the distance."
Michael steeled his stomach and looked, what he saw was a ginormous mass of white colored creatures, all amalgamated into one creature. One with countless limbs and just as many faces. Human, animal, and bug.
Michael paled, "A-a-are they all like this?"
Alex chuckled, "Remember how all of those disasters started happening more and more often?"
Michael nodded, fear evident on his face.
Alex spoke. "They've been growing in numbers for years, all of them. Plus, there's one more that's probably been here since before we were born."
Michael was shaking in fear. "W-what?"
Alex smiled again. "Look at the sun."
Michael looked up, dread upon his face as he saw, the sun?
"It's normal?"
Alex spoke. "Give it a second."
seconds passed.
Michael continued sweating.
And then, it blinked.
"Holy shit."
"Holy shit indeed."
Alex put his hand out, "Gonna take those eyes back now."
"O-ok."
Michael's eyes fell out, revealing his original brown eyes. in the socket. Alex took his eyes back and put them into his sockets once more.
"So Alex, you knew beforehand and moved before anyone else?"
"No, do you remember California?"
Michael nodded. "Yeah that huge wildfire, one of those things." His voice was shaky.
"So with these devils I've been giving them bits of my uh, hair and they would disappear with localized incidents."
"What?"
"Think small sinkholes, anyways, I didn't do that in California and that shitfest happened."
"But what about before California? There weren't such huge incidents before."
"The plague, the wars, Hitler."
"Hitler was one of them?"
"Probably, just look at those guys over there."
"I uh, I think I'm good." Michael looked like he wanted to vomit again.
"So they've been appearing more often right? And I figured out that I could appease them and keep their incidents contained and relatively low in casualties right?"
"Yeah."
"But then there came more."
"Oh."
"And more."
"Shit."
"And even more."
"Fuck."
Michael took his head in his hands. "We're so dead, man."
Alex smiled. "Probably, funny thing is, the earth is a good guy."
"So there's hope?" Michael looked up.
"Nah, she's gonna die really soon after she wakes up."
"What the hell is even going on man."
"This is the last day, ain't nothing to do, and nothing we can do."
"Fuuuuck."
They looked into the sunset.
"If we wake up tomorrow then I'm just gonna jump off a cliff." Michael despaired.
"I'm gonna offer something to the sun." Alex said.
2/1/2012.
Alex awoke to find that all the humans in the final settlement of humanity had disappeared. He looked around him to see that the disguised devils were still there, confused and hungry.
"Oh foul beasts take this alm and be cast away!"
Alex ripped off his fingers and threw them at the devils within the camp. Soon he was surrounded by naught but the sound of distant disasters.
He felt his connection to the earth mother, her final strength ready to take action, but waiting for his final action on this land.
"I get it, you sent them away, to, a sibling?"
Alex could barely translate what the earth mother tried to convey.
"And I had one last thing to try so you waited."
The earth mother gave affirmation.
"Then, I'll do it now."
Alex took a deep breath and faced the sunrise. He prepared his breath to be as loud as he could, for even if the sun couldn't hear him, the offering exchange would still follow under the rules of the cosmos.
"OH DEVIL BEYOND THE SKIES!" He bellowed, establishing the recipient.
"I GIVE UNTO YOU!" He established the gifter.
"MY FULL AND UNDIVIDED ATTENTION!" His 'gift' to the devil, and the devil's gift to him.
"YOU MAY HAVE TAKEN THIS PLANE!" The sun blinked.
"YOU MAY HAVE DEFEATED THE MOTHER!" One cannot simply banish the sun.
"I SHALL TAKE YOUR VESSEL, I SHALL SUNDER YOU FROM YOUR PERCH!" So he binds a vow between the two.
"AND I WILL END YOUR INFLUENCE! ACROSS EXISTENCE!" And with the finished vow, he will be certain to eliminate him, no matter the cost.
The earth mother, determining that Alex had finished his task, opened a gateway, her whole body spiraling into one gate taking Alex in its embrace, crushing everything else left on the planet.
All that remained was the lifeless planets of the solar system, and the wretched sun.
The sun, along with every single star in all existence, turned their gaze to a new world.