Hallowed Attic

I was on my couch watching television like the sloth I was when the heart-stopping, high-pitched whine of the emergency broadcast took over my speakers. My favorite program had given way to a black screen filled with white, capital letters that boldly stated, “EMERGENCY BROADCAST IN PROGRESS.” This was nothing new, the government or whoever controlled it would use it occasionally to warn us about flash floods, as if those ever happened when it rained, or as tests to make sure the damn thing still worked or something.

But this time was different.

There were red, flashing words in the same style of the words above them that made my hairs stand on end.

“THIS IS NOT A TEST.”

All at once the whine stopped and gave way to an uncanny human voice, speaking in a eerily professional tone. “This message is being broadcast by the Department of the Defense of the Republic. Reports coming in from across the nation are describing encounters with aggressive beings of unknown origin. For your safety, please carry out the following instructions.” I stood on the edge of my seat, my heart thumping against its cage of ribs that bound it.

My TV lead to another black screen with white letters still splayed across the center, dead silence filling the air save my own breathing. “At this time, make your way to the nearest church or religious center if you can do so quickly. You will be safe there.”

I thought, {“Well that’s cool, the nearest one’s about ten minutes away by ca-”} before my still reading eyes extinguished my hopes.

“Go by foot or bike. Do not use a car.”

Fuck.

The screen quickly changed to new words explaining what to do if you couldn’t get to a church within five minutes. “Enclose yourself in the most secluded portion of your home.” The bathroom didn’t have a lock, I busted it years ago in an accident. The attic’s hatch didn’t have one either, but it opened upwards and could be kept down with enough weight. “Bring with you essential supplies such as food and water.” A shiver went down my spine at the realization of my dwindling food and water stores. I had planned on going shopping tomorrow. Damn it all!

“If you have any religious items, keep them close to you.” What the hell? What emergency warranted the use of those? Not like it mattered, I didn’t keep any in the house. “If you are in possession of holy water, pour it around your house and on yourself.”

I couldn’t stop myself from verbally exclaiming, “What the fuck?!” What was going on?!

“If you can, form a barrier at the entrance of the room.” I had a gut feeling that wasn’t going to do much. I prayed the broadcast had better information than just ‘barricade yourself in a corner.’

“Keep a knife or firearm by your side at all times.” I understood that for any emergency, albeit I cursed myself for being too cheap to buy one after all this time. “Do not interact with anybody outside your enclosed space.” Easy enough but also useless. Was this all I was going to get? “Be prepared to defend yourself.” Oh Christ. It had to be kidding me. It didn’t have any better advice?! “Do not cry or make any noise.” I was about to move out of my living room when a new message flashed upon the screen, stating, “Most importantly,” leaving the rest of the information locked behind some sort of pause. My attention was wrenched back to the screen, my eyes slowly widened as my jaw fell slack at the last message of the broadcast before it began to repeat itself.

“Do not be afraid.”

My instincts sent me scrambling long before my mind recovered from the shock of the message. As I rushed outside, I saw others scrambling themselves to either stock as many supplies as they could or to try and dash hopelessly towards the nearest church about six miles away. The poor bastards. I didn’t stop to worry about the others, I rushed towards the garage where I kept my water and began to haul the mini twelve packs towards the attic. Getting the stepstool to throw open the door and drag down the ladder upwards was easy enough, hauling the packs up was another challenge. Three times I ascended with a pack in hand before dropping downwards for the next. As if struck by an epiphany, I rushed towards the closet that held my old moving trunk, and began to fill it with as much junk as I could. Books, the weights of my old exercise kit, that paperweight I never used, anything heavy. Of course I had to be the dumbass to fill it before shoving it into the attic, making it the push upwards nearly impossible. Just from those two tasks alone, I could feel I was running out of time.

By the time I returned to my kitchen to gather food, outside the sky began to turn purple, before settling in a blood red, crimson hue in an approaching tide. I only had my hands on a meager few snack and junk foods I still had before I heard a low roar, dull at first, but quickly crescendoing into audible screaming. I ripped what was in my grasp from the shelves and madly dashed towards the ladder of my ‘safe’ haven. By the time I could hear the screams coming from outside my home, I had already drawn up the ladder, closed the hatch and moved the trunk over it.

The air in the attic was stuffy and fuzzy. The insulation certainly provided for a comfy bed, but would not protect from the outside cold. That’s what it was for after all. I situated myself near a corner away from the hatch with my food and water next to me. Despite the distance I put between myself and the door to what may have been hell on earth, it was still barely three body lengths away from me. Directly to my right was a window with immovable shutters that cast a stripped, crimson light directly upon the hatch.

Between starvation, dehydration, and rationing of my supplies, I could probably last a week or two before my hiding place became my tomb. But, maybe if I’m lucky, I could sneak out after a few days to grab some supplies and return here. Maybe something heavy, a phone too while I’m at it.

My hopes were shattered when the just barely audible squeak of my front door reached my ears. Silence fell across the room as I held my breath and breathed as softly as I possibly could. The soft, naked footfalls of some stranger approached the hall of the hatch, seemingly unworried. As they passed by my hidden hole, I stopped myself from breathing a sigh of relief in fear of being heard.

The footfalls cemented themselves in one spot, the cause of it seemingly shocked at some sight. Then, whatever was below began to sniff. It wasn’t until the sniffing had stopped and the feet began their shuffle back towards the attic’s entrance that my heart disappeared from my chest.

Fear.

It was smelling my fear.

My chest silently heaved up and down as the feet stopped directly underneath the hatch where it began to sniff deeper this time. Once. Twice. Then a third time, exhaling in a feminine sigh. “So that’s where you are.” it said. The thing’s voice was mature and sultry, each word spoken as if by a teasing and tempting dominatrix. I backed myself into the corner as the hatch began to shake, the trunk atop it doing well in preventing it from opening. The thing hummed, jerking the hatch in various directions as if to test it for how it opened. Wait, how...how the hell was it even reaching it in the first place?!

My question was shortly answered after the thing let out an exasperated sigh and spoke again. “Of course you’d tease me by leaving a stepstool nearby but locking the the door.” I heard the stool slide against the floor below as the thing beneath let out an exasperated sigh. “My dearest~ above me, why don’t you make this easier for both of us and come down now? I’ve such sensations to show you~.” As she...it spoke in its tone of a mother inviting her children for dinner, I forced my arm to create the sign of the cross across my chest. There was no way I was going to speak to what seemed like a legitimate demon.

	A long silence filled the gap between its request and when it broke the ice a second time. “The silent treatment? Still don’t believe that I know you’re up there?” I kept my lips sealed. Perhaps it would lose interest in me after a while. No sense going after stuff it couldn’t reach, like that one folktale with the grapes right? It paused before exclaiming, “Well. I guess if there’s nobody up there then there’s no one to mind if I do a bit of rummaging~.”

	Unexplainably, I felt my heart sink as I heard the demon sulk off deeper into the house, its stride relaxed and foot steps still audible. Judging from the direction it walked and the sounds of rummaging, the thing was in my bedroom. Even if it wasn’t touching me, I felt was being violated, the privacy I now once felt shattered along with my solitude.

	I heard the thing walking back towards the hatch, talking in a raised voice as it walked. “Nice family you have ~George~,” it emphasized my name as it spoke, “Mother, father and you. All that attention for yourself. I reckon I could find out how they’re doing once I find the free time.” It must’ve found my wallet, it had the only photo of mom and dad I had in this house. Not that it really mattered about their well being at this point, they’ve been dead for a while. “I must say George, at about the age of thirty and you don’t have anyone else? Seems a bit sad in my view.” Now it was insulting me for loneliness.

Fantastic.

	It seemed to sense my dejection-I wouldn’t put it past that-and quickly added, “Don’t take it the wrong way of course. I feel for your situation George. You could say I’m the solution to everything you-.” It paused, before letting out a chuckle. “I’m getting ahead of myself. And the worst part is I haven’t even introduced myself and went looking for your name without permission! I beg your forgiveness for this transgression and hope to make it up to you in the future.”

	What.

	Was a demon actually apologizing to me for going through my belongings without my permission? The demon interrupted my thoughts yet again. “By the way,” she stated, her tone sensual and inviting, “my own name is Ca~li~gula. No relation. But you can call me Cali if you want.”

	Caligula? Wasn’t that the name of that one roman emperor? She DID say no relation though. For the third or fourth time, I wasn’t keeping track, silence permeated the area. She sighed once again, before skulking off in the direction of the living room. Over the sounds of the occasional screaming-at this point it had mostly began to die down-I could hear my TV still blaring its warning before going into the silence of the following “advice” afterward. After a few seconds, Caligula began to laugh, almost to the point of hysterics. In between gasping breaths of air, she screamed out, “Are you serious? This is the advice they gave? This is why you’re staying a mute? By the Pit this is awful!”

	Her footfalls and laughter came back to the hatch as she started, “My dear George, I hate to tell you but the advice you were given is very...useless. After all, when the Christ had to repel Satan in the desert, do you think he had to remain tight lipped or be damned?” She had a good point, but by God if I was too give in that easy. She continued, “Well? Are you going to futily going to keep up the mute routine or will you talk to me like a normal human being?”

	I realized how dry my mouth had been from staying agap from my earlier fear. I licked my tongue and cleared my throat from the uncomfortable dryness. I began, “Well. Caligula. That may be true, but as God is my witness, I will-”

	“Let me stop you there,” she interrupted, “but as of now, I can say that God is NOT witnessing you right now. He only witnesses the truly faithful and has already ‘saved’ them from the little deal he just made with his son. And considering that I haven’t smelled a single bit of faith in this house OR off of you...well.” I could feel her smiling from below, lounging on a wall in my imagination. “You might as well be honest and address the situation as YOU believe you should, rather than how He believes you should.”

	I wiped my forehead clean of the sweat that was acclimating. Was I, no, the world really on its own? I took another deep breath, formulating my new answer for delivery. I shouted out, “I don’t want to go down, I’m afraid for my life and soul! I don’t want to risk damnation of my soul, no matter how fucked I am already!”

	She responded, “If it makes you feel any better, you’ve already been left for ‘dead’ already. And even then, it’s not so bad being damned. By the Pit’s depth it’s honestly people just making a big deal out of all this.” I heard a thump below as her explanation wore on. Probably her hand or tail...s-who knows, I wasn’t going down to find out-thumping a wall to make a point. “And believe me, you’re honestly lucky I’ve taken an interest in you. There are certainly worse folk to run into believe me. The...eh, frustrated kind I call them. Even then I don’t want much out of you...at least for now~.”

	Her response raised further questions with me. What the hell could she possibly want? “Look, what do you want from me?”

	“I want to help your loneliness George,” she answered, “I often feel lonely too. With your soul, I feel like neither of us would have to worry about that ever again~.”

	Well that figures. Of course the demon from hell would want my soul for her to keep. I wonder how she planned to entertain herself with it. Flaying it alive? Burning it? The mere thoughts sent a shudder down my spine, the now cooling air of the encroaching evening adding to it.

	She spoke again from below, “I can smell you excreting fear again. I’ll tell you it’s not what you think it is. Whatever you think is going to happen is not going to be the case.” She paused for a moment as I sat there. “Honest,” she blurted out.

	Honest.

	A demon from hell.

	I don’t know why, but I shouted out, “Oh sure, like I’m supposed to believe that! How do I know you’re not pulling the demon act of lying through your fucking teeth about what you want or don’t want to do? Eh?”

	I could hear Caligula let out an exasperated sigh from below. “George, if demons constantly lied, why would people EVER want to make deals with them if they knew they were going to get fucked?”

	Goddamn it, these kinds of answers were starting to piss me off. “Listen, why won’t you give me a straight answer of what you’re going to do? What the fuck is it that you plan to do to my soul?”

	Caligula snapped back, “Why don’t YOU either come down or let me up and you let me SHOW you what I want to do?”

	I could only muster one response to this demand. “Fuck you!”

	She let out a frustrated growl from below. “At SOME point you’re going to have to come down George. You’ve only got to have so much sustenance to last you, and I’ll let you know now I am VERY patient. Centuries in the caverns of the Pit prepared me for this.”

	“Then I’ll stay up here until this place becomes my tomb then!” I replied.

	Something thumped beneath the hatch. “You have no idea how good I am at the waiting game George. You’ll go half mad trying to beat me.”

	I repeated in a mocking voice, “ ‘Ohh! You have no idea how good I am at the waiting game! You’ll regret this George!’ C’mon Cali, what’s the worst you can do, screech at me?”

	Silence.

	Then I heard her chuckle.

	Then I heard her voice directly in my ear shouting, “BOO!”

	I screamed as I threw myself away from the source of the voice, all the while she was laughing her head off at the action. As I sat there, my chest heaving in fear, she began to compose herself before repeating the line I had so mocked her for.

	“You have no idea.”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

	A week had passed at the rate of a snail sliding up a wall. Hell, a snail doing just that would make for good entertainment compared to sitting around.

	Cali wasn’t kidding about being good at the waiting game. In the beginning, it was small stuff that’d make me jump, a shadow moving past window frame, a hot breath or cold puff on a body part, I don’t know how she did it but she did. I shouldn’t of put it past her. That first night I was kept awake by what felt like caresses from another body every time I tried to fall asleep. The fact it was freezing that night didn’t make matters any better.

	That morning she had the gall to ask me, “Did you sleep well?”

	Bitch.

	I was fine with the water packs, I just threw them into a corner when I drank them, there was also the other corner for the bathroom. I kinda hoped  I wouldn’t have to worry about it. The junk food was alright at first, but I began to get stomach cramps from eating it nonstop.

	Entertainment was hard to come by. Looking out the window became risky, every so often a red, feminine arm would either reach out to grab at me from behind the frame or I would see the beginning of a face peering in or just retreating from out of view. The books I left in the trunk, they were either essentially manuals and tutorials for different things I had an interest in previously or I was too scared to remove due to weight. Talking with Cali was a coin flip. While some conversations were interesting, others often wound up like this.

	“So why is it that hell’s breaking loose?”

	“God decided he got tired of His creations running amok, killing each other, turning the land into a hellscape and decided to just let His fallen Son deal with it. Get two birds with one stone. So, in short, he let them come up here. Hey, I have a question George.”

	“What?”

	“Can I come up there?”

	When I answered “No,” she would usually do some sort of trick, sending a disposed of bottle flying, a sudden touch or breath, something.

	By the fourth day it became more constant with the scares. I heard nondescript whispers constantly as a new sort of ambience. I could begin to feel her actually watching me, me trying to catch her in the act resulted in the face retreating from view deal. At this point, the junk food was taking a serious toll on me, I felt constantly sick while all of Cali’s tricks were going on. Once I had eaten the last of the chips, I felt myself heave, my stomach preparing to announce it’s discontent.

	Rushing to the bathroom corner, my stomach propelled the remains of my latest “meal” into the corner where the bags of piss and shit lay. Once I was done, eyes teary and probably red, I heard Cali knocking on the hatch, shouting, “Are you alright up there? You don’t sound like you’re in the best health.”

	As I wiped my mouth clean of vomit, I realized that the whispering had all stopped. And not only that, I heard what I could assume was genuine concern coming from Cali. It was shocking to hear that kind of stuff from a demon of all things. I sat there dumbfounded, only to answer, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m alright. It’s just all this junk food I’ve been eating. I don’t actually have anything else to actually eat as a matter of fact.”

	“Does that mean,” she started, full of excitement, “that you’ll be coming down soon?”

	When I responded no, she simply hummed, the stool she told me she’d been sitting on screeched against the floor as she seemed to sit back into it.

	Then one of the empty bottles flew at my head.

	That night was I think the coldest of the week and, coincidentally, she had asked me earlier that day if the nights got cold in this area, to which I responded yes. When I felt the warm caress of some other body, I didn’t bother looking over to see what it was. I was simply too cold for caring. That morning, I awoke to the whispering, of course, and a new commodity, a tree of broccoli that I kept on hand for a side during dinner.

	As I awakened with a yawn, I heard Cali’s voice beneath me ask, “Good morning George. Did you sleep well?”

	I had to admit, she was starting to grow on me.

	By the fifth and sixth day the scares had become annoyances at this point, like a fly buzzing around. The morning surprises, while small, were usually nice of one of the different things I had about the house, a few apples here, a carrot there, stuff I didn’t use besides for dinner. During the night the caressing became a gift from, well, the Pit I guess. The warmth made the nights bearable, the touch of another affecting me in a physical way I never felt before. It felt like...I don’t know. Affection I guess.

	By the seventh day, my supply of water was nearly exhausted, and the stench from the corner was becoming unbearable. I could almost sense Cali getting tired of the game as well, the whispering was no longer as intense as it had been. The caresses I felt during the day were more lingering and almost of a deeper feeling.

	As I finished the last bottle of the packs, I tossed it towards the corner, stating aloud, “Welp. That’s the last of my water.”

	“Hm,” I heard her hum from beneath, “that’s a shame. You could always come down to get more. I won’t complain.”

	I rubbed my head as I sat up in my corner. “Cali, why is it that you want me to come down there so bad, besides the whole ‘wanting my soul’ deal?”

“Wasn’t it obvious this whole time?”

	I cocked my head sideways at her question. “Not really no.”

	I heard a soft thump of her leaning against the wall below. “Obviously you can put together that I can get up there as I please. That this whole time I could go up there whether you liked it or not.”

	That did make sense. Kinda figured after the caressing bit and the gift of broccoli. I hummed in acknowledgement.

	“So,” she started again, “the reason I’ve been letting you stay up there is...well.” She paused, almost uncomfortably long. When she spoke again, her tone was more subdued “...I want you to...how do I say this...I want you to...to give yourself willingly. To say that you’ll let me in. Physically and, I don’t know, I guess spiritually?”

	What? She wanted me to essentially turn myself in and to end the siege? Under her authority? I racked my brain with any questions that I could ask to try and shed light on the new discovery. All I could think to ask was, “Is earlier what you wanted?” When she hummed questioningly, I repeated, “Is what’s been going on the past few days with the...I don’t fuckin’ know the hugging and the food gifts what you wanted with my soul?”

	For the first time since the first day, when I watched that emergency broadcast’s instructions, silence ruled over the vicinity. We both remained silent, me waiting for the response while I figure Cali was thinking over how to answer my question. It was about five minutes before she mumbled, just audibly, “Yes.”

	I stood up, stretching my limbs as I looked about the room. The insulation was fucked and would need to be redistributed in the future to keep heat inside. The one corner would also need to be cleaned up but I was less giddy about that task. I looked towards the hatch and raised my voice, loud enough so that she would not be able to misunderstand what I was saying.

	“Alright Cali. You’re welcome to come up here. I’m willing to...I don’t know surrender myself you. If you want, I will even come out so that we don’t have to talk in the stuffy heat up here.”

	Silence.

	Then, I felt a familiar cold breeze before I felt a pair of arms wrap around me from behind, one grabbing my waist while the other red arm snaked up from my armpit and to my opposite shoulder. Something wrapped around my thigh, looking downwards it was a black, leathery tail ending in a spade tip. Two, black wings stretched themselves in front of me, before joining the others in embracing me. A hot breath wafted across my neck, then across my ear as I heard Caligula speaking her old sultry, delicious words directly into it, a chill running down my spine.

 “Oh my dear George~. I’m ~so~ glad about your decision. It’s ~just~ what I wanted to hear all these days.” Turning my head to gaze at her, her beautiful, young face greeting me, she made use of my movement to move her lips into my own, thrusting her tongue into my mouth. Gently she danced around my mouth, my tongue dancing with hers as if our maws were a ballroom. She pulled away just as quickly, spit connecting our tongues, and said, “Now~. We have some lost time to make up for~.” She kissed repeatedly at my neck as the hand around my waist sneaked beneath my pants and into my underwear.

I had just enough rational thought to ask, “Let’s move this to the bedroom first. I’d rather not smell the corner in here any more.”