The fluorescent hum of the office lights drills into my skull, a monotonous soundtrack to the slow death of another Tuesday. Each tick of the clock above the water cooler is a tiny hammer blow against my sanity. I stare at the glowing screen, pixels blurring into meaningless shapes, trapped in this gray fabric prison until the final second mercifully releases me. 5:00 PM. Freedom. A sigh escapes my lips, heavy with the accumulated exhaustion of a soul-crushing day.

  I clock out, the punch card machine emitting a satisfying thunk, and shuffle towards the parking lot. The stale scent of old coffee and cheap air freshener greets me as I slide into the driver's seat of my beat-up sedan. The engine turns over with a reluctant cough. I sit there, idling, lost in the rearview mirror reflection of a life spent chasing paychecks under artificial light. Is this all there is? The thought hangs heavy in the recycled air. In that moment of quiet desperation, I have no idea that the next twenty seconds will detonate the foundations of my reality.

  A bloodcurdling scream shatters the evening calm, followed by the frantic pounding of running feet. My head snaps up. A woman, clothes ripped to shreds, crimson staining her pale skin from neck to chest, sprints towards my car. Behind her, four figures move with unnatural speed, axes glinting ominously under the parking lot lights. Their faces are contorted in expressions of pure, unadulterated rage, eyes burning with an unholy fire. They look… possessed. Utterly, impossibly possessed.

  Instinct overrides thought. My thumb slams down on the door lock button. Click. She wrenches the passenger door open, scrambling inside just as they close in. Their shadows loom large, distorted. I stomp on the accelerator. Tires scream in protest, spinning uselessly for a heart-stopping second before finding purchase. The acrid smell of burning rubber fills the car as we fishtail out of the parking space, leaving the axe-wielding horrors momentarily behind.

  My heart hammers against my ribs like a trapped bird. I risk a glance at the woman beside me. She’s a tangled mess of black hair and blood, tall and thin, her dark eyes wide with a terror that chills me to the bone. Road grime streaks her pale skin. Her whole frame trembles violently as she rocks back and forth, the screams finally subsiding into choked, repetitive whispers. "Mauled by a demon… mauled by a demon…" Blood. So much blood. It coats the dashboard, the seat, her torn clothes. It’s everywhere.

  She falls silent, a sudden, unnerving stillness. I take a shaky breath, trying to regain control. Then, her eyes snap open, wild and unfocused. With a guttural cry, she lunges, grabbing the steering wheel.

  "Just calm the fuck down!" I yell, panic tightening my voice. "You're scaring the shit out of me! Hospital! I'll take you to the hospital, leave you there! You'll be fine!"

  I wrestle the wheel back, the car swerving dangerously. Just as I regain control, a blinding light fills my side mirror. A deafening crunch of metal on metal throws me against the door. Sideswiped. Hard. A huge, hulking red truck – a Deuce and a Quarter, maybe? – grinds against my car, its single, malevolent headlight glaring like an evil eye. I look across, heart seizing, and meet the driver's gaze. Two glowing red pinpricks stare back from behind a crudely fashioned pillowcase mask.

  "What the FUCK is that?" I gasp, turning back to the woman. "I think your friends found us!"

  She’s slumped forward, face down against the dashboard, unconscious. A fresh wave of blood pools beneath her head.

  "Hey! Lady! Wake up! You're bleeding all over my dash!" I shove her shoulder, desperate.

  She jerks upright, not with consciousness, but with something else. Her head snaps towards me, eyes vacant, and she bites me. Teeth sink deep into my forearm with a sickening tearing sound. Pain explodes up my arm. First the axe freaks, now this bitch is trying to eat me?

  Adrenaline surges. I floor it again, weaving through the sparse evening traffic. But the truck is relentless, matching my speed, staying right alongside. Another brutal impact shudders through the car. The road narrows. Trees flash by on one side, oncoming headlights on the other. A school bus looms ahead. No escape. It’s them or the bus. Or…

  I wrench the wheel hard to the right. The world tilts violently. We leave the asphalt, airborne for a terrifying instant before crashing down onto the rough shoulder. My car slams into a thick oak tree with a sound like a bomb detonating. The impact throws me forward, the seatbelt biting deep into my chest. Through the starburst cracks spiderwebbing across the windshield, I see one of my front tires bounce off the tree trunk… and head straight back towards us.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I scream as the windshield implodes, showering us in a blizzard of razor-sharp glass shards. Pain flares across my face, my arms. Something sharp lodges in my throat. My ears ring with a high-pitched whine, vision tunneling towards darkness. Through the chaos, a sound cuts through – laughter. High-pitched, cackling, utterly insane. I force my swimming eyes towards the passenger seat. The woman stares back, eyes wide and manic, glass embedded in her bloody face, laughing like this is the funniest joke she’s ever heard.

  Glass in my throat, bleeding from a dozen cuts, and this bitch is laughing.

  My fingers fumble with the seatbelt buckle, desperate to get out, to escape this rolling coffin. Then I see them. Emerging from the trees, walking slowly, deliberately now. The axe-wielders. They carry their weapons loosely, chanting in a language I don’t understand – a guttural, ancient tongue that sounds like Aramaic or maybe Latin. My head swims. The bite on my arm throbs with a sickening intensity, swollen and hot. Feels like a goddamn heart attack in my wrist. Did she bite a fucking hole clean through?

  No time to think. The rhythmic thunk of axes smashing through the side windows jolts me back. Powerful hands grab me, grab her, hauling us from the smoking wreckage. One of the pillow-hooded figures seizes me in a chokehold, lifts me effortlessly, and hurls me across the street.

  I land face-first on the unforgiving concrete. Stars explode behind my eyes. I try to push myself up, but my limbs feel like lead. Weakness overwhelms me. Blood streams into my eyes, blurring the scene across the road.

  "What is going on?" I croak, the words barely audible. "What is all this? It’s gotta be some kind of cult… some kind of sick joke… a horrific movie… black magic…"

  I’m helpless. Even if I could stand, where would I run? The sounds… oh god, the sounds. Her screams are primal, filled with an agony I can’t comprehend. It sounds like they’re ripping her apart from the inside out. I blink, trying to clear the blood from my vision. Silhouettes move across the street. To my surprise, none surround me. I’m… clear?

  But over there… it’s like a scene from the goddamn Exorcist. Screaming, crying, the shriek of tortured metal as parked cars are flung through the air, smashing into the ground. Devastation. The strange motherfuckers with axes have her surrounded. My heart pounds. Are they gonna kill her? The thought chills me. I mean if they kill her, they’re killing me and that’s a fucked up situation.

  My vision slowly sharpens. They stand in a circle around her, bowing rhythmically, chanting those same incomprehensible words, louder now, insistent. "Hom-Sha-Bom… Hom-Sha-Bom… Hom-Sha-Bom…"

  Between their swaying bodies, I catch glimpses of her on the ground, convulsing. I squint, focusing through the pain and haze. She’s changing.Her skin shimmers, turning a sickly shade of green. Thick, repulsive scales begin to sprout, covering her arms, her torso. Her legs… they seem to melt and fuse together, forming a grotesque, serpentine lower body. Two jagged horns erupt from her forehead, tearing through skin and hair.

  She no longer resembles anything human. She has the body of a massive snake… with leathery wings sprouting from her back… and the devilish horns.She’s changing into a demon with every chant that they're saying in that language that I still don’t understand.

  Then, a blinding flash of light, like an explosion, erupts from the center of the circle.The ground starts shaking violently beneath me.On the side of a nearby building, reality seems to tear open, revealing a dark, swirling portal.A beam of pure, white light stabs upwards from where the woman lies. She rises, levitating within the beam, her transformed body still twitching, convulsing. She floats higher, towards the swirling vortex. Another blinding flash, a more violent tremor, and then… nothing. Blackness swallows everything.

  Sunlight streams through a window, warm on my face. Hospital. Sterilized air, the faint beep of machines. I try to sit up, but my arm is yanked short. Metal clicks. Handcuffed. To the bed rail. A uniformed police officer stands just outside my door, watching me.

  A nurse bustles in, checking my vitals. Her eyes meet mine, widen in panic. She stops mid-motion, calls out sharply to the officer, and practically flees the room.

  The officer steps inside, notepad in hand. Questions start, slow at first, then faster. What happened? Did I know the woman? Linda, he calls her. Where did I drop her off? Did I see the truck driver? His words blur, my head spins, the room tilts. It’s too much. The darkness rushes back in.

  The next few weeks are a fractured nightmare of sterile rooms, probing questions, and disbelieving faces. I tell the story, again and again. The woman, the axes, the truck, the bite, the chant, the thing she became. They nod, they write, but their eyes say it all: crazy. Maybe I am. I’m not sure I believe it myself anymore.

  But this new room… it’s quiet. The walls are soft. Meals come through a little slot in the door. No fluorescent hum, no deadlines, no soul-crushing routine. Just me. Alone. It’s almost peaceful.

  Except at night. In the deepest, darkest hours, just before dawn, when the silence is absolute. That’s when I hear it. Faint at first, then clearer, echoing from somewhere down the hall, or maybe just inside my own skull. A low, rhythmic chanting.

  Hom-Sha-Bom… Hom-Sha-Bom… Hom-Sha-Bom…