Sin Eater'sJournal -Entry 40 Entry 40 Crawford whispered in my ear, telling me of my failure, telling me of how long my father had been under his control, telling me the sensation of the knife as he forced my father’s hand to slide it into my mother while she slept. The demon inside of me whispered in my ear, telling me of vengeance, telling me that it could give me the strength to heal my wounds, telling me of the reserve of power that I could take if only I reached out and claimed it. One was my enemy. One wanted to be my ally. In my guilt and pain, I started to believed both of them. I wanted to reach for that which was offered by the demon inside of me, the power. I coveted the idea of vengeance, for retribution against the monster that had taken my family. I wanted to give up the pain and the sorry and the guilt that was crushing me, and turn it into rage. At the same time, I was breaking, allowing my weakness and fear to roll me in its undertow and drag me out into a deep ocean that I would not return from, that would drown all of this nightmare away. I just wanted it all to end. Crawford rolled me over onto my back, breaking my scattered train of thought. The pain was immense- first as I landed on the raw shotgun wounds, second as he settled his hulking frame on top of me. My vision was still a red haze, and my head was fuzzy. It had been a very long day. Stabbed, shot, kicked…my body had used up its store of supernatural juice. The angel in my blood was struggling to hold the demon back and having a damn hard time of it. I hadn’t fed either of the spiritual creatures trapped in my body, and because of that the one I needed was weak and the one I had to control was to strong. Crawford knew this. Crawford had played me this entire time to get me to this weakened state. He had me chasing him and the Marked, using up my energy. He distracted me from maintaining my own needs as I followed the carrot he dangled in front of me. I had not fed the demon sin. I had not partaken from the joy of #life. Crawford was taking me to the edge and was trying to push me over the cliff. The demon inside me offered me power. The images of all those that had fallen flashed in my mind. Rage, hot and liquid flowed over me. I wanted Crawford’s head, needed to crush it between my hands. He killed my family, used my father like a puppet, took everything from me. I wanted to hear him squeal as I carved him like he carved up those three young women. I wanted him to beg, only to see his absolute ruin on my face. In my mind, I pulled myself from my prone position up onto my knees and I reached for the demon’s proffered gift. Just before I stretched my fingers out to grasp the glowing ball of power offered by my demon, Crawford drove a knife into my gut. I didn’t think the pain could get worse, but it did. My vision faded to black as Crawford twisted the blade and fresh waves of agony rolled through me. Back inside of my head, my fingers froze a half inch from the demon’s gift. I thought of my father. I remembered how he drove a K-bar through my gut (in much the same spot Crawford just had) to see if I was strong enough to survive, to see if I would fight or take the easy way out. My hand pulled away from the ball of power. And in a flash of intuition, I realized what Crawford’s game was. He wanted me to take that power. He didn’t want me dead. He want me broken mental and physically until my only choice was to reach out for help. He wanted me to bind with the demon inside of me. He had done everything in his power to break me down mentally and physically so I would be weak, so that the demon inside would be able to overwhelm me if I gave it even the tiniest sliver of a chance. Crawford was trying to help my charge escape it’s cage. The demon inside of me roared with frustration as my hand fell to my side. The darkness that surrounded me sprung to #life with flame. The demon reared up in front of me vast, and powerful, and unimaginably horrible in all it’s splendor. I rocked back on my knees shielding my face from the heat and stench of the thing. This was what was inside of me. I could feel it’s cold hate for the world, for me, for everything. I could feel it’s malice like toxic gas in my lungs. This is what Crawford wanted me to release onto the world, this denizen of evil. I may have failed my family in protecting them, but I couldn’t fail them in my duty to maintain control of this beast. I couldn’t unleash this thing on the world. It would be better if I died and it was sent back to Hell than allowing it to gain a material body (my material body) and using the world as its playground. The demon arched it’s back and screamed. Fire shot from it’s mouth in a geyser of heat and flame. I should have cowered. I’m sure that’s what the demon wanted, but I was to far gone to cower. I was all but dead, and fear had fled me. I looked at the beast…at the nightmare of it. I could see that ball of power nestled in it’s forehead, one bright star amongst the darkness, pure and white and perfect. It seemed so wrong, so out of place with the terror that possessed it. Crawford's voice leaked into the darkness, accusing me of killing everyone around me, telling me that my touch was death. I looked at my hands. They shimmered in the darkness. Pulses of light raced through my fingers, my arms, my legs, my body like blood pumping light through my body. I thought of the shimmer of Amy's blood (blessed by the holy water) as it ran down her face. I looked at the ball of light in the demon's head. I looked at the light pulsing through my veins. It was all the same power. Demon's are angels cast from Heaven. I looked up at the beast…at the ball of shinning light in it's forehead. I flipped my vision using the power inside of me, the power in my blood. Small smudges of darkness swam around that bright pure star, drinking in the light of that shimmering center of demon’s power, that core essence that was once the pure spiritual heart of an angel. Small dark smudges of sin. I looked at my hands. I read the sin of my guilt as it flowed over my aura. I looked back at the demon. It had no aura, no shimmering vail around it, no soul. I realized then that the demonic sigil that Crawford was drawing on people’s forehead’s didn’t eat their sins. It ate their souls. That’s why Ward and my dad’s aura looked so rotten, because the demon had been feeding on their soul, the thing that made them human, one of the things that made the Fallen hate humankind so much because we had one and they didn’t. I looked back at my hands. I watched as my sin boiled over my aura and absorbed the radiance of the angelic glow of my blood, and I understood. Human souls were the key, casting an aura to keep the sin away from the core of what God made us from. The human aura was a shield that allowed us to maintain ourselves against our sins until such time as we were cleansed. Demon’s had no such aura. They just had the core essence of the angelic power that God used to create them. They had nothing to shield the purity of their core essence from sin. I was a cage. The angel bound in my blood acted as a safeguard, but that didn't explain the need to eat sin. I looked at the ball of the demon's power, the essence of it's angelic makeup. The beast may have been twisted and mutated when it was cast from Heaven, but the core of it's power was still pure, and that purity, that core power, could be shielded. I searched myself, gathered my pain and my guilt, gathered my failure and arrogance, gathered my sin. I offered it up to God. Romans 3:23. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. I had fallen way short, but I was not done fighting. I felt the power allotted me as a Sin Eater (the strength of an angel) flare with warmth and light. There was a sensation very much like gentle hands on my shoulders. Images of my mother and father filled my head, good images, happy memories. My grandfather’s laughter filled my ears, drowning out the evil whispers of Crawford. I focused on these gifts. They filled me with hope, helped me remember what goodness was, gave me power over my feelings of guilt. I used that strength to push all that gathered sin from me. I fed all that pain and anger and guilt into the act, letting my faults and failures fall from me, letting it go. I watched as the sin flowed from me in a thick dark smog. It coalesced in front of me then drifted towards the demon. The beast raged as my sin gathered around that bright core in its forehead and drank in its light. I felt the demon's grip on my mind loosen and fall slack as the cluster of my sin engulfed the source of the demon’s essence, shielding it’s power. I looked down at my hands. The light pulsing through my body was brighter without the burden of my sin to drown it out. I felt strength come back into me, building in my limbs, making me whole and stealing away the pain. In my mind, I rose to my feet as the demon across from me fell to its knees. Copyright 2014 Wade Hunter