The Devouring

The two remaining boys were left to a very familiar date he was used to.

But somehow, there was something about the boy Ed's silence and resignation to his fate that caught his attention.

Unlike the other boy who moved on and about on his chair pleading for mercy and his how never to go to places uninvited anymore, Ed didn't even move nor flinch a bit.

He just sat there motionlessly, lost in thoughts. Thoughts that he could not comprehend.

"We will decide their fate through the flipping of the coin" he announced after much reflection.

To his utmost surprise, no one said anything to protest and the people still remained calm like they had been when Lorraine's name had been mentioned.

Ed raised his head from his dejected state and stared at the man, but this time around with worry etched all over his face.

Was his how his end was going to be? What if his beloved mother were to return to their neighborhood to take him with her to her new man's house, wouldn't he even be given such chances to have a taste of the luxuries and good things life had to offer?

Did the God Father Romillon always talked about create him knowing that he was going to be a suffering poor boy for his life and then ending this way on this night as a sacrificial lamb for occultic people?

He stared at the other boy opposite him. He was sweating so profusely and if Ed hadn't been mistaken about the air conditioning in the hall, he would have believed that he did so due to the lighted candles all over them.

But the air conditioning in the room prevented that and even he who sat at the podium like he did didn't sweat that way, was he that fearful of dying?

What was so good about life and living that he was so fearful about his being snatched from him? As for him, even if he were to be killed this night, there was no guarantee that anyone would look for him or even be concerned about his disappearance from the neighborhood.

If his own mother could abandon him without pausing for a moment to stare back at him despite how he called out for her and now Lorraine Blai, his childhood best friend had denied knowing him, who were the others to worry about him?

His drunkard father who didn't even care about his existence for decades now or the rumour peddlers of their neighborhood who were always looking for whom to gossip with?

He and his life was just insignificant and that might be the reason he had been created with an insignificant fate and to die an insignificant death.

"Heads or tail?" Ed was asked as the man walked up to him.

He sighed out of resignation.

"Ask my partner first" he managed to whisper amidst his voice that was almost breaking.

The man stared at him for a while before walking towards the other boy to do as he had been instructed.

"Head. Head. I chose the head" the boy shouted from where he was without waiting to be asked.

The possibilities of the coin landing with the head projecting upwards was a two out of three percent chance. He couldn't ignore it and this had influenced his decision immediately.

He sighed as he anticipated the coin to be flipped. Maybe his life would be saved that way. Maybe his counterpart had already given up on life which was why he had asked for him to chose first.

The man walked towards the middle of where they both sat.

"You're tails then" he faced Ed and said before he flipped the coin.

Everyone watched in anticipation as it went up towards the unseen air and began to journey towards it's landing on the podium.

As the coin landed on the podium, the room fell silent. The man's eyes gleamed red with an otherworldly intensity that made Ed's heart sink.

But before he could even process the outcome of the flipped coin, the air around him began to shift.

At first, it appeared like it was just a faint whisper of smoke, a gentle caress of dark energy. But within seconds, he noticed the smoke coalesce into tendrils of shadowy mist that seemed to pulse with a malevolent life of their own. Next he smelt sulphur. He was extremely sure he perceived it.

The other boy, who had chosen "heads," let out a blood-curdling scream as the smokes enveloped him. His body began to convulse and his limbs thrashed wildly on the chair he sat on as if possessed by some ancient evil.

And Ed had no other choice than to believe that it was because there was no way he would be throwing himself and convulsing on such a chair with numerous nails under his own will and accord.

He continued to watch in horror as the smokes seemed to feast on the boy's flesh, tearing it apart with an unnatural hunger.

He could see it being torn but couldn't see what was tearing it apart from the black smoke that surrounded the boys body.

Was the man who flipped the coin not seeing what was happening? Why wasn't he doing anything to save the boy whose skin had started oozing blood? Was this what was going to happen to him too after the black smoke would b done with the boy?

Beads of sweat began to form on his forehead and he felt himself struggling to shift his chair away from the podium as if doing that would prevent him from getting feasted on by the black some as well.

The boy's screams grew louder and more anguished as his body began to disintegrate before Ed's very eyes.

Bones, stripped of their flesh began to protrude from the boy's body, like skeletal fingers reaching out in a macabre dance. The smokes continued to writhe and twist around the boy's remains, as if savoring the last morsels of his soul.

The room was silent with the only sound heard being the blood wetted tearing flesh and the boy's haunting screams which seemed to echo through eternity in Ed's mind.

He felt his mind recoil in terror and then just as suddenly as it had begun, the carnage ceased.

The smokes dissipated, leaving behind a gruesomely dissipation of the boy's skeleton, stripped of its flesh and laying sprawled on the floor.

Ed's mouth were still open as he struggled to breath from what he had just witnessed. No one in the crowd seemed surprised by what had happened. Not even the man that stood in his presence moved.

Was he going to be next? The fear of the thought threatened to consume him. Mere viewing of it might have already given him a high blood pressure.

And just when he had closed his eyes waiting for the black smoke to circle him as well, the man finally spoke up.

"Congratulations, Ed Warren. Tail it is"