We thought this world is boring, mundane even normal. We created gods, demons, magical creatures, even the rules of magic itself, just so that we don't die of boredom. I am here to tell you that the world is everything but normal. Gods, demons and magic, they all exist. I am the living proof of their existence. Hellish Prologue A Half-Lilin Rewrite By Shinieris

“Ooh, see, Patty’s happy,” Sarah remarked seeing her baby girl’s smile.

“When she gets fat in the future, we’ll call her Fatty Patty. Coochie coochie coo!” Jerry Willows teased his newborn daughter.

Sarah rocked her baby as the little girl gurgled in happiness. “She’s not going to get fat! Daddy is so cruel, isn’t here?” Sarah said as she kissed her daughter on her forehead.

“Hey, that’s not nice. You’re going to make her think I’m a bad father,” Jerry said looking hurt.

“Oh you’re such a baby,” Sarah said as she nudged his lips with her own and kissed it lightly, “Are you sure you’re ready for parenthood?”

Jerry scowled. “Of course-“

“Shh!” Sarah shushed as she concentrated on a barely perceptible sound.

“What?” Jerry asked as he heard nothing.

Suddenly Sarah’s right hand glowed with a dull red light and as her veins popped on the whole of her right arm, she threw the glowing red orb at a corner of the room. The corner of the room broke with the shattering sound of cheap glass and out of the darkness behind the broken wall, was a woman. She was tall, beautiful, with reddish hair and a cruel smile. She strode into the room, with the clicking of her high heels and a presence that shook reality as the shattered wall she came from repaired itself behind her.

Jerry’s knees went weak as the woman approached. He fell to the floor, right next to the crib as his legs gave out. For some reason, Jerry felt very intimidated by this amazon-like woman.

“Hello, Mother,” Sarah greeted with barely controlled anger as her hand glowed again with a dull red light. She pointed her hand at the woman, as she made it abundantly clear that the woman wasn’t welcomed.

“Stop that, you know it will only cut your life even shorter,” the woman said in a slightly high-pitched, breathy voice that rattled Jerry’s spine. She took a step forward, closer to the married couple and reached out her hand to touch the baby.

Sarah slapped the woman’s hand away. “You will NOT have her, Mother,” she said as she sat further back on the crib, cradling the baby in a protective hug with her back to the wall.

“Oh? And what are you going to do about it? You know I have first right to every one of my children. It’s only the ninth day, I have eleven more days to claim her as my own. Even if you expel me from your house right now, with eleven days, I can come back and torture you with the torments of hell. You know I’ve been there,” the woman said with a cruel smile and fiery gaze.

“You can torture me. You can torture Jerry. You can even kill us, but my child will live her life as a normal human!” Sarah stated as she designed a spell in her mind.

“I am not going to kill you, silly girl. I have much hope that you will choose to return to me. How about this, you swear to come home with me and let’s just say that I will delay taking your daughter for… maybe ten days?” the woman attempted a compromise.

Sarah laughed at the attempt. “Hah! Ten days, Mother? In the end you will still have her. No, I’ve found a better solution,” Sarah said as a spell circle appeared above her head, flowing with greenish miasma.

The greenish fog flowed around her and the baby, glowing with a greenish light in the darkened nursery. It enveloped both her and the baby in a protective barrier as she cast another spell. She raised her right hand, palm upwards as the air condensed above her palm. Within seconds, a small 16 ounce thermos appeared out of thin air in her hand. Suddenly all the miasma entered the baby’s body, making the baby girl cry in pain. Once the last of the miasma had completely disappeared inside the baby, the thermos broke apart, revealing a single feather inside it that unleashed waves of pure white light that blinded all in the room. When the light disappeared, the baby was lying on the crib’s mattress, with Sarah slumped on one corner as she lost all her strength.

The woman reached forward to grab the child, but was repelled by an unseen force. “What did you do, you little whore?!” she yelled as she grabbed Sarah’s throat instead.

“Let her go,” Jerry said with a hand around her right ankle. He looked tortured and out of breath, as if something was crushing his lungs.

“Do not touch me, little boy,” the woman said as she kicked away Jerry’s hand.

“Hehehe, you can’t have my daughter anymore, mother. You see, you are already too late!” Sarah said as she laughed out loud when the woman loosened her hold on her throat.

The woman looked at the baby, extended her hand and encountered a resistance. “This is a barrier that those assholes’ put as protection for children that has gone past my control. But how can this be? I should have eleven more days,” she said, confused, until she finally realized what what was wrong.

“You little slut!” the woman said as she pulled Sarah up by her skull, “You turned the girl into a boy!”

Sarah, who was exhausted beyond measure, simply giggled as her body hung from her head, “For boys you only have power over them for eight days, don’t you Mother? It’s already the ninth day. You are late by one day, Mother!” Sarah laughed like a madwoman.

The woman threw Sarah to the floor. “If you think you’ve won, think again, little girl. That baby was originally female,” she said as she pointed a finger at the baby girl, “I claim this girl as mine. One day when your spell loses its power, she will be mine again. Make no mistake.”

As the woman’s body slowly turned invisible, Sarah taunted, “How does it feel to be denied, Mother? You can say what you want, but I’ve won this round!”

As the woman’s body disappeared, she ensured that Sarah drowned in her own blood out of spite.

*As always, please drop me your comments and feedbacks. Praises helps me write faster and constructive criticisms helps me to write better.
**It seems like at the rate I'm going, it will be next year before I can start selling Escape! So I've decided to heavily edit my old story (which I'm embarrassed of) and try to sell this one as my first. For those who have read the old one, do tell which one you prefer. For those who have not read the old one, don't worry, this rewrite works for 'By The Light of The Moon' too, so you won't be missing much. I just thought that my writing skills have improved since then and wanted to make this story better so when I decide to write the next installment one day, I can proudly tell people, go read my first story. I know this one is short, but don't worry, the next chapters won't be as short.

We thought this world is boring, mundane even normal. We created gods, demons, magical creatures, even the rules of magic itself, just so that we don't die of boredom. I am here to tell you that the world is everything but normal. Gods, demons and magic, they all exist. I am the living proof of their existence. Hellish Chapter 1 A Half-Lilin Rewrite By Shinieris

I looked down at the bed, watching the man gurgle and drown in his own blood. His throat, was slashed open and blood pooled in the hole where his heart should have been.

I closed the door, walking with trepidation to the mirror, wondering how much and how long would I need to take to make myself look halfway normal. As I looked into the mirror, I screamed in fear at my own reflection.

-----

I awoke with a series of gasps. It took me a few minutes to regain awareness, to realize that it was just a nightmare. I took several deep breaths to calm myself

That damned dream again, I cursed. It had been plaguing my dreams for days now. It was always the same dream. It was always the same man, same bed, same bathroom, and same face in the mirror.

Try as I might though, I could not recall the face. I recall that it was terrifying, but as for details, it was all a blur, except for the eyes. Yes, the eyes. It was yellow and the pupils were slits, similar to the ones on a cat. I supposed it was rather mesmerizing, if one didn't mind the splashes of blood that covered the face. Inside the pupils though, it was filled with fire and cruelty.

That was as much detail as I could recall. Maybe it was time to change prescriptions. This particular one seemed to trade one kind of nightmare for another. Maybe another visit to my shrink will do me good. He did help get rid of my previous nightmares.
But for now, my most immediate concern was a bath. I must have smelled ripe from the sweat. I looked at the wall clock and realized that I was about to be late for work. Mental check: get rid of the alarm clock and buy one with real bells, instead of the one that sounded 'tittit, tittit'.

"Hey Pat. Mr Punctual's almost late again today. What's up?"

I turned around at the annoyingly mocking face of my high school nemesis. That wasn't really accurate though, we must have been enemies since grade school. To say that I hated him was an understatement, I loathed him with a passion. It was something like Tom and Jerry, though I wasn’t sure which of us was angry Tom and which of us was the devious Jerry.

"Rick, my name is Rick. Besides Chris, what do you care if I'm late?" I countered, though I wasn’t expecting a response. The less contact I had with him, the better it was.

He acted hurt, which would've convinced me, if I hadn't known him since elementary school, "I only wanted to know how my best friend's been doing. We are childhood friends after all".

Yeas, of course. We were ‘childhood friends’. Somebody obviously neglected to tell Chris that childhood friends don’t steal their friend’s girlfriends, nor do they break their childhood friend’s leg just because their friend happened to get a prom date with one of the most popular girls in school. Chris’s idea of a ‘childhood friend’ was the kind of friends who would not surpass him in any way. As his primary ‘childhood friend’, he became especially disturbed when I was not always following behind him.

"Besides, your mom asked me to take care of you," Chris said, saying the one thing that he knew would cool me down.

I groaned at the memory. My mom passed away six months ago due to brain tumor from what I was told. She only lived long enough to see me graduate and get a job. My little sister Stella cried a river during her funeral, and she mourned for weeks after. My mom, she wasn't perfect, but she tried her best to take care of us and listened to us, when no one else would. So when she left, we felt as if we had no one else to turn to. My dad handled it the worst. He buggered off for a long, unscheduled and unanticipated solo voyage across the world in his yatch a week after she died. We had no idea to tell if he was still alive or dead, as we haven't heard from him since and he hadn’t leave us any way of contacting him.

I walked straight to my cubicle, not bothering to reply Chris. Besides, he probably just wanted attention, and I was not going to be the one to give it to him. Apparently getting the hint, he moved to the cubicle in front of mine and sat on his chair. I've been trying to avoid him for my entire school life and here he got the same job, in the same company, in the same office and given the seat right in front of mine after we graduate. Go figure. One might call it a funny irony. I assure you, it definitely wasn’t funny to me.

I called my shrink and tried to get an appointment for this Saturday. My father always taught me to make an appointment a week in advance, because of the unspoken rule of ‘You can never get an appointment on that one day you’re actually free’. So it wasn’t surprising that instead of the Saturday that I asked for, I got an appointment on Monday instead. Guess I'd have to take a day off anyhow. One thing that my boss particularly liked about me was that I never arrive late and I never used office time to do other things. The ‘never arrive late’ thing may have been broken, I’ve been coming to work late for two consecutive days and I arrived late last week too.

A message popped up on my screen. "hey, girls want 2 go to the bar across d street aftr work. U comin? sue".

Sue was the girl in accounting whom I met and instantly liked during last year’s company Christmas party. All the girls had to wear Santa’s Little Helper costumes while all the guys had to wear reindeer costumes. She stood out among others because she also wore a reindeer horn instead of a hat. I wondered back then if she knew that Santa’s Little Helpers were elves and not reindeers. She claimed that she was only a year older, but everyone knew you can't really trust women and their claims when it came to age.

I opened the program and typed a message. "Only the girls? Sue, you know how awkward it is to be the only guy in an all girls group". I wasn't joking, it really was awkward. I would talk about global warming and the fuel hike and they'd talk about bras, negligees and cute guys, as well as discount sales. Definitely not my point of interest.

Another message popped up almost instantly, "chick~en. cluck cluck cluck. don't tell me you're afraid of cute little lambs?"
Cute little lambs? Sue always had a way of making me laugh.

"No, maybe another time, Sue,” I typed back.

It took awhile before the next message arrived, "come on, patty, it'll be fun. i promise we won't talk about bras again. please?"

Again with that name. Why was it that everyone insisted on calling me Pat? I hated it. It sounded like short for Patricia. Patty's even worse.

"OK, I'll go. But no bras". Sent.

I received a, "oh you naughty boy".

I was confused at that response. What did she mean, ‘naughty boy’?. It was only a few minutes later that I realized that I had worded my response wrong, but by the time I corrected it, she didn’t respond.

We did go to the bar that night. I ended up acting as their personal waiter fetching drinks from the bar to our table, again. One of the girls, Liz, left with a cute guy (according to the girls). The rest of us stayed there for another hour, drinking, talking about work and of Marisa’s latest crush who was one of the new guys in Marketing.

Somewhere along the line, Marisa said something to me about Stephanie Mills, whose face graced the commercials a couple of times while we were there. I couldn’t quite catch what she said, but it sounded like she was telling me to get over my crush on Stephanie Mills. I then told her to fuck herself, which made everyone laugh. It wasn’t like my crush would lead to anything. Stephanie Mills was a very big name in Hollywood.

They delivered their promise of not talking about bras. Though the entire conversation was about topics that I was comfortable of giving my two cents of, they also slipped in something about make ups and cute guys. I was pretty sure I groaned a lot. I think they actually did it to see me squirm.

I got home rather late that night. After ordering chinese, I sat on the sofa and watched Oprah. My dad always said that I was a dreamer because I watched too much Oprah. Normally I just kept quiet and avoided replying since he was well-known for his temper and his 'I'm right, you're wrong' attitude. Personally, I liked watching Oprah. It restored my belief in the human race.
After having dinner in front of the TV (a habit my late mom used to try to stomp out of me, without much success), I washed up and went to bed, not without worry. I was pretty sure that I would be having that nightmare again. After making sure that all the lights were turned off, I drifted off to sleep.

*Alright, here's the next chapter of the Half-Lilin Rewrite. Please leave me your comments and feedbacks. Praises helps me write faster while constructive criticism helps me write better. If you have no strong feelings either way, being polite is more than enough. Thank you for supporting me.