Bitten

"Fuck, fuck, fuck. What did I do to deserve this?"

A young man, seventeen years in age, was running down a road with one hand clasped over his eye. He had wavy blonde hair and blue eyes, and was somewhat scrawny compared to others his age.

Damian was the name of this young man, and he was running in absolute terror from a group of four men who he recognised as members of a local gang.

He had been walking home from school like normal, when he had been jumped by the gang members, who the entire time were insulting him for sexually assaulting a girl who he knew. Damian did not understand what was going on and tried to argue his case but the more he said, the worse the beating became. Eventually, one of the gang members attempted to stab Damian, missing his target slightly, and creating a deep gash over Damian's right eye. This caused his vision to disappear in his right eye, and seeing an opportunity where the gang member recuperated from his missed stab, Damian began to run as fast as he possibly could.

Fuelled by adrenaline and fear, Damian managed to make it back to his house where he locked all of the doors and windows and hid in his room, the whole time covering his severely injured eye.

Damian tried to put together the pieces of what was happening, and came to the conclusion that a girl who he went to school with had accused him of sexually assaulting her, despite him never doing it. He assumed her motive was his refusal of giving her the answers for their exam which they had done a few days prior.

He knew for a fact that this girl's boyfriend was in a gang, but he never thought that she would try to get him killed, as even if she did not directly tell her boyfriend to stab Damian, her telling him of the fabricated assault would obviously lead to his retaliation in the form of extreme violence.

He had not been one of the four that attacked Damian, but he definitely ordered them to do it, as he was a known 'higher up' in the local gang, whereas the others had been the grunt equivalent.

As a relatively smart person, Damian decided to call the police on his attackers. However, as he did not know who they were, the police told him they could not perform an investigation even if he would have a permanent injury.

After this plan had no positive outcome, Damian decided to stay home for a few days. He would have nobody to complain, as his parents had died when he was a child, and until the age of sixteen he was raised by his uncle and aunt who promptly ran off the second he inherited enough money from his parents to live alone. They had not treated him poorly, or stolen any of his inheritance, but they had spent so much of their lives looking after someone who wasn't their own child that they wanted to escape the second that they could, and Damian did not blame them as they had raised him quite well.

Damian began to treat his eye the only way he knew how, by googling if there was anything he could do about it. There was seemingly nothing, so Damian went with a more risky option.

He opened a portal to another universe and popped his head through to grab a blue berry which he proceeded to eat. This healed his eye fully, but did not help the scar which the rapid healing caused in the process, which was a single thick gash mark over his right eye.

A majorly important fact about Damian was his ability to open portals to other universes. Although this seems like something that should go hand in hand with his introduction, Damian had only recently acquired this power and was much too weak to be able to survive in any world worth going to.

He had been struck by lightning, and when he awoke, he instinctively knew he could open a portal up to any universe he wanted. The universe which he had received the blue berry from was the Pokemon Universe, one of his favourite games, and the Oran Berry which he had eaten had proved very helpful in healing him.

He knew that the Oran Berry would be in the location it was, because he had previously opened a portal to the Pokemon world to try and explore, only to find himself in a forest where he was attacked by a sentret before he ran away. During this time, he had noticed the bush of Oran Berries that were positioned very close to where his portal opened, and as his portals always opened in the same place in every universe, no matter where he travelled to the previous time, he knew of this easy way to heal himself.

As he was healed, Damian realised he should probably eat something as he hadn't managed to eat any lunch due to being busy with work. However, when he checked in the fridge there was no food in there, so he decided to brave the outside world to go to the shop.

Although it had not been long since he was attacked, he figured if he was careful then he would be able to go to the shop and return unscathed, as despite how much he would like to get his own back for his attack, he was much too weak for something like that.

He opened the door to outside, and with his hood up started to walk to the shop, luckily it was closer to his home than most people's houses were and would only take about five minutes to get there.

It was still risky though, as some people in the gang that had attacked him were known to hang out in the area. But Damian was willing to take the risk as he needed to stock up on food if he was going to stay inside for a few days.

He managed to get to the shop just fine, but what he did not know was that he was being watched. In a different plane of existence entirely, a small and weak looking demon that seemed shrouded by a black veil was sat in front of a basin with a single droplet of blood inside of it.

"This is all I have left, my last hope, go forth my shadow parasite."

In saying this, the droplet of blood transformed into the shape of a small worm which was pure black in colour with multiple sharp teeth on it.

The creature disappeared from the basin, and began to fall through the sky before landing on Damian's hood. The small worm creature slithered around to the front of Damian's hood and then made its way onto the back of his neck before biting down on it.

Damian felt a small prick on the back of his neck and slapped at it which immediately crushed the parasite. He immediately began feeling nauseous, and feeling incredibly queasy, he returned home and collapsed asleep in his bed.