The Demon And The Change

"But I don't want to goooo!" The five year old Sylvie whined. She was almost three and a half feet tall with a small amount of dark hair on her head. Her skin was a rich chocolate and very smooth. Her long, clumsy fingers picked up the toy she had been playing with, a model of a blue train with red highlights and a wide smile, and spun the wheels of it forward and backwards. "Come on Sylvie" her mom said. Her light skin gleamed in the soft radiance cast by the old halogen light behind her. "It's time to go home." "I wanna stay here with my friend!" Sylvie said, her voice a soft whimper. Unlike most five year olds, Sylvie was very calm and rarely threw a tantrum. "Where is your friend?" Sylvie's mother asked. Sylvie reached up, grabbed her mother's hand and pulled her along. As they rounded the corner, passing past a maroon pillar splattered with a darker brown, tinged with red.

Neither of them noticed the red.

As they continued onward, the more eerie the place felt. The normally bright and cheerful daycare now seemed dark and gloomy. The place was completely silent. A faint dripping sound was heard by both of them. "Ahh! Somebody must have left the tap on!" Sylvie's mother said with barely concealed panic. She looked around the next corner. She saw a figure dressed in black, a long blood coated knife in hand. It was crouched over the corpse of a adult. The adult was almost unrecognizable in the dim light, her face had been slashed. A hole replaced her nose, her mouth was cut down the middle so it parted like she had three jaw parts, not two, and she had a second knife in her eye. Her body had been disembowled with long, grey intestines spread out in a crude star around her.

The other children of the daycare were dead as well. Guts were everywhere, pinkish slashed organs and brains. Next to one of the childred was a gore coated sledgehammer. A long spear had impaled a child to the wall through their gut. They whimpered softly and cried out. As Rebecca watched in horror, her breathing shuddered and stopped.

Rebecca, Sylvie's mother whispered softly "Thats Mrs. William! Thats the manager of the daycare! And the rest of the children!" She pushed Sylvie back, preventing her from seeing the bloody scene. "We need to go. Now."

"B-but" Sylvie sputtered in protest.

A howling roar came from the room, and the soundproof glass doors shattered. A barrage of lethal sharp shards pounded into the wall across from the duo. As both of them stared wide eyed, Rebecca shouted "GO! RUN!" and shoved Sylvie towards the exit. Sylvie knew better than to argue when her mother used that tone of voice and ran, her small feet pounding down the purple carpet. Rebecca paused for a moment to look back, then followed Sylvie. She saw a flickering red orange glow reflect of the glass shards that weren't embedded in the wall. "Is that fire!?" She mouthed to herself then continued running.

Both mother and daughter flew down the hallway passing more glass doors, at least the remnants of them. They to, were shattered.

Lungs burning from exertion, arms pumping and legs slamming on the ground, both of them continued to run. Past the metal statues of Buddha, past the model Himalayas, past the stained oak reception desk and out through the ornate wooden doors. Rebecca turned, slammed them shut and continued running to the old asphalt parking lot and towards her car.

Rebecca yanked the door open, almost tearing it off its hinges and practically threw Sylvie in the car. The door was slammed shut and a moment later Rebecca was in the car as well.

She grabbed her phone and dialed 911 while she started the car. It sputtered a coulple of times and started, roaring to life. The wheels spun, squealed and they took off leaving nothing but a couple streaks of black on the old grey asphalt and the smell of burning rubber.

In the rear-veiw mirror Rebecca saw the ornate doors go flying off their hinges, splintering and breaking on impact. The killer in black stood there, a white mask of a snarling demon with long crooked horns upon their face. Rebecca could have swore that she saw a large clawed shadow behind the killer.

"This is 911 what is your emergency?" The line had finally picked up. "I'm driving away from Yellowstone Daycare on 885 Patton Dr! There is a person dressed in black wearing a white mask that killed everybody there!" That had gotten the attention of the person at the other end. "Could you repeat the address again?" "Yellowstone Daycare on 885 Patton Dr!" "Five police cruisers will be there shortly." The person Rebecca was talking to had hung up.

Rebecca sped up and quickly drove home. The small cozy one story house was all that they needed. "Sylvie go inside and wait there until I come back. Please don't go anywhere even if you get bored. I'll be back soon." Before Sylvie could even get a word in, her mother was gone. She was left alone, standing there in the dark entrance hallway. She reached up on her tiptoes and flipped a light switch. The wooden floors gleamed in the light. Sylvie continued walking past the beige walls and past the bathroom with its large mirror and shiny metal faucet.

The house was dark. Abnormally dark. Sylvie felt watched.

Ten minutes after Rebecca left the house.

The clawed shadow Rebecca thought she saw when she drove away was very real and most definitely not human. After all, humans don't have glowing orange skin covered in black plates of armor. Humans didn't emit enough heat to melt rubber tires from a dozen feet away. Humans weren't fifteen feet tall with claws that could tear through steel as if it was a piece of foil.

Rebecca had showed back up at Yellowspring Daycare just a minute after the police had. What she saw looked like a six foot tall person covered in black, bulletproof armor swiping at them with long clawlike weapons. After several fruitless minutes of the police firing at the behemoth and retreating whenever they got close, an armored car showed up. Several people dressed in unreflective black armor wearing black helmets with a single stripe of gold on it, jumped out of the car. One of the armor-clad soldiers had a long tube with a wide and narrow end. They raised it to their shoulder and Rebecca saw a light green protrusion emerging from the narrow end of it. 'Is that a RPG!?' Rebecca had wondered.

Just seconds after they jumped out, a bright streak flashed forward emerging from the suspected RPG. It slammed into the person with blossom of fiery power and bright light. A explosion rang out a moment later. A roar of agony produced a shockwave of air that pushed everything nearby back by several feet. The police closest to the monster had screamed in agony and clutched at their ears as the monster changed.

The plates of black armor pulled away from each other, revealing bright orange flesh beneath. The creature expanded, swelling up to fifteen feet, over double what it had originally been. It's long claws lengthen immensely and it's face expanded and split in half, revealing that it only had a mouth on its head, nothing else.

Emerging from the monster's body, a great blast of heat hit the police and their cruisers. After a couple seconds, the tires on the cruisers began to melt, the rubber liquifying from the immense heat. The police on the other hand, had it much worse.

Their bodies immediately developed severe burns and bubbles of boiling fat formed beneath the skin before bursting out in shower of skin, blood, and liquid fat. They fell back forced into a full retreat. The slower ones didn't make it as they collapsed to the ground twitching and spasming as their brain cooked from the heat.

BOOM!

Another RPG slammed into the creature. The black clad soldiers ran forward helping the police to safety but keeping their distance from the creature as it thrashed about. With its transformation, it had gained size as well as the heat aura but had exposed its flesh.

BOOM!

A third rocket slammed into the creature and it turned its attention to the soldier wielding the RPG. It's dropped to all fours and started to run, slow at first and then faster and faster. The edge of its heat aura clipped a police and their skin blackened further as their body contracted into itself. Skin tore as it shrank and revealed glistening pink muscle to the heat. The muscleshriveled up and the police had been screaming the entire time and fell silent as he died.

The monster continued to run at the soldier and CRACK! A Barrett M82 sniper rifle had been brought by on of the armor-clad soldiers and set up during the chaos of its transformation. The anti-material rounds pierced straight through one of the armored plates, sending shards of it flying and putting a massive crack in it. The bullet pierced straight through the creatures super-hot flesh and dug into a plate on the other end of the monster.

The creature ignored the hit and continued to run at the soldier with the RPG who was now making a dash for the armored car. The doors were still open and Rebecca hadn't seen anybody emerge from the drivers seat so she assumed the at the driver was still in it. Her assumption was proven correct as the soldier jumped in and began to reload their RPG from a small stash of rockets stored in the car.

The car accelerated and turned, leading the monster on a wild chase after it. More shots from the Barrett landed and shattered one of the plates, breaking it apart and revealing more of the orange flesh. Black blood leaked from the wound, sizzling when it hit the ground.

Finally, the RPG began to show some effect beyond cracking the armor plates. When the next rocket landed, a plate shattered and the flesh of the creature rippled from the concussive force. Veins in the creature's body pressurized as blood reversed its direction from the force and blood spurted out of the open wounds caused by the anti-material rounds. Blood continued to pour from those wounds.

As the creatures lifeblood painted the asphalt, the heat it emitted lessened until it was no hotter than standing in front of an open oven. Uncomfortable at worst.

While the chase occurred, the several other people who had jumped out of the armored car has shot at the exposed flesh with their rifles. But one had hung back, not firing anything. Now, they stepped forward as the armored car swerved towards them.

The person was built like a small mountain, broad shoulders, a thick neck, and a barrel chest. Their legs were as thick as Rebecca's torso. They unstrapped a massive gun from their back and set up a tripod support. They rested the gun atop it, and the armored car swerved out of the way. 'That's a machine gun!' Rebecca realized as soon as it opened fire. The gun sounded like a dragon, the roar of the bullets was deafening. Rebecca covered her ears and stared on. The monster changed its target to the machine gun wielder as the bullets ripped into it. They tore straight through the monster's armor, cracking, fracturing, and shattering it.

The flesh, a fraction as tough as the armor, was pulped by the bullets. Gobs of flesh oozing black blood splattered over the asphalt and yet the monster still charged. It opened its mouth completely, the top half of its face lifting up as its throat separated from its neck revealing both that the monsters mouth went to its shoulders and a mouth filled to the brim with jagged teeth.

The machine gun changed to fire at the open mouth and bullets began pounding it. Previously the head area was covered in the thickest armor that even the Barrett couldn't get through, except for a single thin slit where the mouth was. The monster occasionally opened its mouth to roar but it had never opened it this far for this long.

Teeth shattered as the bullets slammed into them and the monster cried out again, and then it vomited a stream of blood and stomach bile at the machine gun. The person using it leapt away, barely managing to clear the splash zone. The gun melted and corroded, it's form twisting and becoming unusable within seconds.

Sensing the guns destruction the monster stopped and roared in triumph, a short lived celebration that was interrupted by a RPG to the face.

The monster's head was turned to pulp and splashed across the asphalt. It swayed for a moment, and collapsed to the ground. The orange glow faded from its flesh and the aura of heat completely vanished.

The killer in black with a white demon mask jumped out of a shadow and at the now weaponless user of the machine gun. The user punched the killer and the gut and the killer literally folder around their fist before flying off it into a wall. They collapsed to the ground either in a critical state or dead.

After a couple of questions, Rebecca drove home to a murder scene.

The System had integrated Earth as it was, but when it remade Earth, it was with all of the legends and horror tales. Demons existed. Heaven and reincarnation was real. Great cosmic horrors slumbered in the cracks of the false reality.

The End was coming.