The Corruption Within

by Ty Griffin

  “We must leave, human!” Came Veikr’s panicked voice. “We must leave now. He will see me. He will hurt us. I know it. You must flee now.”

  I groaned and again tried to force my eyes open. I knew in the back of my mind that the fear in Veikr’s words likely required an urgent response, but the fog in my brain wouldn’t allow me to do much of anything quickly. When I finally managed to get my eyes cracked open enough, the first thing I saw was the back of the bar.

  That’s when I realized I was lying on the floor. To one side of me was a nearly empty bottle of off-brand whiskey, and on the other side was the shattered remains of a bottle of—something. I groaned and tried to force myself to my feet, but someone must have moved the restaurant onto a boat, because the floor pitched as if from a large wave, and I fell back down.

  Then I heard the jingle of the bell above the door and felt fluttering in my gut. My addled mind couldn’t understand what was happening but I could tell that Veikr was scared. A second later Gabe was standing over me.

  “What the hell?” he grumbled.

  “Nooo,” Veikr screeched inside me. The intensity of his scream felt like someone shoved ice picks behind my eyes and twisted my stomach into knots. The unsettling sensation of Veikr’s terrified scream inside my body did not mix well with the alcohol in my stomach, and my body exorcised the one it had control over.

  “Dammit, kid,” Gabe said as he grabbed my arm, careful to avoid the vomit on my sleeve, and lifted me to my feet. “You’re a mess, Wesley. What the hell were you doing?” He gave me a shove toward the door to my apartment.

  I mumbled something insightful and profound, but it just came out as “Imma drinks … won’t leave.” I ended the thorough explanation with a half-hearted wave at the bar behind me. “Clean it later …”

  “Go clean yourself first. You reek,” Gabe said, irritation evident in his voice.

  I followed his advice, stumbling up the stairs and going straight to the bathroom. I stripped off my vomit and whatever else-covered clothes and tossed them on the floor, turned the shower to as hot as possible, and dumped myself into the tub.

  I don’t know how long I lay there, but when I woke up the water had run cold and I was an aching, hungover, shivering mess. I turned off the ice-cold shower and toweled myself dry. Nothing inside me wanted to face the mess I had made, but I knew I didn’t have a choice. In all likelihood, I had messed things up with Gabe so bad that he would fire me and kick me out. But any chance of saving the situation drained away the longer I let things stay as they were.

  I picked up my filthy clothes from the floor and tossed them in the wash. Then I found some clean clothes, brushed my teeth a couple times to get the foul taste out of my mouth, and headed downstairs to speak with Gabe.

  “Human, I told you we must leave this place. He is not a good man, that one. He will hurt us,” Veikr’s voice resonated within my body.

  “Oh god,” I groaned, pausing halfway down the stairs. “You’re really here? Inside me? I was hoping that was a dream or a hallucination.”

  “Yes, I am here,” scoffed Veikr.

  “And there is nothing I can do to make you leave?” I asked.

  “No. Nothing.”

  “So this is … this is like a possession?”

  He didn’t respond right away, and I could sense he was contemplating the thought. “Yes,” he said after a brief moment. “I possess you. You are my vessel.”

  “Are you going to make me start spinning in the air or vomiting green goo everywhere?”

  “I had nothing to do with your vomiting, Ambivalent One,” he replied.

  “No, I meant … ugh, never mind. Look, what happens now? Are you going to torture me until I go crazy and bite someone’s ear off? Are you going to make me jump off the roof or something?”

  “Of course not. You are my vessel. Why would I want to hurt you? In fact, I want to help you. I can give you great power and guide you to a more satisfying life. Think of me as a partner and a shepherd. I will lead you to the life of your greatest desires, and you will be the vessel to enact my will upon the world.”

  “And what if I do not want to be your vessel or enact your will upon the world?”

  I could not miss the subtle threat in his tone when he said, “I would not recommend refusing, human.”

  An icy shudder ran down my spine and swept through my body. I thought of the fiery pressure in my torso the night before. I decided to choose my words carefully and not risk that pain again. “What do I do now?”

  “Leave this place, as I have already said. The man downstairs is a violent and dangerous man, and will kill us on sight.”

  “Gabe? He’s been really good to me. Gabe wouldn’t hurt a fly,” I said. Images of Gabe attacking the stranger in the alley flashed through my mind, but I pushed them away, not wanting to share everything with the invasive spirit.

  “You do not know him as well as you think you do. He will cut you to pieces the instant he finds out about me. He is dangerous.”

  Okay, good. He couldn’t hear my thoughts. That was a bit of a silver lining.

  “I’ve got to go down there,” I said cautiously. “Can you hide or something?”

  “No, if he is paying attention he will sense me. I will be ready to help you run, should he attack us.”

  “I thought you could give me power? Is it only the power to run away?” I asked with more snark than was probably wise.

  “You have been my vessel for only a few hours, human, most of which you spent intoxicated and unconscious. Do you want to take on an enemy so quickly?”

  “I guess not.”

  “I did not think so. Continue on, Vessel. I will stand ready to give you strength enough to run should you need it.”

  Just then a thought occurred to me. “Last night you took away the pain in my ribs to let me run, yeah?”

  Veikr hesitated. “To be truthful, I did not remove the pain, and I have no power to heal you. I can, however, intercept your body’s signals so you do not feel the pain.” After a second, he qualified, “for a time.”

  “Great,” I said. “Can you do something about this hangover? My head is killing me.”

  “Oh, uh”—he paused for a moment in apparent thoughtfulness—“yes, I can do that.”

  In an instant, everything was better. The nausea was gone, my head felt clear and sharp, the aches in my side and sore muscles had faded. It was amazing. Forget sex, drugs, thrills, recognition, or power—the greatest feeling in the world is the absence of pain. We just tend to forget that until we are forcefully reminded—with pain.

  I breathed out a quiet sigh of relief. “Okay, I guess let’s do this.”

  “Yes, and quickly. I can maintain this for only so long. It requires concentration. It would be like, for you, keeping a muscle flexed, not hard to do but difficult to maintain for long.”

  “Gotcha,” I said, and cautiously walked down the rest of the stairs.

  Gabe looked at me coolly when I walked through the door from the back room. The restaurant was empty except for the two of us, although I could tell it was well into lunchtime by the light coming through the front windows. I stood in the doorway, ready to bolt for the back door if Gabe gave the slightest indication of an oncoming attack, but he just stared at me impassively, the glass he had been drying in his hands.

  We stood staring at each other for several moments. The part of me that was aware of the gracious way Gabe had treated me wanted to apologize for drinking his booze, trashing his bar, and vomiting on his floor. The practical side of me wanted to turn around, enjoy the free apartment and easy job as long as possible before things blew up further. The skeptical side of me was uneasy leaving all of Gabe’s secrets hidden. I was confused and unsure of what I should do next.

  Plus, I had a demon inside my body, or maybe my soul, telling me that Gabe would try to kill me the instant he recognized that fact. I didn’t know why Veikr would think that about Gabe, but then I thought about the flashes of light
I had seen from him. Was it possible Gabe was in a similar situation as me? Was he possessed by another, larger, more dangerous demon? From what I had seen, the spirits had no qualms about attacking each other, and that would explain the dark side of Gabe I could not quite figure out.

  That thought terrified me. If Gabe did have a malicious spirit inside him, there was no telling what he would try to do to me. Would his demon try to eat me like the one had last night? Or was the demon only trying to help Gabe accomplish his goals, as Veikr had seemed to be offering me? If Gabe really was stalking and attacking women at night, when he seemed like such a caring and generous person during the day, was it possible the demon was forcing him to do it? Did that mean it was possible Veikr would do the same to me? Could I become a predator as well?

  My stomach started twisting in knots again, and I felt a wave of nausea that had nothing to do with the hangover. Just before I turned to run back to my bedroom, I heard Gabe let out a tired, exasperated sigh and say, “You look like hell, kid. Come sit down. Some greasy food and gallons of water with help your stomach settle.”

  I hesitated, unsure if Gabe was setting a trap, baiting me to come closer. “He does not seem to notice I am here,” Veikr growled in my body. “If he noticed we would know by now, believe me.”

  I nodded silently, both to Gabe and to Veikr. I sat in a stool across from the grill as Gabe pulled out a patty and a couple eggs from a fridge and set them cooking on the grill. I looked at the floor around Gabe’s feet and realized how clean it was. With a great deal of shame, I realized that Gabe had to clean up my mess, all of my mess, before he was able to open the bar.

  “Gabe, I, uh …” I hesitated again, this time in embarrassment. Gabe turned to look me in the eyes, his spatula paused mid-flip. “I’m sorry.”

  He grunted and turned back to the grill, scraping and flipping my eggs so they wouldn’t burn.

  “I’ll pay for the alcohol. You can take it out of my check. Or I have some cash saved upstairs. I can go get it now.”

  “You’re goddamn right you are going to pay for the liquor,” Gabe snarled. “But this isn’t just about the money, and you know that. You betrayed my trust. You’re underage. I could’ve lost my liquor license and gotten fined enough that I would have lost the bar. But you didn’t care about that, did you, son? You just wanted to get drunk.”

  “Did he call you son? He is your father?” Veikr asked incredulously.

  “No!” I nearly shouted.

  “No?” Gabe asked, his voice beginning to rise as well. “No, what? No, you didn’t do it? No, you didn’t care what it might do to me?”

  “You did not tell me this one was your father, Vessel,” Veikr growled from inside me.

  “No, I, uh.” I shook my head, trying to clear the confusion from two competing conversations. “No, I am not your son, Gabe,” I said defiantly, for both their sakes.

  I saw color rise in Gabe’s neck until it reached his face, turning his clenched jaw a tight, angry shade of red. “I know damn well I am not your dad, kid. If I was your dad, I would have beaten your ass by now. Don’t you try to turn this around. You messed this up, not me.”

  “He is not your father but is going to talk to you like this? Vessel, you now have access to great power, and no one should feel this easy about treating us so lightly,” Veikr yelled. “If he has not noticed me by now, he has cut himself off from his power. We can show him, Vessel. We can show him the consequences of talking to us in such a way!”

  I felt my own cheeks begin to flush and my hands ache. I looked down and saw my knuckles turning white from clenching my fists so tight. As I watched, the white of my knuckles started to crack with streaks of ember-red light. Fear mixed with anger inside me, and the red glow spread until it covered both of my hands.

  I felt the mindless rage I’d tried so hard to contain begin to consume me, and I had opened my mouth to unleash my venom on Gabe when the jolting clatter of the metal spatula against the grill broke my concentration. I looked up to see Gabe had thrown the spatula and was leaning over the grill, his hands stretched to either side.

  “I’m sorry, kid,” he mumbled.

  The apology shook me, but the adrenaline pumping anger through my veins made it difficult to comprehend emotions other than rage. “What?” I asked.

  Gabe stood up straight and turned to face me. “I’m sorry. I am angry with you and spoke in anger, but that is no excuse. I should not speak to you that way. I expect more of myself.”

  “Not good enough,” Veikr said.

  I shook my head, trying to separate my thoughts from Veikr’s. “It’s fine,” I said, forcing myself to swallow my pride. “You’re right. I messed this up, and I wasn’t thinking about what it could do to you. I’m sorry.”

  Gabe took a couple deep breaths, picked up the spatula, and continued scrambling my eggs. “You don’t seem like the type to go hog wild over the chance to get drunk, otherwise I’d imagine you would have been stealing liquor sooner than this.” I could see the question form in the tension in his shoulders when he paused and looked over his shoulder at me skeptically. “Unless—”

  “No,” I interjected, throwing my hands in the air in a placating manner.

  “Who is he to judge us?” growled Veikr.

  “You’ve got every reason to not believe me, Gabe,” I said to them both, “but I swear this was the first time I’ve touched your liquor. I just …” I couldn’t think of an adequate explanation of last night without risking either starting a demonic turf war with Gabe or being locked away in a mental ward, and I still wasn’t sure which was more likely. So I simply said, “I just had a rough night last night.”

  Gabe scooped the burger onto a plate and piled the eggs on top, threw on a piece of cheese to let it melt, and slid the plate in front of me. “It’s not fancy, but it’ll help,” he said as he handed me a fork.

  I nodded and shoveled a bite of eggs into my mouth. “Thanks,” I said as I chewed.

  “Drinking won’t fix your problems. It just postpones them while adding new ones,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “I know you know. That’s the thing, kid. You’re smart and you’ve got a reasonably good head on your shoulders. I remember what it’s like to have trouble keeping check on your emotions. I think at times you let that little evil voice inside push you to make dumb choices, but you’ve got to remember that you choose who you are. You have the power to control what you do. You can’t let your emotions or anything else make those choices for you.”

  I stared at Gabe blankly for a moment, trying to read his face. He stared back, showing nothing. He looked and sounded like he meant everything he said, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew more about the “little evil voice” in my head.

  After a moment, Gabe waved a hand in defeat. “Ah, I know. You don’t want a lecture, but I think it’s a truth you need to hear.” He paused and looked at me seriously. “And you need to understand that if it happens again, it’ll cost you your job. I’ve put a lot of trust in you, and I don’t take the betrayal of my trust lightly.”

  “I understand. It won’t happen again. I promise,” I said meekly.

  Gabe’s grunt signaled the end of the conversation. He checked the clock on the wall behind me and said, “You know, it’s weird, I never did see your friend Kayla this morning. I thought she had said she was working today.”

  “Kayla!” I shouted. I stood, abruptly tipping the stool over with a loud bang. The sudden movement made my head start pounding again, and a wave a nausea swept over me. My face must have turned white, or possibly green, because the look on Gabe’s face said he was worried about the possibility of me being sick all over the place again.

  I dropped my head to the bar and took a few deep breaths, trying to control the nausea. “What the hell, Veikr?” I whispered.

  “You startled me. I told you, it takes concentration,” he replied.

  “Ugh, fix it.”

  After a second the headache was
gone; it took a few more seconds for the nausea to leave. “There,” Veikr said. “It’s a little more difficult back-to-back like that, but I’ll get better with practice.”

  “You all right, kid?” Gabe asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I stood up too fast. I forgot I was supposed to meet with Kayla this morning.”

  “What time?”

  “Uh, seven.”

  “Ooh, better hope she didn’t see you through the window looking the way I found you,” he said with an evil smile.

  “Oh crap,” I said, drawing the words out. “Oh god, I hope she didn’t see that.” I looked at the dishes in front of me and back up at Gabe.

  I must have looked adequately pathetic, because he chuckled and said, “Go on, kid. Go see about a girl.”

  I picked up the stool and set it back against the bar. “Thanks, Gabe!” I yelled as I headed to the door. I stopped halfway through opening the door to look back. “Do you like apples?” I asked.

  He smiled. “You gotta get her number first. Then you can ask me that.”

  I smiled back and shot through the door, sprinting across the street to the art studio where Kayla worked.

  Painted by Genevieve was an art studio in the same sense that those fifteen-minute oil change places are mechanics. The tools to do some serious work were there, and a few quality pieces had come through, but most of the work was done by amateurs.

  The brightly painted walls with swirling patterns of green, blue, and pink held prints of work done by Genevieve herself. Kayla had told me that Genevieve had once fancied herself a serious artist before discovering she didn’t enjoy the lifestyle of a starving artist. Now you could rent out an easel with canvas and supplies included by the hour, and if your painting was decent it would be displayed in one of the two large front windows with a little white tag displaying your name and the price—with a percentage of the sale going to the studio, of course. The bulk of the studio’s profit, however, came from children’s art classes and those little painting parties middle-class women use as an excuse to drink wine.