The President’s Demon

Behind the seemingly Ironclad and seamless looking door of solid white, of which two men dressed in blatant black suites stood as silent as posts of solid steal, slept the Western world’s most powerful man. In fits of sleep, tossing and turning the Leader of the free world moaned and sighed in tumultuous desert like nightmares. He was the President of the United States of America, and couldn’t handle the terrors of the night.

Something was off in the sanctuary of his heavily guarded (and heavily shaded) bedroom. His wife April lay sleeping, not beside him, as custom had called for, but instead was back at their Kentucky Horse farm (one of the states largest and, now, most beloved) giving speeches all this week for one cause or another. It was a lonely road being the first Kentucky boy since Lincoln (even though Illinois claimed him, he was in Kentucky first by God) to sit in such a hallowed hall. It was the sick sounding thump that jarred his twitching eyes awake.

 A stirring of shadows drew his eyes to one corner where absolute nothingness reigned. It felt to the President he was being mocked by a something just beyond the eyes abilities to see. His hands drew upward and rubbed at the tender orbs, hoping to wipe away the sleep and see better. There’s nothing there, he reassured himself, nothing at all. But still, something seemed to lurk just on the edges of the night’s maddening darkness. And what was more, was that that something was standing right there in his private bedroom.

“Someone there?” He asked.

Stillness. Silence. And sightless mockery. The night was thick with the air of haughty laughter.

The President’s eyes went from one corner to the next, looking, hoping to see something, something real. Something real could be grabbed, and tossed from his room. But a night terror that extended from the depths of a man’s sleeping mind, that was a wrestling match the President was sure he could not win if he wanted to. Being as tired as he was lately, he wasn’t sure he’d want to win another fight for a thousand years. He knew it’d be tough to lead the free world, but sweet Jesus, it was far tougher than his overly wild imagination had ever dared to reveal to him.

A sensation of creeping spider like eyes trickled up his spine with their hair little legs, begging for the President’s eyes to come back to the inky corner where he was just certain a something was standing still. A something with a joker’s grin filled with mockery. The thought of that both angered him and terrified him at once.

That’s when the laughter grew from the oily blackness and materialized into something tangible. It at once filled the room with its eerie mirth, slithering across the terror stricken President. The something was a visible shadow, a shadow just a notch below being a figure. Whisps of thicker black darkness swirled around the emerging figure giving it an ancient smoky look the President was even less fond of seeing. He suddenly wished for the blank mockery to return, and for this foul obscenity to go away.

“Tommy, Hal, get in here!” He shouted to the two secret servicemen just beyond the door. They didn’t respond. Instead, the President was met with more laughter and a swift hiss of shadows stealing what little heat there was in the bedroom from the corner just opposite of where the President had at first thought he had seen movement. The thing was growing more and more solid, nearly as solid as the President’s naked terror that was creeping near nausea.

“Who the hell is it? Who are you goddamn it!?” He roared with Executive anger.

“Hiya Sammy, How’s it hangin?” A jovial cat caught in the blender sort of voice called from the inky depths of the hellish night.

“Who are you?”

“Names Tad Dexter, some folks just call me the Roamin’ Troll though, especially back in ole Kentucky…”

“Tad Dexter? Who the Goddamn hell are you, and how’d you get into my bedroom?”

“God Damned… Fitting, and deadly close old chum.”

“Answer me you little prick.” The President called, hoping to hide his growing terror and strength sucking vomit that was knocking on the door of his throat begging for release.

“Been doing a great job old Sammy boy. Real good job in office. Hell, I don’t know if half of my best jokes coulda been pulled off without ya buddy.” The joy filled voice called, a face emerging just slightly from beyond the shadows. Corpse white, with a scarecrow’s contemptuous glare. The mouth was twisted upwards in the unnatural bending of a devil’s smile. The sort of smile that could eat a man and ask for seconds. A smile of cold knowing, and unending hunger.

“How’s that secretary treatin’ you? The one with the tight ass and tits that always tease you about coming out and taking a stroll on your desk?”

“Get the hell out you son of a —-”

“Bitch?”

The face was sticking out from the shadows, the rest of the figure’s body was completely shrouded by the dark shadowy wisps that reminded the President of smoke. The eyes of the shadow figure were insanely normal, they looked dangerously filled with knowledge and oddly enough, understanding. The sensation of being known as this man seemed to know President Samuel Hager, made the President feel utterly terrified. If he could have pissed, the President supposed he would have, freely. He found his hands clutching the blanket with obvious fear and threw it down in a fit of anger.

“Listen here you, whoever you are, get the hell out and I won’t have you charged with treason and sent to fucking Guantanamo bay, I’ll be sure to have your ass plugged with the biggest nastiest fucking cock there if you don’t leave right this goddamned second you understand me you little fucking—”

In a rush of silent wind, dark shadows screeching away behind, the dark figure of the man calling himself Tad Dexter was upon the President in a hurry. His eyes were slits and the grin was twisted down in a horrific frown befitting of a bloody and deeply troubled clown. Oh dear Jesus, President Hager thought just before the cold lifeless hands that belonged to the devil like figure of shadows were upon the President’s throat. The fingers were serpentine in length and had piercing dagger like claws at the skinny tips of each. They were midnight black and smelled of a thousand rotting deaths. That’s when the piss found its passage and filled the Presidential pajamas nicely.

“You listen here you son of a whore, I’ve been nice to you for a long fucking time, but you tempt me and I’ll drag you down to the depths of a thousand hells, where if you’re lucky I won’t personally see to it that your own ass won’t be ripped out as you lay in an eternity’s waking watch feeling every foul sensation, you understand me Mister mother fucking President?”

The President was speechless, and utterly horrified. His head bobbed up and down in a child’s pathetic way, his crotch stinking of amonia and growing viciously colder as the moment wore on. His balls begged to creep back up inside and made a hint of never wanting to come back down and see the world again. The President would have let them if He could have, and would have just as likely joined them in their cruel journey. He too felt their desire to never again see the cruel world. A cruel world where monsters really could come bursting out of the shadows in the private (and intimate) world of a President’s bedroom.

“What is it you want?” He asked when he found the strength forever later.

“What do I want?” The Beast of shadows asked, a look of amused thought growing on it’s face as it appeared to think over a thousand nasty choices. A look of bright idea grew in its eyes and then it spoke again.

 ”Why, all I want Sammy is for you to take a peek into the unseen and have a taste for my world. I’ve been up and down these halls quite a bit lately, before you ever walked them that’s for sure. And, well, I just wanted to stop by and say howdy to my good friend Sammy.”

The thing’s eyes said otherwise.

The President felt the sudden release of the monster like claws from his throat and realized he was falling backwards toward the waiting bed. He hadn’t even noticed his body being pulled up and away from the safety of the bed below when it had happened, but was deeply grateful to be returning to its waiting warmth.

“Oh, and Sammy…”

President Samuel Hager turned toward the retreating figure. Shadows were swimming up on all the figure’s sides ready to swallow him up, and hopefully take it back to hell where it could burn in misery, the President thought.

 The creature eyed the President for a lonely stretch of time, contemplating something and looking for all the world as if it knew the President’s inner thoughts. That wicked up turned smile found its place on the anciently foul thing made up of darkness and whisps of shadow like smoke. Its eyes returned to a scarecrow like look void of insanity, but also void of the normal. Its dark brow hanging dangerously over those even looking eyes. It was a moment tempting the President into madness. It would in fact tempt any man or woman into madness, had they seen it instead.

“Have fun in May…” It spoke finally.

A puff of shadow took the strange figure away, leaving the President sitting bone chilled and utterly alone. He reached for the trusty blankets, tucked them up and under his chin and vowed to not fall asleep. His eyes which started out wide and terror raped by the intrusion slowly crept ever closer toward sleep. A few times a natural creak of the old House that sat as an icon to so many, drew his eyes open wide in a fierce and fresh burst of energy.

Is it coming back, his mind raced over and over. Again, those wide eyes of terror drew heavy and sleep took him. The shadows shifted and the piss tried its best to dry. The President tossed and turned in hopeless attempts at peaceful sleep. Neither of which happened, the piss drying or the restful sleep that was so desperately needed (even before the sinister thing invaded the President’s sleeping chamber.)

However come 9 am of the next day President Hager was up and beginning another hectic day in the hallowed halls of Liberty and Freedom. His mind never once returned to that strange and horrifying night before in one of the most guarded Houses of the world. He did however feel the soggy cold dampness of his pajams, smelled the acrid stench and wondered just what wicked dream had caused him a grown man of power to piss himself like a child. A flash of a wicked face stole his peace, but nothing more of the night crept in. He shrugged it off to a mere nightmare, and soon enough forgot it entirely.

The hustles and rappid rhythm of the White House kept the President quite busy, his Wife returned and the Secretary with the dancing breasts was promptly replaced for reasons never explained. In the President’s own mind, he felt guilty and wanted to extinguish the temptation before it birthed a shame. A shame too many before him had endured, and he himself would be damned to have happen to him.

He and his wife slept countless nights from the that wicked one with the whispy shadows and the sudden burst of a figure, all the way until May without anything once even remotely clear to that night. They had their demons to be certain, but who doesnt? They dreamed their nightmares, moaned in their sleep and never upon waking understood just what it was that had conjured their waking in the first place. But wasnt this typical of us all?

May came with a soft blast of excitement, and not a single thought of the tragic night some five months before came to mind. Midways through a demonically painful suffocating feeling took President Samuel Hager deep into the insane spasms of a heart attack. His hand shot to his chest in the idiots hope of being able to massage it away, or to proclaim the obvious. It was massive, it was severe, and above all, it was fatal. His eyes bulged insect like, his mouth clenched at first, his teeth showing in animal like fury. Then it opened wide and sucked in at the air like a dying fish. It was a circus act befitting of the damned, and the dying. His fight was fierce to say the least, and had a respectable audience. No one rushed to his side as he started the death march, no one had time to, the awful thing that had came upon him was swift with ancient practice.

His head collapsed with a sick ka-thunk upon the most sacred of all desks before a shocked and fully live audience of cameras. It was tragic, and not very easily forgotten. As if freed for the first time, those in attendance at the Oval office rushed to the already dead Presidents side. They did all this and not until graceless moments later realized the cyclops beast of a camera was still rolling.

Meanwhile, at homes spanning the globe, a live audience watched onward with the have to see mentality all people have been guilty of at one time or another. Seeing a wreck for example and not being able to look away. Not even in the face of the chaotic mess of blood and gore mixed in with shattered glass and bent metal. Not even then can the hypnotization be rendered weak enough to pull from. It was this same force that kept the camera going, and the eyes glued. It beat the hell out of reality TV or so the watching audience thought. Their eyes taking it all in, it wasn’t real, they couldnt see it, taste it, touch it or feel it. Well, not physically, it just wasn’t real.

Elsewhere a thin looking man with cropped hair and scarecrow eyes was walking down a lonely stretch of highway. His thumb which was abnormally long and had the darkest nails anyone could ever dream possible, was fully extended and begging for a ride. His heavily worn out boots made no click clack, only an old man’s quiet shuffle. His clothes were bland and cried no alarm, but they were saturated with a faint smell that was close to a burning house. Wood, ash and tears.

Three cars passed the lonely figure, two of which wrecked in one freak accident or another on down the road. The local newspapers never being able to explain it themselves. Not even the local cops. It was an act of God they said, heads hung low. Their minds however knew the truth, it was an act of a devil, not God. It was a knowing of the gut, a knowledge that’s often crowded out by cruel logic in a cruel and cold age of reason.

What had happened to the President, was just another twisted joke of an ancient evil that wanted to assure a watching world, that what roamed in the nights of the Dark Ages was still alive and hitching rides across the country. It was in fact still playing those same old practical pranks that only Demons can conjure.

Copyright (c) 2008 by Gregory D. Welch

~ by shadesoftruth on November 4, 2008.