Wasted Time
Flames rose from the circle Raul had drawn around himself in lighter fluid. A shadow appeared before him, a tall figure of darkness, too faint to be real yet too impressive not to be. Raising his arms, which were covered in occult symbols drawn in charcoal, Raul recited to the shadow a string of words so vile that nobody in the history of demonology has ever remembered them, their unconscious defense systems immediately forcing them to forget the syllables.
“Speak, mortal!” commanded the shadow. “You have ten minutes!”
Throughout the world, the sky became red. Clouds turned to balls of flame. Despite this, the air on Earth was freezing, void of warmth and relentlessly frosty. At once, every human being turned their eyes to the sky, and at once they all heard a voice speak inside their heads. It was Raul’s voice.
“I have so much to say. Such ideas to share. Such feelings to vent. I have so much to say, and I’ve been trying to say it. Still, nobody hears. Nobody hears, because NOBODY IS FUCKING LISTENING! I don’t matter to ANY OF YOU, DO I? NOBODY CARES! WELL FUCK THAT! YOU’RE GOING TO LISTEN ANYWAY!”
The streets were filled with chaos as most of the human race thought they were going insane. Fear and pain were the meal of the day at the IHOP in Salinas, California, where several women tried to kill themselves by bashing their heads into the walls and mirrors in the restrooms. Some people in Berlin, Germany decided to spare their children the plague, whether they saw it as the accursed voice of a devil or the pain of having mentally ill parents, by slitting their offspring’s throats. The greatest torment, however, was reserved for a select few.
“SASHA! I fucking loved you! I loved you with all of my heart AND YOU CHOSE JACOB! How could you take that fucking idiot over me!? I would have been the perfect boyfriend to you! I would have treated you like a goddess! He dumped your ass like a dead hooker into a river. Of course, it never occurred to you that maybe you could cry on my shoulder. No. I was a fucking freak. How could someone like you ever love me? HOW COULD ANYONE LIKE ANYBODY LOVE ME!?
“Jimmy, you DICK! I did everything for you. I helped you move out of your parents’ house. I went and got you from your fucking senior prom because you were too drunk to drive home. I BAILED YOU OUT OF JAIL! Did you ever so much as say, ‘Thanks, man’? NO! You ungrateful little cunt!”
On went Raul, ranting for ten minutes about the friends who had wronged him, which pretty much covered every friend he had ever had. After he finished complaining about his grandmother constantly bitching at him for not going to church, the sky faded back to its normal color, the clouds became clouds again, and his voice faded from the minds of the masses, which were a lot less massive following the large number of suicides.
The shadow suddenly ceased to be faint, now an almost solid figure, entirely black and nearly opaque.
“Fool!” said the shadow. “You waste the time of Lord Nexrum for this? You have contributed NOTHING to the world! You HAD very important things to say, but when given the chance, you did NOTHING! The entire human race was your audience, and you whine about your insignificant romantic failures? You cried to people who didn’t care. Your personal life was NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS! For wasting my time, you shall pay. You will suffer for a thousand years in the Pit of Electrons!”
Raul’s eyes widened, a look of pure fear forming on his face before it melted away, along with the rest of his flesh. His body was completely burned, and his soul found itself falling down an infinite tunnel. If he still had eyes, there would have been tears in them.