The Hum of Hate in His Bones

issue 271 - 3rd November, 2024

by Corey Jae White and Austin Armatys

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Every time Gnar’kor tries to leave the bathroom he is stopped by some invisible, malevolent force. If he gets too close to the door he is thrown back, and ricochets across the length of his sterile, lavender-scented prison. Sometimes Gnar’kor hears human music and laughter outside, but if he tries to open the window to investigate, it crashes down on his fingers, paralyzing him with pain. Sometimes he just sits dejected on the toilet, grinding his monstrous teeth. Other times Gnar’kor loses his temper and rushes the door, kicking and thrashing at it until, inevitably, he’s tossed aside again.

When Gnar’kor is so hungry he fears he may actually die, a pizza is slid beneath the door by some unseen hand. He hates these pepperoni pizzas, hates their human stench, but he eats them nonetheless, chewing dispassionately. He eats and listens to the hum of hate in his bones, dreaming of those he must kill in order to make this right.

#

“Derek! Are you downloading porn again?” Kayla removes her headphones to listen for a response.

“He’s too young for porn,” Kathy says idly, playing on her tablet at the kitchen bench while Gary crouches in front of the oven.

“You wish, Mom. Derek!”

“What?” Derek appears wearing his dobok, yellow belt tied around his waist.

“My game keeps dropping out! Are you downloading porn, you little shit?”

“I’m doing my taekwondo! Stop being a bitch.” Derek recedes down the hallway, flipping Kayla off as he goes.

“Dinner is in five minutes,” Gary calls out to his son.

“Mom, Derek just called me a bitch.”

Kathy’s tablet bloops and she smiles. She doesn’t look up. “You called him a little shit first, Kay. All’s fair in love and name-calling.”

Kayla turns to the laptop and puts her headphones back on.

Attempting to reconnect.

For the next four days a huge event will course through The Shattered Earth, bringing the netherworlds closer to the mundane world than ever before. Demons will crack through the pavement, new raids will appear and, most importantly, new Immortal loot will drop at a much higher rate than usual... And Kayla will miss it all if her goddamn connection keeps fritzing out. It won’t do, not when she’s expecting LazerBoy and his Fallen Brotherhood goons to launch their inevitable counterattack.

Attempting to reconnect.

“Is anyone listening to me?” Gary calls from the kitchen. “Or does Gary have to eat this tasty shit all by himself?”

Kayla closes the game with a huff and sits at the dining table.

“Do you have to swear like that in front of the kids?” Kathy says. “It’s inappropriate. And weird.”

“Not to mention talking in the third person,” adds Kayla. “That’s super weird.”

“Well, I think it’s funny,” Gary says, ferrying his pizza to the table trailed by steam. “Gary thinks it’s super funny.”

Derek materializes, this time wearing just pajama pants, summoned by the wafting scent of melted cheese.

“Mom, make Derek put a shirt on.”

Derek slides into his seat. “I’ll be like five minutes, then I’ll go back to my room. I’m starving.”

“Yeah, I bet you’ve really worked up an appetite,” Kayla says, stroking the air with a closed fist.

Gary cracks a beer. “Can you two stop bickering? We’re going to have some civilized conversation at this table,” he says, “or die trying.”

“Your father made this pizza from scratch,” Kathy says as she cuts it into eight uneven slices and dishes them out. “This isn’t store bought; he spent all afternoon making it.”

“The trick is letting the dough rest,” Gary says, his chin lifting slightly as he shares his wisdom.

“Smells great, Dad,” says Derek.

“Amazing what you can do when you don’t have a job,” mutters Kayla, instantly regretting it. If her father hears though, he doesn’t show it.

“Where’s Paul?” Kathy asks. “I thought the smell would have him begging by now.”

“Must be downstairs,” Gary says.

“Kay, could you bring him up?”

Kayla’s only response is a tight-lipped smile. She heads toward the back of the split-level house, glad for the respite from her family.

Their Dachshund Paul is usually left downstairs on the tiled floor since he got old and incontinent, the faithful hound kept company by the family’s VR rig and all those weird... things that mysteriously arrived in the mail.

Kayla hears the whir of a struggling electric motor. Her dad’s softball-sized glass award has fallen off the mantle, again, and the squat, black Roomi vacuum cleaner is pushing it toward the stairs.

Kayla laughs, then opens her phone’s camera app and swaps it to video mode. “What are you doing, Roomi?” she says. “Typical knock-off shit.”

The Roomi aims the award right between two stair railings. The engine whines louder as it pushes the solid glass ball up and over the lip of wood. With one last shove, the ball rolls over the precipice.

Kayla giggles. She’s about to put her phone away but hears a wet crack. She walks slow to the railing where the Roomi sits still whirring. She lifts her phone high, watching the screen, unable to bring herself to look with her own eyes. She’s still recording when her phone clears the banister and the screen shows Paul’s lifeless body. The glass award rests where his furry little head should be, circled by a corona of gore.

Kayla screams.

#

Gnar’kor sits on the toilet. Not because he needs to, but because it’s the only place to sit that isn’t the floor. For a time, he would try to sleep in the bathtub, but the faucet would turn on randomly, soaking him with water—either freezing or scalding—or with tepid blood of unknown origin. Once, a thick, whitish fluid glugged from the tap, but Gnar’kor scrambled from the tub before he was made to feel the temperature and consistency of that inexplicable jism.

He remembers the journey that brought him to this wretched place. The girl sorcerer had broken into his shatterbone keep, teleporting past vicious traps and dispatching his minions in their dozens. But when faced with Gnar’kor, she fled, leaving behind a strange shimmering portal. He had never seen its like before, and it whispered to him of other realms to conquer. He slipped through before the portal could close, arriving on this plane of neatly cut grass and tightly packed farmhouses with no crops in sight.

The girl was gone, but her voice had boomed inside his head, his skull vibrating with the force of it: “How’d you get here? Weird bug. Still, I can probably have some fun with you.”

A moment later he was caught within these four tiled walls, a white ceramic prison ill-suited to a demon prince. Years have passed since. Still he is no closer to freedom.

Gnar’kor sighs. He has been sitting on the toilet for so long his ass aches, his legs tingling numb. Suddenly the porcelain morphs beneath him, turning to black leather, reclining, and extending to support his hulking mass. Gnar’kor lies back, relieved, pleasantly perplexed until snakes twist from the chair—their eyes chrome, black fangs forged in the void. They wrap around his wrists, ankles, and throat, tightening as he struggles.

The ceiling fades from plaster white to star-smattered black and a raven flies out from this darkness to land on his hip. Its razor claws dig through his flesh and clasp the jutting bone. He winces, and the bird caws.

“Creature, will you strike at these snakes and free me?”

The bird caws again, tightens its grip on his hipbone and lashes out, striking at a different sort of snake. Gnar’kor screams. His torn member lies bifurcated against his thigh, bleeding steadily with his pulse.

The girl stands over him, clad in a long, dark robe, the garment burning with sigils of the Forgotten Order.

“Aren’t you meant to be some kinda scary demon prince?” she says in her strangely-accented tongue. “I’ve had you trapped in this bathroom for, like, thirty years, and now your dick’s been bitten in half by a bird.”

As if on command, the raven strikes again, this time coming away with a beakful of mangled cock flesh. It tosses this chunk into the air, catches it, and eats it.

“Vile sorceress! Soon I will be free, and then I will visit a vengeance upon your family. Your children will know of this curse, and your children’s children, and your–”

“Children? Eww, dude, gross. Besides, you’re never gonna escape; I created this world… well, Zuburb. I’m god here.”

Gnar’kor spits in her face. “Then I will kill god.”

Kayla scoffs. “Look, it’s been fun watching you go slowly mad, but now I have a better idea.” She pulls a snail as large as a housecat from her sleeve. The creature’s shell shimmers, cycling through every shade of green imaginable.

“No!” Gnar’kor screams. “The Xaddrigal Chronosnail of Horrendous Insanity!”

“I picked it up cheap at auction back over in The Shattered Earth.” She holds it over him and the creature’s flesh ripples, loosing drops of acidic mucus onto the demon’s torso, the vaporized flesh smelling of death and dust. “Figure I’ll test it out on you before I use it on the Zuburban normies.”

She places the Chronosnail on Gnar’kor’s stomach and it slowly slides toward his face. Its slime burns cold on his skin and already his perception of time slows, the snail’s venom triggering a million-year hallucination.

Reality crawls, slower even than the snail.

In his mind Gnar’kor is screaming, but his lips will not part for a hundred years.

#

The bathtub faucet gushes, water rolling over the edge in waves as the surface tension breaks. The hair dryer switches itself on, shaking and clattering against the top of the vanity. It tumbles off the edge, and when the appliance hits the pooling water, the whole bathroom flashes bright before falling into darkness.

Kayla hits pause on the video, titled Ghost In My Bathroom?, now at 53 million views. Kayla’s other video, Roomi Murdered My Dog, has amassed over 100 million views and was featured on all the national news channels, though they obscured the carnage of Paul’s head with blurry pixelation.

“I always wanted to go viral,” Kayla says, “but not like this.”

“It’s a good thing you posted these videos,” says the woman in their living room, “it’s how we found you.” She wears a crushed velvet safari suit and oversized horn-rimmed glasses, with a rosary of silicon beads on a USB cable clutched in her hands, and a huge dagger sheathed at her hip. Her partner, an ancient man with a beard so long and twisted it needs to be tied around his waist, prowls the living room, scanning the walls with some sort of electronic doohickey. His machine tings again, and he tuts in response.

“Just in time, too,” he says. “These readings...”

Kayla looks at their business card again: Lee Lin and Mark Chin, Techno-Exorcists.

Gary cracks another beer. Kayla’s mom usually would have said something by now, but everyone has more pressing concerns.

“Let me get this straight: you’re talking about ghosts?” Kathy asks.

“I understand your skepticism,” says Lee Lin, “but this is very real, and we need to take immediate action.”

“It might not even be a ghost,” Mark offers. “Could be a djinn, a ghoul, a phantom, a sprite...”

“How about a dracula?” Gary asks, slurring. “Could it be a fuckin’ dracula?”

“The events you’ve experienced all point to a genuine paranatural experience,” continues Lee Lin, ignoring Gary. “The entity’s focus on technology suggests a very particular source: a demonic daemon.”

Mark joins them at the couches. “Beyond the videos, have you experienced any other weirdness recently? Did the microwave flash 6:66? Did the toaster burn bread with images of Mary shaking the baby Jesus?”

“What about the internet being all fuckity?” Kayla asks, though it seems mundane compared to pet murder and electrified bathrooms.

Mark leans forward. “When did this happen?”

“Earlier in the week. Just before Paul...” Kayla trails off.

Lee Lin and Mark share a meaningful look. Lee Lin jots down some notes in cryptic shorthand.

“And before that?”

“How about the... uh...” Kathy tries to complete her sentence but can’t.

“The dildos?” offers Gary. “A bunch of sex toys got delivered the day before Paul died. Strange ones. Tentacle-shaped with weird protrusions. Hundreds of the things, all charged to my credit card.”

“They were piled at our front door for the whole neighborhood to see,” Kathy adds, blushing. “What happened to discreet packaging?”

“Some demons are as mischievous as they are malevolent,” says Mark.

“It starts with low level activity—missing data, a washing machine that turns itself on in the middle of the night,” Lee Lin says. “But demons bore easily, and the worst is yet to come. We need to make our move, and we need to make it now.”

#

A subjective millennium later, Gnar’kor is weak when the walls finally fall aside to reveal a bland scene: lawnmowers, dinner parties and hobby roses. An insult of a prison. He takes a tentative step and instantly old powers return, his muscles thrumming with energy, the effects of the Chronosnail’s toxins lifting.

Gnar’kor, the Demon Prince of The Seven Hells, inhales deeply, enjoying the clarity afforded to him by hatred.

“Feels pretty nice, huh?” asks a voice. “Freedom, I mean.”

“Where are you? Show yourself human, so that I may fuck your brains!”

“Oh, you can’t see me, let alone do that other thing. I just hacked in so we could talk. I think we might be able to help one another.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m LazerBoy, leader of the Fallen Brotherhood,” the voice says. “I know who trapped you. I know where she lives, and I want to help you kill her.”

Gnar’kor growls. “Why facilitate my revenge?”

“Your captor has long been a thorn in my side. Her Forgotten Order turned my allies against me and destroyed my entire army! Over twelve hundred hours of grinding, wasted!”

The man’s petty grievance means nothing to Gnar’kor. All that matters is their shared hatred. “Tell me how to reach her.”

#

Derek watches from the window as Mark pulls another cardboard box from the van. The vehicle is hard-to-miss, side panels airbrushed with three cartoon ghosts flying out of a cracked computer screen.

“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?” Gary asks, nursing yet another fresh beer.

Lee Lin turns from the complicated looking machine in front of her. “The main thing you can do is sweep the house again for electronics and put them with the others.”

Derek looks longingly at the pile in the middle of the living room. Some of his favorite stuff is there—his consoles, his laptop, that weird frog toy from Japan that Uncle James got him, his phone...

“Dad, Kayla hasn’t put her phone in the pile.”

“I was going to, snitch.” Kayla checks her appearance on the phone screen and starts streaming. “This is your girl K-Dot for perhaps the last time. As you can see, my living room is ruined, my dog has been killed, and I’ve probably missed like a million sweet loot drops. Pray for me, chat.” She blows a kiss and disconnects.

“Those are your final words?” Derek says.

“At least I’m not going to die a virgin, you little—”

“Kayla! Put your phone in the pile this instant,” Gary snaps. “No one is going to die! And if you have any respect for me, you’ll pretend you’re a virgin until you’re at least 30 years old.”

“Ew, Dad!”

“Ew, you!” says Gary. “I’m going to give the house another once-over.”

#

Kathy walks downstairs to do an electronics sweep and the glow coming from inside the VR helmet catches her eye.

She picks it up: a boutique Scandinavian model that weighs less than a bicycle helmet, dull grey and ringed with orange LEDs. They bought it for Gary to do ‘immersive meetings’ while working remotely, then he was retrenched two days after the store’s return period ended and it became Kathy’s toy.

Haptic feedback required. Please wear Haptic Feedback Suit before continuing.

Kathy finds the suit neatly folded on the couch and puts it on. She can’t remember the last time she wore it—not since… Kathy plugs the cable into the helmet and dons the headgear.

The screen reads Initializing Haptics and Kathy feels the familiar sensation of the suit tightening, vibrating from top and bottom, the two waves meeting at her crotch.

She sighs.

She’s expecting the usual menu, a near-endless list of depraved scenes, but when it has finished loading, she finds herself face-to-face with some kind of... creature. It is clearly (and prodigiously) male, muscled like those MMA fighters Derek idolizes. His skin is deep red, and a thick strip of black hair runs down the center of his scalp between his two... horns?

“I have been waiting for you,” he says.

#

Derek is alone in the living room when the TV switches itself on, the screen showing a muscular, tanned chad in bed with three buxom women, writhing and moaning loudly.

“What the shit is this?” Kayla asks, rushing in from the kitchen.

“The TV just did it, I swear!”

The image distorts, shows a man on his knees with a bag over his head, the footage branded with a terrorist logo. Another man, with his face obscured by a patterned scarf, stands over him holding a curved sword. Before Derek can react, the sword drops, severing the man’s neck. The head rolls in an arc, spraying blood across the sand.

The TV switches back to the porno, but now every time the chad’s dick slides into a hole, it’s not a wet squelch Derek hears but the sound of sword slicing through neck. Every thrust a decapitation, every ecstatic moan a man begging for his life.

Derek vomits onto his tented pants, the warm sick seeping through the fabric.

#

Gary charges into the living room, instinct driving him to protect his children. He smashes his beer bottle into the TV screen and stands proud, chest puffed out, his stupor (and unemployment) momentarily forgotten.

“It’s ok. Gary’s here,” he slurs.

The weird, snuff cut-up continues to play at the edges of the screen, volume loud as ever, the picture now shattered flesh geometries flickering with primary colors. Gary tears the TV off the wall and throws it to the floor with a crunch. Another scream echoes through the house and Gary stares at the TV quizzically.

“What’s that noise?” he asks.

“Dad, it’s coming from the back of the house,” Kayla says.

Gary kicks the TV once for good measure, then cocks his head to listen.

“It sounds like... Mom?” Derek says.

“Fuck,” Gary yells, running toward the noise. He gets to the top of the stairs and looks down to see Kathy writhing on the floor, wearing the VR helmet and haptic suit, howling with abandon as she climaxes noisily.

“What the shit are you doing?”

Kathy stops and lays rigid. After a moment she sits up, pulls her hand out from inside the suit, and removes the helmet. Her face is flushed.

“We’ve finished constructing the Electronic Penta— What’s going on?” Mark asks as he and Lee Lin join Gary at the stairwell.

“I was just—” Kathy stops. Her words turn to choking sounds and her hands go to her throat.

“Quickly,” Lee Lin shouts, taking the large, ceremonial blade from its sheath. “The daemon has possessed the suit!”

#

They sit inside the Electronic Pentagram, surrounded by salt and cabling, a smart phone placed at each of the star’s points, and three laptops in its center. Mark sits at these computers, one hand clutching a huge can of energy drink, the other dancing across the keyboards. Gary sits slightly apart from the group, brooding, the soiled and sliced haptic suit lying before him like a snake’s shed skin.

“So, first this demon rapes my wife, and now it’s trying to kill us,” Gary says. “Great. Good times.”

“It wasn’t rape,” Kathy says, sounding sheepish.

Kayla groans. “I am going to need so much therapy.”

“Can’t we just leave?” Kathy asks.

“How many cars on your street are self-driving?” Lee Lin asks, doing a series of abstract mathematical calculations on a yellow legal pad.

Kathy sighs. “Most of them?”

“We don’t know how far this daemon’s influence extends,” Lee Lin says. “He could be all across the neighborhood by now... Trust us, this is the safest place to be.”

“The Seven Holy Firewalls are up,” Mark says. “It’s now or never.”

Lee Lin stands and, as she opens her mouth to speak, the lights throughout the house flicker and die. “Demon!” she yells. “You are not welcome here! I call upon the Saints McAfee and Kaspersky to banish you from this place!”

There is silence before a deep laugh emanates from the speakers of the phones surrounding them. The screens come to life, and both Kathy and Kayla gasp.

“Gnar’kor?” Kayla says.

“My oppressor!” The demon’s voice crackles, too deep for the tiny phone speakers. “Now is the time of my vengeance.”

“Vengeance? What is he talking about, Kayla?” Gary asks.

“He’s a demon prince from The Shattered Earth. But that’s just a game.”

Mark chugs the last of his energy drink and crushes the can in his grip. “It’s finally happening,” he says. “We’ve dealt with emergent digital demons before, but there was always a risk of escalation when they began to add AI to gameworld NPCs. They refused to listen to the warnings of the cyberspiritualist community!”

The color leeches out of Kayla’s face. “I thought something had changed; he was a lot more fun to torture than the last one.”

“And you call me demon,” Gnar’kor growls.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Kayla says, pleading to her family and the strange strangers. “You should see the cute Zuburbia bathroom I—”

“Silence!” The lights flicker as Gnar’kor’s shout echoes around the room. The image on each screen changes again, displaying a white background with black text. Kathy crawls toward the nearest phone.

“How do you have that?” she says, looking at an email conversation between herself and Rodrigo, the words as vivid in her memory as they are on screen.

“Tell me, Kathryn, did you fuck Rodrigo?” Gnar’kor laughs. “Did he fulfil you in ways your husband couldn’t?”

Gary’s eyes bulge from their sockets, shellshock written in the weird twist of his grin. “What the fuck is this, Kathy?”

“I never slept with him,” Kathy cries. There’s a pause before she adds, “Not in real life.”

“What does that mean?” Gary asks, his voice high-pitched.

“The VR suit with the haptics. It wasn’t like it was really him. We’d pick characters, we’d…” Kathy lowers her head.

“I’ve just figured out the perfect way to deal with this situation,” Gary says, standing up. “Good luck with this bullshit, everyone. Gary is out.”

“You must not leave the pentagram,” says Lee Lin.

“Dad? Where are you going?” Derek asks.

“Away, my son. Away from this family. Away from these two babbling weirdos. Away from this fucking demon or whatever it is... away from all of you.”

“Now, Gary—” Mark starts, raising a placating hand.

Gary pushes the old man aside and snatches a bottle of scotch from the nearby bookshelf. It’s a 30-year-old Glenglassaugh—the very bottle he was given for ten years of service at the agency.

“I’ve been saving this for a special occasion,” he says, breaking the seal and taking a deep draught.

“Gary,” Kathy pleads from the floor, “please, I—”

“You want some? Okay, sweetheart, consider it a parting gift!”

Gary pours a stream of golden liquor all over his crying wife, then turns to Kayla and smiles.

“Shame you couldn’t catch that for your YouTube channel, huh, Kay? There were probably some good views in that one. Real pity. Maybe next time?”

“YouTube, dad? Gross.”

“Gary, do not leave the safety of the Electronic Pentagram! Our psychoelectric defenses may be the only thing keeping you safe!”

Mark’s voice is commanding, but Gary walks backward out of the pentagram, one hand clutching the bottle and the other with middle finger defiantly extended.

“Fuck you later, everybody!” Gary calls out cheerily.

They watch him disappear and a few seconds later the door to the garage slams shut.

“Is Dad possessed?” Derek asks.

“No,” Kathy says, “he’s just an asshole!”

“I’m going after him.” Derek darts off before anyone stop him.

He hears the soft purr of the electric car starting up in the garage. He tries the door, but the light over the smart lock glows red. Derek bangs on the door with a clenched fist.

“Dad, open up!”

There’s no answer. The motor whirs louder still, the high-pitched whine rising in intensity.

Derek’s eyes well with tears. “We’re a family! We’ve got to stick together!”

He shoulder-barges the door again and again, tears flowing freely. The door begins to give then, finally, it cracks. Derek pushes into the smoke-filled garage.

“Dad?” Derek calls out. The noise of the squealing tires is piercing. Derek gropes along the wall, reaching for the button to open the garage door. There. He presses it and the door slowly rises, tire smoke billowing out into the street.

“Derek,” his father croaks. “Gary needs help.”

The car rocks back and forth over Gary’s torso, smearing his entrails against the polished concrete floor, the tire spraying gore up the wall. Derek screams and, is if in response, the self-driving car merrily beeps its horn.

An arm wraps around Derek’s waist and he’s dragged out of the garage.

“Dad!” he yells. The car shoots forward, slamming into the doorframe as Derek and Mark topple over, just out of reach of the murderous automobile.

#

When Derek and Mark sit back in the Pentagram, the phone screens are showing a scene of inexplicable VR copulation—multilimbed creatures fornicating in freefall, desperate to climax before they strike the ground rushing up from beneath.

“Very creative, Kathy,” Gnar’kor says.

Kayla sneers in disgust, but she can’t look away.

“Hey, fuckhead!” Derek says. “Leave Mom alone.”

The screens switch to show Derek in a low-res webcam, staring intently at the screen as his arm moves rapidly. Derek’s face goes white.

“Who gives a fuck?” Kayla says. “He’s a teenage boy, of course he jerks off.”

“Do you want to know what he was masturbating to?”

“No!” Derek yells, but it’s too late. A RedTube video comes onscreen, showing a man breaking wooden boards with his erect, left-veering cock.

“So, that’s why you love taekwondo,” Kayla says, but the boy’s eyes are blank.

“And now you, Kayla; my warden, my torturer, my most hated of all creatures!”

The screens switch to a flurry of chat screens, scrolling with texts, lewds, and nudes.

“Kayla?” Kathy says.

“So, I sext with like half my class. Who cares? I’m a zoomer, I have no shame!”

“This isn’t going to work!” Mark says.

“It’s time for the Omega Protocol!” Lee Lin opens the remaining Techno-Exorcists box and pulls out a huge tangle of chargers already plugged into powerboards. “Derek, you need to power-on every single device in that pile!” she says.

Derek doesn’t question her, he just nods and takes the bundle before diving into the mound of electronics.

As each device is connected it comes to life with Gnar’kor’s face or voice. “Come Monday morning, every child in your school will have seen that video,” the frog toy croaks. “Cockwondo, that’s what they’ll call you!”

“Piss off,” Derek says, finishing his task and returning to the Pentagram.

“Let’s do this!” Mark lifts up the top of a large metal box, revealing a chunky red button.

“Alright.” Lee Lin holds out her hands and lifts the other women to their feet. “I want everyone to flip Gnar’kor off!”

“Is that part of the spell or whatever?” Kayla asks.

“No, but it’ll feel really good!” Lee Lin smiles and points two birds right at one of the phones. The others follow suit. “Hey, Gnar’kor? Just die already!”

The demon laughs, but if he’s about to speak, he doesn’t get the chance.

“Boom!” Mark yells, slamming his fist down on the button.

Every light globe in the house explodes, the Penta-phones all spark and start to smoke, and the huge pile of hissing and screaming electronics goes dead.

The house is silent but for the occasional zapping spark.

“What the fuck?” Kayla mutters.

“EMP.” Mark grins. “Kills everything electronic in the vicinity. Never had to use it before.”

“The mound of electronics was a trap,” explains Lee Lin. “Give the demon so many devices to possess that every instance of him is in the house when the EMP goes off.”

“So... that’s it?” asks Kathy. “He’s gone?”

“Banished, with no hope of returning.”

“That’s the Techno-Exorcist guarantee,” Mark adds.

The stillness of the air hangs heavy around them.

“I’m sorry, Mom. None of this would’ve happened if it wasn’t for me.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Kay,” Kathy says, wrapping her arms tight around her daughter.

“Let’s head outside,” Lee Lin says. “This is a crime scene now, and the authorities will be here any minute, and we’ve got some explaining to do.”

Derek moves toward the garage where his father’s remains have already started to congeal.

“Dad,” Derek moans.

Kathy draws her son close. “Don’t, Derek. Not like this.”

Outside, the group huddles together on the manicured lawn. The street is devoid of all light but that of the moon—streetlights exploded, houses dark, concerned neighbors slowly exiting their homes to seek answers.

As the five survivors turn toward the flashing lights and blaring sirens of approaching emergency vehicles, no one notices the Roomi vacuum cleaner gliding silently down the sidewalk, leaving behind a long streak of Gary’s blood as it disappears into the night.