Page 1 of My Demon Mate

CHAPTER 1

EVEREST

“Come on, baby. I know you can do it. Just pick up the knife and stab him in the throat. He deserves it.”

I shake my head, trying to dispel the deep, rumbling voice that’s been pinging around my skull for years. There’s no point answering it, but I think the words anyway. No, I will not stab anyone.

The voice isn’t scary exactly—it mirrors all the secret thoughts and feelings I have, but am too afraid to act on. What bothers me about the voice is it’s foreign. It’s not my own inner voice that reminds me to lock my front door when I leave the house or tells me to take the trash out before I go to work. This voice is deadly and wants me to act on the murderous suggestions it whispers in my head.

“Everest!” my boss and the lead cook at the diner I work at, Mitch, shouts. “Get your head out of your fucking ass and give me the order!” It takes me a moment to realize I’m standing in the middle of the kitchen with the order ticket just out of reach for Mitch to grab. Mitch called me a stupid piece of shit because I tried to hand it to him through the window, forgetting about his policy.

I looked away in embarrassment—he yelled loud enough for the entire diner to hear—and my eyes snagged on the knife on the counter behind him. Then my mystery voice told me to commit murder, and I was too stunned to hand Mitch the order.

He snatches the paper from my hand, causing it to rip in half. I stutter out an apology, trying to take the pieces from his hand so I can read him the order. He roughly pushes me backward with one hand, causing me to bump into the shelf behind me. I raise my hands over my head in time to stop the pot and a few bowls from dropping on me.

“Give me that!” Mitch shouts, his face twisted in anger. He takes the rest of the paper from me, brushing past me to get to the oven range. “Get the fuck out of here and take more orders. Looking at your face is pissing me off.”

Swallowing a lump in my throat at his abuse, I turn to leave … but not before my eyes land on the knife once again. I stare at it for longer than I should and my mystery voice comes back. It’s practically purring with excitement, and I have to suppress a shudder. Though I’m not sure if it’s a good shudder or not.

“I know you want to,” the voice says, sounding as smooth as silk. “I can help you. You know what to do.”

That’s where my mysterious voice is wrong. I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know where the voice is coming from to know what to do. It’s driving me crazy that I don’t know, and I thought for a while there I was crazy. My stomach rolls as I think about how insane the voice made me feel.

I went to a psychiatrist a few years back and told them I was hearing voices. The doctor seemed bored at first, until I told him the voice only came about when someone was inflicting some form of abuse on me. Even though I shouldn’t have, I told him the voice would tell me to hurt or kill those people to stop them from hurting me. It wasn’t until I was committed and held in a psychiatric unit for possible schizophrenia, being pumped full of meds and monitored for a week, that I knew I should not have told him anything. Even then, the voice didn’t go away.

Instead, the voice told me to pretend that I was getting better. It told me exactly what to tell the doctors so I could be released. Through my voice’s guidance, I told the doctors I was under a lot of stress and blamed an imaginary voice for my own thoughts. It took days, but I finally convinced them I wasn’t a danger to anyone, that they were just the thoughts of an exhausted man.

Since that happened three years ago, I haven’t told a soul I hear someone in my head that tells me to maim or kill people.

Who would I tell? I don’t have any friends. My family, that only consists of my dad, is shit. It’s just me and my mystery man in my head.

After pushing away the desire to open Mitch’s throat—is it even my thought or is it my mystery voice’s suggestion?—I go back out to the main floor and make my rounds through the tables of the Gray Wolf Diner, named after Mitch’s last name and his love for wolves, I guess. A few people give me dry looks when I approach their table to ask how everything is, not happy that I interrupted their meals. They don’t complain, thank God. Mitch would really have my ass if I got complaints.

I would have been fired by now if there was anyone else willing to take Mitch’s shit. Shortly after I was hired and had learned my basic duties, the guy training me quit on the spot because Mitch had yelled in his face one too many times. I’m used to it, though. I’m used to being hit and yelled at and spit on and disrespected in general. So anything Mitch dishes out, I can take. As long as he pays me so I can save up and move out, I’ll be his punching bag. I’m not sure when that will be, but I’m hopeful it’ll be soon. I can’t take much more of living in my shitty trailer.

My home life is no better than my work life. I’m twenty-five and still living with my dad, who has made my life a living hell for as long as I can remember. My dad, Jack, is an alcoholic abuser that beats me regularly. It’s gotten to the point that I anticipate it, and I’m surprised when he doesn’t. My mom, Lily, took off years ago, not wanting to get her ass beat day in and day out. It hurts, because she was a good mother, trying to shield me from the abuse my dad inflicted on me, but she up and left. I wonder if she tried to take me with her or just packed her bags and didn’t look back. Though I should, I harbor her no ill will. Wherever she is, I hope she’s happy.

Sighing, I finish the rest of my shift with no more incidents, steering clear of Mitch as I place orders just on the table beside him instead of handing them over personally. The guy training me told me about Mitch’s personal policy not to hang slips in the window. One day, one floated onto the grill and stuck to a burger he’d just finished. I forgot this during my second week working, and a slip dropped on the grill, barely missing a cheesesteak. It was the first time he slapped me in the back of the head for my fuck up. Since I didn’t quit or retaliate, the abuse got worse.

I step into the changing room to clock out, almost bumping into another employee. The server that clocks in after me gives me a curious look, like she wants to say something, but she doesn’t. She simply walks past me to start her shift. Mitch probably told her not to talk to me or she sees how badly I’m treated and doesn’t want to be caught in the crosshairs. No matter. I don’t have friends and don’t know how to make them, so it’s just as well that she keeps her mouth shut. It seems like I don’t have anyone.

“You know you have me,” my stranger says in a seductive voice. One that sends an unexpected shiver down my spine. “You could have more, you know. You know what to do, Everest.”

I grunt in irritation as I put on my backpack and start my walk the few miles home. The voice is wrong again. I truly don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do. I don’t know what to do besides be lonely with him talking in my head. It’s not like he’ll magically appear to save me from the hell that is my life, so I need to get used to life alone.

The trailer park we live in is nothing fancy, but it’s all I can afford. My dad doesn’t work, hasn’t had a job since I can remember and made me start paying rent at sixteen when I got my first job. If it weren’t for me working my ass off, we’d be homeless. I’m not sure how we survived before I started working.

When I was eighteen, I tried to move out and make my own way in a tiny studio apartment on the other side of town. It was small, cramped and smelled faintly of mold, but it was all I could afford after I saved for almost a year, and it was mine.

After only a week there, my dad tracked me down and literally dragged me back home. My trash bag filled with clothes was strewn all over the ground as I tried not to stumble after him. The grip he had on my hair was unrelenting, my scalp smarting for days after, a few bald patches in the middle that I had a hard time covering. In the ordeal, I lost most of my clothes. I had to save up for months just to go to the second hand store to replace some of them.

Seven years later, I’m stuck in the same place, doing the same thing, hoping for a way out. I’ll have to be more careful this time and leave the state, not just the trailer park. That’ll take time and money. If only I had someone out of state that could help me.

“I can help you, baby.”

“No, you can’t!” I shout, knowing I sound crazy, but I’m frustrated. It’s the first time I answered the voice aloud, not just replying back in my head. But the exclamation burst from my chest because they’re words I so desperately want to hear from someone real, not my own imagination.

“The fuck you yelling about now, boy?” my dad asks, weaving on the porch as he drinks from his can of beer. He’s probably working on his second case if his weaving is any indication. “That’s why you got locked up in that looney bin last time. Talking to yourself like a fucking idiot. Embarrassing me around town.”

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