Page 14 of Demon's Prey
Kurse yelped in delight. He reached in for the containers and grabbed both at once with his extensive fingers. Without realizing the power of his own might, he slammed the freezer door, immediately knocking it off its hinges.
Kurse cowered, making a mental note to take a look at that before Faith returned home.
Kurse sat on the couch with his containers and decided to take a look at the room viewer Faith had told him about. They called them ‘TVs’ on Earth, and they had something similar in Kortanth. He thought about them as something like moving books.
He clicked the TV on and found multiple stories that appealed to him. The first had pale looking humans chasing non-pale humans, attempting to consume them for their living properties. Kurse could relate to this.
But that program changed to something about a man who hits balls with a stick, so he lost interest.
He pressed the button to move rooms. He wound up in a room where people were always talking about their feelings, their betrayals, and the last person they had slept with. Kurse figured out how to locate the description with his massive fingers and read the title of the room; The Bold and the Restless.
This program captivated him beyond measure. As he observed the ongoings of twins showing up out of nowhere, unplanned pregnancies, and characters previously thought of as dead reappearing, he consumed the appetizing ice cream.
When he noticed that one container was empty, he tossed it aside and ripped open the other. The sensation of ice and sweetness was luxurious, and made him feel like he was back home in his lair.
He could do anything he wanted in his lair, and demons there understood him. Even if they didn’t, he didn’t care because they always did as they were told. No one in Kortanth spoke to him like he was a five year old.
Kurse felt something gurgling in his stomach when he polished off the last container of icy goodness. He placed his hand on it and cringed slightly. Something was moving around in his gut, like the stirring of sharp knives.
But abruptly, the knives shot up into his skull, making it pulse like the gongs at the castle of the Oracle.
“FUCK!”
Kurse stood up and smacked his head on the wall. Pieces of it crumbled onto his bare feet. He paid no mind to the damage, though, as his head felt like a thousand hammers were bashing into it.
He clutched himself with two hands, pressing his nails deeper into the caverns of his scales. He tumbled out onto the balcony and began bellowing, begging for any help that could be offered.
But New York remained indifferent to his suffering, replying only with the usual orchestra of honks and chatter.
“FUCK, WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY HEAD?” Kurse screamed and found himself leaning over the side of the building. Eventually, the paneling gave way to his weight, and he plummeted to the first floor below. Kurse came with it, rolled into a ball and was still holding his head.
The fall to the ground was barely a bump for Kurse. He just wanted to make the pain go away. How could something so wonderful cause such agony?
Kurse stood all the way up, almost losing his balance. His sight was blurry from the pain, but he could still make out a woman standing before him with a creature by her side.
Kurse squinted and concluded that it must be her pet. But her pet was wide-eyed and made sporadic screeching sounds intermittently.
“HELP ME! MY HEAD HURTS!”
Kurse’s voice rumbled through the ground below him. The woman jumped backward but reached into her pocket anyway. She removed a tiny pink item out of it, then held it out to Kurse.
“Here, for your head,” the woman’s voice quivered.
Kurse leapt forward and almost fell. The pet ran away with intense fright. The woman, however, kept her hand outstretched so Kurse could pluck the object from her palm.
He held it between his nails, continuing to scream in pain. The woman motioned for him to swallow it, so swallow it indeed he did. It tasted sour and powdery.
“IT'S NOT WORKING!”
The woman took a step forward, “You have to wait a few minutes. Can—can I help you get home?”
Kurse gazed at the ground where the remnants of Faith’s balcony lay. He wished more than anything that he could go home.
8
FAITH
Faith was driving downtown around 5PM, which she knew was a death sentence within itself in New York. She had just come from interviewing Stan Landon, the man in charge of training men to be more present during their wives' births. She had to intentionally keep her eyes extra wide open in order not to fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion.
