Sean E. Britten

I’ve always been inspired by music (I know, super original!) and music has always been a part of my writing. Way back in the days of burnt CDs, my mates and I used to put together CD mixtapes and I came up with the idea of a series of short stories based around pieces of music. Mixtape is all short stories sharing their titles with different songs and inspired, to various degrees, by their lyrics, artists, and vibe.

Currently Playing: INXS – Devil Inside

He doesn’t know why and he doesn’t know how, but Damian has been possessed by a demon that is slowly but surely ruining his life. Ignoring the puking, the boils, the violent urges and bizarre visions can only hold it off for so long.

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As Damian threw up, he wondered what he was going to get this time. Bent over the toilet bowl, gripping the cold porcelain, the force thrusting up from the pit of his stomach squeezed his eyes closed. He felt the tickle of little legs at the back of his throat and then on his gums right before the splash. He retched for several more moments, spasms making his chest ache. Every single morning he found himself throwing up with the same force, usually several times throughout the day as well. Spitting the last of the foul taste from his mouth, he eased his eyes open.

Centipedes. Black and red with dozens of spiny legs, writhing in the black gruel that now coated the inside of the toilet bowl and filled the water. They tried to crawl up the sides. Damian felt kind of bad for them as he reached for the flush. Centipedes seemed closer to real animals than most of the things he puked up. Maggots he was always glad to get rid of. Worms were harmless but he was indifferent toward them. Those little brown cockroaches filled him with such disgust that if anything he felt a kind of malicious pleasure in flushing them. But he had a measure of sympathy for the centipedes. Nevertheless, he hit the flush, waited, and flushed again. Black spit and wriggling bodies gurgled into the pipe and disappeared. Damian dabbed his lips with toilet paper as he stood up and made his way to the sink. He spat, rinsed his mouth, gargled, and brushed his teeth.

Another day in paradise, motherfucker.

Something pricked the back of Damian’s throat again. Bending over in a sudden rush, he hacked up a final centipede. It shot into the sink hard enough to bounce off the porcelain then fell, writhing, against the drain. Damian’s previous sympathy was forgotten. With a surge of anger he slammed the heel of his hand into the wriggling bug and smashed it into a streak of legs and grease.

In the kitchen, Damian drank coffee and forced himself to eat a couple of slices of dry toast. He choked down the sustenance, enough to keep him going through the morning. His eyes, however, strayed to the knife block by his microwave.

Take a knife and hide it under your shirt. They’d never see it coming.

“No, I don’t think so,” Damian said.

The knives remained in their block but he felt the handle of one so vividly that his fingers curled involuntarily around it. Tremors of impact shuddered the length of his arm as images of his coworkers drifted through his mind. Their faces contorting first in surprise and then agony as his imaginary self first revealed the knife and then rammed it into their guts. He could almost taste the warm and salty splatter of blood hitting his lips.

Taking several deep and calming breaths, Damian finished his coffee and then made doubly sure he hadn’t picked up any of the knives and stashed them on his person without realising. He’d done so before.

On the train ride into work, no one spoke. Other commuters were concerned with their headphones or their screens, or they stared straight ahead into their own worlds. There seemed to be no common thread of humanity between them at all. At every station, they poured on and off the train like cattle at a slaughterhouse.

Damian scratched at the cuff of his business shirt. The sleeve rolled up to reveal red boils and a fierce rash. His face and hands were uncovered but cruel burns and boils crawled up both of his arms and crossed his chest. He tugged the sleeve back down to cover them.

He felt tense. He always felt tense now. Reaching over his shoulder, he massaged a kink in his neck. Gradually, he felt the muscles loosen. Some of the tension unwound and he let his head drift back, rolling it to the side. Looser, too loose. Something gave way and his head continued to revolve, and he wound up looking backward over his own shoulder.

Damian let out a choked sound as his trachea was pinched closed. Vertebrae popped and crackled, he felt the vibrations in his jaw. His face lined up with his spine. He couldn’t make himself turn back, he could only keep going. His head kept twisting, facing the window above his left shoulder, and then it came back to the front with a snap. He could breathe again. Looking around frantically, he checked the faces of his fellow commuters but no one wore expressions of shock or horror.

Damian didn’t know where the demon had come from. It would make sense if he remembered unwisely reading aloud from an old book full of Latin, or breaking a ghoulish statue, or getting drunk and pissing in a church graveyard. He’d just woken up one morning puking slugs and with a voice pushing him toward bloodshed in the back of his head. Horrified as he was at first, he’d tried to convince himself it wasn’t real. Then, he’d screamed and raged about why this was happening to him and only him. He’d tried to reason with the demon, searching for a way to get it out, begging, pleading, but all it ever wanted was for him to kill himself or to kill others and he couldn’t do that. Now, he just tried to make it through the day.

The train was old, the seats cracked, graffiti scrawled all over the walls. Buzzing softly, the lights flickered on and off. In the fractions between flickers, Damian saw horrible creatures scattered throughout the carriage. More imaginary horrors from the demon. Creatures that were themselves demonic, alien, and tortured. Mangled, mutilated things. A long, many-legged thing that reminded him of the centipedes he’d thrown up that morning, its flesh flayed and pink and veiny, wrapped itself around a woman’s shoulders. Eyes bulged above the mandibles gnawing on her skull. Another monstrosity, chimplike, its skin crispy, limbs broken, suckled at a big man’s chest with a mouth like a leech. A catlike, tentacled thing clung to the side of another man’s head, open lesions weeping down its back. Damian had no idea why the demon showed him these things. Unlike the visions of violence, the creatures only appeared for fractions of a second but looked disturbingly real.

Damian reached the office without incident in spite of the demon whispering violet obscenities in the back of his head. Jo, the receptionist, greeted him warmly. Perfect, plump, angelic Jo. If he could get this thing out of his head, he might actually get around to asking her out on a date. Or get around to finding a new excuse not to.

What would it feel like to wear her skin? Wet, I assume. Warm and wet. Until it gets all cold and stiff.

Another guy, Sohan, sat at the desk across from Damian. Most of the office remained empty but Sohan was already tapping at his keyboard with a cup of takeaway coffee steaming beside him.

“Hey, buddy, how are you doing? You alright?” Sohan asked.

Tell him you fucked his mother.

“I’m good, thanks,” Damian said.

“You sure? You’re looking a little pale.”

Tell him it’s because his mother wouldn’t stop sucking your cock until you were cumming blood.

“Jesus.”

“What’s that?” Sohan asked.

“Nothing, nothing, I’m okay. I, uh, threw up a little bit this morning but I think it was just something I ate.”

“Stay away from me if you’re sick, buddy. I’m saving my sick days to call out for a music festival.”

Jokingly, Sohan leaned backward in his chair and used his fingers to make a cross. Damian grimaced as he felt something recoil in his chest but then it was gone. He settled in his chair and opened his computer.

An hour later, the office was full of people. Marketing and Accounting and Sales all shoved into the same open plan space. Movement and babble surrounded Damian in waves. Distracted as he was, he struggled to concentrate on his work. Numbers bled off the screen. A pulse beat at the base of his throat.

How many of them would it take to stop you? If you just started killing them?

Damian found his eyes roaming around the office of their own accord. He was tall and reasonably well built. The majority of the office were middleaged women. There were only two guys, Toby and Nicholas, both in Sales, who he was reasonably sure could take him in a fight one on one.

Take them out first, by surprise. Take your stapler and ram it into Toby’s fucking eyes. There are scissors in the drawer, use them to shiv Nicholas in the neck. Thread your keys through your fingers and punch Julietta in the face.

“Shut up, shut the fuck up,” Damian muttered under his breath.

A meeting reminder popped up in the corner of Damian’s screen. Apparently he had one scheduled with his boss, Drew, which he had forgotten. He clicked to acknowledge it then waited for fifteen minutes before heading over to Drew’s office.

“Damian, how are you doing?” Drew said. “Come in and shut the door, please.”

Stab him.

Damian checked his pockets to be sure he hadn’t stashed some scissors there without realising. Finding them empty, he shut the door and sat across from his boss.

“I’m good, thanks,” Damian said. “I’m not sure why we had this meeting scheduled? I had it in my calendar.”

“That’s alright, I booked it in. Look, I’ll get right to the point, how are you really doing? You happy here? Everything alright at home?”

Damian felt something cold trickle down his spine. Visions flitted through his head of him smashing Drew’s face down onto his desk.

“Yeah, yes, I’m fine here,” Damian said. “And at home.”

“It’s a few weeks until your next official assessment but I’ve got to warn you that it’s not looking good. You were doing fine up until a couple of months ago and then it’s like your KPIs just fell off a cliff. And it’s not just that, I’ve had a few people comment that you seem standoffish, shut down. They’ve heard you talking to yourself at times.”

KPIs? More like Kill This Prick. Smash his fucking head on the desk. Wrap that shitty fucking tie around his throat and choke him with it.

“Shut up,” Damian hissed.

“What was that?” Drew looked mildly alarmed.

“I said, uh, who said that? Who said that about me?”

“These are anonymous reports. It’s alright, this isn’t some kind of official HR thing, I’m just checking in.”

Damian noticed Drew shifting his mouse and clicking something on his screen, looking at it from the corner of his eye. The screen pointed away from Damian so he couldn’t see what was on it. He couldn’t help but wonder if the names of his accusers might be visible in whatever window Drew had just minimised.

Take that screen and smash his fucking head until he stops fucking wiggling, the fat grub. Invite the traitors in one at a time and take them out too.

Damian’s heart battered his ribs like a bird in a cage. Something fought for control of his right hand, jerking up and reaching for the computer. He snatched it with his left hand and battled it down. Frustration bubbled over.

“Fuck off!” Damian snarled.

Drew flushed. “Excuse me?”

“Not you!” Damian said, but his tone boiled with anger. “I mean-,”

“Damian, uh, your eyes?”

Feeling something warm and wet on his cheek, Damian reached for his face. His fingertips came away stained with redness. Tears of blood leaked from the corners of his eyes. He scrubbed them away and grasped for an explanation. In the back of his head, however, the demon was laughing and drowning out any ability to think. Drew cycled through expressions before regaining his professionalism.

“I’m not accusing you of anything, Damian, but have you taken something?”

“No! No, of course not,” Damian said, still wiping at his face.

Blood got into Damian’s left pupil and stung terribly. He gasped, probing his eye with careful fingers. For a moment, his vision blurred and he saw the office through a sheen of red. The LED lights overhead were harsh and steady but in that split-second he saw another of the demon’s imaginary monsters hunched over Drew’s shoulder. Shaped like a giant praying mantis, it drove a pair of fanged limbs into his manager’s chest. He blinked and it was gone but he was sure it was yet another attempt by the demon to force a reaction out of him. Blinking rapidly and wiping his face, he managed to rid himself of the last of the tears.

Drew huffed. “Look, I’ve passed on the warning I felt I needed to. I think you might need to step back and gain a little perspective before we speak again. Take the rest of the day off. Actually, take the rest of the week. I don’t want to see you back in the office until next Monday and, and, we’ll speak again, alright?”

“Drew, it’s fine, I don’t need to-,”

“Damian, please, we’ll speak again on Monday.”

Damian started to storm out of the office but then stopped himself and instead did his best not to draw any more attention. Going about their business, no one really looked up at him. Sohan didn’t even glance away from his own work. He felt like a pariah all the same. The voice at the back of his head fell quiet, biding its strength, until the demon returned with a sudden vengeance as he packed up his laptop. He just barely managed to clamp down and stop himself from throwing it across the office like a frisbee.

Jo looked up from behind the reception desk as Damian left. She smiled for a moment before catching his expression. He stabbed at the call button for the elevator.

“Is everything alright?” Jo asked.

Bitch.

“Bitch,” Damian muttered before he could stop himself.

Jo looked shocked. Damian hesitated, wanting to explain, to apologise, but the elevator doors dinged and rolled open. Helpless, he stepped inside and let the doors close in front of him. The demon howled laughter in the back of his skull. With a surge of rage, he swung around and punched the wall of the elevator. The panel dented. Fuelled by frustration and demonic impulses, he hit it again and again until the elevator reached the lobby. Knuckles grazed, he breathed deeply and smoothed out his clothing before walking out.

Damian’s stomach clenched as he stalked down the street. He had no real sense of where he was going. Like any normal day, he headed back toward the train station but he didn’t really want to go home. He didn’t want to be alone, and he didn’t want to be around other people. He had no idea what to do. Almost in a daze, he brushed past a couple of people and left them irritated in his wake.

You’ve got nothing. No family, no friends, no job. You’re a fucking loser and it’s never going to get any better.

“Shut up!”

Damian’s stomach roiled again, and again. The back of his throat burned. He was going to throw up and there was nothing he could do to stop it, the demon felt like it was getting stronger off of his pain. He looked around for a restaurant, somewhere with a bathroom he could use, but the best he could do was a nearby alley. His guts writhed as he staggered behind the closest dumpster. Bent double, he let himself retch.

Pain wracked Damian’s chest. Pressure moved the length of his oesophagus, slowly, agonisingly. It blocked the back of his throat and made it impossible to breathe. It wasn’t unusual for him to find himself throwing up multiple times a day, like some kind of byproduct from the demon’s presence inside him, but this was different. Spasming, he did his best to force it out. As the pressure went on and on, his lungs started to burn and his head swam. He wondered, dimly, if this was some kind of final attack and he was actually going to die.

Something wedged against his tongue and pried his jaws open. Water streamed from his eyes. The diamond-shaped head of a snake with polished black scales emerged from his open mouth. Its forked tongue flickered. Spotting it out of the corner of his eye, Damian jerked back with instinctive fear but he couldn’t pull away. His throat stretched and tore. Some of the snake’s scales came away slick with blood. At its thickest point, the snake was about the same circumference as his wrist. Once that had passed, the rest of the snake’s body cleared his throat and mouth without resistance. His windpipe found room to open again and he gasped for breath. About four foot in length, surprisingly heavy, the snake’s bloodslicked coils slapped as it hit the floor of the alley. Damian skipped backward. The snake, completely black, writhed and moved under the dumpster. He spat a gob of bloody saliva after it.

Someone laughed at the mouth of the alley. “Little early in the day to be getting wasted, isn’t it?”

Damian turned to find a man he didn’t recognise watching him with a mocking sneer. Beefy with a shaven head, wearing a business shirt and tie. He must have seen Damian throwing up behind the dumpster but not seen the snake. Eyes watery, unsteady on his feet, Damian would have had to admit he looked drunk.

Who the fuck does this fat fuck think he is? Fuck him up.

“Fuck off,” Damian said.

“Fuck off? Fuck you, I’m not the one puking in an alley four steps away from where people are walking,” the man said, still laughing.

Violent fantasies projected themselves on the back of Damian’s eyeballs. His hands bunched involuntarily into fists as he felt punches landing. Felt the shape of the man’s jawbone padded with flab meeting his knuckles. The demon was growing stronger and, after the day he’d had, frustration threatened to boil over.

Damian tried to remove himself by moving out of the alley, past the mocking businessman. The man refused to move, sneering, forcing Damian to almost shoulder him aside. At the opportune moment, however, the demon pounced. Damian felt it push its way down his right leg, the limb suddenly wooden, and it made him veer sideways. His shoulder hammered into the centre of the man’s chest hard enough to knock him back a couple of steps.

“Hey, asshole!” the beefy man said.

The other man’s hands slammed forward and shoved Damian in return. He staggered into the corner of the alley wall, jarring his shoulder. Sneer gone, the man looked almost surprised with himself. Something inside Damian snapped. Dropping his bag, he swung around with a widely arching punch. The blow clipped the man’s chin and knocked his head back.

“Fuck!”

The man fought back with an attempt at a punch, catching Damian on the shoulder. Grabbing him by the front of his shirt, Damian hauled the man back into the alley. The two of them bounced off the dumpster. They exchanged clumsy, flailing blows, both struggling to keep their footing, grunting.

Stick your fucking thumb in his eye! Skullfuck this bitch! Kill him!

The businessman managed to land a solid blow on the side of Damian’s head. His skull rang. With another clumsy swing, Damian hit him in the throat. The two of them broke apart, breathing hard, neither of them really built for a prolonged fight.

“Fuck this!” the man said, backing off. “You’re fucking crazy!”

Suddenly, something moved at their feet. Damian looked down and saw the black coils of the snake he’d just puked up looping around the man’s ankle. Its head reared back, fangs bared.

“No!” Damian reached for the animal.

“What the fuck?”

In a blur of motion, the snake struck. Its fangs found their mark through the man’s slacks. He cried out in shock and pain, and threw himself backward. The snake coiled and thrashed but its jaws didn’t release until it had injected a full draught of venom. Dropping off, it whipped around then disappeared beneath the dumpster again.

“What the fuck? What the fuck?” the man echoed, groping for his bitten calf.

Blood seeped through the material of the man’s pants. Eyes rolling back in their sockets, he went suddenly limp. His head smacked the side of the dumpster as he fell, creating a hollow bang, and he collapsed across the grimy floor of the alley. Damian felt like he was watching from a place outside of himself as the man flailed for a few more moments, foam collecting at the corners of his mouth.

“Oh, fuck! Fuck!” Damian said, fear sobering him even as the demon continued to bark in his skull.

Finish the job! Stomp his fucking head until his brains are coming out his ears!

Damian looked around but didn’t see any witnesses. No windows overlooked the alley and there was no one watching from the street. He bent over and grabbed the man by the shoulders. Heaving him upright, he dragged the body behind the dumpster and left it leaning against the brick wall. The man’s eyes were open and glassy, and more foamy saliva poured down his chin.

In a blind panic, Damian ran. A few people gave him strange looks as he raced out of the alley and took off down the sidewalk. With nowhere else to go, he returned to the station and then jumped on the next train without bothering to look where it was going. It only occurred to him as he was riding away that he couldn’t be sure if the man was really dead. And if he’d called him an ambulance maybe he could have told some kind of story that wouldn’t have implicated him in what had happened.

Damian didn’t go home. He ended up catching another train back to the station closest to his apartment but instead he wandered for hours until it began to get dark. More boils broke out across the back of his neck and his hands. Veering into a fast food place, he locked himself in the bathroom and pulled open the front of his shirt. The shape of an upside down cross appeared on his chest, branded to the skin with boils and rashy red irritation.

You’re mine now, killer! No going back, doesn’t matter what you do, there’s no getting rid of me!

Damian made his way to the middle of a nearby bridge, stopping and leaning on the railing. Cars passed behind him. Looking down at the dark water, he could see the refracted light of their headlamps sweeping across its surface. If he looked closely, he could see the narrow shadow of his own reflection. The fall wouldn’t be enough to kill him on its own but maybe it might knock him unconscious. Either way, his best hope would be to then drown as he was swept downstream by the current. His silhouette looked small, lonely.

Do it, pussy.

A set of headlights traced across the water. In the flicker as it passed over Damian’s reflection, he saw it. Draped across his shoulders, some tentacled monstrosity. He spotted several glowing eyes, like cigarette embers, above a maw filled with fangs as long as fingers. The fangs were sunk into the side of his neck. Just a glimpse and then it was gone but it was so distinct it burned itself into his memory.

“It’s you, I see you,” Damian said.

You’re imagining things, you can’t see me. I’m inside you.

Damian had never seen the demon before. He didn’t think it was possible. But now that he had, the comparison to all the other creatures he sometimes saw for fractions of a second at a time was obvious. It was all so obvious. He’d been blind not to see it.

“They’re demons, they’re all demons,” Damian said. “I thought they were just another horrible thing you showed me, but they’re real! They’re real, like you are.”

Okay, fine! So what, Captain Obvious? Means nothing.

“It means I’m not alone! All those people on the train, the others I’ve seen, the one on Drew, they’ve all got creatures like you eating at them.”

It doesn’t change anything. You’re a killer, they’ll lock you up! 

“I don’t even know if he’s really dead. If the snake was deadly, why did you want me to finish the job?”

You’ll never be rid of me! Not unless you jump, jump! Finish it!

“Fuck you! If all those people can do it, I can do it.”

Damian pushed away from the bridge’s railing. With the demon raging in the back of his head, he returned the way he’d come. Suddenly seizures gripped his legs and arms but, step by step, he regained control. Thinking he was alone in his possession, he’d never looked for a real solution but now possibilities opened up ahead of him. The demon was powerful but far from all-powerful. He walked toward an uncertain future, but a future.

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Sean: Penultimate story for the year and I was tossing up what to release, to be honest! Done a lot of horror lately and I had a few potential stories in mind but I didn’t want things to get too samey. I hope this one is enough of a departure?

The good news, well, I hope it’s good news, is if you’ve enjoyed Mixtape I’ve definitely got a bunch more stories for the new year! I’m not sure what I’ll be releasing on the site or when but I’ll definitely have some more stories inspired by songs. Toward the late stages of my wife’s pregnancy and during the first few weeks of the new baby, I didn’t have quite as much energy for writing but I do feel like I’ve had a bit of a burst this week, and I already have a few ready to go, so stay tuned! Maybe I’ll start a new playlist, I feel like the Mixtape playlist for this year is a bit of a disaster when it comes to vibes.

If you want more from me, you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram.

Next Track: Gayla Peevy – I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas