The Journal Of Jonathon Sparoe: Daemons Among Us

By Jonathon Sparoe

Jonathon Sparoe's having a hard time adjusting to life. Struggling to find a decent job after coming home from college, Jonathon can only seem to find solace in writing. But the mysterous appearance of a smoky apparition calling itself his "daemon" turns Jonathon's world upside down. What is this creature, and what does it want from him?

Excerpt:

“Awake, sleepy head?” a voice bounced around the room, a ventriloquist’s wet dream as it would seem, for Jonathon could not assume with any clarity where the words were originating from. Yet, despite this auditory deceit, Jonathon could not mistake for even a moment that the words were stemming from the black, cloudy fog clinging to the corner of his ceiling. The shape slid across the grooves along the wooden apex of his room before falling into the air before him, swirling into what Jonathon had imagined a puddle of water would look like suspended in mid-air. Two eyes popped out from its center, huge and widened with a royal blue. And there it was. Just as he had seen in his mind not an hour or so ago: that crooked, slinking smile. Jonathon wanted to cry out, either with fear or surprise, or both for that matter, yet choked as his throat tightened and betrayed him.

The mass before him took notice, and let out a cacophonous roar of laughter that smacked against the inner walls of Jonathon’s head. “Jacky boy, what’s the matter? I thought we’d gone through this already last night?” The shape, creature, whatever this floating blob was before him gloated to Jonathon, and it floated slowly closer towards him, until Jonathon could feel that same feeling he had while reading the piece sitting on his computer. Warmth. Contentment.

For all the fear that he felt, Jonathon’s heart sat still in his chest, quietly beating at a calm and steady pace. Four arms complete with wobbling hands and fingertips crept out of the edges of this creature’s form, and then they wrapped themselves around Jonathon with a strangely gentle embrace. Jonathon tensed at first, and then eased up as he felt a stronger sensation of that pacifying warmth. And even though he was still equally at odds between fits of fear and nervousness, Jonathon’s mind bubbled up with a single thought. It doesn’t feel quite like rubber. More like satin.

“Feel better now, baby?” The creature teased, and before Jonathon could even purse his lips to begin to say, “Who are you?” the creature responded, “Jacky boy. Jacky baby. I’m your daemon. I thought I told you that last night. Geez man, you really need to lay off of that cheeba.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jonathon Sparoe
• Release date: Apr 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311842350

Book preview

The Journal Of Jonathon Sparoe: Daemons Among Us

Published by Jonathon Sparoe at Smashwords

Copyright © 2014 Jonathon Sparoe

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Chapter One – A writer’s daemon

Jonathon Sparoe sat idly in his chair, rocking back and forth as he flicked a pencil between his left thumb and forefinger. Damn it, I can’t figure this shit out! He thought as he began to furiously bite at the fingernails of his right hand, until the cuticles of his middle and ring fingers began to bleed. Jonathon decided that he had had enough of trying to sit in silence, waiting for his muse to bring him the answers, and got up. He paced his small dimly lit room slowly, rubbing his hands against his temples in a vain attempt to ease the pain of a throbbing headache that had begun to beat its drums between his ears.

This was Jonathon’s first week home from graduating college, and unlike most of his peers, Jonathon did not have a job. Jonathon didn’t have piss poor grades, but they weren’t spectacular either. Needless to say, Jonathon was fairly upset that he had to move back into his parents’ home. And in the basement no less. Just great, now they can really call me a lowlife who lives in his mother’s basement, Jonathon thought, angry at himself that he didn’t more fiercely pursue an internship in his junior year. Fast forward to Wednesday, and here was Jonathon, pacing around his cramped room, frustrated to no end.

Figuring that he couldn’t go wrong with spending his free time more wisely, Jonathon had decided that he would write, and hope that his efforts would be fruitful. After all, Jonathon was a spectacular writer. He began his literary career in the 5th grade, when his elementary teacher Ms. Lamio had presented her students with a single piece of stiffened paper which had asked the students to write a tribute to their parents. Jonathon had never considered writing previously – he was much more interested in drawing pictures of cartoon characters onto plain t-shirts in an attempt to sell them to his classmates – yet he still took the paper home, and wrote. The poem became recognized by the Gift of Tributes Company, and he was published in their compilation book. Thus began Jonathon Sparoe’s introduction to writing.

Over the years, Jonathon had written hundreds of poems. Mostly bad ones, reeking of teenage angst and discussing his emotions. Others were thematic. Those were primarily done as extra credit assignments for school, where he had written about the Knights of the Round Table as his class was reading The Canterbury Tales. Eventually, Jonathon had dozens of poems published in compilation books, as he had sent them to whoever would give them a passing glance. Yet as he entered young adulthood and lived the college life, Jonathon put his writing on the back burner. Maybe he shouldn’t have, for here he was: no job, no car, isolated in the small box that was his bedroom, with a brightly lit computer screen flooding his room with the white light of an empty word document.

Fuck this shit, I need to relax, Jonathon thought to himself as he walked over to his dresser’s top drawer and opened it, swiping loose socks and boxers to the side, revealing a small wooden box. Jonathon flipped the lid open, pulled out a small plastic bag filled with fluffed up green buds and a glass pipe caked with tar and resin on its insides, revealing a swirl pattern of blues, yellows, and reds mixed into the clear glass. He pinched some off a piece of the bud, crumpled it into the bowl of his pipe, and put a flame to it, inhaling deeply. Jonathon held the smoke in his lungs for nearly two minutes, visualizing the swirling pattern that he could feel in his lungs. Jonathon exhaled, closed his eyes, and breathed a sigh of relief. At last, his headache was gone.

Hey. Hey buddy. The sound of this whimsical voice caught Jonathon off guard, and in his inebriated state he panicked as he nearly fell backwards onto his bed. Looking around, Jonathon tried to make out the source of this