Her Agitated Demons

By W.F. Gigliotti

Seraphina was a succubus, a demon of lust from Hell.
Throughout history, the Devil’s succubi sought to haunt the dreams of men, introducing greed, lust, and corruption into their minds. But Seraphina was different from the others. Seraphina was obsessed with finding true love. But true love is hard to find for a demon.
On a cold rainy night, Paul Chastain found Seraphina, broken and on the edge of despair. He resisted her as best he could as he nursed her back to health, but eventually he surrendered his heart to her and married her.
All was well, but one day, 25 years later, Paul was browsing through Seraphina’s demonic artifacts in her Demonry and he accidentally unleashed the Apocalypse. His wife, Seraphina, lost her senses and left, their four sons fled the scene, and Hell itself was unleashed upon the city and countryside.
Now Paul Chastain has just a limited time to prove that he still loves her and to finally show her the meaning of true love, before Satan takes her back to Hell, where she will be lost to him forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: W.F. Gigliotti
• Release date: Jun 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311993779

Book preview

W.F.Gigliotti Her Agitated Demons http://wfgigliotti.wordpress.com

Any resemblance to anyone alive or dead, real, or imagined by somebody else, is purely coincidental. I never use real people in my fiction. Ever.

This is copyrighted material.

Personal Note from the Author:

Thank you for purchasing this copy of HER AGITATED DEMONS. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Many demons were harmed in the making of this novel. Oh well, they were just demons. No harm, no foul.

No hippopotamuses or rhinoceroses were harmed in the making of this novel. (Um, Spoilers?)

No hippopotamuses were molested during the making of this novel.

No humans were harmed in the making of this novel, because humans are VERY important.

Other works by W.F.Gigliotti:

Novels:

KINETIC CUT AND RUN

THE QUIVERING ZOMBIE

THE HAMMERED ZOMBIE

Short Story:

FROGS OF THE DARK RIVER

More details can be found at:

http://wfgigliotti.wordpress.com

Seraphina was a succubus, a demon of lust from Hell.

Throughout history, the Devil's succubi sought to haunt the dreams of men, introducing greed, desire, and corruption into their minds.

But Seraphina was different from the others. Seraphina was obsessed with finding true love. But true love is hard to find for a demon.

On a cold rainy night, Paul Chastain found Seraphina, broken and on the edge of despair. He resisted her as best he could as he nursed her back to health, but eventually he surrendered his heart to her and married her.

All was well, but then one day, twenty-five years later, Paul was browsing through Sera’s demonic artifacts in her Demonry when he unwittingly unleashed Armageddon. His wife, Seraphina, lost her senses and left, their four sons fled the scene, and Hell itself was unleashed upon the city and countryside.

Now Paul Chastain has just a limited time to prove that he still loves her, and to show her finally the meaning of true love, before Satan takes her back to hell, where she will be lost to him forever.

HER AGITATED DEMONS

Seraphina – a demon – had it all

A husband and kids, big and small

Then one day, her husband sinned against her,

And she had a great fall

And all of her agitated minions

Demons big and small

Were unleashed upon the world

And it was the apocalypse for one and all.

Now the husband seeks to set things right

He’s rallied her agitated minions together

To fight the epic fight

Her love and happiness

Was everything in the world that was right

But in the end, he would sacrifice all

On this, the longest night

For his beloved Seraphina – the demon

Was his only light.

HER AGITATED DEMONS

Chapter 1 – THE PARTY

My name is Paul Chastain. I was in Hell.

I climbed to the top of the next rise and beheld the landscape before me. This was indeed Hell, as I had feared. This was the middle of it and I was surrounded by demons and devils. My house was a ruin. My sons had fled earlier. There is no telling where they had gone. And my wife was pissed off at me. Much of the region before me was an inferno.

I was all alone now, just me, with nothing but a handgun and the Face of Great Father Sin in my hand. Many would consider the face a mask instead, but it was no mere mask. The face, when placed over your own, destroyed any kind of morality that you might possess. When you looked through its eyes, you looked through the eyes of Satan himself, able to think as he does, and even act as he does.

I looked down upon the face as I gripped it tighter in my hand, my fingers invading the eyeholes of it. It was oddly comforting, the way I was holding it, as if it existed just for the grip of my hand.

I did this, I said to it, as if the face could hear me. Then I thought better. You did this.

Seraphina was my wife’s name. I called her Sera for short, Seraphina when I felt like it. She was named after fire by the greatest devil, Satan himself, the father of lies. She was the daughter of Lillith, the first wife of Adam, before Eve. The tale of Lillith was an enduring tale from the early versions of the Bible, one of those lingering bits of controversy that the church hasn’t been able to erase from history, or at least the history as lain out by the Bible.

My Sera, my cute little demon wife – as she liked to call herself – was now unleashed upon the countryside.

Our house was a ruin and was aflame. I could almost see it still burning from where I stood. The swimming pool had been turned into a steaming cesspit of despair. The boys had run off to who knows where.

I looked down at the face again. I had taken it from Seraphina’s Demonry. I still gripped it as tightly as I could, as if it was the only bit of home that I had left. It felt soft and pliable, as if it were about to bend with just a bit more effort. But that was just an illusion. It was as robust and indestructible as steel, yet resistant to the elements.

The Demonry is what Seraphina called her Special Room. It was a room all her own, devoted entirely to Seraphina’s many novelty items and souvenirs from her many journeys throughout Hell’s many levels and regions. The face came from that room. I should have left it alone.

I looked out again into the valley. I looked out at the town below the hills. The whole town was burning. I had sold and bartered deals on most of these properties over the years. I was a high stakes, highly respected, and high priced real estate agent. Now all of those homes that I had sold and developed were burning.

Ashes drifted everywhere. I love Seraphina with everything that is me, I whispered upon the hot wind. Now my life is a cinder. My curiosity had led to this. Now my wife, my Seraphina, might be gone from me forever.

I have misplaced my future. It is gone forever.

The demons down in the valley were now so numerous that they had to climb on top of one another to move around.

That was my path.

# # #

Hours before Hell erupted around us, the night was cool and cloudless. The moon gave the whole of our backyard an otherworldly glow. The stars were bright and they shined, as they had never done before. I could not remember a more beautiful night.

The music boomed. The crowd struggled to be heard when they spoke. It was a party. My eldest son, Marcus, had graduated High School. This was his graduation party. He stood, proud, holding a beer in his hand at the bar. Yes, we had a dedicated bar in our backyard, covered with a canopy that was attached to the house. It overlooked the large swimming pool that dominated the yard. My other sons, Mathias, Lucas, and Jonus, stood next to Marcus. All of them were laughing and carrying on as if they had not a worry in the world.

They were all grown men now, my sons, never mind that Marcus was legally too young to drink. Marcus was the last one born, the only one who still lived with me and Seraphina. The others had moved out and gotten jobs.

Lucas was the priest. He was also leaning against the bar with a beer in his hand. He had decided to wear a priest’s customary black shirt and black pants, with the small white block at the collar. I forget what that was called. It was strange seeing a priest holding a glass of beer. It’s not exactly how I picture a traditional priest to behave. He looked over at me and raised his glass in salute. I raised my own in kind.

Lucas stood beside Jonus. Jonus was the most laid back of our four sons, though that judgment and image was just an illusion. He was an environmentalist, both by philosophy and by trade. He’d said on many occasions that he worked for Greenpeace, though I’d never seen any actual evidence of that, other than he liked to dress in tie-died shirts and jeans, just like a stereotypical hippy from the 1960’s. It felt like a cliché, for sure, and he liked the fact that he looked like a walking cliché as well. He always called himself The world’s most essential hippy. By his rules, everything we threw away was to be recycled in some way. And the food was especially prepared and planned so that not one scrap or morsel would be wasted. No, he was not really laid back, despite his appearance. He was rather stern, actually.

Mathias was the quietest of my sons at the bar. He had not always been quiet though. His job made him that way. He was our second oldest, but he was perhaps the most measured and careful of my four sons. Joining the military had changed him from being completely extroverted and outspoken into a man who was reserved and watchful. He could not talk about the work that he did for our country, especially since he was Special Forces. When our country needs surgical attacks that could not be done by bombings or drone attacks, my son Mathias was one of the ones that our country called upon.

Though Marcus had just finished High School, he had already decided what he wanted to be: a molecular biologist.

All four of our sons ended up with jobs that had some tie to what Seraphina had predicted of them. It was a strange thing. It worried me somewhat. She always jokingly referred to them as our Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Now here they were, War, Death, Famine, and Pestilence, all sitting at the bar, joking and saluting me, their father, with their glasses of beer.

War was easy to discern, since Mathias was in the military. Lucas was considered Death, because he was a priest. Jonus was considered Famine because he was an environmentalist, though it may seem like a long shot to make that particular connection. And Marcus, he was considered Pestilence, because he wanted to become a molecular biologist. It was amusing and disturbing all at once.

I sat at one of our glass tables with Seraphina beside me. I turned my glass of beer in my hand idly, letting the slight condensation on the side of the glass wet my fingertips. She was watching her sons just as I was. She was proud of them, even more proud than I was.

With the loud music and the crowd’s conversations struggling to be heard, I could make out little to nothing about what was being said. It was all a white noise to me, but I was having a good time. The entire family was able to get away from their ordinary lives to be here, and that was good. Seraphina did not have much in the way of family, not many that could show themselves openly in the mortal world anyway. Her sister, Persephany was here somewhere. She was likely trying to avoid me.

Our four sons, Seraphina said as she sat next to me. She was just close enough that I could hear her over the din. Her normally straight shoulder length hair was curled upward tonight, making her look cuter than normal, which said a lot. Her hair was jet black but had small blond highlights on the ends. All grown up. She held a wineglass, filled halfway with champagne. She did not particularly like champagne, which was why it was taking her so long to drink it. She was not much of a drinker anyway, so there’s that. She took a sip and sighed. Pretty soon we’ll be alone again.

I reached beside me and took her free hand in mine. There’s no one I’d rather be alone with than you, Sera, I said. She looked at me and I gave her a smile. She smiled back and bit her lower lip a bit, which gave her a playful expression. It’s a beautiful night, and I’m sitting next to the most beautiful woman in the world.

And I’m sitting next to my Paul, she said with a smile and a small chuckle. As good and loyal a man as any. My ever-loving husband. A wish fulfilled. And look at me, the demon who fell in love with a mortal man.

If there was sarcasm in her words, I did not hear it this time. That was a good sign. Had she forgotten my missteps? I wondered. The old unspoken tension was still there, the uneasy attitude that kept us from being completely honest and true to each other. Still, I trusted her and she trusted me. It had to be that way. If it was not, it would tear us apart.

My eyes wandered to the other side of the swimming pool at the cop who stood there talking to some of the other guests. He was drinking like the rest. He was off-duty but he was still dressed in his uniform, still armed with his side arm. Conrad Beelz was his name. Seraphina often referred to him as a friend of the family. I did not care for the man. He kept turning up, like some unwanted problem that needed to be fixed.

Sera had assured me on numerous occasions that Conrad Beelz was not a threat, and that I had nothing to worry about. She had told me, at first, that he was one of the few people who knew what she was, and that he was concerned for the safety of the town and its residents, and nothing more. Still, I did not trust him. I know how men think because I am one of them, obviously. If I were Conrad Beelz, I know what I would be thinking when looking upon Sera.

He still bothers you, doesn’t he? Sera asked me. She then took a sip of her champagne as I moved my eyes back to my glass.

I trust you, Sera, I told her.

Love without trust can never last, she said. Her grip on my hand tightened.

I don’t trust him. I don’t like how he looks at you. I never did.

I suppose I can’t blame you, Seraphina said with a sigh. I am a most elegant and beautiful specimen. A trophy maybe? Something to be looked at and admired perhaps? An object of sexual desire so profound and erection inducing that no man can possibly resist me? A work of exquisite and ancient art, to be looked at and fawned over? The succubus who wanted to know true love? A demon who sold her soul to God and to a mortal man so that she could know true love? She took another sip. She was not a drinker. She felt uncomfortable. Her uneasiness was causing her to take in more of her champagne than she ordinarily would, and to say things she was not meaning to say. I am bound to you, Paul. I am forever yours and yours alone.

When most movies are love stories, those love stories often end when the two primary characters fall in love and get married. Once they get married, they live happily ever after and then the credits start to roll. In real life, often the real love story starts long after the couple in question gets married. So it was with us. And this is how I ended up in Hell.

Do you think that I’ve found true love with you, Paul? Sera asked me. Is your love for me true?

Absolutely, I told her. Without hesitation.

Still, there was that tension.

She gave me an uneasy smile. She reached over and kissed me on the cheek. I love you, with all my heart, she told me. You gave me four beautiful sons and a life that I will never forget. Her eyes were watering. A hint of a red glow showed up deep in her black irises, a small hint of her true form, her demonic form. They have all grown to be such strong young men. She downed the rest of her drink and carefully, almost too carefully, set the glass upon the glass table.

The music was pounding. The bass of it was strong enough to cause the concrete walkways to pulse with the music’s strength. The water of the swimming pool, lit up by the pool’s underwater lights, rippled with its beat. The light of the lit water reflected upon everything and everyone.

Whenever I closed my eyes, I could feel the world spinning.

Where are all of the imps? I thought. Our demonic protectors, guardians, pets,