First Demonic Dragon

A man stumbled into a lavish California home at 3 a.m.

His tie was strewn awkwardly around his neck. His breath reeked of alcohol, and his movements, while not fully inhibited, still showed signs of impairment.

He stumbled into the room from the kitchen and walked past a woman sitting at the bar.

She had clearly been up waiting for him. He clearly didn’t care.

“Long night at the office, was it..?” She said as she sipped from her own glass of wine.

The man’s mood seemed to sour visibly as soon as the woman spoke to him. Perhaps he had been trying to pretend that she wasn’t there to begin with.

“That’s what I said in the text, isn’t it..? We landed a big contract at the firm, the guys wanted to do some celebrating… Get off my back.”

He rummaged through the fridge for some kind of comfort food. Not the kale shit that his stupid wife kept buying out of some misguided attempt to look good for him.

It wasn’t working. Having the baby had really knocked her out of her prime.

His wife set her glass down patiently. She interlocked her fingers together and spoke in a soft, non-accusatory tone, painfully designed not to spark conflict.

It was a learned behavior. Painfully crafted over time and born out of necessity.

“…I thought we had decided to quit drinking..?”

It should have worked. It had worked before.

But alcohol and a loss of inhibitions had considerably lowered his tolerance for her perceived nagging.

“Jesus, would you get off my back..? I’m a grown man, I can go andget a fucking drink if I want to, it’s not the end of the world.”

His wife felt her pulse rising. But she kept her voice calm and tried to prevent an already bad night from becoming worse. “Please, keep your voice down, Max is sleeping…”

“Christ.” The man waved his hand dismissively as he returned to sorting through the fridge.

The best thing that he could find to eat was a couple of their son’s Lunchables. Far from riveting food, but they would get the job done at least…

He peeled back the packaging and started snacking on the cheese and crackers. For a moment, he was satiated and seemed to be at peace.

But then, he noticed his wife out of the corner of his eye. Sitting there tensely while she fumbled with the thirty-two-carat ring on her finger.

She always did that whenever she had something unnecessary to say…

“…What now, Janette?”

“I didn’t say anything…” She turned her head away.

“You didn’t have to say anything, but I’m looking at you staring at me out of the corner of your eyes like I’m some prick, so what!?” He snapped.

She flinched when his fist hit the table. Her nerves became even worse as she quietly poured herself another glass of wine.

“You know that those are for Max to take to school..”

“Yeah, well, I pay that asinine tuition and buy all the damn snack boxes to begin with, so I think I can eat all the cheap cookies I want, don’t you?”

The woman slowly got up from her seat while taking her wine glass with her. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this…”

“When I’m like what, Janette?? Tired? Hungry? Whatever it is, make sure to tell me so that I can stay like this all the time! Maybe then you’ll leave me alone for once in your damned life!”

His wife paused just shy of heading up the staircase. She slowly turned around with a hard expression that didn’t quite fit her.

“…You want me to leave you alone..? Fine. I’m taking Max to my mom’s, and-“

“No, you’re not taking my son anywhere.” The man approached her dangerously.

“I’m not going to stay here and keep letting you treat me like this. You don’t want me here, so I’m leaving..!”

The man actually laughed in her face then. “OH, you want to go? Well, that’s fine! Just make sure you leave behind my car, my credit cards, the clothes I bought, every lick of jewelry on your cheap country body and-“

“S-So you want me to leave here with nothing…?”

“You had nothing when I met you, so I figure that it’s only fitting.”

Even as his wife wept silently in front of him, her husband didn’t show any remorse. Rather, he held his hand out and tapped his foot impatiently as if he were waiting for her to hand over everything she wore.

How could someone be so cruel? Hadn’t she loved him enough? Hadn’t she tried to give him all that she could already?

What’s more was there to take from her?

Dignity, pride, self-respect, and peace of mind were all things she didn’t remember what it was like to have anymore.

All of her dreams had been trampled away to make way for his, and he wasn’t even grateful. There hadn’t been anything here that was truly hers for a long time now.

And it was until this moment that she realized something she had been allowing herself to overlook.

She looked up from the puddle of tears on the floor and stared at the man in front of her with hate-filled eyes.

“…You’ve always thought that you were better than me..!” She hissed.

The man lashed out and grabbed the woman roughly by the collar of her robe, eliciting a scream. “I am better than you, Janette!” The man snapped.

“Who do you think pays for the food you eat?! The house you live in while you do nothing all day!? The clothes on your back!? Without me, you would still be living in that trailer park back in Minnesota, with no one to pay for your bitch mom’s dialysis except for the perveted old men who tipped you at that greasy dinner!”

A crisp slap echoed off the walls of the big house. Hardly the first time. But maybe it should have been the last.

Janette saw a toy sitting at the top of the staircase. The reminder of her son, who for all intents and purposes was the only good thing in her life, filled her with something she didn’t know.

A heat washed through her stomach. Spreading up from her navel all the way up to her esophagus until it felt like she could breathe fire.

She shoved her husband as hard as she could to force a separation.

Ordinarily, it never would have yielded any fruit, as he had more than eighty pounds on her, and those exercises she spent all of her free time doing didn’t exactly emphasize muscle growth.

But tonight, her husband was drunk. Off-balance.

He stumbled when she shoved him. So she did it again. And again.

And then, before she knew what was happening, he was crashing backwards through a glass table.

The shards of glass became the blades that pierced Austin all over.

A particularly large piece of glass now stuck out of the side of his neck.

His carotid artery severed, blood spouted from his neck like a fountain and covered the floor in seconds.

Janette was so completely taken aback that she froze without understanding what she was looking at.

All she knew was that the man who had caused her so much grief and anguish was lying before her. Fragile. Helpless.

He would die in minutes if she didn’t call an ambulance, or at least find something to administer pressure.

She should be moving now. She knew that.

And yet her feet didn’t obey.

Janette had covered her mouth in horror when her husband first fell.

But now, there was a faint smile on her lips as clear as day.

‘I guess… You weren’t really better than me at living, huh..?’

It was a fleeting thought. One she shouldn’t even have harbored, as she had never had those kinds of thoughts before.

And yet, as soon as her synapses formed the thought, she couldn’t help but find it funny. A low tickle threatened to leak out of her throat.

The tickle turned to a giggle, a giggle to a chuckle, until eventually she had arrived at a full-blown fit of laughter.

“Well met.”

Janette suddenly ceased to find anything funny at all.

She turned around in near-constant circles, looking for the source of the female voice that she had just heard.

How much did they see?

Did they know everything?

How did they get in here..?

Was she going to jail..?

No, no, that was ridiculous. There was enough here to label it as an accident.

But then, who was that speaking to her..?

“Down here.”

Janette looked down at the blood still ruining her carpet.

The face of the most beautiful woman she had ever seen greeted her. Strong and powerful, red and frightening.

Her gaze was so devastatingly heavy that she thought her knees might buckle under the pressure.

She hadn’t realized she had already wet herself.

“W-Who… Are you..?” She asked.

“I am your goddess.” The crimson woman responded. “And goddess to many, though they will not know it. But you’ve caught me at a bit of a transitional period…”

Janette had no idea what that meant. “O-Okay… Goddess of what exactly..?”

The woman paused as she pondered the answer to that herself.

It took a long time for her to think of an answer, but Janette knew better than to rush this mysterious entity.

Eventually, the goddess parted her lips again and gave Janette the answer she had been painstakingly waiting for.

“I.. am..”

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