How Demons Torture

He was there! Right in front of her! She ran to him, closed her eyes, and tried to wrap her arms around... nothing. Off balance, She pitched forward and fell to her knees to the wet, grimy earth. Her hands still clutching nothing. It was still dark; he was still not there.

She collapsed on the dirt and leaves crying and yelled, "It's never you!" as if the dirt was the person she sought. She pressed her face to the ground and covered her ears so that she could not see or hear those awful phantoms and their terrible tricks.

The moss from the trees hung thick; dead leaves covered the ground; trees hung over like corpses drooping over some unseen clothes wire. The wind rattled the dead limbs.

She lay there on the ground, crying as she curled herself into an ever-tighter ball and tried to block all sounds from her ears. But in this enchanted forest all sound reacher her too easily.

"My Love! There you are!" She heard him call, but she knew it wasn't him. She knew she was all alone in these woods with only those horrid demons.

She didn't even look. She was tired of being tormented for days and nights on end. She was tired of being alone. She was just tired.

Something touched her back. Her body jerked in response, as she knew the phantoms didn't touch... didn't they? They never let her get near enough to touch them. She looked up.

It looked like him; brown hair a bit messy, hazel eyes that seem to laugh good-naturedly, and the same funny crooked smile.

He looked like her love, but was he? She looked at him, unsure of what to do. She had been tricked too many times.

"Darling! Aren't you happy to see me? What is wrong?" He grabbed both her hands in one of his own, and began to caress her face with his other hand. His old trick! How she had loved it when he had done that.

"Is it you?" She asked, her voice shaky and more then a little skeptically, "Are you my love?"

"Darling! Don't I look like your love?" He traced his finger around her lips; "Don't I sound like your love?" He started to touch her ear gently.

All he said was true... but the demons!

"Are you my love?" She asked again.

"Here!" He cried, holding her hand tighter. "Feel my heart, for demons have none!"

He pressed her hand against his chest.

A look of horror swept over her face. She felt no heart. She saw his crooked smile and laughing eyes both turn evil. All of this, just to torment her.

"You get away from me you heartless demon!" She screamed as loud as she could, jerking away from him. The laughing image of the phantom faded into nothing before her eyes.

She fell to the ground once more, but this time did not rise to any more calls or touches, and did not even raise her head until the late morning sun was filtering through the trees.