They Were All in Love With Dying (Mage)

I saw flames without heat, and animals that swirled and passed through each other like smoke, and blood creeping along the concrete floor towards the door. I heard howls and snarls and above it my father's voice, chanting passages from the Bible and something else in a language I didn't recognize, in a voice that shook the ground under my feet like thunder. There was the smell of smoke, and dead skunk, and something sharp like air scorched by lightning. The hair stood up on the back of my neck and along my arms, prickling through my t-shirt.

I think he saw me. Not my dad - Wayne. He looked up and sort of smiled, even with the blood running down his face from his nose and the corners of his mouth.

That's when I started running. Ran to the car and turned the key and drove off without the faintest idea where I was going other than away. Drove until fatigue started edging into the fear, pulled into a truck stop, bought coffee and food and a packet of caffeine pills, and was about to leave again when I realized that if I had his car, he could find me. That, and I still didn't know where I was going, but I couldn't go back after that. I still don't know if anyone in town found out what had happened. Even the Coombes. Maybe Vivian and her parents woke up the next morning and forgot they even had a brother or a son. Or if they did, maybe Dad would have just said that the demon left Wayne, but the process of driving it out killed him. I really didn't know.