IRISH LOVESTORY - Demon

 

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Demon

About a week later, in the middle of the night, Jack burst into my room, clutching my diaries as though they were relics he had the right to desecrate.

“I’ve read them,” he bellowed, his voice jagged, unhinged. “Every word, every letter—I want them all translated for me!”

“Translate? Why would I? I’ve already read you the passages about you,” I whispered, confused, my heart fluttering in my chest like a bird against a cage.

“I found older entries—before you belonged to me. Who were all these men?” His voice cracked the night open.

“Men?” The faces from years ago blurred in my mind, half-forgotten strangers. I sat trembling on the edge of the bed, reading aloud a few innocent lines. Fleeting crushes, passing thoughts—nothing of consequence. But in his eyes they became weapons, proof of betrayal. One diary, two pages, an entire night—it was never enough to satisfy the tempest raging inside him.

For seven nights in a row, he returned to this torment, and I began to believe reason had abandoned him entirely.

Desperate for sleep before work, I barricaded myself in another room. But at midnight, the harsh glare of a light tore me awake.

Jack ripped the covers from me and pinned me down, his weight a cage. He screamed into my face for hours, a torrent of curses and venom. My pajamas gone, my dignity stripped away, my body trembling beneath him.

“No one could ever want you,” he snarled, his eyes black and bottomless.

His features twisted, distorted into something unrecognizable—he was no longer a man but a demon wearing human skin. I closed my eyes, clinging to what remained of my sanity, while his voice roared mere inches from me, shaking my skull until time itself seemed to splinter.

“Why are you doing this? What do you want from me?” he shouted—but the man I had known was gone.

I could not meet his gaze. I begged, pleaded, but he did not hear. Then something broke open inside me—fury, raw and wild, rose like fire in my veins. I arched and kicked, striking his chin. For a heartbeat he staggered, then lunged back with eyes blazing as if intent on devouring me whole.

I screamed—not words, only the primal sound of terror. There was no thought, only instinct. Somehow I broke free, fled to the next room, slammed the door behind me. My mind teetered on collapse. I sat on the bed, one desperate thought taking hold.

My head throbbed, my heart thundered like twin death bells. I wanted only to vanish, to silence the terror clawing at me from within. I found a packet of ibuprofen and swallowed four, one after another. Then I lay down, closing my eyes. Inside, there was nothing left for him to take.

He broke through the door. He always did. When he saw, he dragged me to the car. My body was heavy, but my mind drifted far away, unmoored. The world blurred into a high-speed chase—flashing sirens, a police car clearing the road at Jack’s command. My hand hovered at the door handle, aching for escape into the night, but the locks held fast.

In Kilkenny they strapped me to a stretcher, needles and machines tethering me back to life. A nurse leaned close, her face kind, her voice low.

“You should contact the Red Cross for help,” she said gently.

The Red Cross? The thought felt absurd, almost cruel. How could anyone help? I dismissed it at once. The pills had done no lasting harm. I only needed rest. Jack drove me home, remorse pressing the air between us like a weight.

“When I stood outside, listening to the machines, I thought you were gone,” he confessed later. “I imagined the doctor telling me you had died, that I would have to send you home in a coffin. It scared me.”

But what chilled me most was not his words—it was the calm, almost clinical way he spoke them, as though the thought of my death had already been rehearsed in him, savored.

As soon as I could, I gathered the diaries and destroyed them. I tied the bundle in a bag, looped it to a rope, and flung it over a wall where his hands could never reach. A faint hope lingered in me that one day I might recover them, but for now Ice and Lola watched silently as I carried out my small rebellion.

I waited for the day he would ask. When at last he did, I braced for fury—but his calm unnerved me more.

“Do you have the diaries?”

“No. I got rid of them.”

“Where?” His tone was almost casual.

“I threw them into the river,” I lied.

He only raised an eyebrow, said nothing more, and never mentioned them again.