Corruption

Снартея 2: Саlviи

Calvin stared into the mirror, no longer able to stomach the unseemly horns sprouting from the sides of his head. And his ears. Oh, how he detested the pointed monstrosities that revealed every ounce of demon blood in his veins. He was a deformity. A disgrace. Demons were a disgrace. They were being carted by the hundreds away to camps. He no longer wanted to be a demon. So he wouldn't be. With a pair of scissors, he went to work.

The pain was excrutiating but the demon laughed all the while. His ears went first, stubborn against the dull blades. The blood refused to stop, so he held paper towels to the gaping holes with duct tape. Next was his tail. The flesh broke with a swipe of his scissors but the bone refused. He snapped it and ripped away the rest. One more step and he would  be a human. But how to get rid of his horns? The workspace downstairs had a rusted saw. Yes, that would work well enough.

It took hours, but the job was done. There were only cracked stumps where his horns had been, marrow exposed. He laughed himself into a painful slumber, so, so happy that he was no longer a demon abomination. 

********

A year before, Calvin had been a normal university student. He had a girlfriend, a home provided by his parents, and a part-time internship as a history professor. It was a perfect life for a normal twenty-year-old. 

One morning, he woke up in bed, careful not to wake his girlfriend, and reached for his vibrating phone. 

"Hello?" he whispered. "This is Calvin Hawkes. Oh, hello sir. ...Yes, I'll be there. Ten minutes."

Crawling out of bed with a groan, the brunette left for the bathroom to run a brush through his hair and brush his teeth. He pulled on the cleanest slacks and buttoned shirt on his floor and headed out the door. His work was only a short drive, five minutes without traffic. It was early in the morning, so the classroom was empty except for the professor. 

"You wanted me, sir?" Calvin asked. 

The human man pushed his glasses up and sighed, leaning against the classroom window. Calvin noticed the tired look in his eyes and his unkempt, sandy hair. It filled him with unease. 

"Sir?"

"Mr. Hawkes, will you take a seat please?"

Calvin sat at the closest desk and folded his hands, brows furrowed. The professor paced, gradually nearing his intern. 

"The department has recently started to downsize," the professor began. "So we have to cut some certain employees."

"What?!" Calvin shouted. "My uncle was head of this department! I've just started getting paid! I had to get a loan to pay for an engagement ring!"

The professor sighed and rubbed his temples. 

"Yes, yes. But due to your... background, we have to let you go."

"What "background"?! I have no drug offenses, criminal record, or--"

"We know--"

"Then what?!" the brunette yelled, realizing that he had risen from his seat and was clenching his fists.

"You're a... bircornus. A demon."

His anger flared to it fullest. Within the next few seconds, Calvin slammed the classroom door so hard that it rattled. His keys were clenched so tightly in his hand, it left marks. He made it to his home quicker than usual because of his dangerous speeding and accidentally slammed that door as well. His head hit the wall and he threw the keys into the hall. 

"Honey?" a feminine voice asked sleepily from the bedroom doorway. "What's wrong?"

Calvin thought she was the most beautiful person in the world. She was a bicornus, too, but not a demon. That was such a derogatory term. Demons were evil beings from stories. Just because of the old pictures of demons with horns and tails... How could anyone look at his girlfriend and see anything evil about her?

"I'm sorry for waking you," he said, kissing her forehead. "Just a stressful morning."

The raven-haired beauty looked at him with a skeptical quirk to her brow. "It's only seven. What happened?"

Calvin sighed as the woman held onto his shoulders. "Fired. For my species."

"What?! That's profiling! You need to report this!"

"Yeah, Eva... I will..." He groaned and wrapped his arms around her. "But I need some way to get money. I'll look in the classifieds. I need to pay for classes."

Eva huffed. "If you won't report it, I will."

The vibrating in his pocket made Calvin sigh. He wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone else. But he took the cell phone out and flipped it open. 

"Hello. Calvin Hawk-- mom? Hey, stop shouting. Yeah... No... Mom, calm down. No... Mom! Mom!"

The phone went dead on the other line. Calvin tried to redial, but it went straight to voicemail. When he growled in aggravation, Eva rubbed his shoulders. 

"What's wrong now?" she asked. 

"My mother started yelling about people going crazy and about how someone was coming... And then her phone died."

His face pale, Calvin ran a hand through his hair. His mother was one to panic about the smallest of things, but he was worried nonetheless. 

"I'll be back," he said, fetching his keys from the hallway. "I need a drive."

Calvin's mother lived almost an hour away, eastward in a larger city. His father lived with her but was most likely at work. If he still had a job, that is. But the drive was a nice excuse to blow off steam. Speeding down the roads with rolled down windows-- it was a small slice of heaven. 

"Okay, honey," Eva said with a kiss. "I'll have my phone on me."

"Love you, Eva."

The drive was just as he expected: relaxing. The city blurred past him, but what his mother had said fluttered weakly in his mind. When he looked around at a stoplight, there wasn't anyone in sight. Peculiar. It wasn't until he saw the kicked-in doors of several buildings in the residential lots that he became increasingly worried. Some homes he recognized as those of friends and family; but it didn't occur to him that they were all bicorni. 

His parents' door was wide open when he arrived. 

"Mom!" he yelled. "Mom! Mom! Dad!"

He ran into each room and found the bathroom door broken in, splinters littering the floor. There were the marks of fingernails carved into the wood floor leading from the room. 

Heart racing, Calvin called the emergency hotline.

"Hello? Yes. Someone broke into my parent's house and I--! No... What does that have to do with anything?! ...Yes. I'll wait. But hurry!"

Sliding down the wall, Calvin sat and put his head in his hands. The hotline had asked if their family was bicorni. It couldn't be the same reason he was fired, could it? Not in the same day. Not this fast.

He waited. It didn't take long before a car with flashing lights pulled directly into the yard. Two large men in law inforcement uniforms stepped out.

"Finally!" Calvin shouted. "There are scratch marks on the floor and the door is--"

Before he finished his sentence, the brunette was knocked to the ground with a shot from a taser. The electricity coursed through him, eliminating any other senses than pain. It subsided after an excruitiatingly long moment. Under impulse, his legs swung out. One officer doubled over and the other ran at the young man. Calvin scrambled to his feet and ran. He was faster than the other two men, so getting away was only a little problem with the leftover pain of the taser in his side. 

The city was filled with alleys, so it wasn't difficult to escape the officers' sight. Hurrying up the fire escape to an apartment, he hid away on a windowsill for almost an hour before his frozen legs would allow him to crawl down.

The officers were out of sight, so with keys in his pocket, Calvin snuck back to his car. Every sound made him jump, but his nerves stayed together long enough to get him through the city. A large banner hung between lamp posts over the street. A lurch hit the brunette's stomach as he read it: Erase the Demon Plague! Fight now!

********

Calvin watched out the window as another bicornus family was pushed into a armored van. It was ten months since his own family went missing and the "elimination officers" were making their way across the county. All of the bicorni were removed from schools, jobs, and the streets as fast as the officers could manage. Rumors of concentration camps spread as fast as the officers did and soon everyone was in a panic.

Bicorni fled in a mass exodus, including Calvin and Eva. Many were still caught by officers before they even left their hometowns. Propaganda fills signs and newspapers everywhere. Speeches by the leader of this "revolution" echoes in the streets through the radios. There were limited safe areas left to go to. The word "demon" was now commonplace.   

"I don't care," Eva said with a sneer, closing her eyes tightly at the sounds of the family's screams. "I'm going out there with a shotgun next time that siren comes through. I'm not moving again."

Calvin glared at her with baggy eyes, the tension from the past months weighing down on him. 

"You don't have a shotgun. Stop acting so stupid."

Eva spat at him, "At least I'm trying to do something."

The engagement ring was forgotton in Calvin's coat pocket. He wasn't sure if it was best to stay with Eva anymore. His nerves were at their limit and every little thing either one of them said grated like nails against a chalkboard. 

At that moment, a crash sounded from the streets. Calvin's attention turned to the officer's vehicle, where several demons were pouring out of. Others came from the apartments nearby. Suddenly, there were gunshots and fire. The vehicle burst, sending humans and demons alike flying. More came out of what seems like thin air, attacking with what weapons they could possibly get their hands on. The officers' guns were knocked from their hands and the rest of the demon's advanced. For the first time, Calvin believed that the demons looked actually... demonic. They piled onto the humans, fire on their backs. The sight struck fear into the brunette. Is this what their kind was reduced to? Demons. Monsters. 

His stare went from the demons to Eva, who gazed down with bright eyes. It was disgusting. 

"Isn't is great?" she whispered. "They're fighting back."

Her beauty had lost its shine. She was now just as much of a demon as the others. The propaganda had sunk in after being placed everywere for so long. Maybe their kind was too different. The unpure. The evil. 

The riot calmed down after all the officers had been slaughtered on the spot and demons ran back to their hiding places. Sirens roared in the distance.

"Come on, Calvin!" Eva said excitedly. "They may still have guns on them!"

Calvin sneered. "Then, go. Get them."

Any time sooner and he would have refused her request. He would have held her back. She was his love. But now she was just a monster. The humans were right. The demons were a plague.

Eva wasted no time. She moved the bureau from the door and ran out. Turning back, she cocked her horned head toward Calvin. 

"Are you coming?"

Calvin kept his gaze out the window. 

"No."

A flicker of movement caught his eye from the van. He narrowed his eyes and saw human fingers of a mangled body wrap around a trigger. Yet Calvin didn't say anything to Eva. He let her go without hesitation. 

So when that mangled guard was able to shoot her through the heart as she reached for his gun, Calvin still said nothing. He watched as his former betrothed-to-be bled out on the pavement, dying slowly. There was no sorrow, no regret in his eyes. She was a monster. It was the humans' rights. A light chuckle escaped his lips. She was gone. She was gone. He would go soon, too. Go. Go. Go. He would follow his mind into the dark spiral of nothingness. 

********

Two more months were spent in that building. Calvin had mutilated himself beyond repair. His hair hung loosely in front of his eyes, caked with blood. Humans had come twice, but with one look at him, they turned away, knowing he would soon die. 

Calvin watched the streets with nervous eyes. Demons could be anywhere. Evil still looted the town. The horned monstrosities. It was no longer safe to go out with those things wandering. The only food were the bugs that scurried through the house's cracks and the occasional bird trapped in the rafters. Water came from the rain. 

Calvin would stare into his mirror from hours at a time, gazing upon his un-demon self. Then he would cackle. Oh, how clever he was. He escaped the fate of those evil demons. He would be safe from the humans. They were allied now, he and the humans. Fighting on the same side. 

He never noticed his hunger. Or the sharp angles of bone that jutted under his pale flesh. So he didn't really notice that he was dying. He wouldn't really care if he did notice. The outside was dangerous. Demons were out there. It was best to stay safe. Safe and hidden. So when he drifted to unconsciousness one night, it didn't quite occur to him that he would never wake up. 

So he died curled up on the cold, hard floor so, so happy he was no longer a demon abomination.