Jenny's Hijacked Mind

The landscape around her is bleached red as if it is flooded with an unending ruddy light. The dirt under her sneakers is gritty and dry, and when she shuffles her feet curiously the dust rises in slow moving plumes. Jenny blinks and shakes her head, confused and terribly disoriented. What was only a moment ago she had been standing before her great aunt's grave, staring at the newly lowered casket. Her oldest female relative lowered into the cold ground. The cemetery however is long gone replaced by a sparse, alien world.

Sucking in a breath she pulls her shaking hand back towards her body, her aunt's heart shaped locket glinting oddly in the dull cerise light. She had been planning on leaving it in the grave, buried six feet under, but now it hangs precariously in her hand as if she had been mere moments away from dropping it. Before her, standing tilted and broken, are the remains of what was probably at one time (given the immense amount of rubble) a large building. Looking around she sees that everything is in a very similar state of destruction.

“Dear God...” she whispers to herself, taking a step back, swallowing against her suddenly dry mouth.

With a sickening feeling her stomach swoops in her body and the hairs rise on the back of her neck. Behind her, a dark chuckle bounces off the smoothly worn stones surrounding her. Her blood curdles in her veins and she whirls around, pony tail swinging behind her.

Except there is no one there, just more destruction – as if an entire civilization had collapsed centuries ago.

“There are certainly none of your human Gods here girl. Calling for them will do you no good.”

The voice is everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. Jenny feels it in her bones, in her blood just as much as she hears it in her ears. Feeling a tug, an awareness somewhere from deep inside herself, she looks up and to the left, and there, standing perched atop a fallen pillar, is the monster from her nightmares.

It is male in appearance, tall and sharply lean, dressed in a tailored all-black suit, but that is where all similarities with anything human ends. The skin is stretched, canvas tight, over pointed bones, unnaturally pale and flaking away in large paper thin swathes. Its eyes glow fluorescent green in the low light and its gaze rests on her unwaveringly – the creature does not blink.

A shocked scream tears out of her throat and Jenny falls backwards, tripping over a loose piece of twisted metal. She hits the ground with a dull thud, scrambling backwards as the creature giggles, saccharine sweet. It jumps lithely down the pieces of ruined masonry, landing in a crouched position a handful of feet from where she is on the ground. It tilts its head to the side as if studying her intently and the creature grins, teeth sharpened into needlelike points.

“I have been waiting for you Jenny Mendheim,” the creature speaks, standing to its full height, towering over her. “You and I are going to have so much fun together.”

Jenny doubts with everything in her very being that anything about the beast before her is or could be fun. “How do you know my name?” she asks breathlessly, heart beating in her chest like it is trying to escape her rib cage.

Unwilling to stay in this prone position when she feels so much like prey to its reptilianness, she stands as well, wishing hard that she were taller. She feels incredibly tiny suddenly and it's a horrible, practically gross feeling. It still towers above her, perhaps close to seven feet or more and she has to crane her neck backwards to look into its inhuman face.

“I know everything about you Mendheim, and you know me – even if you do not want to admit it,” it answers silkily, dark tongue reaching out to wet bleached-white lips, as if tasting the air. “I have known many Mendheims.”

She does know him and in many ways it's worse than if she was completely in the dark. How old had she been when the nightmares had started? At least five if not younger. Aunt Henrietta had called them an omen and had warded her bedroom against evil every night. As Jenny had grown older her family had become more and more worried. The dreams didn't end and had only become clearer and more real and now it was before her in the flesh.

“Where am I?” Jenny asks, keeping eye contact while starting to take shuffling steps backwards.

Another giggle. “Well… you're still on Earth actually, but your mind is wherever I want it to be.” The creature turns also taking in their surroundings. “This was once my homeworld, thousands of years ago, or rather how I remember it the last I was here. Its not much to look at anymore, ugly as it is. Apocalypse will do that to a place, it won't be long until your world looks very much like this.”

“You're going to destroy my planet?” Jenny inquires confusedly, trying to follow.

If possible the creature looks affronted. “Why in any world would I care about your stupid blue ball?” It rolls its green eyes and it is the most human thing Jenny has seen it do yet. “Even for a Mendheim you are rather unintelligent. I had been hoping you would prove to be a challenge. I've been bored waiting for you to come of age.”

Years ago when she had still been very small, her Great Aunt Henrietta had told her and all the other young cousins “ghost” stories about a monster that she called the Sycophant – amongst other names. A creature that collected Mendheim witches. At the time Aunt Liz had told them not to pay any attention but Henrietta had only scoffed. It's the powerful ones that have to be careful. He'll come for the young women and kill the men. Why do you think our people left the old country? The demons crawled through the ancient German forests, inhabiting the oldest trees, coming out at night for its evil deeds.

“I do think Sycophant is a very silly title. Doesn't even sound frightening. I prefer Demon or evil incarnate, that's always been a very fun one.”

It reads minds.

A voice from the past whirls around in her fear clogged brain. If you see a Sycophant children, run. One thing that Jenny remembered about Henrietta was that she had always given really good advice. Kicking out, she sends gritty dust high into the air, shooting it into the creature's eyes, making the beast snarl and wince. A moment later she is sprinting away, legs pumping hard beneath her as she flees. Turning a slight curve, in what was at one time probably a road, she vaults over a fallen statue, her body flying through the air with the force of her jump. She falls and scrapes her hands on the stones, yelling as they dig hard into her flesh, but she can't worry about it because behind her she can hear the Sycophant laughing hard.

In a flash she's up again and running. She rounds another bend and comes to a wall of debris; crying from overwhelming fear and frustration she begins to climb, rock shifting and falling as she scrambles up the incline. The open wounds on her hands sting and the blood seeps into the thirsty, alien rock. After a hard climb she reaches the top and looks down at a destroyed planet. She is at the very top of a plateau overlooking a large, steep crater, and beyond that it's just a dead wasteland for miles and miles.

“Oh Jenny-Girl!” the creature sing-songs.

Jenny turns and slips down a foot or so, screaming as the monster makes a grab for her flailing right leg. Huffing and puffing, she pulls herself back up, reaching the very top of the wall and looking down at the crater below her. The depths of it are dark and smoky, an unnatural inky blackness that almost appears to crawl up the slopes. The only way is a steep jump down into the crater or back towards the Sycophant.

“Where do you think you will go from there? All I want it to talk to you Jenny-Girl. You're not eighteen-years-old, you're not ripe quite yet.”

“Stop calling me that!” Jenny yells, picking up a stone and throwing it at its head.

The creature sidesteps easily and shakes its head, seemingly disappointed as the rock clatters uselessly away. “There's no reason to be rude. Generations of Mendheims dead and this one is throwing rocks. I've hunted your kind for thousands of years Jenny-Girl, nothing you will do will save you, not when it comes down to it. Each Mendheim witch I've killed has died screaming.”

From somewhere, with a false bravado that she never knew she had, she looks back one last time. “Want to bet?” With that she propels herself over and falls, and falls, refusing to scream, eyes squeezed shut as the air whistles around her.

Except she never hits the ground. Slowly she realizes that there are a set of warm arms around her, shacking her gently, a worried voice in her ear. She opens her eyes and sees, instead of the dead alien world, an expanse of green grass, dotted with hundreds of gravestones. Clutched tightly in her hand is her aunt's locket, her grip so tight that the silver chain is biting hard into her palm.

“Jenny what's wrong?” her mother asks, still holding her. “You're shaking.”

She can't get her mouth to work at first and just shakes her head hard, trying to make sense of what has happened and pulls out of her mother's grip. She glances up from Henrietta's grave and sees across the field a darkly dressed, pale figure silhouetted against the nearby grove of birch trees. Jenny watches as the figure disappears into the wood, fading from sight. On the wind, the air smelling of cut grass and freshly dug-up earth, she hears a faint giggle.

In two weeks Jenny Mendheim turns eighteen. For as long as she can remember some of the women in her family have been special, a few with fantastical abilities that only manifest after their eighteenth birthday. The old women had always talked of a monster, evil and foul, that was their adversary. Aunt Henrietta had called him the Apocalypse Bringer. Henrietta's words come back to her and it feels like hearing them only yesterday. “Children, he comes before us from whence he was born, bringing with him his past to become our future.”