Prologue

“Agon’s Log. Date…Feb…February 16th.Ti..Time…ah…nine fifty…P.M.…they...they’re back…I can see them again…” The beating inside his body was fierce and unrelenting. One hand clenched his chest, while the other shakily held his cracked cell phone up to his pursed lips as he tried to steady his breath. He couldn’t swallow; that’d be risking the possibility of him throwing up, which he already did twice. Any more and he would be spewing out his own organs. He felt a third wave coming, nonetheless, and paused. His breathing was sharp and concentrated, his lips spread even further. The bulging glob of vomit dribbled its way back down to the base of his neck and towards the bottom of his gut. He mustered up the strength to try speaking again.

“It hurts…even…when I close my eyes…I-I still…m-mom…AHHH-” As he recalled that horrific sight, he threw up again—all over his already sweat-soaked t-shirt, and ruptured phone screen. The acidity scraped against the walls of his throat. Whatever puke didn't fully leave his mouth clung to his esophagus like hot glue. He wailed, falling over in exhaustion. The beating within him persisted; a jackhammer knocking against his frame. He dropped to the floor of his bedroom, toppled over in his own regurgitated stress. He tried once more to speak, yet the very first consonant he formed set his throat on fire. His voice was ragged and clogged with mucus.

“N-No…! NO…MORE…I…ah-” He yelped. In a flash, his eyes no longer saw his bedroom, but a black void. And from that void, a woman’s severed head leaked through, floating in the darkness. Her skin was absurdly pale. It looked like she might’ve had some hair before, but it was all removed, leaving a scabbed scalp in its place. Agon sat up from the ground, coughing and hacking up the remnants of his vomit, searching for an exit, frantically turning every which way. All he could find was the woman’s head. His mother’s head. Unfortunately, this was no unfamiliar sight.

For the past year, once every month, sixteen-year-old Agon Cora had been haunted by horrific visions that only he could see. Visions that ranged from fiends with contorted bodies cackling in his face and forcefully feeding him their own intestines, to cockroaches pooling from his throat and nibbling at his uvula. But anytime he tried to speak about these hallucinations to his parents, or even replayed the situation to himself quietly in his room, he would throw up and forget the entire thing. It wasn't until last March that he began recording these incidents as far as he could without vomiting. He wouldn’t get far at first, but after several attempts, his endurance grew. Of course, as time passed, the illusions became stronger, more vivid, and abysmal. The potency of each vision grew one after the other to the point where it drastically affected Agon’s body. Whether or not he tried to make note of what he saw made no difference; these twisted fantasies broke his body and mind. One year of absolute torment, unable to truly express his distress and speak of the waking nightmares that marked him. Yet, of all of the accursed illusions he had seen, witnessing his mother’s severed head was the worst. Agon stood hunched over, knees buckling. His eyes were bloodshot, and hot tears painted perfect strokes across his cheeks. His heart banged against his chest with even more force than before. A piece of rusted scrap metal appeared beside his mother's head.

“Stop…Please…Who’s doing this? Why is this happening to me?!? I’m sorry…I don’t know what I did, but…I’m sorry! Just make this stop…PLEASE! MAKE IT STOP!!!” He begged, but who was to hear him? Perhaps this damned visage of his mother, or the metal’s edge that slowly caressed her left cheek. For a second, Agon was met with a sense of relief as his teary eyes blurred his sight, but that sensation faded as quickly as it came. Deep down, he knew whether he closed his eyes or let his tears wash away his view, he would still know. He could feel the twisted hallucination’s energy; he could hear the shrieks of his mother as the scrap peeled off the skin of her left cheek in a slowly sadistic motion. Wedges of flesh fell to the black floor with a sloppy thud, sputters of crimson blood stained the ground and sprinkled into the void. A singular drop found its way onto Agon’s nose in a gentle peck; a distorted mother’s kiss. This was the one vision he couldn’t shake. Uselessly standing by as this impromptu blade danced across his mother’s likeness. Up and down it ran, like a bow brushing against a violin’s strings. Not to say that he ever recovered from the other illusions he saw, but this…this was the one that truly broke him. Agon had only seen it one other time last September, and the first time he saw it, he screamed and ran into his mother’s arms. It was his mother’s warmth that saved him from the terrors within his mind, but her loving touch could only do so much for so long. From then on, she watched over him as his visions became more intense. She tried to ease his worries, even sought therapy for him; she did whatever she could to make sure her son was at peace, but peace was already fleeing him. Agon could never go into detail about what his worries truly were, but it was the fact that she stuck by his side even though she didn’t know the full story; to see her smile, her soothing face…that was enough for him to keep pushing forward. And now, that same face floated before him, being skinned one sliver at a time. An unknown pressure overwhelmed him, and his mind started to replay all of the visions at once. No matter where he turned, something haunted him.

“Urk…Stop…hah…ahhhh…I-I can’t breathe…!I can't- ACK!!!” His left eye twitched. Suddenly, that banging in Agon’s chest dropped; not a single beat echoed within the chamber of his being. He clasped his chest and gasped; his balance disappeared in an instant as he fully collapsed on the floor. On his back, convulsing, reaching with his lungs for a single strand of air, but it wasn’t enough. His eyes slowly rolled back, and his head tipped to the side, taking one last look at his mother’s face beyond the amalgam of illusioned chaos. The head slowly inched towards his soon-to-be corpse. As it hovered before him in his final moments, it yielded a sinister smile and spoke in a deep, gritty voice, much in contrast to its normally sweet and tranquil cadence.

“FINALLY, YOU KEEL OVER. NOW THE REAL GAME BEGINS!” the voice rang. As the boy closed his eyes for the last time…

“AHEM! Wakey wakey!” The gritty voice yelled. Agon’s eyes shot open as he gasped deeply, inhaling as much air as he could fit in his lungs. He found that he was standing upright, in long, clean white fabrics. The dark space he last saw himself dying in was replaced with a worn wooden pier that stood above dark green murky water. A blanket of blue sky stretched for what seemed like forever above his head, and as he looked out towards the horizon, he saw a figure in the distance, with a deadwood tree branch fashioned into a makeshift fishing pole. Each of the smaller branches had its own hook and spool of line; altogether, it appeared to be about ten lines in total. The figure cast their pole far out into the water, each hook simultaneously plopping through and breaking the water’s surface.

“Whuh…” Agon murmured, squinting his eyes and leaning forward as much as his drained body would allow to get a better view. The figure began sidestepping towards Agon, grunting aggressively, all while keeping his pole in the water.

“HUP! HEE! HUP! HEE!” The figure shouted. His side steps shortly became side lunges, his pace quickening. Agon froze in terror, but his body couldn’t move. No matter how hard he tried, his body was still spent. In a matter of seconds, the figure had side-stepped all the way to stand only a few inches from Agon, though it did not look at him, nor did it twist its body to face him. It only focused on its pole and the rippling tide.

“HEEEEEEOOOOOW!” The figure huffed in a final stomp. Agon stared at the being in bewilderment. It was a man who seemed to stand at about seven feet tall, wearing bleached black jeans, with the right pants leg cut above the knee. His entire body was a gunmetal grey, with his toned torso exposed to the sun. Right over his sternum was the time “10:00” tattooed vertically, stretching down to his abs. His head was fitted with long, straight, dark grey hair that fell just to the nape of his neck, and garnet colored horns that grew so far that they plunged right back into his own eyes; with every breath he took, the sockets bled profusely. What kind of monster was this? Agon could say nothing, but let a small squeak escape his lips. At that sound, the entity snapped his head away from the water and gazed deeply into Agon’s pupils. Several seconds passed. Finally, Agon opened his mouth, preparing to scream.

“...Ah-”

Just as he finally found his voice, the man cut him off with a grunt, yanking his pole back with vigor. After a minute or so, he yanked out ten fish of various species and sizes. After setting his pole upright upon the pier, he studied each fish carefully, then spotted the smallest of the bunch, a red fish. The rest of the fish evaporated before the boy’s eyes. While Agon choked on his scream, the strange man clasped the red fish by its tail fin, yanked it from the hook with his other hand and…

“SHUUUUUUUUUUUUT UUUUUUUUUP!” smacked Agon across the face with it, letting the fish fly in the air and drop to the ground. After nearly knocking him overboard, Agon tried to gather himself over the railing. He attempted to catch his breath and held his hand to his cheek, using whatever bit of mental fortitude he had to make sense of this entire ordeal. He looked at the man one more time, as he towered over him like a wall of meat. His arms were folded stiff, and he snorted a bout of steam from his nostrils. He shot Agon a piercing gaze and finally spoke.

“I am the deity of life, Olagna.” The horned man leaned in, letting the metallic scent of blood fill the boy’s nose. “Agon Cora…YOU PISSED ME OFF!!!” He shouted. Agon looked at him with a completely dumbfounded expression.

“...What…?” He muttered.

All the while, the red fish flopped on the pier under the beaming sun.