The reek of decay and buried truths choked Coldwater Hollow, a forsaken place where sunlight drowned in mist. Mark Strauss slogged along the splintered pavement of Main Street, his boots grinding against the rot of a town that seemed to quiver with dread. Nearing his late thirties, eyes sharp as shattered stone, his past was a ledger of sins—arrests stacked high, a brother lost to flames, a home reduced to ash, a wife who fled when the whiskey bottles buried him. Mark didn’t chase salvation; he chased escape. Coldwater was his latest dead-end refuge.
As twilight bled into the fog, a whisper sliced through, cold as a grave’s edge. “Mark… tu es meus…” The words, ancient Latin, rasped like they’d been torn from a sepulcher. He halted, pulse hammering like a cornered beast. The street lay barren, shopfronts sealed with warped boards, windows staring blankly. “Who’s out there?” he snarled, fingers brushing the blade tucked in his boot. Silence answered, but the fog tightened, and a giggle—eerie, childlike, twisted—pricked his nerves.
He should’ve run. Should’ve slung his bag over his shoulder and roared out of this cursed pit. But Mark was forged in defiance, the kind that buries men. He shrugged it off as fatigue, the burn of cheap liquor from the bar. He pressed on, the whisper lingering, a thorn lodged in his mind.

Midnight turned the boarding house into a snare. Walls groaned like they mourned, floorboards creaked under unseen weight, and the lone bulb in Mark’s room sputtered, gasping for life. He perched on the sagging mattress, honing his knife, when the air soured—brimstone and cinders. The mirror across the room shivered, and his reflection warped. His eyes in the glass burned too fierce, too ravenous. “Hell with this,” he growled, snatching his coat.

“Quid fugis, Mark?” The voice was closer, a venomous hiss coiling up his spine. Now in French: “Tu ne peux pas fuir ce qui vit en toi.” You cannot flee what lives within you. He whirled, blade drawn, but the room was empty. The mirror fractured, a cruel gash splitting his image. Blood wept from the crack, slow and deliberate, pooling on the floorboards.

“Show your face, you son of a bitch!” Mark bellowed, voice ragged. The air turned arctic. His breath clouded, and shadows in the corners writhed, reaching for him. A figure took shape—gaunt, impossibly tall, eyes like spilled ink. Its grin was a blade’s edge, teeth glinting with malice.

“Mark, mon cher… warum läufst du?” German, taunting. “You think you can outpace me? I am the hunger you nurture, the fury you choke down. I am you.” Its voice fractured—Latin, French, German, then something primal, guttural, that stung his ears with pain. “Surrender your soul, and the torment ends.”

“Go to hell,” Mark spat, lunging. His knife plunged into the thing’s chest, but it cackled, a sound like splintering bone. The blade dissolved, dripping like tar, and the creature melted into smoke, only to reform at his back. “Pobre Mark,” it purred in Spanish, “you fight so fiercely, but you’re already mine.”

The night collapsed into madness. Mark staggered through Coldwater, the town twisting like a fever dream. Streets curled back on themselves, buildings loomed as if they’d crush him. The demon’s voice was a relentless storm, clawing at his weaknesses. “Your brother, Mark—his death’s on you. Drunk, useless, you let the fire take him.” It shifted to Italian: “Sei un vigliacco.” You’re a coward.

Mark’s anger surged, but every slash of his knife cut only air, the demon dancing through shadows. It toyed with him, unearthing his shame—his wife’s pleas, his father’s contempt, the nights he stared down a barrel but couldn’t pull the trigger. The fog thickened, birthing faces: his brother, blackened and shrieking; his wife, eyes hollow as graves. “Join us, Mark,” they intoned in a chorus of tongues. “Gib dich hin. Rends-toi. Arrenditi.”

He ran, heart a war drum, until he reached the town’s edge—a crumbling church, its spire a jagged wound against the sky. Inside, the air was heavy, candles flickering without a breeze. The demon stood at the altar, its form shifting—now his brother, now his wife, now Mark’s own face, twisted. “You can’t destroy me,” it said, its voice a mirror of his own. “I’m the part you loathe. The part you birthed.”

Mark’s hands trembled, his knife useless. The demon’s words flayed his mind, exposing every wound. “You’re nothing,” it hissed, slipping into Aramaic, then English. “A screw-up who ruins everything. Yield, or I’ll claim everyone you ever cared for.”

“There’s no one left,” Mark growled, but his voice broke. The demon’s laughter shook the church, pews cracking, windows exploding inward. Mark dropped to his knees, guilt a millstone around his neck. The demon’s claws sank into his chest—not flesh, but something deeper, tugging at the core of him, something everlasting.

The world became a shrieking void. Mark’s mind splintered, memories bleeding into horrors. He saw himself as the demon did: a wretch, a failure, a soul already condemned. But in that abyss, a flicker of defiance sparked. “You’re me,” he rasped, voice raw. “Every mistake, every wound I carved.”

The demon staggered, its form glitching. “No,” it roared, cycling through tongues—Greek, Russian, something older than time. “I am eternal!”

“No,” Mark said, standing, blood trickling from his mouth. “You’re my shadow. My pain. And I’m done running.” He didn’t strike with steel but with resolve, locking eyes with the demon—his eyes—and refusing to break. The demon screamed, a sound that shattered the church, and collapsed into him, a torrent of darkness that seared as it merged with his soul.

When the debris settled, Mark stood alone in the wreckage, the fog vanished, the town still. He wasn’t cleansed—the demon lingered, a murmur in his veins. But now he understood: it wasn’t a predator. It was him, forged in every misstep, every loss. As he walked into the dawn, he carried it—not a curse, but a reminder.

“Screw you,” he muttered to the shadow within, and kept walking.