He knows the fires of the underworld. He has seen Satan's throne. His home is that in the fires of hell so hot. His name is Zyyk-Ragh-Go; The Red Burial; the 5-headed dragon soaked in the blood of a billion damned souls. Their screams are his music, and he relished in them daily. He was one of Satan's most trusted soldiers in the war against Heaven. This explains why he was chosen for such an important task.
His mission is simple: when the time comes, begin the Apocalypse. When the day is nigh, he will open the pits of hell and unleash the devil unto the world. He accepted this task with a grin, and was sent to Earth to wait and prepare. He has been there for 4 months.
He really wants to go home.
Upon his landing on Earth, he found that the devil fashioned him a human body; that of a svelte, 18 year old man out of high school. Within his pockets was a wallet with an ID that read his new name: "Damon Devil". He always was a narcissist, the demon thought upon seeing his new identity. Zyyk-Ragh-Go – or "Damon" as he is to be called now – thought little of the humans he saw roaming the streets of this city – this Coast Haven on the edge of California. They walk around as if their lives had purpose. They breed and produce loud offspring so that their genetic code can move on and serve some purpose in the future beyond a footnote in the primordial ooze. It's despicable to think they believe that their existence means anything in the cosmic scheme, that their lives will make any difference when hell emerges on the living world and --
That's when Damon walked by the beach and saw a poor woman's swimsuit top pop off her bosom for all to see. That's when Damon learned the first problem with being human: hormones. From there, his new body spiraled out of control with all the needs that the demon never had to live with before. From the… unpleasantness of the encounter with the topless woman came the gnawing in his stomach. From there, he needed to release waste. All these practices, every fluid that excreted from his human body was sickening. It would have driven lesser demons mad with the monotony. But he had a job to do, and the first step towards doing it was to find a place of residence. He searched Coast Haven and found a boarding house with a vacancy; one owned by a Miss Raven Coolwater.
This is where he finds himself today.




Damon stirred in his bed as he staggered to consciousness. The events of the previous night had been all but a blur, not counting a few sips of that brew humans call "beer." An evil concoction if Damon ever did drink one, within instants of taking the first sip he had lost all control of his body – as if the brew cut off his higher brain functions leaving him with nothing but instinct: HUMAN instinct. All that resulted was a pounding headache as he lifted his skull from the frilly pink pillows and worked on pulling back the red vinyl sheets of the—
This isn't my bed, the cloaked demon thought to himself. He looked around the room and saw none of the decorations were that of his own room; the bed was not his, nor were the walls or ceiling. Worse yet, there were decorations: posters of German horror films, romance novels that greatly insult classic myths and monsters, and photos on the nightstand of a svelte, buxom, attractive young woman with raven black hair, lips red like a rose, and eyes bluer than –
Oh no… the dragon reached his logical conclusion as he slowly turned his head to see Ms Raven Coolwater – the owner of this room AND his landlord – stir from bed next to him. Her silky black lingerie and disheveled hair – complemented by the fact that Damon himself was in his boxers – only strengthened his case. Satan, help me…
"Morning, tiger," Raven finally spoke, not helping to break the tension Damon was so rightly feeling. She got out of the bed and stretched her body out – like humans do after they sleep so…. "well" – giving Damon a clearer look at her body. Curves like an hourglass, a near-perfect body; Damon was no longer left wondering why the night's events turned out this way. Honestly he hoped that maybe they could –
NO! NO! NO! I will not let this human curse get the better of me! I am here on a mission and I will not let myself get distracted by every seductress I come across on this pathetic world!
"So…" Damon finally spoke up and addressed the woman he had just – "shared a cup with", let's say – "What exactly happened last night?" Damon was nervous to hear the answer.
"Well, I called you up here to discuss your rent; primarily the fact that you've missed 3 months of it, coming up on 4."
"Oh!" Damon felt a little relieved that their meeting last night wasn't anything too disgusting. Then another thought drifted into his mind, one that scared him more than the first. "That's not why we… er…."
"Oh, no. that was just the booze." Raven replied, relieving Damon of another fear. She continued, "I'm worth much more than 4 months' rent. Trust me, you can't afford me. But the issue of your rent still remains."
"What do you expect me to do, Miss? I haven't any source of income to appease this exchange you call 'rent'. Ultimately it seems pointless; having to pay money just to allow oneself to live."
Raven had just started picking out her clothes for the day. She laid out a pair of shorts – shorts that looked shorter than her panties, might I add – and a black shirt. "Maybe you should just get a job, dumbass." She said with a grin. She continued, "If you hate the idea of 'working' so much, just get a job doing something you like and are good at. Take my sister Crow: she was good at hunting and knew a lot about guns; so she moved to Vitium City and became an assassin. Now, what are you good at, Damon?"
"What am I good at?" A grin clawed across Damon's face as his mind turned back to the fiery pits of the underworld. " I am good at rearing the flesh of the damned as they roast and scream over the fires of damnation, repenting for every mistake they've made in life as they plead to their maker for their suffering to-- " Damon stopped himself. He knew he was sounding like a loon, so he changed his answer quickly. "I mean… I like to cook."
Raven looked at the dragon for a few moments. Damon was afraid she'd seen through his disguise and knew all about his "true" self. "Well, if you like to cook, Mikey could help you. He works at a burger place down on King Street and he said they're hiring." Then again, humans are an incredibly gullible people. She continued, "And I'll tell you what: if you can come up with this month's rent by the 30th, I'll forget all about the other three months."
Damon, the dragon, had forgotten his pride and praised the generosity of his landlord. "Thank you so much, Miss Coolwater! I promise you, when the Apocalypse comes, you'll die first so you cannot see the horror of the end of the world!"
"What?" she replied.
"I mean…." Damon tried to correct himself quickly, "I'll have sex with you again." That was even worse. And he ran out of the room in embarrassment.




"Welcome to The burger Shindig! May I take you order?"
"Welcome to The Burger Shindig. May I clog your arteries with this grease-covered miasma and lead you closer to your inevitable deaths?"
Mikey – or rather, Michael Tremblee, local occult fanatic and, unfortunately, one of Damon's acquaintances in the boarding house – slapped Damon for his unruly greeting. "That's not how we act here at the front desk. We need to be respectful. That way, they pay us – maybe even tip us!" His greasy red hair only looked uglier under the ridiculous yellow hat and uniform that all the employees of this establishment were forced to endure on their person. Not even the dragon himself was able to make the uniform look any kind of good.
"It's the truth. I've seen more appealing meals provided by Satan himself!" Mikey laughed it off, but Damon was not lying. Lucifer was a better cook than these hacks, passing poison off as an economical luncheon.
"Regardless, you need to better behaved. Follow all the rules, be polite, all that jazz, or…" Mikey motioned to their supervisor in the back of the kitchen – Damon had known her for all of 20 minutes and already despised her very being.
Claire Kent was her name. Black hair bounced as she walked, contrasting with her pale as snow skin. She was a sadist if you ever knew one; beating the life out of her workers for nothing more than her own sick, deluded pleasure. "Yes, I know." Damon replied. "She's only a leather suit and a riding crop away from being a dominatrix."
"Make that JUST the leather suit." Mikey replied as she had pulled a whip out of somewhere – her cleavage for all they knew – and struck an employee on the back for some indiscretion. They heard something about a dropped fry or two. "God, I'd like to show her how it feels!" he cursed under his breath.
"Why don't you just summon Cthulhu? Perhaps he can help."
"You think he would!?" Mikey excitedly answered, failing to see Damon's sarcasm, leading him to slap his forehead in disgrace, and go back to carving mental-scars into a little girl asking what a McNugget was. She ran off crying. Damon smiled. Another good deed done.
Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. Damon felt a sharp impact on his back shortly after denying someone ketchup – he told them their ketchup was lamb's blood. He turned and saw Claire, brandishing her instrument of cruel torture for another strike, as if to deter any further "misbehavior" from the dragon. "Mister Devil, was it?" she said, with a sadistic grin that REALLY made her look like a dominatrix. "Your first day, and you're already on my list. You've scared off … 13 customers already. That's not good. For you, I mean. It's going to be a lot of fun for me." She swung the whip at Damon's face, cutting the cheek. Blood dripped down, but quickly evaporated to steam – as a dragon, Damon's blood boiled at temperatures that would melt most solid substances.
Damon glared at the sadist. With a glare that made the woman shiver, he spoke. "You are pathetic, do you know that? I mean, MORE pathetic than the rest of humanity. You're only causing such pain upon others to make yourself feel better. I've seen your type before. What happened to you? Some mate scorned you? Daddy didn't hug you enough? Grow up. This is childish, what you're doing. Frankly, I pity you." Angered and outraged, Claire did the only thing she could think to do when someone talked back to her in such a way: whip them.
She swung her weapon, but the dragon caught it in the air. With strength that dwarfed any man on the dirt-ball called earth, he crushed the device of petty torture and struck the sadist square in the stomach with his fist. The mighty impact sent her back, from the front desk, into the kitchen, and finally out the back door – conveniently opened by a busboy who had just taken out the garbage. She hit the garbage cans head first, causing much gruel and half-eaten food-stuffs to cover her body.
After a minute of silence in the restaurant, by both the patrons and the employees, Claire returned to Damon's face. Her anger was demonic; her glare ghastly; Damon was impressed. She spoke in a tone akin to rusty nails scratching glass. "My office. After your shift. Bring a bucket." She walked away, smacking another worker on the back for – she claimed he dropped a burger bun, but she really did it out of spite.
The other workers looked at Damon with faces that said 'You are going to die'. Mikey, the closest thing the dragon had to a 'friend' on this absurd world in this absurd situation, had only one thing to ask: "What…. What do you think the bucket is for?"


Hours passed. 6 o'clock and the end of everyone's shift went with it. It's 8 PM now, and the only 3 people left in Burger Shindig were Damon, Claire – both of which were in the latter's office – and Mikey, awaiting Damon's fate. He had to wait… he was Damon's ride home.
The door opened. Mikey froze up, waiting to see Damon's beaten, bloody body walk through the door. No one had ever hit Claire like he had, no one had the stones to even look her in the eye. Mikey could only wonder what torments he would endure in –
He was just fine; physically, at least. He had a shameful look on his face, as if he had just murdered someone in cold-blood. (The thought of it! A Demon feeling SHAME for killing someone. It's laughable.) Yes, just like he had killed someone. The only other person in the room. "Oh, god no, Damon, you didn't!!"
"You think I'm proud of it? I want to tear my arms off for this! Oh dear, why must instinct take over. Curse this human body! First Raven, now this—"
"Ra… Raven? Our landlord!?" Mikey paced up and down the empty restaurant, grinding his greasy hairs to a pulp in stress and anxiety. "Was that about the rent? I mean, sure, you owed her money, but you didn't have to, I mean, never actually—"
"It wasn't about the rent. We were drunk… and….. ugh, I hate thinking about it."
"You got drunk and you KILLED her!?" The Dragon looked at the occultist as if he were babbling like a madman. Or when he practiced spells in his room after midnight, which was pretty much just madman ramblings. "What did you drink? What the HELL did you drink!?!?!?"
The dragon finally calmed down and looked the occultist in the eye. "What… do you think happened in there?"
"I don't think!" he began, "I KNOW that she called you in there, she scolded you for misbehaving, she threatened you with violence, and you-- " But before Mikey could finish his sentence, Claire walked out of her office. She was euphorically smoking a cigarette, gulping down half of a stick with one inhale. Her hair was a mess, her shirt was on backwards, and she had a face that showed legitimate happiness, NOT sadistic joy and pleasure. "Oh." Mikey dismissed the murder charge. Then, after a second or two, he finally got 'it'. "Oh. OH! OOOOH!! Eww."
"Okay, you're all caught up to speed, now can we forget his ever happened? I despise this practice, yet I constantly find myself powerless to testify when – GAH! Just forget this."
"Okay, on one condition…" the occultist wanted to look in the office to see if he could find the answer himself, but pulled away, facing the demon once again to ask: "Just what was the bucket for?"
"I'll be honest: I'm not quite sure myself…"



A week passed from that detestable night of human sweat and lust. It was a disgusting digression for the dragon, but he managed to move beyond it. He was able to keep his job and earn enough favor with his supervisor to stay out of the crosshairs of her whip – now longer and with some spikes on the end – no doubt thanks to that indiscretion he swore never to speak of again. On the seventh day of his employ he was given his first paycheck and was finally able to pay the rent he owed his landlord. It was a relief for the demon not to have to worry about living expenses and eviction while he waited for his chance to start Armageddon.
He started up the stairs to the third floor of the boarding house to drop off the rent check, but found himself stopping on the second floor landing, seeing Mikey outside his room, holding the door back as some abominable noise came from the other side. Despite his better instincts, he walked over to the occultist to see what the issue was.
"Well, there is good news and bad news," never a good sign, "Good news: that spellbook I bought off of eBay actually works!" Oh, Satan save us, "The bad news: I might have accidentally opened a portal to some nether-dimension called 'The Thousand Screams'." The source of that wail, no doubt, "Nothing major though." As he said this, a bony arm broke through some of the wood of the door, embedding splinters in its green, ghastly flesh riddled with pointed claws protruding from its decayed skin. "See? Only one got through. Would you be a friend and go see Johann on the third floor. See if he has a gun or something that can help? Please? Hurrying would be good too." The gangrenous arm made swipes for his head.
Ah, Johan. One of the other freaks Damon was forced to share a boarding house with. A short, portly man, Johan was an unemployed engineer; unemployed, no doubt, because he is a clinically insane man. His advancements in the field of electrical engineering include: a gun that shoots smaller guns that shoots sticks of dynamite. He even has a robotic arm that he has grafted to his own body. (He didn't lose his arm or anything. He just built it and didn't have any storage space. He did have an electrical saw, though…) Damon dreaded going anywhere near that man's room because of the constant buzz of his tools, the occasional blood that seeped out from under his door, or just his odor – he rarely bathed. "T-tell you what Mikey, I'll go find him after I drop the rent check off to Miss Coolwater. I'll be back in five minutes, tops." With that, Damon was off.
"OKAY! I'LL BE RIGHT HERE! WAITING! FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE! ………… He's not coming back. Is he?"
Damon practically ran to Raven's room and knocked on the door like a madman in the rush to get away from the mad occultist. She opened the door clad in tight blue jeans, yet a surprising lack of a shirt, leaving nothing but her black bra on display. Damon covered his eyes, not out of respect, but disgust, shouting "Have some decency , woman! You're a human, yes, but not a whore!"
She chuckled, seeing the check in his hand, she knew what this was for. Damon handed it to her and prepared to run down the hall and take the other stairs down to avoid the extra-dimensional zombie the idiot on the second-floor summoned. "Wait!" Raven pleaded to him, waving him inside with her hand. "Why don't you have a drink? Think of it as a celebration of your first paid month of rent." Unenthused, Damon entered her all-too familiar room, seeing resting on the bed a bottle of scotch and two wine glasses. She picked one up and filled it, handing it to the dragon. She then proceeded to fill hers. "My sister just sent this over from Vitium City. 1957; good year. And only half the bloodstains as he usual gifts." To that, they toasted and knocked their glasses back.


Damon stirred in his bed as he staggered to consciousness. The events of the previous night had been all but a blur, not counting a few sips of that brew humans call "scotch." An evil concoction if Damon ever did drink one, within instants of taking the first sip he had lost all control of his body – as if the brew cut off his higher brain functions leaving him with nothing but instinct: HUMAN instinct. All that resulted was a pounding headache as he lifted his skull from the frilly pink pillows and worked on pulling back the red vinyl sheets of the—
Oh hell, not again… the Dragon knew this situation all too well. He turned his head t o the left and – of course – Raven Coolwater was resting on his left arm, hair disheveled and – from the look of it – completely nude under the covers. Swell. He proceeded to sneak out of bed to his right as subtly as possible, as to not to rile up another awkward moment. He found himself similarly pinned on his right side as his left. He turned and saw, atop his right arm, Claire Kent, similarly nude, cuddling up against his side.
Damon was silently flustered, trying to make sense out of an absurd situation. Before he could process this information, from the front door of Raven's room, Mikey emerged, kicking the door open. His face was beaten to hell, and his arms were cuts by sharp claws. His shirt from the night before was covered in red blood. In his right hand he held a kitchen knife – the cleaver they used to cut choice cuts of meat – and in his left, he held the corpse of the extra-dimensional horror he inadvertently summoned the eve before. Completely ignoring the two nude temptresses on his arms, his gaze was directly right at Damon. From his lips, he spit, along wit his own blood: "What the hell? You said you'd help me!"
Damon finally gave up. He buried his head in the covers of Raven Coolwater's bed.

The Apocalypse cannot come fast enough.