Bill Blais

Telling someone like my mother that Hell is a real, physical place, somewhere you can travel to and from, would be like spray-painting the statue of Jesus hanging over the pulpit during mass. Better off telling her the Pope is gay.

Down every hall is a gruesome tangle of impossible creatures, and every one of them is split open or strung with barbs or dragging their insides after them, flailing along on shattered limbs or shredded wings or blasted stumps. I__e got the pistol, half a can of spray and a handful of useless shotgun slugs.I__ dead.

You want me to join your group of demon hunters," I can__ believe I just said that out loud, "because of a can of pepper spray and a boat load of luck? You__e insane.

I__ in a secret underground hideout of a group of monster hunters, filled with magical totems, brass monkeys that move and enough firepower to take over a small country.

Most people create a destiny of minutiae, of the mundane. They create their own limitations. When the moment comes for them to stretch and leap, they find themselves boxed in, locked down by their own fears.

We fight monsters and unholy creatures for a living here. Grotesque, evil, violent, dangerous; they__e certainly all these things. And yet, we somehow manage to go to sleep each night and wake up each morning. The terror wears off. What was horrific becomes mundane. We lose ourselves to a numbed normalcy after a while, a self-inflicted detachment. You forget how you got here, what it was like before. And then someone comes along, someone new, someone who sees it all with fresh eyes, and it snaps you out of your daily coma, reminding you of what you__e forgotten. Of what you__e become.

Demons exist,' he says simply, as if talking about the weather. 'They are real and they are dangerous. We hunt them when necessary and return them when we can.

Mario the Magnificent is Orange!" His eyes sparkle with eagerness as he winks at me.

The things I__e seen," he continues easily, "have shown me that the only constant is change. Too much power in one place is a fool__ errand. Eventually, and inevitably, no matter how good the intentions, or how long the life, power always wins out, and everyone suffers for it. The only true path of rational existence is balance; a constant re-assessment of the burdens of power, if you will.

I know you think I should be home taking care of my family. That maybe I__ be distracted or I wouldn__ be as committed as the rest of you, but who__ more committed: the person with something to lose, or the people who__e got nothing left?

That thing ruined my favorite T-shirt," complains Mario."Whatever." It__ Marianne__ voice. "You were just looking for a reason to get your shirt off." I try to look around for her, but my neck refuses.

The glove suddenly feels much heavier, now, more dense. The rush of power didn__ come through me, but wrapped around me; invisible and strangely empty, like a purely mechanical force. It wasn__ like I just got stronger; it was separate from me, like something stepped in and punched him instead of me. I pull the glove off gingerly, half afraid I__l punch my own fingers off.

I chew the inside of my lip, considering for a second what it would be like to slap this skinny little witch right across her tight-lipped little face. ~Kelly about Suni