I see the devil in all things. It's not even particularly well-hidden, not like some trick of the imagination or a disguised magician, it's hiding in plain sight to me. Not the sort of devil that a cult may tell you of, not some huge, red demon with the beard of a goat, but something more primal. Fear. Loathing. Hatred. Something malicious, something insidious, something downright disgusting is hiding amongst all which touches the light I walk upon. An idea of evil, a form of maleficence, an essence of carnage, a torment of the psyche. I walk unlit roads towards a house which does not feel like a home. I see it within the groups of youngins that shout, scream and stare me down like a starving, broken hound. I see it in the lonely old man with the fishing hat and the widest, deepest wrinkles one could ever see. He approaches and I feel the cold, biting sting, then the twist, and the switchblade enters my belly. Something is ruptured, I am sure, and I will bleed to death right here, under the inviting smile of an evil moon, on this playground I've trod upon so many times. But no, no, the warm gushing of blood simply does not come as he passes me, the cold is all-encompassing and stark and I realize the blade never came out, it was merely his stare, his essence that penetrated my stomach so violently. I see it in the mother and father that walk near me. I know all they could think about was tearing me apart, bit by bit, inch by inch, biting into my flesh and carving me up like a pig, putting me down with a pickaxe to the forehead like a workhorse. All that was keeping them back was the child on the father's shoulders, so young, so clean, so pure, untainted by such evil. But it'll grow. It will become an adult someday. And woe is me if I see them then. But I do have good news, I do!
There is not much left of this path, so short, so narrow, so hard upon the soles of my boots. Soon I can walk inside and experience once again how ghastly, isolated, frozen, lifeless. Truly despicable is this room. There is no home within this house. The devil is in all things, but some things different than others. The walls used to laugh at me but now they stare in silence. They know better than to scare me now. They instill these images of specters coming to **** me in my sleep, but without a word. They do not speak to me, for they know what will happen if I am simply left to my own devices long enough. Clever is this old devil, it is, for it knows its greatest weapon in this war against me is itself the subject. It knows, it does, that one day, one miserable, gray day, under the clouds that block out even that disgusting moon that carries me, that smiles with me, that accompanies me better than any man ever did, I will do its bidding for it. I will simply have had enough and I will leave, and it will greet me with a grin that could harm a man in its sly and smug luminosity.
But that day has not come, that day is not today, and the future is as grim and unseemly as the past, almost like they bleed into each other, like a river of sewage running directly through my soul, carving the rocks until they're the color of **** and tempering me with the essence of garbage. And what do I do in response? I simply endure. I stand and face the river, thinking myself some hero, some sisyphean idol of martyrdom for claiming to know the agony of living. When in reality, all beings face the same agony, they just do not see it. But I do. I see the devil in all things.