Chapter Text
Abaddon’s growing wasn’t immediately noticeable.
It started with his shoes pinching his toes. So fragile and squishy, human toes. Pain in his pinky toes was annoying, but no cause for alarm. Human bodies were bizarre pockets of sensation, after all. But then, one morning over breakfast, Katherine remarked on his hair.
“Your hair’s gotten awfully long, hasn’t it?” she said, and sipped her coffee. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it this length. Do you cut it yourself normally?”
Abaddon scoffed. How absurd. “The hair of my vessel doesn’t grow.” The humans knew embarrassingly little about the most basic laws of demonkind. Abaddon could school them in this topic, but well, he didn’t want to. Bones to dig up, birds to pelt, and all that.
“No, no it’s definitely longer.” Ben spoke through masticated pancakes. He jabbed a syrupy fork across the table. “Your bangs are over your eyebrows.”
“I don’t have bangs.”
“Hate to side with Ben, but your hair is longer, dude,” Esther chimed in. From her seat beside him, she flicked at the hair on his forehead. “Your bangs have grown at least half an inch.”
He slapped her hand. “Not bangs! And that’s impossible. Demon vessels can’t grow. The vessel isn’t technically alive, but in a suspended state. Hence, why I’ve been a boy child for the past two hundred and fifty-seven years.”
“Maybe something messed with your suspended state?” Nathan offered. He didn’t eat breakfast, but for some reason, liked to sit at the table and watch the others eat. Humans were truly a mystery.
“Nothing messed with my state – and ugh, these infernal shoes!” Standing up in his chair, he tore off one buckle shoe and then the other, flinging them across the kitchen. “You’ve tormented my little pinky toes for the last time!”
“It sounds like you might have outgrown them?” A pinch was forming between Katherine’s brows. The kind that appeared when the voice in the well would make conversation with the children, or robed cultists showed up on the front lawn.
“That’s imposs–”
“Yeah, we got that buddy,” Nathan said. “But could something have happened to make it possible? It wouldn’t be the strangest thing to happen in this house.” As he spoke, a gnome-like creature wearing a red, pointed hat sprang from the sink drain and ran, giggling, across the kitchen, disappearing into the bowels of the house.
Ben swallowed his pancakes, eyes wide. “Uh, anyone else see that?”
Esther’s palm slapped the table. “The dark ritual!” She shook Abaddon’s shoulder. “I think it’s causing you to age.”
Katherine said, “The dark what.”
Nathan chucked, shaking his head. “I did my fair share of those in the second cult I joined.”
“What dark ritual?” Abaddon frowned, searching his memory.
“So we’re not going to discuss the gnome that just crawled out of the sink?”
Esther was still shaking his shoulder. “During the last full moon. With the pigs blood and the Sheryl Crow CD?”
Katherine’s brow pinch was rapidly evolving. “Excuse me, you did what?”
Ah yes. The ‘first cut is the deepest’ full moon blood sabbath. “But the blood sabbath was designed to remove the limits of this flesh prison, allowing my demon powers to come forth.” Abaddon sighed, staring down at his flimsy human hands. “It didn’t work.”
“What if it removed a limit, just not the one we thought?”
“You mean –” Abaddon felt at his hair, almost long enough to obscure his sight.
Esther crowed in delight, “You’re growing like a regular human, Abaddon!”
“My flesh prison is…growing.” He looked from his fingers, wiggled them, then down at his sore toes. Then, he laughed. “This prison is weak – but soon, soon it will grow large! Large enough to smite my enemies!” He paused, mid-cackle. “How quickly will this growing happen?”
“Not as fast as you want it to. Trust me,” Esther said.
So it would take some time. That was fine. Time was one thing Abaddon had in spades.
Katherine finished off her coffee and set the mug on the table with a thunk. “Not how I expected my Monday to go, but discovering the demon possessed child under my care is growing is, surprisingly, not the worst way to start the week.”
“Toilet poltergeists,” Nathan mused.
Katherine shuddered in agreement. “Toilet poltergeists. Anyway, this isn’t so bad. In fact, as a mother of not one, but two growing children, I would even say I’m qualified to help here. To start, we’ll give your hair a trim. Then we’ll see if any of Ben’s old shoes fit you. After that, I’ll call the school to see about getting you enrolled.”
Wait. “School?”
Abaddon squeezed between Esther and Ben, purple backpack in his lap, and a pair of Ben’s scuffed and slightly too-large tennis shoes on his feet. As the car drove, he wiggled in his seat. “School – where impressionable children flock like sheep. I shall poison their minds and recruit them as my minions.”
“Al-righty then. Mom, why, exactly, did you sign a thousands of years old demon up for school again?” Ben asked.
Katherine calmly steered the hunk of metal between other hunks of metal. It was remarkable. Humans were idiots, generally. But Abaddon had yet to convince the metal steed to obey him. Katherine talked as she drove. “Abaddon may have lived thousands of years as a demon, but he’s only lived as a human for a couple hundred of them. And he was feral and in the woods for most of that time. If he’s going to grow into, what I’m assuming will be a fully adult person, he’s got to get a better understanding of the world.”
“And minions,” Abaddon added.
“I don’t know why you’re so excited about school,” Esther said. “You can get minions anywhere. School’s boring, and you have to do homework. Blegh!”
Abaddon paused at this. “Home…work?”
He followed Katherine through the school hallway. The floor was a garish yellow and the air smelled of aging lunchmeat and hormones. Intriguing.
Ben waved as he split from the group, heading toward another wing. Apparently this was a 6 - 8 establishment, whatever that meant. Practically speaking, it meant Ben’s classes were over there and Abaddon and Esther’s classes were in this vicinity. Though before Abaddon could attend class, he must consult with the supreme ruler of the school – someone called the principal.
Then Esther waved, giving Abaddon a salute before stepping into one of the hall’s many doorways. He managed a belated salute before Katherine tugged on his arm, stressing that they were late.
The supreme ruler was a disappointment. But he bequeathed Abaddon with P.E. garb, which pleased the demon greatly. The principal informed that Abaddon would be joining Mrs. Wesley’s 6th grade class. A disappointment, as Esther was in the 7th grade, and he’d hoped to share a class with her. The principal assured them that Mrs. Wesley was well-liked by both parents and students, and that she’d been briefed on Abaddon’s special needs.
Abaddon hadn’t the faintest idea what that meant, but before he could ask, the principal was trundling him off, saying he wouldn’t want to miss the start of class.
Once more in the lunchmeat scented hallway, Katherine turned to face him. Bending, she placed her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “This is going to be a big change for you, Abaddon. Change can be uncomfortable, but it’s always worth it in the end.” She paused here, as if expecting a response.
Abaddon wasn’t always good at those. He nodded.
That seemed to do the trick. Katherine smiled. “If it gets overwhelming, you can go to the nurse and have her call me. Don’t tell Ben and Esther I told you, but they both ‘got sick’ on their first days of school and I had to come get them. But you’ll do fine. Just – please don’t murder or maim anyone. Oh, and listen to your teacher.”
He nodded along with her. Don’t murder or maim – difficult, but he could manage. If following these guidelines would assist his vessel’s growing into a more formidable form, Abaddon would do it. Whatever it took. Even doing the bidding of this dreaded Mrs. Wesley.