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Possessing the boy is easy. He is of weak mind and weak will, something his father is the direct cause of. Abaddon had searched his memories.
The boy had cried and wailed at first. Making a cacophony of noise inside the mind as he begged Abaddon to release him. The boy grew silent once he realized how little the demon cared about his plight. That did not stop the putrid mortal feelings the little welp would send through the body or the senseless chatter.
Anytime Abaddon saw the boy’s father a manic sense of hope and desperation would flood forth. It would clog the mind and travel through the limbs, filling them with a need to act that even a demon as great as he had trouble quelling. Then there was the pleading.
“Father! Father help me father! Banish the demon please!"
The boy would be brought to bitter tears, their imagined taste sweet, as his cries never made it out of the bodies lips. He was too weak to overpower Abaddon.
So Abaddon and the boy went enacting evil and wicked deeds while the boy sniveled inside the mind. His guilt was a heavy weight that Abaddon could feel in the bodies gut. It was annoying and wholly unneeded. It had to stop.
Abaddon lay in the boys bed, staring up at the hay thatched roof as the guilt ran rampant in the bodies abdominable area. An incessant gnawing that was making his fingers itch to move. It would almost be impressive if it wasn’t pathetic. Abaddon closed the bodies eyes and let his conscious mind fall back.
He opens his eyes in his true form and before him is the boy. He’s sitting in the black void that houses their essences, their souls as the mortals call them. The boy is hugging his knees and at his approach he stares up at him. His eyes are red rimed and snot leaks from his nose that he hastily wipes away with a sleeve.
He does not cower however. Abaddon can see that he wants to. His blue eyes wide, his form trembling like a leaf but he sits there quietly assessing him. He is not used to an absence of startled screaming or begging when they lay eyes on his true form, for it is a grotesque thing.
Abaddon has many limbs and horns, a large spindly body that although appears weak is strong beyond measure. It is not meant to be understood, it is not meant for mortal eyes to look at for too long. It is meant to be a visage of torment, burned into their retinas forever more. The boy stares with his shaking form a fear he dare not name alight in his eyes. He waits watching as the child’s jaw tightens, building up the courage for speech no doubt.
Interest curls within Abaddon, whatever will the child do? What comes out is a horse whisper but even without ears Abaddon hears it.
“Are you going to kill me?” The child whispers.
Abaddon laughs, the cruel sound emanating from within. The child cringes, the fear sharpening as Abaddon hadn’t bothered to manifest a mouth. He neglects to do so now, just to delight in the squirming sense of fear it elicits in the boy. Abaddon hasn’t had the chance to relish fear like this since he breached Earth’s surface.
None of the mortals fear this vessel yet, it is too small, too weak to translate his full might.
“Whatever for?” He asks, for intelligence is another thing this vessel lacks. It cannot read the book its father reveres above his son's own flesh and blood. He stalks forwards, towering over the boy as he regards it with disdain. “Do you tire of fighting me? Wish to rest your weak and weary soul?” The boys trembling increases and tears drip down his baby fat laden cheeks.
Abaddon cannot help but to laugh again. Humans are silly creatures, driven by such fleeting fits of emotion. He reaches a hand out to the boy’s frozen form and rests it on his shoulder. A perfect mimicry of the sparse gentle touch its father gives it, what he’s seen from its memory it desperately craves.
Its flesh fails the boy even now as although he trembles and cries, at the mere notion of kindness it leans into it. It foolishly tries to take comfort from Abaddon. The boy dries his tears and deapite it remaining cautious, its instincts so profound Abaddon can feel the bodies heart beating against its ribcage, he calms.
Curious, but ultimately stupid.
His grip on the boy’s shoulder tightens to a painful degree. The boy, who had moments ago sought out his touch, attempts to wriggle away from him as if burned. Tiny hands grabbing at the hand and wrist the holds him. Abaddon easily restrains him with two others.
“Rest is for the deserving and the useless, you are nearly so but for the body to thrive it requires its mortal soul. You are not so lucky as to die.”
And something even more curious happens. The boy’s face reddens and it begins to thrash as if dying. It screams but it grates on Abaddon differently than its screamed pleas.
“Father will free me! He will! He will!” He shouts, its small voice loud and rough. It breaks in the middle of its words as it continues. “And you’ll be sorry when he does.”
Abaddon gives the vessel a squeeze, watching as its flesh pokes between his fingers. As its face grows red not from anger but from a lack of breath. The boy does not need it here, but the urge is so ingrained it might as well be. He draws the boy in close, right up to what constitutes as Abaddon’s face, where the demon’s mouthless voice sounds from.
"I’ll relish the day he tries for that will be his doom,” the boy finally ceases his thrashing as he stares at him with hate. Delicious, delectable hate. "And it will be wrought by your hand.”
He drops the boy, and lets him scream and rage that he lies. That all demons do is lie and this is no different. Abaddon retreats and begins his nightly mischief to the continued rasp of his screaming insults.
it is far better than his warbling begging pleas.
—————
Abaddon doesn’t visit the boy again but that doesn’t stop the boy from trying to visit him. He continues to be a gnat in his proverbial ear, but he’s chosen to rage as opposed to beg. His will grows stronger and he’s nearly seized control of the body before Abaddon shuts it down.
The body pulses with these horrid feelings. The anger boils in its gut, hot as the fires of Hell. It reddens its face, makes it sweat and occasionally tears fall from its eyes. Although when that happens the sweeping weight of despair makes a joint appearance.
Abaddon wreaks havoc despite these annoyances. He steals into the neighbors houses, killing their chickens, spoiling their flour and releasing rats into their homes. During the day he terrorizes their children. Tricking them into wondering off into the woods by their lonesome, or starting petty spats amongst their ranks.
Nobody suspects the beloved priest’s child.
Until they do.
The priest conspires with a neighbor, and when Abaddon is busy said neighbor captures him. The body is no match for the grown man even with Abaddon’s might boosting the bodies strength. The vessels muscles can only hold so much.
He is bound with rough ropes and the boy cheers. “I told you! I told you! Father’s got you now!” He shouts with delight.
“Can you not see that our doom is upon us?” He growls but the boy’s joy is too great. He cheers and hollers even as the body is carried to a clearing by a cliff, where the angry crumpled faces of the villagers wait.
The vessel is brought to kneel before a great fire and the boy’s father. Aboddon attempts to move anyways, to spit, thrash and bite. Anything to make his captors regret daring to try. But the boy’s misplaced joy had emboldened and strengthened him.
For the first time since his possession the boy overpowers Abaddon and forces them to obediently kneel.
The boy’s father stares them down with hate filled eyes as he reads from his precious book about how good triumphs over evil. The boy does not listen to the words, only the cadence and the conviction in his dear father’s voice. Abaddon does and he knows what the boy does not. That his father will condemn him to a fate worse than what Abaddon would have provided.
"Father! Father help me father! Banish the demon please!" Begs the boy.
The father stares down at his son. A smile quirks his lips. A rare sight, so much so that the boy doesn't see the bite in it. "Do not worry son. All will be well," he reassures and joy bursts within the body.
Abaddon wills the body to move but the boy is too strong, convinced that this is his salvation. That his father believes the boy can be saved. The boy does not cringe when his father grabs the large metal cross, he does not cower or cry when it is dipped and heated in the fire. He delights.
Abaddon can feel the body smiling ear to human ear. Feel the fuzzy giddiness clogging up the mind space and tingling through the stilled limbs. The boy doesn’t cry until the last moment.
When the heated iron is thrust their way and forced against the skin. It burns fiercely, singing away his clothes and the rope that binds him. The air fills with the putrid smell of burned flesh as blisters and blood bubble to the surface in quick succession. A large throbbing wound is left in its wake, pain lancing through the skin like knives.
The boy screams louder than ever before. Abaddon feels it all. The sadness, the hurt and the betrayal at what his father has done. Above all else is the rage. It burns brighter than the wound and the boy ceases his misguided attempt at obedience.
The boy pilots the body now, and it is the boy that leaps up and tackles his father. They’re sent careening over the edge of the cliff and with a sickening crack the priest dies.
Abaddon and the boy live.
—————-
The boy never pilots the body again nor does he speak. His voice and will for anything beyond being a vessel died with his father.
For weeks, days, months, eons the boy cries. He sheds bitter tears for what he’s done. The guilt is immeasurable, rendering the body immobile even as Abaddon has full uncontested control of it now.
They continue on, forever trapped together as what else is there?
The boy’s grief quiets. He ceases crying but he’s washed out, mellowed. Emotions are hardly sent through the body anymore and Abaddon misses feeling anything besides monotonous nothing. He grows used to that too, just as he does with spending unintended time on Earth.
When Abaddon meets the Freeling’s the boy sends the first spark of untempered emotion in years. Abaddon stays with the Freelings.
One day the body is compelled by the boy. He doesn’t wrangle control from Abaddon, but he sends a pulse of want through the forced bond. A burning that resounds through the scar of the cross, pulling on the puckered skin. Abaddon heeds it.
The body kneels on the cold ground, a familiar position that the boy doesn’t miss. A blip of sadness reaches its way through before it disappears. A tiny hand grabs a crayon and paper and begins to draw. It draws Abaddon’s true form in all its terrible glory. And it draws the small boy the demon inhabits. Their hands are joined, smiles on their faces.
The joy in the drawing is mirrored through the bond. Fuzzy and warm it wells up within the body. It tickles the edges of the scarred cross with something that feels like an itch. The itching of a scabbing, healing wound.
Abaddon feels the body smile when he looks at the scribbled drawing. He was not the one who willed it so.