His skin began to blister from her touch

Good things come in small packages. He had heard the cliché before, but he wasn’t buying it. He stared through the haze of blood that filled his eyes into the soft, round face of the child who stood before him, and he knew for a fact that there was nothing good in this particular small package.

She was no taller than four feet; her cotton dress was trimmed with eyelet lace at the hem and sleeves and tied high with a large bow. Once white, the red of his blood now sprayed across the front like a scream. She wore white patented leather Mary Janes and was clutching a tattered Teddy Bear in one hand.

He was tied to a chair, his arms pulled painfully behind him and tied to the back legs, while his ankles were bound to the front legs. He could barely remember everything she’d done to him: burns, cuts, beatings; acid, knives, fists.

After three days at the mercy of the child who was out to destroy him, he could almost feel his sanity slipping away; the shell in which the demon was hiding conflicted with how he understood children behaved. Five year old girls didn’t drip acid onto your toenails; they didn’t ram metal rods through your wrists and then hook them up to a car battery… they just didn’t, did they?

He had no idea why he was there. Four days ago he’d been an accountant, calculating payroll for a deli chain called Mr. Squid Pickle, and barely making ends meet. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened on his journey home, until the bus came to a screeching halt and the metal side peeled away like burnt skin.

The child had been standing there in an apple red dress and pigtails, holding the Teddy Bear in one arm and smiling the most disturbing smile he’d ever seen. She walked very calmly toward him and took him by the hand, dragging him from the bus seat, and his skin began to blister from her touch. No matter how hard he fought or resisted, she was stronger.

One whole day had passed before she even spoke to him, at first simply tying him to the chair and wordlessly inflicting small torments: deep pinpricks and steam burns, and the more he struggled the bigger her smile became.

When she finally spoke, her voice was small and playful, punctuated by frequent giggles whenever he screamed. He slipped in and out of consciousness more and more frequently as time went by, and the sudden appearance of a tall slender woman wielding a sword was enough to bring him around.

Without a word she cut his ropes while watching for the child with keen green eyes. He crumpled to the floor the moment the ropes fell away, lacking the strength to even remain in the chair, and when the child’s laughter echoed through the room the woman spun to find its source.

The little girl walked toward her fallen captive and his would-be-rescuer, idly petting the Teddy Bear’s head as she peered at them through a thick fringe of lashes. “Did you really think I wouldn’t know you were here, Grace?” she asked, “I could smell your stench the moment you crossed the threshold.”

“Nice that you let me get this far, Sadira.”

“I wanted you to feel like you were doing well.” Sadira replied with a smile, flashing her tiny white teeth. “He doesn’t even know why he’s here,” she added, gesturing at the crumpled man at Grace’s feet. “He has no idea that the fate of mankind rests with him, and frankly I was surprised I found him first.”

Grace narrowed her eyes at the child, knowing she could not win a hand to hand fight with the demon housed in that tiny shell, so she opted for surprise and hurled the knife she’d had up her sleeve. To her own surprise the blade hit its mark, sinking hilt deep in the soft tissue and Sadira’s eyes went wide as she began to silently cry.

The man watched from where he lay on the floor and the child’s tears made him smile weakly. He watched as Grace strode to the child and without hesitation removed her head with one powerful sword stroke, and the black mist that pulsed from the open wound didn’t faze him, nothing could faze him anymore.