Volt Demon

posted on 11 Dec 2022

Henrick was mercilessly hooked on the stimulating lust of electrocution from the first time he stuck a paper clip in the electrical socket mounted to a desk in middle school. Leading up to that point, he had been the type of person who was numb to life in almost all senses of the word. The days passed him by so placidly. Some that knew him - the few friends he associated with - eventually said that he had died before his mom had given birth to him. He was, perhaps, not exactly depressed, but there was rather an absence of any semblance of pleasure or feeling. Relationships, personal interests and hobbies, social banter: none of these things brought him the slightest shade of contentment, and instead, he spent his days in a hazy dream, uncaring of his life or where it went.

That was, until he discovered the effect electricity had upon him. The process of electrocution was a daily grounding ritual, akin to someone having their morning coffee, and the feeling itself was both an anchor to the vitality of life force and a crippling vice; in his tortured pleasure, which became more addictive and destructive as the years passed, he was able to make the greatest strides: to finally feel human, to reach out and grab those things that were once so far away and removed from his immediate reality. The relationships he could at last develop on a personal and emotional level with other humans closely paralleled the visceral and perversely sexual relationship he’d continued to forge with his multifaceted shades of self-torture, but the latter was excruciatingly more blissfully intoxicating and at once debilitating. No love on this plane of reality could ever equal that of the exquisite flagellation… of the warm embrace of bodily destruction.

Originally thought to have several mental illnesses as a child, by the time Henrick was close to graduating college, he’d built a promising future for himself as an electrical engineer graduating with the highest honors and was able to maintain both a steady social life and a relationship with a young woman who was majoring in microbiology. The study of electrical engineering, thought by many in his university to be the most challenging degree, was a non-issue. While other students struggled with their higher level mathematics and physics requirements, Henrick understood the principles of electrical science on more than an intuitive level: he understood them on a biological, instinctual level. His voracious appetite for all things concerning his object of intense lust propelled him forward with an intellectual ferocity that could not be matched by any other students who were motivated by the thought of a stable career or prestige in their prescription amphetamine induced delusions of stability and fortune. Neither could his interest be matched by the dull, high-brow individuals who took nothing more than a purely dry, intellectual interest in solving puzzling mathematical problems. No: his fascination for electricity, and for the study of its application in electrical engineering surpassed both groups, for it was at once as natural and as essential to him for survival as drinking, eating, and breathing.

There were several instances in college where equipment from the electrical engineering labs went missing, only to be discovered several months later when Henrick had crossed the precarious edge and had to be taken to the hospital for life threatening electrocution injuries. At least five times he came close to dying during his undergraduate degree, suffering permanent damage to nerves in various parts of his body and scarring his heart. His psychiatrist diagnosed him with two different personality disorders and put him on medications such as SSRIs and anticonvulsants to prevent mania, and he had to miss an entire semester during a visit to a psychiatric ward. He complied out of necessity and to obfuscate his true intentions, as he was not suffering from a mental illness. No, instead, he was invigorated from a pressing mental necessity.

As it always happens with the things in this world, Henrick’s tolerance for electrocution grew depressingly higher and higher with each passing day, month, and year. To maintain his intimate connection with electricity, his rituals and regular intense electrocutions no longer sufficed: he needed something more. Something deeper, something more metaphysical, something that transcended the somatic and tactile realms. By the time graduation had rolled around, he was lost in chaotic thoughts, and in a blinding obsession he wanted to grasp the ethereal essence of electricity itself: to witness the twisting physical and mental manifestations of his true love that beckoned him all hours of the day, imbuing him with fertile life.

Tireless research and brainstorming ensued during the brief hiatus following his graduation when he went back home to live with his parents. It was during this time, when he became addicted to an obscure internet forum that he encountered houses in his country which were said to be haunted by anomalous presences: by ghosts, apparitions, and all manner of demons. These more traditional hauntings were of no concern to him, as he was looking for something very specific. His mind could think of nothing else. And one day, it arrived right in front of his eyes like a gift from the arcane realms of death.

The house posted was said to be around 60 years old. No one had died in it, in fact, and it was not built around any sort of burial site or a location that contained a history of brutal crime and murder. But all inhabitants of the stead had eventually left, and quite quickly. The reason? The electrical system itself was said to be haunted. Being so old, it was understandable that perhaps the original system design in the house was not up to modern standards. But this did not matter, as this was not the issue. These strange occurrences that Henrick read about - the intense sparks that would be emitted from light sockets, the appliances that would catch on fire and die, the light bulbs which would all burst at once while the residents slept - could not be repaired by any electrician. After encountering the wiring system in the house, the electricians from several generations and backgrounds over time were baffled by their design, as it did not match any known past or current systems nor did it line up properly with electrical theory and the natural laws of physics. The handful of repairs and dismantling that took place semi-successfully lasted only days, and then the house would subsequently revert back to its default state, almost as if through a self-correcting energy on behalf of the house or the electrical wires themselves. The various disturbing notes electricians had taken faded to obscurity as the years progressed, and no one seemed to care about the sinister and obscure designs studied therein except for the few who had encountered them firsthand. Stories of this “demonic” electrical system - the “Volt Demon” they called it - were limited to only a few counties and small circles of people in the trade around the state before eventually being talked about less frequently until they were forgotten with new able-bodied workers who no longer had to contend with the consistently unoccupied house.

Indeed, the previous residents of the house never stayed for very long, and the valuation of the house decreased exponentially as time went on despite a booming market, in danger of being torn down completely after a series of family members were harmed or portions of the house had burnt to dust, the fires started by some unknowable, non-human cause. A nameless renovator had taken it upon himself to recently purchase the stead and make several changes and repairs to the house in an effort to sell it for a higher value, beautified and like-new, but of course (in Henrick’s favor) he failed to eliminate the presence of the electrical aberrance.

Henrick applied for a job as a junior electrical engineer in a city located almost an hour from the county the house resided in as soon as he could. After a series of interviews which he passed without a shred of incompetence, he said goodbye to his parents and girlfriend whom he promised to maintain contact with until she too could find her way to the city he resided in. During a cold winter evening when the trees were barren and dusted with flecks of patterned snowflakes, he flew across the country with a large mortgage down-payment in his bank from money he’d saved during part time jobs in college.

“Goodbye son… words cannot describe how proud I am of the man you’ve turned into,” his father said.

“My baby, you let us know if you need anything at all, and don’t be shy about coming back if the going gets tough,” his mother said. “I know you have a tendency to get lonely.”

Hidden behind their genuine smiles, behind their veil of parental lovingness, buried so deeply, so out of sight, lay the vexatious tones of fear, the hesitation that would be imparted upon them when they realized the magnitude of what it meant for their son to be alone with his rather peculiar habits and tendencies.

Upon arriving, Henrick was immediately mesmerized. The house, from the frontal view, defied any human architectural tradition. From certain angles, a conglomeration of eclectic styles could be ascertained, but these conceptions would quickly dissipate in favor of forms that seemed ominous, hollow, and peculiar. No clear perception could be formed for more than a few seconds, as each mental impression would take an optic paradigmatic shift like one was viewing a kaleidoscope of esoteric design. Henrick gazed at the two stories of the dwelling from the entrance below, the spindly junctures on the rooftops reaching toward the heavenly bodies in the gray sky above. Odd circular windows were mounted at symmetrical locations on the roof, betraying nothing of the inside of the house which was pitch black. He put his hand on the side of the house, his fingertips grazing against the baroque material. Coldness. Emptiness.

And…

Something else.

A presence.

A shock jolted through his hand, delivering a wave of ecstasy that started at his fingertips and flowed through his arms. He basked in the long half-life of the feeling. And then he barreled through the door, as he could stand the anticipation no longer.

The air was stale, dry. This presence was there, it was inside, it was waiting for him, and he wanted more. He was close to hyperventilating in excitement, but he suddenly stopped cold. As his eyes began to adjust, he squinted, peered down the nearly indecipherable hallway that lay before him. A tightness enveloped Henrick, squeezing him with anxiety, for he quickly realized that his eyes were not playing tricks on him. He would let this go on no longer - where was the light switch? Where was his energetic mistress who would serve him, pleasure him as it always had?

He flipped the switch on the wall to his left side. Illumination ripped through the darkness, and simultaneously, an electrocution the likes of which he’d never experienced in his life threw him into a pleasure void so deep that he collapsed, fell over, and blacked out before he could witness what stood before him.

Besides this singular incident which Henrick frequently thought about and longed for, the next few months passed inconsequentially as he performed his duties as an electrical engineer at a workplace which quickly grew to love him for his natural talents and work ethic. As promised, he communicated with his girlfriend regularly, often texting her throughout the day and calling her when he could. She was finishing her final year at college, and would be going to medical school. His parents were always happy to hear from him, and often expressed how proud they were of him. They told him that they would be visiting him soon along with his younger brother, and they’d be bringing an assortment of housewarming gifts. But Henrick was deeply dissatisfied with his life, feeling trapped, feeling as if he’d made a mistake. He cared nothing of these peasantries and relationships; cared nothing of other people. What was it that he experienced when he first arrived, what was that embrace with the electrical apparition? It was his primary concern, the summation and median of his thoughts. Why couldn’t he have it again? His usual forms of torture were barely keeping him going. He was becoming restless, depressed, longing for that which he originally came here for: transcendental torture, metaphysical self-annihilation at the mercy of something far greater than his human form. Where was his bringer of bliss, his bringer of death? Each day, he longed, he wished, he prayed. And he hoped. He hoped, as he made sadistic daily use of the electrical sockets in the house, that all of the energy that he was expending dreaming of his fantasy - all of his psychotic cravings - would summon or awaken whatever had occupied his house… that the culmination of his potent neuronal storm would manifest a physical phenomenon through sheer hyperstition.

One fateful night, his pleas were answered in full force.

He awoke in a fit of piercing anxiety, feeling smothered from all sides, paralyzed. Voices echoed in his head, voices from everyone he’d known called his name, babbling incoherently as their words tossed and turned, hitting the sides of his brain back and forth, back and forth. A bleak darkness permeated the fibers of the house, folded itself into the corners of the ceiling and coated the length of the floor in a spindly fashion like a desolate spider’s web. The gloomy hues along with the energy that was being emitted from the house made it seem as if a combinatorial twist of dimensions had occurred, and what Henrick was looking at toed the line between reality and a horrific alternate spacetime geometry.

“Henrick! Henrick!” the voices called to him incessantly.

He finally managed to remove himself from his bed and almost fell over. His sight, hearing, sound, and touch were all dulled; it was as if someone had pulled a thick wool cloth over his sensory organs, smothering them, not letting them see the full contents of the world. It was as if the house itself was closing in on him, the darkness consuming him. The frantic realization that he felt like he was going to die sent merciless, gut wrenching feelings of pleasurable doom down his spine. He poured sweat.

Yet, something led him onward: a bellowing call from the abyss reached its hand around him, embraced him, and pulled him toward its event horizon. Confused, panicked, and dazed, Henrick stumbled through the dark corridors of his house, something else controlling him without his permission. The feeling of the loss of autonomy, the disintegration of his core self, created a nausea greater than that of the dizziness, and he vomited as he stumbled and fell over several times, slipping in bile and half-digested food.

He was so close, he had to keep going.

As he inched himself to his objective, a whirring thrill reverberated throughout his body. He became lustful, overtaken by a primitive, carnal desire so intense that it voraciously consumed the feelings of fear and panic in an instant. He jumped up despite his body’s wishes and ran toward the kitchen.

A bright blue ethereal shower of sparks spewed forth from the mouth of the electrical socket closest to his kitchen table on an empty wall. They were dazzling, spectacular, alien, cryptic, and they captivated Henrick, sucked his very soul into its existence as he stood there, stimulated and aroused. His eyes were transfixed and unwavering, his mouth agape. Drool dripped from his bottom lip and coated his chest with remnants of vomit specks. Electrical wiring began slithering from the opening of the socket, slow at first, only small amounts, but with each successive moment, their density and numbers grew in size. The socket was ejaculating its internals, long and rope-like, waving them in the air, levitating them, and then letting them fall to the ground and twitch in welcome to their host like a warm bed. They burned with intensity from the transfusion of diabolical energy. Henrick knew exactly what he must do.

On all fours, he crawled toward the innards of the entity, and laid down, letting them wrap themselves along every inch of his body, smother him, dig into him. And then the great shock was transmitted, the strange voltage that he’d never before felt in his life, wrapping itself around every braincell in his head and squeezing tightly. He screamed in bliss and pleasure, in an ecstasy so intense he thought he’d die from a heart attack. And it did not let up. His mind was propelled through several dimensions of colorful topology, his very essence was projected to a plane so high above others, that he could see the entire universe from a birds-eye perspective. Through the conduits of heaven and hell he traveled, witnessing the exterior of the cosmos and of human life itself in his majestic and perverted high of electrical shock. His dopamine and serotonin receptors self-destructed, downregulated, and withered away from the otherworldly flood of chemicals; he self lobotomized from the pleasurable disintegration his brain underwent.

And from that moment forth, there was no turning back: Henrick had gotten exactly what he wanted, and it was all that he’d ever need now and forever.

He no longer showed up to work, and eventually lost all contact with each person in his life. Day in and day out, he’d wrap himself in the pernicious embrace of the Volt Demon’s innards and travel through thousands of pleasure paradigms, transcending himself and his physical body.

He barely ate or drank, for all he needed was the electricity that his house provided him with. He lay naked, withering away like a corpse in the making, severe nutritional deficiencies causing him to decay from the inside out. A bite of food here and a tooth was dislodged. A bump on the counter there and skin would slide from his weakened muscle and thin, fragile bone, becoming gangrenous and infected. His eyes were sunken, he lost vision entirely in one of them. His fingernails fell off quite rapidly, exposing sensitive, bloodied nail beds below them that he made sure to wrap extra tight with electrical wiring during his torture-bliss experiences. His physical being would not last much longer, but this did not matter, because he had transcended his shallow, pathetic world that never cared for him once. He was united with his one true love, the one who he’d always longed for and who now accepted him as no one else had.

Henrick’s father, despite arguing with his mother about the autonomy of their now older son, thought it best to check on him. They hadn’t talked to him for several months, not even a text, as Henrick had told them to no longer contact him for the time being. He said that he wanted to be completely separate for some time while he figured various things out, and needed uninterrupted focus to make that happen.

“You have to respect his wishes, honey, he’s an adult now,” his mother said.

“I do respect his autonomy. But something is off. I can feel it. Are you telling me that you don’t?” his father asked.

After some incessant bickering, Henrick’s father flew to his city and took a cab to his house the very next day.

A knock. No one answered the door. More knocks.

“Henrick! Henrick! Open up!” his father shouted, banging profusely.

He could stand it no longer. He took a large rock from the garden and smashed the window near the kitchen until he could squeeze in. “I’m coming in!”

Darkness. Quiet. A lurching, rotten scent of putrefaction: of death. His father recognized it, and flew around the house in a panic, turning on all of the lights, checking every corner and crevice for his son.

Henrick was not there. Someone had once lived here, but his son was absent, as if he’d evaporated from the surface of the planet. All signs of life were gone, the signal flatlined.

Weeks had passed, and Henrick’s father had filed a police report and asked the people at his son’s former work and in the town if they knew anything of Henrick and his disappearance. Alas, it was all in vain; not even the slightest clue had come to fruition.

Henrick’s father and the rest of his family sat in his son’s house one evening, forlorn and melancholy, discussing their next steps as they packed his belongings into boxes. Lost in thought, his father came back to his senses after hearing faint electrical zaps coming from the kitchen. Ripping himself from the couch, he made his way to the sound’s location, methodically but with a sense of unease he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Standing inside of the room, he closed his eyes and felt a presence, identifying and then confirming the direction the sound was coming from: a wall on the rightmost side, adjacent to the oven and near the kitchen table, covered by nothing but a single electrical socket. He pressed his hand to the wall, and an intuition hit him. A fatherly intuition, the kind that told him that his son was there. That his son was inside of the wall.

He sprinted to the garage of the house looking around like a cornered animal, the other family members becoming panicked, questioning him with unease.

“Henrick is here! There’s no time to explain!”

Henrick’s father came back to the kitchen with an axe he’d found and began smashing in the sides of the wall furthest from the center. He placed his hands in the divets he’d created and began removing the sides of the drywall with cortisol-induced brute strength. Closer and closer, more and more wall fell. The hairs on his neck were standing on their ends, a knot was forming in his stomach, his hands bled with splinters, cut and mangled. Before the entire wall was removed, Henrick’s father knew that he’d never find his son. He knew that his son had left this world and would never return. In fact, he knew that his son had never truly been alive, even during his first days on Earth. He was born dead.

Eventually, there was no more wall left: all internals were laid bare.

His father, step by step, backed up to observe his anxious extirpation. He raised his head at what lay before him.

The electrical wiring was complex and interlocking, forming obfuscated but blatantly evil symbols of primordial animosity along the periphery of the wall. They coalesced to the center, where they formed the outline of a human body with its arms by its sides. And this body, which was the exact shape and size of Henrick, had a head, and on this head were two still-human, organic eyeballs against the backdrop of the inorganic wiring bundles. The optic nerve fibres of the eyeballs were fleshy and red, and they enmeshed themselves with the electrical system’s strands as if they were connected to a brain.

Tears streamed down his father’s cheeks as he looked at the figure and let out an animalistic howl of anguish. Henrick’s mother and aunt had walked into the kitchen and were screaming, sobbing behind his father, trying to make sense of what they were seeing.

“What is this! What in God’s name is this! This can’t be… it can’t! The color of those eyes!”

The eyes that were staring forward into oblivion, once dead and impenetrable became enlivened and they shifted, shooting their gaze in the direction of Henrick’s father. The eyes locked in with his and at once they were one. He was with Henrick. He was with his son.

In that moment, in that single flicker of the eyeballs, his father fell to his knees in horror and dismay, the crushing weight of all of the pain that his son had endured throughout his entire life falling on him at once, wringing out his insides and breaking him, shattering him irreparably at the onslaught of once former incomprehension becoming known.