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Bassett Ellery is a young ex-soldier, one of the few naive youths to have survived the war only a couple years ago. Desperate to escape memories of the war and distract himself with work, this shell-shocked soldier sold himself to another man as a servant. Not only is his mind haunted with memories of the battle, blasts, and blood, but he is also plagued by a Pey that lusts after his blood.

They call me Bassett Ellery. I am 19 years old, coming up on my 20th birthday at the end of summer and the beginning of Autumn.
I remember in my division, my comrades always had arguments over the color of my hair. Some said it was strawberry blond. Others insisted that it was a pale red. I'd have to say that it's strawberry blond. I haven't cut my hair since the war, since they cropped all my straight locks when they stripped me of my uniqueness. So it's grown quite long, just long enough for me to pull it back into a pony-tail before I begin work for my new employer.
Others also used to say that I was the baby of the group. It wasn't my fault that I still had some of the child fat in my cheeks and that I have no wrinkles of age. They also used to call me Bassett "Button" because, apparently, I had a button nose. But then again, they also called me "Bloody Bassett" because I had a face that would intimidate anyone who got on my bad side. My thin lips would purse if I concentrated for too long. They say that I had a very naturally intense gaze for someone with a baby face and that I was a monster on the battle field. My almond amber eyes would've belied everything my baby fat tried to hide if one looked hard enough.
Ever since the war, though, I've lost a bit of that intensity. I'm struck with shell-shock now. If I hear a loud noise, if something surprises me, even the littlest thing, I'll completely freak. The last time it happened, I started to shake uncontrollably and I couldn't drink a glass of water to help calm myself down. I even have the potential to seriously injure someone if they're in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It was also in battle that I obtained the scar that makes a wing off my right thick and level brow. Not your right, mine. It was a bayonet that nicked me when I collided into the enemy on a suicide charge. The entire reason why he missed plunging the steel completely through my skull, my comrades used to say, is because of my body shape and stature. I'm slim, slender as a willow, and it's often said that it doesn't look like I could have, (nonetheless have actually), kill other men. They say that I was slim and quick enough to peel myself away from danger and after that, that I snapped right back up in front of the other soldier and stirred up his guts with my own bayonet.
The only thing I keep on my body obsessively is my army tag, the pieces of rounded silver rectangles that will identify my body if I die. I also have a tattoo with my number and division on the inside of my forearm. It's kind of awkward, and it hurts more than anything, but it's something that I can't get rid of. My comrade, the tattoo artist who put it there in the first place, had decorated it with what little details he could so that it didn't seem just like a number to be branded with. It looks like little sprouts of plants are growing from it, like little dandelions that have lost some of their wishes.

March 21, 2008.............................................................................................................................Bassett's Journal




I must get down to the point. Although I wish with all my guilt-ridden heart to keep silent, from expelling these words both spoken and ridden, in fear of, by some stray wind, they would break free and betray me by breathing my secrets into stranger's ears...I'm afraid to say that I can't. I must impose upon this sweet paper for I must have some shape of solace before I break.

Now understand this, o sweet piece of parchment and ink, I come to you now as an other man's servant, but I'll have you know that I do not come from dirtied kitchens and bowed backs, but from scarred battle fields and smoke-filled trenches. That's right, I was a servant of war, not a servant of the stove.

...And it was there that I lost everything.

It was a spring day and the flowers would've been nice to look at if they weren't dancing in a rain of shrapnel and dirt. In fact, it was hard to even see their pastel color with all the black smoke in the air, but they were the only thing that I could really see, really make out from anything else in the world. I was lying on the ground beside my comrades...bleeding. We were taken out by our own cannon's stray fire while advancing through the woods on the outskirts of the battle. It was out mission to sneak out of our current position in order to take a message to the main road where we would plea to higher commanders and their messengers for more reinforcements.

We failed.

The message we carried was in Jerry's hands, the same man who had caught the full rage of the cannon. There was nothing left of him save some scraps of smoldering cloth and leather. It was this combination of mistakes and ill fortune that cost us everything. Since we couldn't get the message for reinforcements, our ranks remained weakened and soon we were overcome.

...And it was because there was no one left to search out the failed message runners that I was forgotten.

I was still very much alive. When the cannon fire demolished our measly group, I had luckily been in the front, leaping over a fallen body as I tried to race through the forest with my comrades. The force of the blast flung my body forward as if I had been smashed into by an iron train. Memory tells me that I tumbled into the ground like a rag doll and landed upon my side so that it could seem like I was merely resting. Unfortunately, I couldn't move. Beneath my blackened uniform, my skin was raw and boiling, stretched and paper tight with burns. It was mere luck that saved me from shrapnel. Whatever luck I had was, ultimately, my ill fate.

Looking back, I wish that I had died right then and there.

The war, the hungry untamed and unsatisfied beast that it always was, had already preyed and feasted upon my family. There was no "home" for me to return to. In fact, it was because of the loss of my family that I, in tearful rage, signed my soul away to the gun in hopes to extract my revenge by killing every enemy I could (and I'm not ashamed to say that I have killed, but I am scared to do so again). Which was sick, considering that I was only eighteen when this came to happen. There was no girl of mine that I had left behind, there weren't any friends I could fight for. Besides, I was already with them, lying beside their still and unmoving pale-faced bodies.

At least...I was sure that they were all dead. Until I saw something move.

From the crumpled position I was in, my blurry lop-sided vision revealed a shadowed figure to me that I was very much startled to see. Yes, there was motion, just a couple yards away from me, and it was there that my heart swelled five times its size with hope. It was hard to make out in the dying light of the day, but there was, indeed, a dark figure moving slowly across the debris towards my broken body. I squinted my eyes, trying to peer past the dirt and dust, the tears and blood, but all I could see was a dark shape. From what I could make out, the figure was stooping down, as if checking the wounded and dead for signs of life.

My heart was racing. I didn't know why, but when this dark figure moved into my vision, I was suddenly possessed with this mad craving to live, even though I had no one to live for.

Wait...Who was I kidding, I thought then? There was me. I had to live for me.

So it was with great difficulty that I raised my voice as high as I could, like raising a tattered flag above the ruins, "Over here!" I had cried, "I'm right here!"

At the sound of my raspy voice, the figure, who had been leaning over the body of a dead comrade not so far away, snapped its head in my direction. I called again, my chest swelling with anticipation, and it started towards me...scuttling. That's right, scuttling. I don't know how else to describe it. It moved unlike anything I had ever seen before and it was coming for me. Unease suddenly struck my heart and I felt as if I had done something wrong.

Now, I don't believe in the occult or anything like that, but what I saw before me was indeed a demon. There was no other explanation. It wasn't human, whatever it was, it wasn't human. I mean, it appeared to be a medic, from my strained sight, but it was different. It was a monster.

...And it was looking at me.

"You are wounded," the being's thick foggy voice told me and it leaned down over my paralyzed body...it was then that I realized what it was doing. This being before me was intending, not to care for me or tend to my throbbing wounds. I knew, deep down, as if the answer had been shouted into my ear that it was intending to hurt me. It's eyes were brimming with hunger and I swear that from the corner of my eye I could see a strange tongue lick its chapped red-smeared lips.

"No!" I shouted then, suddenly and with more strength than I had prepared, "I know what you seek and you will have none of it."

"None?" it asked me, its voice amused. It responded to me as if I were some child. "I will have what I want."

"Not if I don't have any blood to give," I corrected. Fear beat its leathery wings in my chest, "I have no wound that bleeds. Merely ones that simmer. The blood you see is the blood of my comrades and already it grows cold and dry. It becomes brittle, but you see," I said, and it was around this point that I don't recall saying the words that left my mouth. Fear possessed me then, and I simply spat out what words came to mind, most of them being from old tales that were cooed to me when I was a wee lad. "If you help me up, if you help me to a place where I can find more help, and help me heal so that I can move about on my own and take care of my necessities, I can help you in return."

The demon before me tilted its head. I had captured its attention.

So quickly, I stuttered more and more, trying in a mad rush to get my proposal out of me before it exploded and left me helpless, "If you do as I bid, I'll give you blood to drink, warm and fresh, whenever you're hungry, but only as much as I can give without hurting myself even more. Understand? Does that sound appealing?"

I had lost everything else. I couldn't lose the one last thing I had: my life.

The demon nodded and then carefully it bend itself down upon its knees and gathered me into its arms, I, this young mortal lad in the arms of this battlefield demon. From there, we managed to get to where I needed to go to receive the attention that I required for my wounds. I slowly healed in the safety of a medical tent and all around me I could watch the demon haunt the premises, waiting for me to get better. It brought me food to eat, water to drink, and while I could give it no blood, it drank its fill from the dying soldiers in the middle of the night in the beds around and on either side of me.

You see, sweet paper, I have discovered and made a treacherous deal with a Pey. Now it awaits for me and I must find out a way to make the deal official. As of the moment, it teeters precariously on the weak bond of trust that we have made, but I need something else in order to protect my life from it. I am terrified, paper, I am utterly appalled and I don't know what else to do but look into this store that I recently stumbled upon, running errands for my new master as I try and make something out of my life.

It is only this new place, this...Daemonologie, that can save me now.




Now, sweet paper, I must bid you farewell and give you my gratitude for listening. It's been a most relieving experience finally talking about it, letting down this burden if only for a moment. However, now I must burn you. You may not say a word of this to anyone, not anyone, and I cannot risk hiding you or storing you away. If I destroy you, you cannot hope to tell my master or anyone else of my mistake, of my promise.

Thanks.


---------------Bassett