The Devil's Apprentice by Patrick Stewart (polar express read aloud TXT) 📕

onto the sofa, his eyes wide, the muscles on his face suddenly became taut as his puffy red skin turned a ghostly pale. His hands wrapped around his neck. His mouth was wide open but he gasped for air.

Alex rushed over to him. He dropped to his knees and gripped Andrew’s shoulder. It was icy cold. He’d stopped gasping. His body was completely motionless but he still had his hands wrapped around his neck.

Alex pulled his phone out. The screen was completely damaged and it did not recognise his frantic fingers thumping at it. “Call an ambulance!” he shouted at the blonde hooker.

“Dad?” Alex’s hand trembled as he shook Andrew by the shoulder. His body was cold… much too cold. From his bare chest, where the breastbone ended, the skin above began to change colour. It was slow at first, like a drop of ink emerging from within, the patch of blue the colour of a clear summer sky, it quickly spread across his chest.

Alex let go of his dad and shuffled back whilst climbing to his feet, his eyes wide in horror as Andrew’s skin turned entirely blue from his head down to his exposed ankles. A scream escaped the hooker’s lips as she jumped off the sofa. Standing behind him, she grabbed him by the t-shirt, her naked body rubbing against him.

“...what the fuck happened to him?” she whispered. “Why does he look like that?”

“I think… I think he’s dead.”

“No shit he’s dead. But why the fuck is he blue?”

It was a good question. Andrew did not look like he’d just died. His still body on the floor, his back resting against the sofa, his eyes and mouth were both wide open, and his hands were still wrapped around his neck. Even without the blue skin, this did not look like a normal death.

The hooker pinched Alex in the back. He turned to look back at her, annoyed. “What?” his voice came out course. He cleared his throat, then repeated, “What?”

“Your dad’s dead.”

Alex had realised as much. “I know,” he muttered.

“He said he was going to die… and then he died.”

Again, it was something Alex was aware of. “What’s your point?” he hissed.

“Coincidence? Or is all of that devil stuff true too?”

Alex stared at the dead body of his father, feeling strangely calm. Andrew hadn’t exactly lived a healthy life. This was sort of how Alex had imagined his dad would die. Quite suddenly from drug overdose, or drinking himself to death. The fact that he’d predicted the day of his death and the manner of said death, both were pushed to the corners of his mind, as were Andrew’s ramblings about the devil coming for them both.

“Did you call an ambulance?” Alex asked.

The hooker stepped away from him, her phone in hand, she raised it to her ear. As she spoke to the emergency services operator on the other end, Alex glanced around the room, looking for his dad’s shirt. It was on carpet by the corner of the sofa. A green shirt that had seen much better days. He was about to move towards it when the bell sounded.

Someone was at the front door.

“Is that the ambulance?” Alex asked.

“If it is, they got here in record time…”

Alex let out a nervous laugh. “Who else could it be?”

They both turned to look at Andrew’s dead body, his skin blue, his face traumatic. Doubts began to creep inside Alex’s mind. Determined to keep them away, he walked out of the living room. Alex didn’t recall closing the red door, nor did he remember switching off the corridor light. He walked down the dark passage and came to the front door. His hand on the brass doorknob, he was about to turn it when his doubts got the better of him.

It was ridiculously quick for the ambulance to arrive. Andrew hadn’t been lying about his impending death. What if he was telling the truth about the devil? After what Alex had seen in the past week, he couldn’t deny the existence of supernatural beings.

The front door had a peephole. Alex pressed his eye against it. There was a woman outside. A tall woman wearing a smart white lace shirt with golden buttons tucked into a black skirt that rested above her knees. Black sunglasses covered her eyes. Her skin was red. The same devilish red skin Jamie Azarath had.

Chapter 4

With some effort, Alex unclenched his hand and released his grip on the brass doorknob. His heart thumping, he turned and walked back down the corridor. Coming to the living room, he stood by the door.

“Was that the ambulance?”

Feeling a little dazed, Alex leaned against the door frame. He blinked twice. “What’s your name?”

“Lucy Lust… was that the ambulance?”

“That’s your real name?”

The blonde hooker, apparently named Lucy Lust, frowned. “You got a problem with it?”

Alex shook his head. He did not have a problem with it. He did have many other problems though. His gaze flickered to the body of his dad. Still blue and still dead. “There’s a woman at the door. She’s red…”

Lucy’s eyes narrowed. “She’s what?”

“Red. Her skin, it's all red. Sort of like the devil really… I’m beginning to fear my dad might have been telling the truth.”

“You’re weird,” Lucy told him.

Still naked, her bare breasts brushed against his shoulder as she walked past him and marched down the corridor. A small voice inside Alex told him to grab hold of her, to stop her going to the front door. There was a red woman there. A demon? The woman was a demon, wasn’t she? Jamie was one too. They existed, as did angels. He couldn’t deny what he’d seen with his own eyes.

If demons and angels existed, did that mean his dad had told the