My life started out ordinarily enough. I was born to an ordinary middle class family in an ordinary middle class town. It could have been Anywhere, USA, but it happened to be Iowa.  Mom was just that — Mom. Like in Leave it to Beaver. She stayed home all day and baked cookies, or whatever it is that Moms do, while Dad went to work. Life was good, and everything was perfectly normal. Until the year I turned nine.
   
That was the year the nightmares began.  They started out simply enough, at least, at first — just the typical bad dreams of a nine-year old kid with an overactive imagination. Nobody thought much of it at first, but they got worse. They even got to the point where I dreaded going to sleep at night.  I'd do anything to avoid sleep, but I had to sleep sometime.  And it didn't seem to matter if I slept during the day or at night.  The dreams were always the same.  Terrifying.  I didn't understand what was going on, and no one would listen to me.  They just told me to stop reading comic books and pray for protection.  A lot of good that did.
   
My parents started to pay more attention when my grades started to drop.  I was never a brilliant kid, but up until then, I'd done okay in school.  I had a lot of friends, but I didn't care about them anymore. Every night in my sleep, I'd see them die some horrible death.  It was easier to become a recluse.
   
I tried everything I could think of. I slept with the lights on. I prayed. I wore a cross around my neck. I went to church on Sunday.  Nothing helped. I didn't know what to do. Nobody did. The doctors tried drugging me into oblivion, but that didn't work either, and after a while, I started flushing my medication down the toilet. They did sleep studies and brain scans. They tried hypnosis and therapy.  They poked and they prodded, but they couldn't find anything wrong with me.  As far as they were concerned, I was perfectly normal.  My parents were at their wits" end, and I was on the verge of madness.

And then one night, something strange happened. In the middle of a nightmare, I woke up, or thought I did, to find a stranger in my room. A woman bathed in a warm golden light. The most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She told me not to be afraid; that she was there to help. She told me there was a war coming and that I was to play an important part, but before that, something terrible was going to happen. She said I had to be brave and strong, and if I was, all would be well. She said when the time came, I'd know what to do.  And then she was gone. 
   
After that, the nightmares stopped, and things returned to normal, or at least, as normal as possible. The truth is things were never really the same again. I knew my parents lived in fear of something, but I didn't know what. I now know it was the fear of losing me. Of losing their only child to a darkness they couldn't control or do anything about. They feared I was on the brink of losing my mind. If only they had known the truth. It may not have saved them, but at least, they would have known it wasn't their fault.
   
They did their best to protect me and to love me. If there's anything I remember about those days, it was that. I knew what it was to be loved. Sometimes those memories are all that keep me going.
   
Ever wonder what your life would be like if things had been different' Ever wonder if there's such a thing as fate, or if we're all just pawns in some bigger cosmic plan' Ever wonder if no matter what you did, no matter what choices you might have made, you'd still end up right where you are now" I've gone over it a thousand times in my head and still can't figure out how I might have changed things or how I could have saved them.
   
Anyway, like I said.  Things returned to normal, or as normal as they could be.  I went back to school, and my grades recovered, but things were different somehow.  I didn't care about the things I used to care about anymore.  I avoided my friends.  They asked too many questions, and after a while, they left me alone.  I was a freak, and everyone knew it.
   
Things had changed at home, too.  Right after the dreams stopped, I found out that my mother was pregnant. My parents were overjoyed at having another baby, but they still were still worried about me.  Somehow, I knew the baby was going to be a girl, and somehow, I knew something terrible was going to happen. Try as I might to convince her, my mother dismissed my fears as simple sibling jealousy or the product of an overactive imagination. It was neither. I knew better, but no one would listen.
   
Everyday I lived in fear, wondering when tragedy would strike. As the months passed, I started following my mother around everywhere she went, even skipping school to do so, until I finally got caught. And then my father made sure it stopped. He didn't want any son of his turning into a delinquent, or worse, a nutcase.
   
And then, late one night, my worst fears came to pass. It was Halloween night, when the veil between worlds is the thinnest.  I woke up in the middle of the night to hear my parents fighting, or at least, I thought they were fighting.  Shouting at each other.  Screaming.  They never fought.  Ever.  Not even about me. Terrified, I crept from my bed and down the hall to my parents' bedroom. What I found there I'll never forget. I still have nightmares about it.
   
My father had my mother by the throat and was choking her. The look on her face is something I'll never forget.  Sheer terror.  And there was something else. The only word I can think of to describe it is evil. Pure evil. I could smell it.  I could almost feel it.
   
I looked at my father, but it wasn't him. It was something else, something inhuman, something from my nightmares. I watched helplessly, frozen in place, as he threw my mother across the room, and that was when I acted. I ran to my father's study and grabbed the handgun I knew he kept hidden in the desk.  The gun I wasn't supposed to know about. The one he kept there to keep the family safe. I didn't think to check if it was loaded. I didn't think of anything but saving my mother and my unborn sister, but it was too late.
   
By the time I got back, she was already dead, sprawled on the floor, blood soaking the carpet, her neck tilted at an odd angle.  I couldn't help but scream. That was when the thing noticed me. The thing that had hold of my father.  The thing that had killed my mother.  When he turned to face me, it wasn't my father who looked back at me anymore.  It was a demon.
   
His eyes were yellow and otherworldly. Inhuman.  An evil grin spread across his face as he took a step toward me, and I instinctively backed up.  I was so terrified, I could hardly breathe.
   
"Well, well. Look what we have here," he sneered.  "It looks like this won't be so hard, after all."
   
He took another step toward me, and I pointed the gun at him, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull the trigger.
   
"D-dad..." I stammered.  "Don't come any closer."
   
The thing that was my father sneered again and took another step forward.  "Dad. How touching. Put the gun down, son, and I promise you won't get hurt."
   
"Stay back!" I warned trying to sound brave, though my insides felt like curdled milk. "I don't know what you are, but you're not my father."  I had both hands on the gun now, trying to hold it steady.
   
"Oh, your father's in here somewhere, trying to get out, trying to protect you, but it's useless. He can't help you now. No one can. Now, put the gun down and accept your fate like a man."
   
I vaguely remember shaking my head.  I think I was crying.  "Dad, please..."
   
I watched in horror as the thing's eyes changed again, flashing angrily, murderously. I knew in that moment that it meant to kill me, or worse.  I screamed, as it lunged at me. I don't remember pulling the trigger, but I must have. They said I shot him five times at point blank range.
   
I don't remember what happened after that. I must have passed out. When I awoke, I was in the hospital. My life was never the same after that. I had killed my first demon. But as far as the rest of the world was concerned, I had just murdered my own father.