The Ritual

by Adam L.G. Nevill

Would he like a fucking slap too?

Luke found he had almost accepted the situation, and wondered if it was because he always expected the very worst to befall him, all of the time, in every aspect of his life.

He thought of a black beard wet with hot gore, a snout red in the thin light from where it had been snatching at the coils and plump offal of his friends.

Evil was, he decided, inevitable, relentless and predictable. Imaginative, he’d give it that much, but soulless.