I groaned before waking up for what seemed like the thousandth time. It felt like a truck had hit me. For all I know, one probably had.

I opened my eyes and through blurry vision, I saw Tanjiro running toward me.

“Are you okay?!,” he shouted. I shook my head sending a bolt of agony zig-zagged through my skull. I groaned again, gritting my teeth.

“Can you feel your body?,” Tanjiro asked me. 

Actually, I couldn’t, but with a hoarse voice, I painfully whispered, “Yeah, I’m all good.” I still resented the idea of appearing weak in front of Tanjiro.

Tanjiro growled and smiled. His smile filled me with warmth and I automatically felt safe— Wait, what?!

“Good. I like it when I can feed on humans while they are still alive to scream,” ‘Tanjiro’ said.

I blinked and Tanjiro was no longer Tanjiro. He was the demon.

The demon grabbed me by my throat and I yelped. As he raised me into the air, I squirmed. His fist continued to tighten, slowly and painfully crushing my windpipe. I tried to scream for help but only a gurgling sound came out.

I reached my arms out and weakly slapped the demon in the face.

My vision was starting to blur and fade. With one last act of desperation I reached into my pocket and pulled out my switchblade. I raised it above my head, the movement tightening the muscles in my neck.

HOLY CRAP, I screamed internally as the demon increased the tightness of his grip. HE’S GONNA CRUSH ME LIKE A GRAPE!

Pain flared up in the tendons in my neck when the demon’s fingers suddenly tightened and I dropped the knife.

Darkness almost completely obscured my vision. An idea struck my mind and my consciousness immediately told me to go for it.

I pushed my knee up into the crotch of the demon. Hard.

The demon screeched and his grip loosened. I dropped to the ground. I snatched up the small knife off the ground, rejecting my lungs’ request for oxygen and threw it at the demon.

Expectation: The blade flies through the air in slow motion giving the viewer an epic view of the blurry spiral the spin of the blade creates. Suddenly, the motion shoots back to normal speed and the blade slams cleanly into the eye of the demon, sending blood splattering everywhere. Hideko is triumphant!!

Reality: The blade flies through the air awkwardly in an exact replication of the opposite of the perfect sci-fi spin and the handle bounces harmlessly off of the arm of the demon. Hideko swears and throws up blood.

“I’M GOING TO TEAR YOU TO PIECES!,” the demon cried as acid and a vile aftertaste burned my throat and tears burned my eyes, followed by the rumbling growl of chainsaws.

Chainsaws?

“Howdyyyy…,” someone growls from behind me over the roar of the chainsaws. I peek behind me, still on my hands and knees.

Guess again. Not Tanjiro. Instead, a figure that I could make out thanks to the shine of the moon stood there with a chainsaw instead of a head and two more chainsaws coming out of the figure’s hands.

If I wasn’t about to die in the sim— for real, I would have shouted with euphoria.

Instead my wobbly arms gave out and I fell face first into my own throw up.

Nice.