This post is part of the August 2013 Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s prompt is “Child of the Devil.”

Maria Nguyan had been skeptical of the woman in the dark dress at first. She’d even manged to get the first two numbers of 911 dialed on her cell phone. The mumbled intimations of being a child of evil and the prophesied doom of the world hadn’t helped. Mom had always warned of strangers, after all, though that warning coming from someone who greeted door-to-door salesmen with homebaked cookies had never seemed particularly dire.

But that had been before Ms. Dark had shown Maria that she had mysterious and inexplicable powers. Local flies did her bidding, being pushed in front of a speeding semi had sent the truck driver to the hospital, and releasing the heartburn rather than keeping it in had led to a gout of flame breath powerful enough to reduce Mr. Feigenbaum’s hated geraniums to ashes.

“So do you see now?” said Mrs. Dark. “Do you see how I speak the truth? You are the child of evil, the spawn of the most profane and evil Devil of every faith on Earth.”

“I do, I see it now,” Maria said. “Mom always told me that Dad was a rotten, no-good, devil.” She remembered little of her father save an unpleasant smell, eternal arguments, and the motorcycle jacket emblazoned with e red imp that he wore the day he had left. Well, that and his immaculately groomed mustache and goatee. The mention of Maria’s father was the only thing that got demure Mrs. Nguyan into a full-throated rage.”I guess…I guess I should have known all along.”

“Oh, child, child,” Mrs. Dark said. “You have it all wrong, I’m afraid. It’s your mother who is the Devil.”

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own responses:
ishtar’sgate
BDavidHughes
areteus
Ralph Pines
articshark
pyrosama
Anarchic Q
meowzbark
MsLaylaCakes
grace elliot
milkweed

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