When my mother came to wish me a good night, I knew something was wrong. I heard the soft knock on my bedroom door faintly, through the deafening silent sobs that wracked my body.

"Has that girl Kay been bullying you again?"

I stared at her through the tear-stained eyes she was taking in with a worried expression. It almost felt like something was changing. Maybe the nights of wishing my mother knew I existed were over.

Except there was no care in her eyes. Just curiosity... and calculation.

She laughed. "Kay's my human, did you know? Not that she knows."

I froze. "What?"

"Oh, yes. Demons know their humans, but humans have no idea that while they're asleep, a demon in their mind runs amok in another dimension."

"I don't understand," I said, a chill running through me. I felt like I was swimming through a swirling pool of confusion, and maybe the world was swimming alongside me, for all the sense I could gather.

I ran, my feet digging into the hard dirt but unable to propel me forward. "I don't want to!" I screamed. "I won't give my life to you!"

My mother smiled in understanding, a smile that was horribly familiar. "I know you don't," she said. "I'll do my best to explain."

The hot dirt met my hands. The world swam faster, paddling past me and leaving me deeper and deeper in a dark void, until all I could seem to hear was congratulations and thanks, for giving myself away to her service.

"You see, I'm the leader of a sort of... rebellion, if you will. The Queen of the rebellion, you could say. Everyone has a demon that runs amok in our realm while its person is fast asleep. Believe it or not, there are some demons who don't support the Demon Queen's rule."

My mother seemed to be twisting sideways in the air, moving eternally in that direction but remaining firmly where she was. "What do you mean?" I asked. I know exactly what you mean, a voice inside me said.

"You haven't got a choice," a sharp, metallic voice told me.

"Humans don't know about their demons, but the demons are all too aware of their humans. Isn't that funny?"

"So what did I do to you?"

"Well," she said, lowering her voice, "it turns out that demons can also possess humans. That's how I'm here; possessing someone close to you." She smiled cruelly, an expression I'd seen many times on my mother's face, but always a bit different from this. "And I'm here because we believe you are the Demon Queen's human. Therefore, you must be eliminated."

I laughed. "Tell me something I don't know, Commoner Scum."

I awoke to a world of pain. Every spec of my existence was raw agony, consuming all other senses. I couldn't see, hear, or feel anything but the pain and the hard, dry dirt pushing up into me.

Somewhere, a sharp, metallic voice called out... "Thank you for giving away your life in the service of the Demon Queen."