Fast forward a few centuries later. After Dunstan’s death, he left instructions on how to move the demon from one bag to another given that the same rosary is used for each new bag. After a while, the story became legend and maintenance of the bag fell out of fashion. Where is it now? Hopefully in the hands of our main protagonist! Otherwise, how else should the story progress?

~~~

Options narrow when you’re poor and if a needed something happens to cross your path, you take it as a gift sent from above, a gift from God.

Julio Ramirez was in fact painfully dirt poor. Often having stewed leaves for dinner, patching his old shoes with some pieces of tire and having to sleep on an old mattress on his bedroom’s cement floor. Despite all this, his parents still found means to send him to a good school. But due to the pathetic situation they were in, they, unfortunately, did not have the means to get him the most important thing for school: a bag.

Oh, you know where this story is going…

~~~

At that moment it seemed like a blessing for Julio, ignorant of the imminent curse he was putting himself to upon reaching for it.

As he made his way out of the church with his parents, he asked if he could go use the bathroom. Being new to the city they were in and the parish within it, he somehow found his way to the cloisters. And who could blame the poor boy? The cathedral was far larger than the small barrio chapel he was so acquainted with.

“Excuse me…” he asked as he tugged on a cleric’s tunic. “Where is the bathroom?” he asked.

The cleric, holding a small mass bell, turned to him and said “That’ll be left down the hall and make right till you see it…” he instructed.

“Thank you!” Julio said as he ran for it.

The young boy ran so fast that he passed by the bathroom and went to open a different door. He then stopped and marveled at the strangeness of the room. He forgot his natural urge and went on to explore the dusty old storeroom. The room was filled with boxes and shelves all with marks and labels saying: “For Donation”.

“Hmm…” he wondered. “If these are to be donated, especially to those who are poor…” he thought. “there would be no harm in me taking it, then!’ He smiled cheekily.

He looked around as if in a grocery store as he tried to recall the things he needed. A notebook, some pencils, a sharpener…oh, of course! A bag!

He went to the shelves and boxes to finds bag suitable for him. One was too colorful, another was too old, one seemed too expensive-looking for his meager tastes. Finally, upon rummaging through the boxes, he found a lovely black bag.

“That!” he said to himself. “I want that!” he repeated.

Upon inspecting the bag, he found that inside it was spacious and gaudy, not a little cleaning couldn’t fix. On its handle, it had a metal rosary tied to it. Of course, it’s the resting place of the great demon Forneus, but like Julio knew that.

He looks at the strange rosary, unbeknownst to him that he was laying his eyes on the very shackles that hold captive one of Satan’s legionnaires.

“I’ll take it as add-on…” he callously said, palming the rosary.

He then grabbed the bag and as he sneaked out the room, he ran down the cloisters and up to his parents, flaunting his new bag.

“Julio, where did you get that?” his father asked, thinking he might have to pay for one of Julio’s store plunder again.

Julio, quick to make a lie, told his father that the kind priest had given it to him. His father, not much too scold his son in public, went on a limb and thought that Julio was actually telling the truth.

Happy with his new bag, the hopped into his father’s cramped motorcycle and they rode off back to town. Julio was unaware that he, a 13-year-old boy, had become the warden to the prison holding the most viscous commander of the Infernal Armada.

~~~

Somewhere in the lofty rainclouds of Judeo-Christian heaven, just two blocks away from Confucian heaven, the Man in Charge saw this with a rather deadpan reaction. His face, if one could see it without dying, would read as an annoyed “not again…” suggesting this has happened a lot.

Without sufficient knowledge and reasoning to comprehend the processes of heaven, let’s just say some divine entity came down to follow Julio and the beast he was carrying on a backpack. This angels name is Felicity, she has no wings. And that will be central to how the plot goes.

~~~

The town Julio and his family lived in was a small a dirty town named Aglupuyo. And it encapsulated every meaning of the term “dirt poor”. Where else can you see cellophane being used and roofing? Anyways, it was this or nothing for them and thankfully, their house was made of some concrete and galvanized steel. Apart from that, this whole town were to tumble like a sand castle to the waves if a storm was to hit.

In their hovel they entered and just as they did, Julio asked to go out again. His mother, a hardworking fish vendor, was simply too tired to say no let her son be. The child took his bag with him, of course. Not even I could tell you why…

Upon going out, Julio meets a bunch of hooligans. He has met this road far too many times to know what to do. But like an only ever-so experienced traveler, he’ll be shocked to find this road will soon be drenched in blood.

“I want that bag…” the biggest one said. Obviously not too sharp, that was all his vocabulary can muster. “I want it…” he said with a smug expression.

To Julio, his expression was just dumb and retaliated by turning tail and challenging them to catch him, a classic move.

~~~

Julio, who once had the speed and agility of an alley cat, found himself weighed down by the bag. He started losing even more speed upon hearing an eldritch laughter emanating from the bag…

After a trip there and a tumble down here, he found himself cornered by his aggressors. As they approached him and reached for his newly acquired treasure, Julio thought of leaf soup and its smell. He savored in the thought, for it was to be the last thought he would enjoy while sane.

As the thugs came for him with their fist clenched and poised to punch; a black, slender and oozing appendage emerged from the empty bag. Its knobbed end exploded into a hand of sharp, ugly fingers. The thugs backed off and their poise to fight slowly grew to become a poise to run.

The demonic hand wasted no time in grabbing the biggest one by the neck and shoving its pointed middle-finger down his throat until it came through the other end as it took a length of his intestines along with it. The hand grew ever longer and the thugs, petrified in fear, became sitting ducks. One by one, the ruffians became human kebabs. The hand retracted back into the bag taking the skewered corpses along with it. And as they all went it one by one, the bag let out a hellish belch.

Absolutely mortified, Julio sat in a catatonic stupor before attempting to lay hands on the bag. After an hour passed and the moon reigned over the sky, he mustered up enough courage, and sanity, to touch the bag. He inspected the outside; no blood, no guts, no nothing. He opened the bag to find the very same nothing that came with it.

And with that experience, he ran through the alley, treading carefully as not to step on the blood as he carried the bag with him. He ran to the river basin and plunged the bag into watery oblivion.

~~~

As Julio panted his way home, he opened the door and passed by the dinner table, partly because of his psychotic experience and partly because his soup has congealed into an unappetizing jelly.

“Julio…” his mother Francisca beckoned upon noticing him. “Aren’t you going to eat?” she asked.

“Ahh…no” Julio said trying to straighten the horror etched into his face. “I’m not hungry…at all.” He feigned.

To prevent anymore confrontation, he ran up as soon as he finished his sentence. He burst through his door and jumped into his mattress. He thought that a good night’s rest could provide him solace, not so he thought when he heard a familiar eldritch chuckling behind him…