Ashem
All I have is dead, so I’ll take you with me."
"He who waits behind the wall."
"We are the ones before the wall."
Joey Shuldiner was just a kid in Iowa. He never had friends. After his mother’s suicide, everything around him fell apart. In school, the other kids bullied him and beat him. Because of all his trauma, he developed a negative and defiant attitude. He defended himself from the bullies, but he was always lonely. His only entertainment was playing guitar. During school breaks, while the others talked and laughed, he sat alone playing his guitar.
One day his bullies came for him again. This time something snapped. He didn’t just defend himself — he lost control. He slaughtered one of them with his guitar. The other bullies slammed his face with the guitar and ran away.
"...That same night, while his father was at work, Joey left home and walked through the city. A group of hooded figures with strange symbols and blood caught him in an alley. They took him to an abandoned basement in the middle of the city. In the center was a symbol drawn with what looked like blood and intestines. They tied him to the floor. The leader began to recite a ritual, while the other two cut his face and chest with a dagger. Joey felt something enter his head, laughter that wasn't his own, a hunger that wasn't for food, as if a demon were entering him, each tissue being replaced by another, each cell mutating. His eyes began to burn. The skin of his face turned pale, his eyes bled, and his wounds spurted blood; his pupils became bright red, and his sclera turned black. When the ritual ended, he was no longer the shy and reserved Joey; now he was ashen-faced." Zalgoide, someone whose appetite was not only for animals, his limbs turned black and pointed, his teeth sharpened, and he began to eat the people who performed the ritual for him.