• Foggy mist covers the loch, the waves gently lap at the concealed shore, the smell of rotting wood drifts from the wreck where old Mr. O'Leary was last alive, he is now fifteen days gone. No one found his boat. Now as I row myself out I reflect on the last words he said to me "Son you must remember the legends that I have told you in these three months past." "I will Mr. O'Leary, and tell them to any souls as unfortunate as me to know the secret of the loch." "Yes, yes of corse but remember to watch because if they know the secret you must tell them right away before they do anything hasty." And then without so much as a goodbye I pushed him away from the dock so that he may carry out his obligation to the cruelly calm waters. Just as a another wave of guilt passed over me I was snapped back to the present moment as I saw approching me, another rowboat, rare, for I was miles out, and this was a partiularly difficult day for boating, not to mention this was at least 650 ft deep water. But more strange than the boat itself was the entity inside it, a ghastly looking man in an outlandish outfit with a long, greasy, knotted brown ponytail, was coming to the port side of me, and didn't apear to realize neither me nor my boat would be able to move out of his way. Just as his vessel was about to collide with mine, he dissapeared. I immediately remmembered the legends and which one he fit perfectly. There was the Legend of the Monster, Nessie as the tourists call her, the Legend of the Robbers Hideout, and worst of all there was the Legend of the Devil's Henchmen. Old Mr. O'Leary had warned me of him, he was said to have lived three hundred odd years ago, he was just a young cutpurse, but he was skilled and silent and very patient. He waited for just the right time to take the money of his victims, when they were too drunk to remember a face and couldn't walk straight. But one day he got tired of being a cutpurse and grew very greedy, that very night he struck a deal with the Devil that he would collect one hundred souls in exchange for immortality and all the riches he could ever want. So the Devil made him immortal (the souls do take a long time to collect and he wanted them all, so as to expand his power) for the Devil grows stronger with every soul he has. The Man, now the Henchman to the Devil, was very eager to collect the hundred souls and his riches. The next night he went out and collected three souls, but he found that the more souls he had, the more powerful he was as well. He decided to keep the souls and go back on his word with the Devil. Well the Devil heard and was very upset so he enslaved the man so he had no choice anymore as to what to do. The man served the devil for a while but grew very disheartened as he may never again see a gold coin. That night he escaped and now roams the loch looking for weak souls to bring his master for the offer still stands. I now knew what had happened to old Mr. O'Leary. That morning I went to investigate the Loch Ness, but there was nothing until the entity appeared just as last time, but this time he didn't disappear. He approached, and then blackness enveloped everything I could see. A pungent odor drifted to my nostrils, stagnent water, and rotting flesh, I was pierced with tortured cries and hoarse whispers "Get out, turn away, he's here, don't let us stay!" The screams got more piercing, and then a mist and another boat appeared. The occupant of the approaching boat was handsome enough to pass as an angel easily. His voice was mollassis, sweet and slow but as deep as the loch we were just on. He spoke "You belong to me now" he said and had no accent but sounded somehow foreign. He had arrived on a grimy raft made of a material that was unidentifiable. The oarsman was a grisled corpse that was reanimated and smelled of rot, which was now filling the air completely. I retched. The entities pretended not to notice. I sat in the position I was frozen in and numbly stared ahead. My heart was no longer beating. "One more month" I choked out "Very well one month" the Devil replied and so, though I was already dead, I had one month to live. I would gather an army and fight. I must, not for me but for old Mr. O'Leary. The Devil's former henchman and current slave rowed me back to the boat that I had just disappeared from and the blackness disappeared grudgingly as if it wished I could stay longer. And so I immediately gathered up all the ten others who knew the secret and the legends. They all heard the story and agreed to fight. We knew that the only way to kill an immortal was to run it through with a bronze broadsword. We had thirty made and started training forthwith as we only had three weeks from when the swords arrived, to train after all. The day before the month was up we trained for a solid day and night. We then prepared the boats and cast off to where I was last alive. The water was gasoline, for all the flames in our eyes likely set it ablaze. We were indifferent however, concentrating only on imminent battle. Just as before the black mist hung in the air, waiting, to claim ten more souls for it's master. We sailed to hell, to battle with the Devil. The Devil himself was there and though none of us were scared we were nervous. He knew what we were here for and had come prepared with ninty of his own contingent. That day though we were outnumbered nine to one we fought our way out, I believe God himself helped us. the Devil may have had the upper hand in numbers, but we had God on our side. So we had the skill to outfight the nine to one odds, and take back the Loch Ness. just as the devil himself was about to pay for the impurities he had inflicted on the human race, the monster Nessie showed herself and with the distraction to his advantage the devil saw his time for his retreat, and the rest of his now seventeen strong army went back into the depths of hell and weren't seen since, around here anyways.