Twenty years, twenty damn years of war followed by ten years of peace; and they were about to ruin it. I bought this house fresh out of college. Was it entirely too good of a deal? Absolutely! Did I question it as a broke college kid just getting started? …Not at all. I should have known better, should have asked more questions; but, I was young, naive, and desperate to start out on my own.

It was the perfect home: close to my new job, small enough to take care of on my own but large enough to allow me to start a family; and, most importantly, it was DIRT CHEAP. I paid almost exactly half of what a comparable house would normally cost. I wasn’t thrilled about being in an HOA; but, the board at the time was chill as long as you didn’t let things go off the rails.

Things started off well. For the first couple of months, everything seemed normal. Little did I know that Abaddon was just biding her time and gathering intel. The war started soon after. It began with little things: feeling like I was being watched at random moments, keys going missing just as I was about to leave for work, etc. I don’t think she realized I had ADD yet and that those things were “normal” for me.

Hell, it took me six months to realize that something was “off” about the house. By that point, she had tried all the typical “ghostly stuff” like rattling pans, flickering lights, etc. I either wrote it off as something to look into later or couldn’t be bothered to notice. It wasn’t until she started manifesting just outside my line of sight and vanishing when I looked over that I began to wonder what was going on.

I started doing some research into the paranormal but I didn’t take it too seriously until the one year anniversary of buying the house. I was walking through the house, nose buried in a book, and literally walked through her. I think the part that really enraged her that I didn’t even notice until after it happened. The war started in earnest after that.

I tried all the typical things. I called a priest and woke up the next day with scratch marks all down arms. I tried a shaman and nearly caught a flying butcher knife to the dome. I called a psychic and he ran screaming from the house. At this point, a normal person would have followed the psychic and put the house up for sale. Not me though. I’ll be damned if some spooky bitch was going to chase me away from the steal of a lifetime.

And so began a twenty year long psychological war of attrition. She scratched me up, I bought a cat. She stained the drywall with blood, I went gothic with lots of blacks and reds. She tried to set the house on fire, I installed a sprinkler system. Round and round we went for two god damn decades. Twenty years of her trying to scare me away. Twenty years of me pretending that everything was fine and there was a logical reason for whatever happened.

Apparently, even the Queen of Hell herself has a breaking point and two decades of psy-ops was it. Honestly, if she hadn’t caved, I would have. My personal life was a shamble. This crusade had been my entire life. I hadn’t dated, never had the chance to start a family. Hell, I hadn’t even gotten laid since I graduated. The financial toll of my personal campaign had left me deep in debt and nearly at the end of my means.

As our twentieth anniversary drew near, I braced myself for something… spectacular. Every year on our anniversary, she liked to do something extra special, especially when in marked another decade. Year three had been the bloodstains. Year ten lead to me installing the sprinkler system. By this point, my boss just automatically gave me the day off for “damage control.”

I was not prepared for what I found when I woke up that fateful morning. I was awoken to the sounds of pots rattling in the kitchen and my mixer running full tilt. I remember thinking “kinda mild for her but I’ll take it.” It wasn’t until I walked into the kitchen that I noticed the smell of bacon… I found myself staring the Queen of Hell, in corporeal form, in the face… and she was cooking breakfast.

“Sit mortal. We have much to discuss.” There are not words to describe the amount of disdain in her voice. I could tell that this was physically painful for her; but, when Abaddon tells you to sit, you sit. We spent the next several hours hashing out an armistice agreement. By the end, we agreed I would continue to live in the house and she would leave me alone for the most part. In return, I would acknowledge her existence and at least pretend to be irritated when she made the lights flicker or rattled pots in the kitchen.

Calling our truce uneasy would be the understatement of the century. It started out as more of a “honored adversary” type of situation. However, over the course of the next ten years, we moved from that to a begrudging respect and then to genuine friendship. Being friends with the literal Queen of Hell is definitely a unique situation. It was certainly entertaining to have her fuck with my buddies when they came over.

Today, I march back into battle. Last month, was our annual HOA board elections. The old guard has finally all retired and a new regime came to power headed by “Susan.” If I didn’t know better, I’d say Susan was after Abaddon’s throne. The fines started rolling out the next day. One of my neighbors got $100 fine for their trash cans being on the curb past noon. The other neighbor was fined $200 for their grass being 1/8” too long. I watched Susan literally break out a ruler on that one.

This morning, I woke up to find a notice taped to my door. The HOA (aka Susan) thinks that my gothic motif is “detrimental to property values” and expect me to pay a $500 fine and repaint my house. I closed the door, turned around, and nearly pissed myself.

Abaddon had been standing right behind me. “God Damnit, how many times do I have to tell you to quit doing that?!” She just laughed and reminded me that “per our agreement” she was allowed to do exactly that three times a month.

I rolled my eyes, huffed, and handed her the notice. Her ears were quite literally smoking by the time she finished reading it. I quirked an eyebrow at her “Well are you ready to go back to war?” The Queen of Hell smiled, “Let’s fuck their shit up!”

Edit: typos and clarity.

Edit 2: more typos/autocorrect