Thunder Country
an excerpt

She [the Whale] burst from the field, beaching Herself on the away stands and bellowing a high-pitched cry of anger as She arched her tail and slashed with it at everyone and anyone, including small children and senior citizens, who were near enough. Spectators tried to run, but She slapped all of them (within a several yard radius) with Her tail, rendering them unconscious. Then She ate them.

Her voice was soon joined by the vengeful screams of the home crowd, and somehow, as if in a video game, those screams powered Her up, nearly doubling Her size. The Orca's shiny, black, bloated body slid down the stands in a way that looked as if it would seriously injure any normal cetacean, and She submerged Herself again, for a moment, underground. Everyone looked around expectantly, waiting for something great and terrible to happen.

The Killer Whale flew out of the ground exactly under the obliviously celebrating Tallmadge football team, enclosing five or six of them in her oversized jaws. But before she could return to the earth, finally appeased, the Blue Devil of Tallmadge had to fuck everything up.

A vaguely human-shaped figure made of blue flame rose from beneath the Whale, holding Her up in the air with two mammoth hands. The flames licked Her sides like evil tongues, and it wasn't Latin that the away crowd was chanting now, but Arabic. The Devil's voice, though only a whisper, somehow broke through to Karen's ears above their chanting.

Come, children, and sacrifice your icon to me.

The student section, who earlier had been conducting their exorcism in Hebrew and Greek, now realized the mistake that had proved fatal (though not literally, or at least not yet) for their team: the mascot of Tallmadge was not the devil of Christianity and Judaism; it was Ilbis; Waswas; he who had been created by Allah from the smokeless fires. He had been listed under the Wikipedia article for devil, a loophole that had undoubtedly led to Tallmadge being allowed to use the lukewarm term to fool the home crowd. Karen thought it was a dirty trick.

The kids in the student section surrounded the only two Muslim students present, one of whom had come from Lebanon and the other from Egypt. As the only speakers of Arabic in the home crowd, they shouted, separately, their own destructive diatribes against the Beast. Unfortunately, since there were so few of them and they were not well-united, Ilbis did not appear at all harmed.

Come to me, he whispered again.

Karen took an involuntary step forward before she stopped herself, sticking her fingers in her ears and humming loudly. Others around her did the same, while the weaker of spirit walked jerkily toward the jinn, joining together in a circle surrounding him. Flaming spears appeared in their hands, and one kid even had a pimped out grappling hook.

Come to me!

Karen now realized that the devil's whispers were inside her head, not outside it. Plugging her ears was useless. "No!" she shouted, though she could feel her willpower waning under the crushing influence of Waswas. She could see Josh at the bottom of his flaming feet, standing completely controlled by his away-crowd-fueled power.

COME TO ME!

The Muslim kids had given up on trying to be coherent, and were now only shouting "Jahannam! Jahannam! Jahannam!" over and over again. No one knew what that meant, but the home crowd joined in slowly, starting with the student section and followed by the regular spectators, the cheerleaders, the band, the football players, and even the people working in the concessions.

COME TO ME!

Ilbis was strong, but peer pressure was stronger. Even those waiting to harpoon the Whale were now crying "Jahannam! Jahannam! Jahannam!" through mechanically-moving mouths. Karen caved to the urge to join in, though she valued her individuality more than anything, and shouted along with them.

Slowly and almost unnoticeably, the Whale had grown twice the size that She had already been at the end of the crowd's first power-up, swelling up like the stung hand of a person allergic to bees. She was now as long as five yard lines and twice as wide as the score board, and not even an EpiPen would have be able to puncture Her power and wrath.

The mighty Orca uttered an ear-rending squeal. One of Ilbis's feet abruptly sank into the ground. Then the other began to sink. The home crowd, cheered on by their slow and steady success, shouted louder.

Waswas had been sucked nearly halfway back into the ground when he simply flickered out. The Whale splashed into the field with a great, triumphant crash.

Though they hadn't made it into the playoffs, the pride of Thunder Country was uninjured, for the Orca had been rightly avenged.