Author's note: An alternate end where John fails his test and is doomed to wander the carnival forever, with a special tormenter.
"Ooh, Johnny boy!" Wick cooed, descending on her prey. John warily watched her, not trusting the affection in her voice. Soft women in Hell had stingers and fangs. He'd failed and was stuck in this terrible place for god only knows how long.
If there was a god at all, John's prayers would have been answered now. Wick took his cheeks and kissed his mouth, smiling at how he flinched. When he tried to pull away, she bit and tore the skin of his lips. Crying out, he pushed her off and stumbled to his feet.
"Don't you want to see your wittle baby?" she said, and ran off.
Like clockwork, he followed. A zombie, a shell, a machine running an old program: follow the arrows leading him nowhere, call out for a boy who wasn't there but in glimpses. Sometimes he caught a trace, thought it a mirage. Daniel would not have survived a day here.
He hadn't survived long in the world. John stopped in his tracks, reeling and shuddering. What he wouldn't do to undo it all. The words, the abhorrent phrase, was still on his tongue, ashes in his mouth. Never have been born. He hadn't meant it—he had, but it should have been a secret guilty thing, cradled to his soul.
Wick caught him out of the darkness and followed him onto the ground where she sent him sailing. Her gloved hands seized his shirt and tried to peel it up. When he protested, she licked the tears from his cheek and said she liked Daniel. "He's fun." And, punctuating each word with an undone button, "Just like you."
Enraged and heartbroken and just broken, John twisted her arm and flipped her on her back, tearing at her ridiculous clothes. She promised and alluded, swore she'd make manifest the lost and crying child. Wick hissed that he was all alone and wailing for his daddy. John didn't know if he did it out of some desperate hope that this time she told the truth or out of pure, blind rage and confusion, but he did it all the same. She disgusted and frightened him. God help him, because he could not help himself. Never could, not when it came to her.
"What was it you said?" she chimed when he pulled out of her. "What did you wish?"
He called her a bitch and asked for Daniel. She blew a raspberry and slapped him.