Song prompt. Actually, it was more of a 'pick a song by Disturbed and write something' type challenge. The song is 'Overburdened' if anyone wants to listen. And this is what laneshandall over on Tumblr wanted. I hope you're freaking happy.


The devil has a smile. One he uses on his subjects. It looks benign enough, mostly teeth, the kind of broad smile one expects from a kindergarten teacher or actress receiving an award. But the smile never touches his eyes. His beady little black eyes that pierce the soul and suck out all warmth and will to live.

She stands before him as he strolls the length of the line. He straightens his tie, shuffles his lapels around and peers at her. She feels the shell of herself shiver under that gaze. His grin… it shifts somehow – somehow unnatural – mouth full of darkness and nothing, teeth like razors.

"Bonnibel," he hisses by way of greeting. It would probably be more reassuring without the pointy teeth thing he has going on. His incisors lengthen. She tingles.

"Hunsen," she replies, curt, clipped. "Why am I here?"

"You're dead," he states, simply, shrugging. "I figured a brainiac such as yourself would have realised that by now." He gestures broadly then, in a way he no doubt fancies is grand. "See how you're surrounded by all these good deceased folks? Mean's you're dead too, dear." He swings that painful smile her way again, the emptiness filling him from top to bottom.

She folds her arm, tapping a shoe (neither of which she really has anymore). Somehow, she's lost the power in this scenario and she wants it back. "I can see that much, Hunsen. I mean why am I here? Down here with you."

His brow furrows then and the smile twitches upwards in a way that's painfully familiar. It becomes a smirk, a dangerous one, full of promises that she won't like. It's not the same smirk she's used to, the one that promises mischief and laughter. No, this is deadly.

"You wouldn't care to hazard a guess, would you, dear?" For some reason, the way he says 'dear' makes her tremble. The air feels cold even as it warms her. Her brain isn't working right, she feels, there's too many conflicting variables. Too much. Too much.

And she was an unbeliever after all. It must be ten times worse in this instance. Surely all these other souls weren't so poorly.

"I don't play guessing games," she replies. Her voice attempts strength, but a waver creeps in anyway, shredding all pretensions of control.

He laughs then, and the sound makes her quake. "I am the lord of the undead, dear. I make the choices here. Guess."

"I'm not a murderer," she tells him staunchly. "And I'm not a liar or a thief. I am a doctor. So tell me why I'm here."

"Oh no," he all but giggles. "You're so much more than that. So much more than any of that. And for your contribution, I have a special place laid out for you." His eyes twinkle with mirth, only it isn't quite mirth, it's more like violence. He throws a hand out, a line glows in the air in front of them, it… it rotates (that's the only word she can think to describe it with), becoming a window. A window like a television screen. "You are my greatest patron," he breathes. The air shifts around her then and ice runs down her spine. Or she thinks it does, Bonnibel is no longer certain she has a spine.

The window flickers fitfully, cutting through hash with images of a city. Her city. At lengths, she recognises the building where she and her colleagues had been conducting research. A cure. Her memory feels fuzzy, broken, wrong. But the cure she recalls. It was for… for…

AIDS.

Yes that's right. She was on a team of scientists hoping to cure it. They'd had many promising breakthroughs along the road. The road… She frowns then, trying to remember faster. Hunsen watches her expectantly.

"We found it," she whispers, looking up into the eyes of death. "We found the cure. We administered it to thousands of people. No one has to die anymore."

Hunsen's gaze was steady. "Do you know why you looked into it?"

"For…" Her brain goes fuzzy again and she is momentarily unable to recall. Then it hits her, eyes lighting up with memory. "For Marceline," she replies. "She was sick with it, dying. I… I saved her."

That's when Hunsen's evil grin subsides and that makes Bonnie rather anxious. Fear. Absolute terror claws at her innards as his expression changes.

The screen changes as he flicks his fingers. It zooms in on the streets. They were so picturesque from on high, but up close… Her terror is rivalled now only by horror.

Bonnibel doesn't think she has knees anymore, but she feels herself sink slowly, losing height as she watches the window. It is utter madness. The streets are crawling with… with… beings. She hesitates to call them people. They're not. They are monsters.

Like in a particularly ghastly film, the 'camera' pans with a boy, no more than eight as he runs down the sidewalk. One of the creatures steps out from behind a vehicle (or what's left of it, the burnt husk is pitiful) and grabs the boy in hands like talons. The creature's head… is reptilian almost and tilted at the incorrect angle, scraps of brown hair cling to the scaly scalp. The whole body is contorted grotesquely, joints bent backwards flop, grope, reach.

The claws of its other forelimb close around the boy's head. It opens a maw full of green ichor and needle teeth, it snaps once, taking the now screaming boy's arm at the elbow. The boy's head pops. Brain matter sprays the distorted monstrosity. It lumbers off.

The camera pans around again. Similar scenes are played out all along the street. A fire breaks out in one shop. Tins spill from the doorway as a man stumbles out. He is pursued by a horde of staggering things, each one different, each one terrible and fearsome. None of them catch him. None of the ones following him catch him.

A different creature with a head mashed to a pulp and skull antlers gores him with a spine on its arm that can only be a protruding radius. Cans fall from the man's arms as he slumps forward. Blood pools in the corners of his mouth and as the beast slides its arm spike out, intestines slip free, puddling on the asphalt.

The whole view shifts this time, camera whirling through cityscapes and parks. It stops in a cemetery. At first, Bonnibel is confused. Then she sees it.

And she breaks down.

Her lack of physical orifices this time is no hindrance to her screams. Wails of such pure agony that they alone could be utilised in the punishment of other sinful spectres. The phantasms around her shuffle, back away, give her room as her ectoplasmic form hunches in on itself, trying to stop existing. Only that can't happen here.

Creeping through the cemetery are humans. Real ones. Proper ones, untainted by whatever plague haunts the monsters. They are armed. In their wake, they leave corpses. The broken bodies of the creatures that attack them.

It is one shattered carcass that the camera fixes on. One that can't be mistaken. Not for Bonnnibel. Not with the hair – so dark and long and perfect – that haloes a once beautiful face. If not for the pronounced demonic traits displayed, if not for the way her arms were crooked, the gashes in her chest and stomach, she could've been sleeping.

Ghosts can't cry. They have no fluid left, they are condensed air, or so she'd been told. Bonnibel hadn't believed her when she'd said her dad was the devil and all those nightmares and fairy stories were true. It was codswallop. Only it wasn't. And ghosts can't cry.

But Bonnie tried.

Her ectoplasm shuddered as the tears that didn't exist tried to run loose.

Marceline was dead.

"Worse than dead," Hunsen tells her flatly as if not speaking about his own flesh and blood. "Come."

Bonnibel finds herself unable to resist his command and follows, leaving the line, drifting along in his wake. The image of Marceline's pale, lifeless visage trails her. She wishes it would stop. She wishes the ethereal ache in her chest would go away. She wishes she could stop feeling.

Hunsen leads her – or drags her, she's not sure which – to a wall. A great arching wall of grey in a land of infinite blankness. The wall has a soft glow to it and is as transparent as clean glass. As they near it, Bonnie begins to make out the silhouettes of what she perceives to be souls.

They mill beyond the wall. Aimless. Empty.

Hunsen stops her before it, the screen still with them. He points. Her eyes follow, unbidden. The souls are nothing. They have little glowing spots that mark their eyes, they have rough features, vague semblances of the faces they wore in life, but they hold no sentience. Not like the souls she'd been with moments prior. Those spirits had life, awareness… These though… These were proper husks. An egg shell with no white or yoke. Drained. Empty.

"These are the remnants of the people who became those monsters," Hunsen informs her. "They are corralled here because they upset the souls of what used to be the living. They have nothing left in them. The disease purges all humanity from them upon infection and so, in death, they have no true soul."

Bonnie blinked, uncomprehending.

With a sharp gesture from Hunsen, her gaze drifts back to the souls in line. "They are the dead you sent here. You with your life saving cure." Bitterness seeps into his words at that. "You think to save them, but now they're down here. And these," he jerks a thumb at the wall. "These are less than that."

A bubble forms in the wall then, pulling with it a husk. Bonnie squints, but can't make it out. She wants to ask, but Hunsen doesn't let her.

"Marceline gave up her immortality for you," he says and she can hear sorrow. "She knew the disease from her mother would kill her. But she assured me you could fix it. And so she was mortal. And now… And now I don't even have her soul to grieve over." Hunsen's voice shakes, cracks. Bonnie feels sad for him. "You took her. And this is your punishment. For your contribution to my population, I can't properly torture you. Not really, you're a good donor. But for stealing my daughter away from me eternally… For that, you will suffer."

The bubble arrives at the wall as he stops talking and Bonnie falls apart again. It is Marceline's husk contained within. She stares at Bonnie blankly, unseeing, unfeeling, unrecognising.

Behind her, the screen plays images. Still shots and short sequences of footage. All is of Marceline in life. All is of her with Bonnie. Her soul, small and so fractured already, splits down the middle. This is the worst punishment she could imagine.

A cage appears around her, trapping her in an island of darkness with the flimsy remnants of the woman she loved – loves – most in all of existence and the best of their memories. She reaches out to touch the husk. It doesn't acknowledge her.

From the screen, Marceline laughs.

"Enjoy eternity."

Bonnie ruptures.


Anime Girl CC: Wow that's a lot. You will have to bear with me on those, although 'Clarity' is one I've been wanting to write for a while. The lyrics are just... so perfect.