Friday turned to Saturday, and Leslie spent a restless night dreaming about her family. Usually her bad dreams revolved around Alastor, or the car crash that killed her; this one constituted a drastic change in the genre, as her sister and their parents wanted to know why, oh why Leslie had abandoned them.
She figured it was caused by Alastor digging through her past: the photographs, dancing videos and so on. Living in Hell, it was easy to forget what regular human beings looked like. Memories stirred up memories, which led to weird dreams like this. Sitting up in bed, she tried to recreate the sounds of her family's voices in her head, and it was alarmingly difficult. Forgetting them so soon.
The movie showing was at 1pm, so Leslie killed time at the Front Desk, shotgunning several gin bucks in a row. Anything to quell the nervous nausea - unless it wasn't nerves at all, and the ingested magnet was just fucking up her gizzards instead. Was that a thing? What effect did magnets have on the human body? They were drawn to metal, and blood happened to have iron in it... Confused and feeling stupid, she turned to the internet to assuage her worries.
From the bar, she watched the open doors of the reception hall. When Vaggie and Charlie walked through, dragging a five-pound bag of premade popcorn, she followed them in. The set-up was surprisingly modest, reminding Leslie of school. Rows of hard-back chairs, at 90 degrees to the stage, faced a chalkboard easel with a white bed sheet draped over it, and a movie projector somewhere in the middle. Vaggie tore open the popcorn, piquing the interest of fifteen-or-so demons already present. They ambled towards it, like dairy cows to a bucket of feed.
"Hey, no sticky mitts, please!" Charlie scolded. "Paper trays are over here!"
Leslie chose an aisle seat in the back row, keeping one for Angel Dust; she figured his height would be a problem to the other guests. It didn't matter where he sat for teaching sessions, but here, she could imagine the chorus of Down-In-Fronts from disgruntled demons.
The guests continued to trickle in as 1pm came and went, including Ginerva, who looked excited to be off work for a few hours. Mr. Rapier didn't much like losing two waitresses on a Saturday afternoon, but he hadn't fired them at least. Leslie's blood began to chill as Alastor teleported into the room with his desk chair and made himself comfortable, also at the back row, as it happened. Their eyes met.
"Hi," she said.
As pre-arranged, he winked at Leslie, who checked her pocket, and there was the other magnet. He kept it til now to make sure she didn't 'accidentally' lose it, and silently commanded her to gulp it down. Though the public setting precluded Alastor himself from feeding it to her, he could watch as she placed it on her tongue like a pill and swallowed. There was no sleight-of-hand or concealment under the tongue, and he was happy. All that remained was to wait for the fireworks.
Angel Dust took his seat beside her as Charlie thanked everyone for coming. "I see we still have some empty seats," she said, "but the others should be arriving when the movie's over. Please take some time during your viewing to think and reflect on what our characters are going through, and we'll share our thoughts at the end! OK, thank you!"
The lights dimmed, the projector whirred electronically, and finally they settled in for The Shawshank Redemption. It began in late-1940s Portland, Maine, with its protagonist, Andy Dufresne, listening to a car radio. Leslie felt her face warm as she recognized a song by The Ink Spots. Only a week ago, Alastor played the same tune in his office.
"Fuck," she whispered, giving Angel a nudge. "This must really hit different if you were alive for this."
"'47's the year I croaked," he whispered back. "Just missed it."
Leslie sat tall in her seat, taking in the story. There was a new feeling, one she hadn't known years ago on her first viewing. As Andy was bussed down to Shawshank prison to serve two life sentences, the fear and uncertainty on his face was clear. She knew that feeling from her first days in Hell: a feeling of fear, not belonging, and having to be quiet about it for safety's sake.
If the hotel managers expected silent, orderly viewing, they were initially disappointed, as the guests tended to heckle. The death of a nameless character was met with a loud "Shoulda shut the fuck up, Fatass!", and numerous Morgan Freeman impersonations made the rounds, as Vaggie told each demon in turn to shut up.
Then came the storyline about Bogs and the other Sisters. Angel Dust tensed up when the first implication was made, and during a later confrontation in the movie, he stood and excused himself. "Goin' for a smoke," he told Leslie. "Tell me what happens."
While her friend took a comfort break, Leslie periodically glanced at Alastor. Sometimes he was busy shaking powdered spices into his popcorn, which he picked at like a bird; other times he returned the gaze, checking her visage for pain. Nothing yet, and the healthy buzz from her gin was almost worn off. She ate more popcorn herself: if one magnet was cushioned in partially-digested food, with luck, it would never get to know the other one.
Angel returned in time for the scene on the rooftop, where Andy performed a benevolent act of helping an especially nasty prison guard with taxes, in exchange for beers for his 'co-workers'. There were a few snide demonic remarks, but not many, and Leslie felt a stirring in herself, wishing she could understand that certain male camaraderie that the movie portrayed.
The film seemed to have something to say about the prisoners' usefulness to their guards. Once Andy assisted with taxes, the guards punished his abuser (Angel nodded stiffly as Bogs was beaten to a bloody pulp), then removed Andy from the laundry room and placed him in the library: something 'more befitting a man of your education', as the Warden put it. The cynic in Leslie half-remembered, half-sensed where this was going.
For perhaps the most powerful scene, Andy blasting the song from The Marriage of Figaro, the room was quiet. The room forgot the filter between realities; they forgot this was a work of fiction they could heckle. Even the hardest man in the room could find something to identify with, Leslie thought… but she didn't look at Alastor, in case he proved her wrong.
They sat through the proceeding beats of the movie: Tommy's unsettling story, the Warden showing his true colors and Andy using his brains to find true freedom at last. There was a sense of solidarity in the room - Fuck Norton! Fuck the prison! - and a collective lifting of the spirit as the thing came to its end. Leslie and Angel Dust exchanged a grin. This was the hope she felt from staying at the hotel: the hope that their souls could be washed clean and delivered to their own Zihuatanejo.
The movie ended and Leslie heard a chorus of cheers and 'wahey's from the front - not for the conclusion of a fine piece of cinema, but because Vaggie pulled a wheelbarrow of cold beers into view. It seemed fitting, Charlie explained, to replicate the rooftop-tarring scene and let the demons "feel like free men" as thanks for watching the film; at least, that was the idea. Not everyone jumped forward to accept their bottle of suds, but the ones who did seemed grateful.
They waited for the remaining guests to enter for the second-half seminar, and Leslie remembered her magnets. Still nothing, and she shrugged in Alastor's direction.
"OK, so, a lot to unpack," Vaggie said, taking charge as soon as everyone settled down. "First of all, if I may lead the discussion for a sec… Hell's not a perfect analogy for prison."
"Fuckin' A, it's not!" someone called out.
"No. There's no guards, no steel bars… You keep your identity down here if you're lucky. But there are similarities. Most of the dealings of Shawshank run on a currency of cigarettes, did you notice? Everyone has a price and everyone's bought off at their respective levels. Same here; very rarely do you see a charitable act. Also," she continued, "remember Andy's remark of being 'straight as an arrow' outside, and only becoming a crook once he went to jail?"
Leslie clasped her hands in agreement, a little louder than she meant to; her friend gave her a look.
"Well, you know Hell is no picnic. Existing in this place forces many of you to turn to rotten dealings. That at least can be understood, if not condoned." Leslie recognized this as an almost-direct quote from the opening scenes; Vaggie must have loved Shawshank very much to reference it exactly. "So, don't take the film as a literal metaphor for Hell. I mean, how many people here have been to prison?" Vaggie asked. Many hands were raised. "Was this movie accurate to your experiences?"
"Uh, pretty much," said Kain - never too shy to give his opinion. "Dufresne's stretches in solitary brought back a few bad memories."
"Oh yeah, fuck that!"
"And becoming institutionalized," Charlie queried, "any experiences with that?"
"Sure," said Charcoal. "Maybe that's why I don't hate the crap outta the hotel, 'cos I got used to routine."
They talked over the lessons of the movie. Andy writing all those letters, proving that perseverance (or simply being as annoying as possible) would pay off in the end. The record-player scene, insinuating that not all rule-bending was bad. Happiness was fleeting. A tit-for-tat partnership would eventually fail when one party defected: "Remember when they threatened to take Andy's privileges away?" Vaggie reminded them.
"Dickheads."
"Exactly. And the Warden's hypocrisy is pretty damn clear. Keeping the safe-deposit box behind a cross-stitch, saying 'His judgment cometh and that right soon'? He's literally hiding his corrupt deeds behind a god-fearing facade."
They further discussed the fact that Brooks, a favorite character of Leslie's, had grown so used to prison that he could not handle the outside world. Perhaps certain demons felt this way too? A long stretch in Hell might make them fear Heaven, Charlie said, or they might think they could never make it there. If that was the case, hope was what they needed. Like Andy, they needed to believe there were places in the world not made of (brim)stone, and take freedom into their own hands.
Not everyone was convinced.
"Hey, we're all missing the big thing here," said Kain (Leslie couldn't see him, but he sounded contemptuous), "which is… well, we know who our warden is, right? Big Guy from Upstairs. He's running our prison, when you think about it. He excludes us from that garden of His-"
Charlie butted in. "Again, the prison metaphor doesn't-"
"-and our warden's crooked too! Redemption's OK, but why are we doing it His way? Following the rules of some imperfect system, when we should be changing the system."
"Nah, the warden is these cunts," claimed Crymini from a middle row seat. "They frame their fucking operation as, like, rehab, then don't tell us how long we'll be paying for it."
"That's not-!" Charlie began to say, then looked uncomfortable. "Alastor, help."
"They've got a point, darling. How long has it been for some of your guests?"
While Charlie and Vaggie convened for a terse moment, Leslie saw the radio demon looking over at her. Still nothing had become of her in three hours, aside from feeling queasy. Was Alastor getting impatient? She saw him surreptitiously point the claw of his middle finger at her, and then curl it in. Her insides stirred.
SNAP!
Leslie made an inhuman noise as she fell forward, gripping her abdomen. Startled, a few demons craned around to look. They snorted with laughter, but Angel Dust leaned over.
"Auuuugh!"
"Jesus fuck! What's the matta?"
She couldn't answer. All she had was horror and regret. No! she thought. I take it back!
Vaggie and Charlie were coming this way. Time to go. Without looking once at Alastor, for fear of implicating him and voiding their deal, Leslie got up and fled, still lowing in pain. The walls of her internal organs had met unceremoniously, and there was nothing she could do. She couldn't even see it.
Angel made a hesitant, lukewarm effort to follow as she climbed the stairs. "Les, you gonna be a'right?"
"Crampssss," she said, and got out of his sight, crawling the rest of the way.
She made it to her room and lay on the mattress, offering her pain to God and keening to herself, until a certain someone appeared, and she felt his radiant smile tanning the back of her neck. Leslie did not resist as he picked her up and carried her in one arm, his popcorn in the other... back to Alastor's lair for further spectation.