For most of Vaggie's life, the bathroom was her haven, a place of safety and solitude. No-one could hurt her in the bathroom. That door lock meant everything at a time when she couldn't yet defend herself.
She died screaming, and when she woke, it was in Hell, having to do it all again, only different. After all, she could heal from her injuries. But for a few exceptions, a sinner damned to Hell could not die, which was the most common excuse for demons to do vile, reprehensible things to each other. Newly-damned Vaggie didn't think she could handle it. An eternity of mere survival? It was the worst thing she could think of.
Then she met the Princess: somehow the most sweet and innocent thing in any world, up or down. Princess Charlotte Magne, insuperably more divine than her fallen-angel father. At first, Vaggie kept her distance, unsure how to navigate their acquaintance, let alone romantic interest. She thought the age difference would present problems… but somehow, it didn't. Charlie looked to be twenty-five, and acted even younger. Time seemed not to touch her, so it wasn't so strange that the two connected.
Months later - careful, tenuous months - they admitted their feelings at the top of a broken Ferris wheel in LuLu World: stuck for half an hour on a freezing metal seat, forty feet in the air, but otherwise perfectly content. As Vaggie recalled, they were both blushing from the recent confession.
"This is so nice," Charlie said, wrapping the end of her scarf around Vaggie's shoulders. "I feel safe with you."
Suddenly, Vaggie felt her circumstances weren't so bad. She had a purpose, someone to protect, to stay alive for.
Locking herself in the top floor restroom, Vaggie jammed her hard-earned spear against the door for good measure. It was almost worth losing the eye to have such a weapon - but god-fucking-damn it, why couldn't she use it on the Radio Demon? It was so hideously unfair. If she made any attempt on his life, he would simply use his power to disarm her, and then punish her for trying.
Always, it was these men…
Vaggie knelt on the bathmat and covered her face with one hand. She prayed. She prayed for Charlie's safety, for the prosperity of the hotel, and to be delivered from evil… one evil in particular.
o - o - o - o - o
Alastor was away for a while. He'd never mention or explain what he did during his absence, and Leslie knew better than to ask. She shouldn't have cared, but a little notice would have been nice. Neither sound nor sight of him since their meeting in her bedroom, and she wasn't meant to feel like it was something she did?
Bastard.
One day, a fortnight before she would have turned 27, Leslie thought of something to tell him. She went to write it down before she forgot, and found her phone was at 3% battery.
Fine, she thought, plugging it in. Let's do it old school.
Taking a page of her notebook, Leslie lay on her front in bed, to pen a letter. She didn't use their names, since Al insisted there be no physical evidence tying them together. (God, the amount of secret agency she did these days!) No matter: she knew what pseudonyms to use.
How's it going, Hades.
Now, obviously, you like vintage/bygone tech, and I prefer digital media. Never the two shall meet, right? Wrong! I just remembered something that kind of blends them together. You didn't see the moon landing in your lifetime, but I know you knew there were other planets. Maybe aliens too? I bet people have wondered if there's life Out There since they were able to look up.
Anyway, years ago, NASA (our space program) sent a time capsule into space. It includes a couple of phonographic records which were gold-plated, probably to make them last as long as possible.
They represent everything humans are about: sounds, languages, and images, all there for some hypothetical alien race to find. And there's music too, all sorts - classical, blues, jazz, tribal drums, mariachi, whatever.
Most people are like, 'Hey, what are the odds that extraterrestrials will find this record and be able to use it?' I used to think that way too, but… I don't know. Never believed in demons and angels either. Who the fuck knows, ha ha.
Leslie paused, doodling in the margins of the page opposite. Now, how to end it? Something casual.
Anyway, thought you'd be interested. Wrote it down so I don't miss any details, and you can burn it if you want. So yeah. Sometimes the old way of doing things isn't so bad.
Lots-
Fuck. That was wrong. Force of habit. Now she'd have to rewrite the whole letter for the sake of changing her sign-off. Unless… Leslie compromised, turning the 'o' to a wonky-looking 'e'.
Let's meet again soon; I'll show you what was on the records. (Yaaay Internet!)
Warm regards,
Persephone
That would have to do. She hoped the new signoff struck the right balance. It occurred to her that she might be overthinking things, which was more annoying than anything. Did Alastor antagonize about his words or actions? She doubted it.
Leslie took hold of the letter and stood up, then frowned. Well, there was one thing she hadn't overthought: how to deliver this before he got back? In his absence, the door to Alastor's office led to a broom closet. What, was he supposed to check the closet for incoming mail?
With an annoyed growl, she flung the leaf of paper into the air, and it fluttered into the open drawer of her chest of drawers. Fuck it. She'd just tell him in person.
o - o - o - o - o
Leslie retreated to the studio to get some work done. Focusing on her phone, she was startled by a tap on her shoulder. It was Ginerva.
"Hi, my lovely hetero friend," Ginerva said. "You busy?"
"Er…I was going to run through tomorrow's lesson."
"Boring! Come hang out with me and Kain. We're going to get drunk by the lava pit."
Drinking next to a pit of magma; that sounded safe. "You and Kain, huh?" Leslie said. "Congratulations. Why am I coming?"
"You can help us get the booze. I'm banned from the liquor store for stealing, and he won't leave me alone in his car."
"Hm." She thought about it, ignoring her friend's waggling eyebrows. Maybe she should go. Keep Ginerva safe, as her chaperone. "OK, I'm coming. And it's not the alcohol that attracts me," she added, speaking with elocution, "it's the potential of a nice evening of intelligent and witty conversation."
"Yeah, he's good for that. But he's mine, you hear me? Get your own."
"I'm all set," Leslie promised, "and you're witty too, by the way."
"I'm wittier when I drink!"
They found Kain at the front of the hotel in a growling yellow hatchback, waving at them to get in. For half a second, Leslie hesitated, hearing the screeching tyres from her dreams, but her friend dragged her along by the hand, then opened one of the rear doors for her. Ginerva rode shotgun, electing not to fasten her seatbelt. Kain turned on the radio and danced in his seat.
"You're not drunk already, are you?" Leslie asked him, buckling up. A scent of pine suffused from the air freshener on the mirror.
"Naaah," Kain said. "If I'm crashing this car, I'll do it on purpose, thanks."
Leslie gave a thumbs up. "Terrific."
"Kinda crazy we never hung out before," said Kain, smoothly pulling away from the hotel and joining the main road, "but you've gotta keep up that good girl façade, right?"
Leslie didn't bother to explain it wasn't a façade. "True," she said, continuing in the same sarcastic vein. "That, and you were just too breathtakingly attractive to ever approach. Oh, my heart, Kain… you have stolen it."
"Closet hybristophiliac," he said, driving lazily. "I fecking knew it."
"Closet what?"
"Gustauve Flaubert said it best," Kain teased. "'One mustn't look at the abyss, because there is at the bottom an inexpressible charm which attracts us'..." Finally he got to the point. "Hybristophilia is being turned on by a criminal or evil partner."
Leslie laughed too loudly. "What? Hell fucking no. No, no, no. I mean…" She thought better of saying anything. "No, no."
"She likes a man in charge," Ginerva assumed, fluffing her plumage in a suggestive fashion.
"God, you two are as bad as each other," Leslie tutted. "Also, Kain, what makes you think you're a bad boy? Aside from all the leather, and those knives in your head. Do you use them? I imagine they're good for chopping fruit in an emergency."
It was probably unwise, to taunt another hellion, but he'd been at the hotel for longer than Leslie, and seemed to hold the power-hungry overlords in contempt. Surely he wasn't trying that hard to be bad.
"No, I don't use them," Kain scoffed, his dusty-blue hand resting on the steering wheel. "But I know what I am. There's a balance to hit, if you want to stay at the hotel indefinitely. God and his eternal, boring, and eternally boring paradise is not for me. There's other highs to chase, like."
Leslie had to ask. "What did you do to end up in Hell?"
"Yeah, I wondered that," said Ginerva, stroking the handles of his blade Mohawk.
"Lots," he said. The car accelerated around a corner. "Petty theft, arson. Drove my brother and I off a cliff." He laughed.
The two girls straightened sharply. "Why?"
"Just for the craic." he said. "Invigorating, you know? God almighty, I feel like nobody gets it. There's no thrill like dying." Now the car tore down a long highway. Up ahead was a three way intersection, shaped like a Y, with a statue of some unknown demon nested in the middle.
Leslie backed against the seat. "Kain!"
"Stop!"
"Kain, don't!"
He cackled, jamming his foot on the accelerator. His long continuous yelp barely crested over the louder sound of the roaring engine. Still unclasped, Ginerva threw open her door and launched herself out. She hit the road and tumbled behind them, out of sight. Leslie's hands went to the belt buckle, mentally unprepared to do the same. She watched in horror as the statue rushed towards them. She remembered the thud she made on the hood of the car that killed her. Too terrified to scream, she closed her eyes.
"BANGARAAAAAANG!"
Then the smash of metal against stone.
o - o - o - o - o
And Leslie thought the magnets were bad. She never asked what happened to demons when they practically died in Hell… what it felt like. Now she knew.
Oddly, her first coherent thought was: ohh, my mother's going to kill me.
She dragged her eyes up. Kain had flown through the glass windshield, cracking his head on the statue, bloodying it. He gave another enthused yelp, rolling along the crumpled car hood and onto the asphalt. From the sickening motion of his limbs, it was clear he was in bad shape.
Leslie groaned. She was winded, and her leggings were wet from the seatbelt slamming against her bladder. When she tried to lift her head, she couldn't do it. Paralysis? Was this it for her? Her thoughts were scrambled, increasingly panicked. Police! she thought, then realized there were no police. Help! she thought, then remembered the nightmarish realm she occupied.
"Helkk."
Kain laughed maniacally from somewhere outside the car. "Help yourself, sweetheart!"
"Helkpph!" Leslie's eyes were watering. Tears? She had good reason to cry. Her poor body was ruined. It would never dance again.
"You can't die," he reminded her. "Give it time."
This kind of collision would have killed her back home. If it had killed her now, the last thing she'd have told Alastor was Warm Regards.
"Don't worry about it," Kain said, sounding impatient. "About an hour, you'll be grand. Here, I'll tell you the story of me and my brother. You'll laugh at this."
Of course, she had no choice. For some time, he talked about the "spectacular" way their Fiat Tipo had sailed from the ragged rocks off the coast of Haggard, Ireland. Gradually, she saw Kain pull himself upright, and wrestle his limbs back into place, flexing them, testing them. As soon as she could move, she followed his example. The pain hit her in waves. Her neck was especially sore. Breathing through the pain, Leslie contracted her abs; the ruined pulp of her insides was mushrooming in her ribcage, settling back into place. It was the queerest feeling - painful, but growing more bearable by the minute.
Finally, she lifted up her head, stretching her hurt neck. Whiplash. She was healing. She was getting better.
Outside the car, Kain straightened up, patting the arms of his leather jacket for reassurance. He walked around, trying to wrench open her door. No such luck.
"You'll have to climb out through the windscreen," he said. "Come on, if I'm done cooking, you must be."
Leslie glanced down. She felt better. Bruised, but not deathly injured. One hour. That was how long it took? Carefully, she leaned forward, undoing her belt, and shimmied between the front seats, over the jagged glass lip of the windshield, then onto the hood. She slid down and landed on her feet. Still alive. Mostly healed.
"How about that, eh?" he said with glee. "Thanks for shari-"
The prick didn't even duck as Leslie swung her fist at his face. Fresh pain rocketed through her clenched hand. She might have broken it, but she'd broken his nose too: at least Kain got a tiny percentage of what he deserved. Pity he might enjoy the punch.
Leslie limped away from the wreck, covered in dried piss and cradling her right hand, as fireworks for some reason screeched and exploded overhead. There was no sign of Ginerva; she must have recovered from her road rash and fled the crash site ages ago.
What a horrible day.
o - o - o - o - o
That night, Leslie lay solemnly, naked, in bed. The lingering, bruised soreness was finally gone, but she'd woken twice from nightmares, feeling her body shatter and her brain turn once again to oatmeal, and now had enough of sleeping.
She wanted to tell Charlie or Vaggie what Kain had done. She wanted some due process, the kind of justice she used to believe in. True, if Kain was evicted, he would go on tricking sinners into quasi-deadly situations, but at least the punishment wouldn't allow him any masochistic pleasure. Then Leslie thought of Alastor hearing about it. The questions, the curiosity. How had the experience changed her perception of pain? How could he exploit that?
Avoid Kain, she told herself, but keep your mouth shut until the contract expires. She glanced at Alastor's pillow effigy. Perhaps the man had had a point about not trusting anyone.
