Years go by. I keep my contract with him. I problem solve. Occasionally I play host to him. Make more drinks. Normal stuff, between the torment. I accept my fate to be...absorbed... or abused. Or lie to myself that I have. Isn't much I can do. I just hope there will be some of me left. Or perhaps that is the wrong thing to wish for.
But, I should have known something was up. After he stopped drawing blood. After he refused to let me die by any other hand than his own. After he hinted to me, repeatedly, that I was his favorite toy.
He comes to me, stands beside me as I read in my chair, 16 years later in 2067.
"Hello darling." I jump a bit and lose my place. I sigh. I should be more scared of him. Terrified. I was, but not right now. I am too tired. He sits across from me, legs crossed, fingers toying with a familiar rock, the one I had stolen from Hell years ago, a reminder of my continuous fuck ups.
"Hello Crowley, how are the kids?"
"Getting along fine without mama and papa. We both died at the ripe old age of 90." He looks at me, surprised I hadn't kept up. "It's been 2 years since I died… It was in the news."
I sigh and close the book. "I know. I was being polite. Your meat suit looks good for having been buried alive."
"I took a dirt nap. It was a relaxing three days, after which I had a very biblical awakening." He looks at me with fake incredulity for a brief moment before continuing. "The kids are fine. Now...to business." I sigh once again and look at the demon. He is waiting expectantly.
"What can I do for you Crowley?"
"It's time to come home." I freeze up. It's too soon, it'd always be too soon, but still.
"I'm not dead yet."
"Yes well, despite your Monty Pythonesque declaration, I'm claiming the right to inspection."
"The doctors say I'm pretty good for-."
"And I say….you're not. So…"
"But...the doctor's evaluation is what determines-"
"Not if I own your soul, and darling, I've owned it for some time now." I mean, I guessed it'd probably happen. Somehow.
"For how long?"
"Darling, the day you died in the car crash." Ah, so that's why he wanted me dead.
"But you interfered. That doesn't count as a natural death really."
"Immediate interference. I just moved you, the explosion killed you." Of course.
"So why?"
"Hmm?"
"Why now? I'm pretty fucking healthy. As a home away from home I still have good structural integrity. So, if the king would care to humor his humble subject...fucking why?" He laughs the single huff of a laugh I had grown familiar with over the ages.
"Well since it's your last…" he looks at the clock on the wall as if measuring the minutes till my death, "time out here, why not." He looks at me, wrinkled, old, and says words that send chills down my spine.
"After having been soul buddies, my short little trips from blood just...aren't vibrant anymore. They fill me with whatever emotion I should be experiencing, not very controllable. It lingers when I don't want it to. Feelings. All the time. Disgusting. I want to feel what I want to feel, when I want to feel it. Is that too much to ask?"
"That's not not how emotions work Crowley."
"For you maybe. Now I lasted for a long time, letting you ripen, holding out for the occasional visit." I nod, trying to understand, but not really up for dissecting his statements right now. He looks at me, probably for the last time, and says "But, well...daddy needs his fix." His body falls back into his seat and the red storm comes at me, and everything goes dark.
I wake up, not too long after, a minute or so I suppose. I guess I was getting old if that caused me to black out. I look out at Crowley's meat suit, still perfect after all these years, if dead.
"Hello darling. I've just been saying goodbye to my old apartment." I chuckle a bit at his wit, I have to. "Your turn darling, because it's time to move out Rebecca." I breathe, noticing the ounce of respect. It took 45 years but…
I sigh, feeling whole again for the first time in a long time. Or at least more whole, with the other piece of my soul right here. I feel less though, smaller. I am old, tired. That's probably all.
I have control of my body, he gave me that. I had been in and out so many times...I can't even remember how many times it had been put back together, kept safe while I was away. It is barely mine, less my body and more a thing I inhabit. I look around the room once and nod. I'm done, the longer I put it off the more painfully emotional the change will be. Better to just rip the bandaid off before I back out like a scared child and I make a fool of myself.
I feel a tug and fly out encased in a slightly glittering red mist as a ball of white. Crowley takes a breath, back in his own body, my prison, and looks at my...husk. Alive, but not me, starting to move and look wildly about, and snaps his fingers. I feel nothing as I watch my old body claw at their chest, then die of cardiac arrest.
"Well, now that demolition is done, we have work to do." I quietly agree to my fate, not that I have much choice. I do however, regret not being able to finish that book. Crowley pauses, and looks at the book in my lap. He sighs and with a wave it's gone. A small kindness, or perhaps curiosity as he is now as far along in the book as I am.
Still, I lasted a lot longer than I thought I could in a game with the King of Hell. I wonder how much more time I have.
"A year at most, or...Forever." At this I pause my self evaluation. What could he mean? I was sure by this time that all the trouble I had put him through, he would just torture me, until Iwas slowly pulled apart. Use me as an emotional high. Not….keep me around and active. "I have a contract with you. I have absolutely no idea, for once, what will happen if I let you dissolve away. Would you still be there, would it count as death? Would it cancel the contract?" I can already hear him slipping slightly into my manner of speech, to annoy me, put me off guard. It still sounds wrong coming from his mouth. "So. Let's have a test, and pick out your bunk mate. But first...we have two items of pleasure to discuss." He thinks a quick thought and we are gone, walking on a beach. I wonder at his reasons, it couldn't just be that he wanted to test something. I doubted he could care less if my contract was voided by either of us now.
"Oh no. I'm not letting your soul escape to heaven to be interrogated by poncy rats with wings." Ah. Right, his secret. "Darling, you don't know the half of it. You're home now, you couldn't betray me if you tried. You may ask questions." Questions? About what? I know my fate.
"But do you know your Use? Why you are valuable?" I thought it was because I was your toy. Was there more? "Darling, as long as you're here, and I have another part of you somewhere, I can't die. Remember?" Memories flood me. Right! I still didn't know how that worked, how we survived those first attacks. Was I going to find out, more than three decades later?
"Yes. I'm a benevolent landlord." No. There is a reason he is telling me. There always is. I can feel his satisfaction that I know this as he speaks.
"When I'm pulled to the Empty, you're pulled to Hell, or Heaven...but only after you have all your pieces." The piece he has now. So he is no longer immortal?
"No. Because it is 'pieces'. Try plural darling. I have the biggest piece, but I was busy walking around playing that game on your phone, depositing pieces of you around in little angel proof boxes. Before you go anywhere, you need them, and where you go...I go." I am ...Confused and overwhelmed. Did he create a fucking horcrux? He blinks, pauses and shrugs, nodding.
"That little ball of light overrides everything in its need to be whole. It actually would take energy to keep you here if you hadn't signed something saying I own all the pieces." I fall back into my place in the smoke and I ponder this. Souls. Souls are the most powerful thing? Untouched pure human souls? "Why do you think creatures eat them? Consume the energy they put out? They have unimaginable potential." But...it's never been broken apart before? I can feel the little bits of energy glittering in his smoke, roiling and being thrown around in internal winds. Pieces of me.
"No. Feeding off the energy a soul gives off until it is weak, doesn't destroy the soul, just renders it useless for a while. Consuming the entire soul, still leaves a spark that with time will regrow. To my knowledge only God can destroy a soul." So that's why I was back before I died naturally, he had a piece of me. One that was, maybe sill is, slowly being consumed by him. He was tired of trying to not destroy me, breaking the piece he had into small sparks of light that if I died wouldn't be the first piece I went to… or wouldn't bring him to me. He smiles and sips a drink he suddenly has in his hand. "You've opened up an entirely new use for souls. One I intend to keep entirely to myself." So this is the secret. Not the contract, but the fact that it explained that souls could be broken apart and used to keep him on this plane of existence. If I told anyone about the contract, they could eventually figure this out.
I had been attacked by angels a couple more times over the years. Trying to find out what my involvement was. They didn't stop after I hanged myself… no.
Of course the guards were there, and there were two snipers now. There would be a bullet, and off my soul would fly to find its missing pieces… the ones Crowley owned. The ones I now knew were scattered across the earth and probably Hell, the reason I don't stay out for the hellhound to collect.
He had mentioned, casually, on more than one occasion he always enjoyed when I 'came back home.' That little ball of light that fluttered in front of him. He always told anyone in the room to get out when he saw my soul being carried in by a hound. Perhaps because close physical examination would show I was missing parts. Perhaps because of the high I apparently gave him. Perhaps because he liked privacy.
Every time was the same. He'd look at me, eyes blank, for a long time, and then smile a small tight smile.
"Hello Chew Toy. Miss me?" And he'd open his mouth and I'd rush into the prison I'd unwittingly written with my own hands, the prison where my Biggest other piece lay. Waiting. Slowly dissolving. "Lovely to have you back, I felt so empty without you. Now, sit back and wait, I'll play with you later." And he would. Play with me that is. Or more accurately enjoy the high he got from my emotional reactions to his job or my memories.
No matter how long the wait, eventually a demon would show up with my body; always inhabiting it, strict rule. Only way to make sure someone not on the guard didn't try to find out his secrets. However any demon involved with attacks on me was usually...fired quietly anyway. They all knew it, they knew there was a secret, a spoiler. And with his new army made of fans, of artists, well they wanted to know. Even if knowing for a brief second meant death. It was an honor, a limited time offer, something to lord over the other's until Crowley took them aside and did the most horrifying thing imaginable.
No one but I knew about this. And when I was in my body, I didn't remember. It was the one thing Crowley wiped from my memory. He stashed hex bags around the house. I knew he did, he told me. 'For my own protection.' It was a half truth, but I didn't dare fight him on it.
The demons thought they died, they were wrong. I had designed it, even if it was unwittingly. He had come to me one day, asking me to fulfil my contract, to advise him. I tried. I thought I failed. I was wrong. I succeeded more than I ever thought possible. He came to me asking for a solution to having to kill his guards each time I returned to him from an angel attack. I thought, long and hard. The only thing I could think of was turning them human. Then using some sort of spell to wipe their memory after they got a meatsuit. He frowned. Said it wouldn't work, a soul needed it's original body for a spell like that to work. Perhaps that was a lie but he punished me for my failure, and sent me on my way.
I thought that was that, until the next time I died.
No one knew about the kidnapped church goers filling syringes of blood. No one knew about the hours of purification, or the secret cupboard in his room that held jars upon jars of cured demon souls. I had no clue what they were for, just that it was easier to do the ritual with my soul covering his. Now, today, on the last day of my official life...after this conversation...I had a feeling that was an emergency stash...or what he would start with until current deals came to fruition. There were already a few souls in there when I saw it for the first time. In what could be considered a quartz aquarium. They swam happily about with each other. I wondered if this was the stash he had talked about on the show, the one that was raided. He put that notion out of my head quickly. Different stash, different hiding place; besides it had nothing to do with my situation.
He could only have one deal of my type at a time. If he had two...his soul would be pulled apart when the pieces of his signer's souls pulled him in two directions, both trying to get home. At least, that's what he, and I, surmise. So until I died, he had waited, wary to do another contract. I would have tried to convince him to just kill me, to take another contract. It was dangerous for him to just have me, while I was so well known.
However I knew he wouldn't listen, and it was one last chance for him to be killed. He knew my thoughts on this. Of course he did. He ignored them. For some reason, some stupid reason, I was just important enough to risk this operation on. More likely, he had a back up plan or had me too well guarded.
So he collected and purified demon souls so he could have one to...in his words, enjoy for lunch, while he waited for his first contract with a human to end. So I watched this torment happen, every time I was forced to flee to him, while I waited for my body. While I wondered why the first soul to die wouldn't be me.
"Not you darling."
The words bring me back from my mental spiral inside my prison. Moonlight hits the ocean and the waves rush up to meet us. It's quiet, a juxtaposition from my mental turmoil. Crowley sighs, enjoying the feeling of unsettled peace.
"See. I've put too much work into training you. I play you like a finely tuned piano. I know what buttons to press, what places to prod. I don't want to learn that all over for someone else. So you're my favorite toy until you become numb to it all, which you won't, I know you."
And now I understand. He is right. I'm not special. I am seasoned and peppered with the emotions of a tormented but full life.
I am broken in.
"Of course you're special, you were my first. I popped my soul like a cherry with you." He kicks a rock into the waves and I wonder if the ocean would hurt him. He chuckles.
"Not anymore darling. Thanks to you. However if you stay there, every day, I'll tire quickly trying to concentrate on not picking away at you morsel by morsel. If you have a bunk mate, I can pick away at them however fast I want. I'll enjoy their emotions occasionally before..." He stops, leaving the obvious unsaid, but I still shiver in fear nonetheless. "I know you wanted a monogamous relationship, so I'm sorry, but I'll always come back to you Chew Toy." He continues walking, a soft stroll along the beach. Meandering, waiting for me to settle in. "Besides, I made a deal with you, you're supposed to create for me. I believe you might find that difficult if you're just another five pounds on my red waistline." I couldn't say I am happy, but... I have a feeling. A small glimmer of hope, that he actually still wants me to create things for him. He could be lying, but this close to him… I doubted it. It didn't feel like a lie. Of course...if I ever stopped being interesting…
He doesn't respond, he doesn't feel or think. I have no idea if being interesting is as important as being broken in...
However, that meant, if he didn't want to eat me, he'd need a steady yearly supply of souls, forever. And I'd be there. Forever. Is this really my choice... watching other souls die or possible complete obliteration from a year of miasmic mastication?
"You're mine darling. One way in, no way out. Just like Hell is supposed to be."
King of Hell, a walking portable Hell in and of himself.
"That's the idea. You really can take it with you. Well, I can."
So, immortality and more. One soul at a time. Welcome to Hell; entrance fee, one kiss. He nods, and takes one more look at the ocean.
"Now." We arrive at the hidden cupboard, I cringe, falling back into corners as far as I can...but he's everywhere. He flicks his hand and the painting moves aside, flicks again and the door opens, a myriad of symbols on the inside. Lines of shelves with souls struggling for freedom they would never get. He picks up one.
"Hello Stan. Time to come home, your original contract belonged to me after all." He opens the jar with a twist and the soul floats, confused. It has no body. It can't go to Heaven, it has a contract with Hell. It should be guided to the wracks but instead… The King of Hell beckons, and the soul finds a new home. I feel it, beside me, for only a moment, an eternity. I know everything this man has done, when he was alive, when he was a demon. It hurts, I really don't want to know. It's too much. It's far too much. Too much. Too much.
Then he's gone. Crowley shakes his head.
"Looks like you'll need seperate bedrooms." He adjusts himself, stands still, accounting for everything he just did and how it makes him feel.
Wanting. It left him wanting.
A demon soul, turned human. Sitting in a jar for….10 plus years? It was dull. Tainted. Bland. The only emotions were the negative ones he already saw daily in the pit. Confusion and regret are bedfellows down there, and even they seemed numbed by the imprisonment the soul went through. He sighs, and looks at the remaining 12 jars.
I panic. He couldn't be thinking...Right off the bat? What if it's too much?
"Where's your sense of adventure Chew Toy?" He snaps and the lids of 5 jars vanish, sending the white balls of light into the air. They fly, circling like confused drunk butterflies until, "Come home darlings."
The light is blinding, painful, burning. I have no space. There is eternity, and I can't think.
Then, just like that, they are gone, at least for me. I have no idea how. I shiver, vibrate. Confused as to how or why Crowley would want these souls without a contract if they are so dulled. He couldn't pick them apart without -
"Of course I can. First of all I do own the souls, any demon on your guard team has to sign a contract with me. Demons can't be the recipient of a contract, they are already bound to Hell, so to them it didn't mean a thing." He picks up one of the jars with a soul in it and looks at the light wiggling around frantically. I wonder if they saw what happened, or if there is an enchantment on the jars, or if they are too panicked and insane from their confinement to notice. Crowley continues his exposition, the information meant purely to torture me with knowledge of the horror I had helped create. "Now that they are human, those contracts matter. Secondly, the contract I have with you allows me to pick apart a perfectly normal human soul… these...They are the sloppy joe's of souls, soul food if you will. Falling apart from the loneliness and one too many changes, they are easy to pick apart to the last morsel." He pauses thinking "...I'll need to add a year long cap to the tenancy-in-common clause so the freeheld property clause can kick in in tangent to a new tenancy-in-common clause in subsection B...I should be able to fast track the process, avoid the long winding road I went through with your contract." So wait...he couldn't just dissolve me? "Darling, for once...you're wrong. I could let you wither away like a child star...degrading until nothing but a single white coal is left… barely able to think let alone feel emotion. However, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I appreciate your company too much to do that." Bullshit, you appreciate the high I give you. "Why not both?"
The cabinet door closes in front of us, I hear a lock, and with a wave the painting is hung in front of it again. Crowley, once again, pauses, taking... I guess it could be called inventory now.
"Well, it's a suitable substitute." He looks to another cupboard, also lined with runes that prevent anything inside from being taken away, and ponders. He snaps...nothing happens. He tries again. Nothing. On the third try the cupboard cracks.
"Bollocks." He sighs and walks over, opening the cracked front door and taking out his favorite bourbon. He frowns at the cupboard and snaps, and it's whole again.
"Well, progress at least." Really, keeping your liquor in a warded cabinet?
"It's my most expensive liquor. Special occasions only." He looks at the bottle, and we are at
his desk, with a stack
