The room's walls were colored pink with glitter almost everywhere. There were chairs arranged in a circle with a red rug covering the floor.
From what Sir Pentious could see, the crowd was diverse.
There was a small, chubby dark-skinned female demon with black eyes with hot pink pupils wearing a short purple dress and a purple necklace who was eating from a box of donuts.
There was a gray-blue-skinned demon with dark blue fins on the side of his face and running along his spine until it reached the angler fish lure on the top of his head wearing a blue lab coat, black gloves, and black boots who was sitting shyly alone in his chair.
Then finally, there was a white dog demon covered in black spots with a black leg, ears pierced multiple times, yellow and red eyes, and blond and pink hair wearing a spiked dog collar, a pink dress with a skull on it, black fingerless gloves, and a black short-sleeved jacket who was curled up sleeping on the floor in the center of the circle.
"Crymini, wake up!" Vaggie yelled.
"Dammit, woman," Crymini groaned groggily as she woke up. "What's your deal?"
"Hey, kid, you do not give me back sass!" Vaggie retorted.
"For the last time, I died when I was 19," Crymini growled getting in her face. "I am not a kid."
"Ladies, please, let's calm down," Charlie said as she pulled a reluctant Sir Pentious into the room behind her.
"It's not my fault this bitch was being rude," Vaggie replied irritably before she noticed the tall snake demon being pulled into the room behind Charlie.
"What is he doing here?" Vaggie asked defensively.
"Well, you're not particularly welcoming," Sir Pentious said as Charlie let go of his hands and he crossed his arms defensively. "I thought this was supposed to be a rehab center."
"Hey!" Vaggie retorted. "I don't tell you how to do your job!"
"Alright, Vaggie," Charlie said in a calm tone in an effort to calm everyone down before she started speaking up to begin the meeting. "How about we get this meeting started? Hello, everyone! This is the Happy Hotel's newest patient, Sir Pentious! Woo!"
Sir Pentious glanced at the group and rolled his eyes at them.
"Hello, Pentious," Angel said swinging the door open and shutting it behind him.
"What are you doing here, Dust?" Sir Pentious hissed.
"Sir Pentious, he's part of the group, too," Charlie said calmly.
"So, what did I miss?" Angel asked as he slid into his chair. "Did Sir Pentious bear his soul yet?"
"You were almost late," Vaggie chided quietly sitting herself in a chair beside him. "What the hell were you doing?"
"Relax, doll," Angel said. "I merely had some personal business to attend to. So, what's on the agenda today?"
"Our new member was just introducing himself, but it seems that you two already know each other," Mimzy said sliding her box under her chair.
"Everyone knows who he is," Baxter chimed in as he sipped from a cup of water. "Aren't you the snake demon who's always trying to take over hell? What are you doing here?"
"Yeah, did the incident with Cherri Bomb finally make you quit or somethin'?" Crymini asked sitting back in her chair and scratching her ear.
Sir Pentious crossed his arms defensively and said sarcastically, "Hello, fellow scum of the earth. I look forward to avoiding all of you as much as possible."
"Well, bud, looks like someone didn't get the memo," Angel quipped. "This is a no bullying zone, so if you have a problem with us, I suggest you pack your bags and scram."
Vaggie smirked while Charlie facepalmed in frustration.
"Ok, Angel, that's enough," Charlie said bringing the group back to focus and sliding into her chair. "Alright, Sir Pentious, would you like to tell us the story of your life?"
"Don't be absurd," Sir Pentious retorted. "It's none of your business."
"Why?" Charlie asked. "Does it have anything to do with why you're constantly trying to take over hell?"
"God, how long is this session?" Sir Pentious responded with annoyance.
"As long as you make it," Vaggie retorted.
"Okay, fine," Sir Pentious said sarcastically. "I lived in London. I wanted to be king, but the royals said no and I drank myself to death. There, happy now? I'm going back to my room. I need to talk to my Egg Bois…"
Sir Pentious tried to get up from his chair, but Charlie grabbed his tail and forced him to sit back down.
"Sir Pentious, you have to be honest with yourself and everyone else to achieve redemption," Charlie said getting back into her chair. "You have to get in touch with what it is that is making you depressed, sad, or angry."
"I don't want to and you can't make me," Sir Pentious said rising from his chair again. "I'll achieve redemption on my own…"
"No, you don't, mister," Charlie said pushing Sir Pentious back onto the chair and handcuffing his left hand to the chair he was sitting on.
"Hey!" Angel complained. "I told ya to stay out of my stash, Charlie!"
"Bloody hell, woman!" Sir Pentious shouted. "What in the hell is wrong with you? Uncuff me this instant!"
"No way!" Charlie said getting close enough for him to see her clipboard. "Not until you start talking about your life!"
"I don't have to say anything," Sir Pentious said turning away.
Vaggie twitched her eyes, growled, got in his face, and yelled, "Come on! You came here because you wanted to be rehabilitated. So, what is it? Why do you want to be the Devil?"
"Vaggie, get out of his face!" Charlie pleaded.
Sir Pentious glared and Vaggie reluctantly backed down as Angel said, "It really ain't that hard, snake. What is eating you? Mommy issues? Daddy issues? Were you lonely? Were you poor? Were you a user? Or, was it something else entirely?"
"Angel…" Charlie pleaded as Angel lit a cigarette.
Sir Pentious' glare intensified as Angel kept goading, "You know what I think? I think you had it easy in your life. I think you always got everything you wanted in life and when you died you had to work like the rest of us and couldn't stand it. And now that you can't get what you want here, you want to make amends with God so you can move on to Paradise and have it easy again. Typical. I could never stand rich bastards like you who had it easy. No offense to you, Charlie. You're different. You're trying to do something. People like Pentious here don't give a shit. Try to tell me I'm wrong."
Sir Pentious scoffed and hissed, "What are you talking about?! I know what your family was! We're cut from the same cloth, ya bloody hypocrite!"
"I left those bastards long ago," Angel argued back before taking a drag from his cigarette. "What's your excuse?"
"THEY NEVER GAVE ME WHAT I DESERVED!" Sir Pentious finally screamed. "I WAS TORMENTED AND REJECTED BY EVERYONE! I WORKED HARDER THAN THEY DID AND WAS BARELY TOLERATED! WHEN YOU WERE ALIVE, YOU HAD ACCEPTANCE AND SOCIAL STANDING! I WAS REJECTED BY OWN BLOOD RELATIVES AND MY OWN SOCIETY ALL BECAUSE I WAS A 'HALF-BREED!'"
Everyone went silent except Angel who asked, "What the hell does that mean?"
"That means that unlike you I'm not white," Sir Pentious hissed more quietly. "I'm only half-English. The other half comes from India, from my mother's people."
Sir Pentious noticed the clipboard that Charlie had placed on the ground. He used his hat to signal to his Egg Bois to pick it up while a flood of restored memories started flowing his way.
"Uh, Sir Pentious, do you care to expand on that?" Charlie asked.
Sir Pentious looked at her and felt the kindness behind her voice. It touched him.
So, Sir Pentious began his tale, "My father was the child of a wealthy English inventor who along with his wife was radically Christian and progressive for his time. My mother was the daughter of Indian merchants who were like-minded. When my father moved with his parents to India, he fell in love with that daughter. My grandparents were close friends and approved of their union without hesitation. Soon after that, I was born. My skin was lighter because of my father, but I looked very much like my mother. I had brown skin, black hair, and steely brown-gray eyes just like hers, just like a cobra's. That's what they would all say. I grew up in India knowing the values of the West and the East. I had grandparents and parents who loved me and my many cousins on my mother's side to play with. I was never considered different from any of them. I was loved, and I was happy. They all shielded me from the world's prejudice. My grandparents both died happy. My father was happy too until my mother died. She fell ill during her pregnancy with my younger sibling. I was only nine, and from then on, everything went straight to hell…"
Sir Pentious was surprised to see tears falling down his face. Charlie walked away from her chair and wrapped an arm around Sir Pentious. The Egg Bois continued sneaking towards the chair, but Sir Pentious was too lost in his memories to notice.
"My grandfather's business partners forced my father to return to the homeland. He didn't want to, but his kind and gentle heart was heartbroken and he didn't have the strength to keep resisting. So, we both returned to London.
"Upon our arrival to London, his biological family refused to acknowledge me. They couldn't bear the fact that my father had married an Indian woman, so he rejected them. My father was a true Christian man whose progressive values made him an outcast, but we were not alone. My father had a spiritual family in the church he grew up in. They were all radicals who were as progressive as my father if not more and were also considered outcasts in their own families. They were the righteous people who campaigned for justice locally and abroad. They ran organizations to help the poor. They sponsored abolitionists. They even campaigned for women's suffrage. They loved their neighbors as themselves, and they accepted us without a second thought.
"My father and his friends protected me as much as they could. They raised me as much as he did. They all taught me many things, including how to play the organ, and gave me a loving environment, but even so, I knew I was an outcast. I could see it in the glances of passersby when we were out in public. I could hear it in the comments others made. I could feel it in our small insular world. My holy family always stood up for me. My father encouraged me and taught me how to stand strong. He even kept up correspondence with my family in India for me. We went to visit them whenever we were on holiday to escape, but it all wasn't enough. I could still feel the hatred of the world I grew up in…"
Every single misfit was focused on Sir Pentious' story. Not even Vaggie noticed when one Egg Boi picked up the documents while the other Egg Boi took pictures on his smart phone.
"Then when I was old enough to go to boarding school, I felt that hatred in its full force," Sir Pentious continued. "Without guardians to protect me, the school tore me apart. They housed me in a room by myself as if I were some sort of animal. The other students bullied me mercilessly. They stole my possessions. They mocked me relentlessly. They called me a 'half-breed' and tormented me daily. None of the adults did anything to make it stop. They punished me whenever I spoke up against it. They joined in the bullying. I constantly received harsh punishments for minor infractions and rules I didn't break. They accused me of cheating because they could never believe that a 'half-breed' could be more intelligent than any other white student. They marked my grades as low as they could get away with for the slightest error. The only one who was kind to me there was the colored groundskeeper who defended me whenever he could. I tried to stay strong and keep my torment a secret from my father and his friends. I excelled in my studies despite their best efforts, but the bullying only grew worse until one day the aggression got physical.
"The strongest players from my school's rugby team were plastered. I was walking back to my dormitory room after studying in the library all evening. They found me and beat me within an inch of my life. They left me beaten and bruised and almost too hurt to move. The groundskeeper found me, got me help, and stayed with me at the hospital while my father was called for. If I was found any later, I would have died due to the severity of my injuries.
"When my father arrived, I told him everything. He was furious. He brought multiple lawsuits against the school and brought criminal charges against the people who beat me and left me for dead. His lawyer friends helped him as much as they could, but ultimately, the school had friends in higher places. They forced my father to agree to a settlement and those bastards who almost killed me never faced a single disciplinary action…"
Sir Pentious' frill spread out and he started shaking in fury at the restored memories.
"I left that school and started attending classes in another college while living at home and apprenticing under my father. My father and his godly friends counseled me as much as they could, but I couldn't let go of my anger or my hate. Their cruelty had poisoned me, but it had destroyed my father more than I ever knew. He slipped into a depression that neither I or his friends could counsel him out of. When I graduated, we worked together making inventions and bonded more closely than ever. I thought he was getting better, but one morning, I found him dead. He had drunk himself to death. It turned out that he had been drinking for a long time. The world had broken his heart.
"In his will, my father left everything to me. During his funeral, all his friends of the church, much of my mother's family, and even the groundskeeper came to bid him farewell, to mourn with me, and to comfort me in my time of sorrow. Many of them even accompanied me to take his ashes to India. But no one in my father's family came. Not a single person would even approach me or acknowledge my existence or pay tribute to my father. And for what? All because he had fallen in love with an Indian woman…"
Sir Pentious started shedding angry tears and his voice raised in his fury as he continued, "That was the straw that broke the camels back. I realized then that the world was a horrid place where the good and the righteous like my father and his friends couldn't triumph because of the corrupt, racist, unjust, and white-washed vermin who crushed anyone who dared to defy their corruption! That world had broken my kind and gentle-hearted father because he refused to abandon me, so I decided that I would break it back! I could no longer turn the other cheek! I had to destroy the world that destroyed my poor father and me so that good men could triumph!
"So, instead of returning to India to live with my mother's family away from the prejudice of England, I stayed behind and became a villain. I created inventions that I sold for profit to fund underground terrorists the world over. Anarchists. The Irish Republican Army. The freedom fighters among my mother's people. Extreme abolitionists. All of them came to me and relied on my funding and eventually my inventions to help their causes, and I was glad to give it. I saved my assistant Toulouse from a workhouse and got his help going even further. I began carrying out terroristic missions myself. I let my black hair grow long enough to flow down my back like a hood. The survivors started calling me 'the serpent' in all the newspapers, so that's who I became. 'The serpent,' the karmic snake in the grass that would carry out God's wrath and rebalance the world!"
Tears flooded Sir Pentious' eyes as he stared at the floor and relived his restored memories once again. The Egg Bois took the last of their pictures, slid the clipboard back under the chair, and gave a thumbs up to their boss. The hat saw it, but Sir Pentious didn't respond.
"I didn't get what I wanted," Sir Pentious sobbed. "I got vengeance, but I didn't see my work completed. I contracted tuberculosis at the age of 48. I died in my sick bed with Toulouse right beside me. It was so unfair…"
Charlie walked over to Sir Pentious, gave him a big hug, and said, "It's okay, Sir Pentious. Just let it out."
And for a few minutes, that's just what he did.
All the misfits sat in silence except for Angel who finally broke the silence and said, "That explains why you're obsessed with takin' over hell…"
"Angel!" Vaggie snapped.
"What?" Angel replied. "It does. He wants to take over hell so he can finish his work of bringing down those who make the world a shitty place. It makes sense."
"He's not wrong," Crymini chimed in scratching her ear with her back leg.
The two Egg Bois scampered onto their boss' lap and gave him the biggest hugs they could.
"You're going to be just fine, boss," Austen said.
"Yeah," Thrys agreed.
Sir Pentious smiled as conflicting emotions rose inside him and rested in his chest. On one hand, he felt relief at sharing his story. On the other hand, Sir Pentious felt the same odd emotion that he had felt when he saw Delilah that morning. Guilt. He had just distracted them so his Egg Bois could steal their information…
"That was a wonderful share, Sir Pentious," Charlie said finally letting go of him.
"Thanks," Sir Pentious replied genuinely. "Could you take the handcuffs off now?"
"Oh, yeah, of course," Charlie said digging the key out of her pocket and unlocking the handcuff around Sir Pentious' wrist.
"I'll be taking that back," Angel said in annoyance as he unlocked the handcuffs off the chair and stuffed them in his pocket. "Say, Sir Pentious, where did those eggs come from?"
"Huh?" Thrys asked. "What do you mean?"
"I think he's asking where you guys came from and how you know Sir Pentious," Charlie said.
"Oh," Austen replied. "Well, the only one of us who knows that story completely is Toulouse. All we have our bits and pieces of his memories. Only the original has every memory, so you'd have to ask our boss."
"Well?" Angel asked curiously.
"If you must know, I found Toulouse when I was searching my local workhouse for an assistant," Sir Pentious replied. "Ordinarily, anyone else would have just taken out an ad in the newspaper, but I knew that very few employees would be willing to take orders from a 'half-breed,' especially in London. So, I searched the workhouse instead for someone I knew would be grateful to serve me. That is when I met Toulouse.
"Toulouse was the only child of two French farmers. Their farm failed when his father died of illness, and his naïve mother thought they'd have a better chance of starting over in London. But they ended up in the workhouse instead.
"Those workhouse bastards were beyond cruel to him. Toulouse was a French immigrant who only came there to save the life of his sick mother and had no idea what he was getting into. He was only 15. He couldn't have. He didn't speak a word of English.
"The moment his mother died, he was taken back to be forcefully bathed, had his clothes taken from him, was placed in a uniform, locked away, and given a number. Number 22. He had to hide his few possessions so they wouldn't be taken from him and sold. They put him in the mentally ill ward of the workhouse with other maniacs because he was slow, depressed, and too frightened to speak.
"Modern medical literature would describe Toulouse's mental condition as a mix of high-functioning autism and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, but back then, the doctors simply described him as a mentally deficient imbecile. It was horrible. I can't imagine how scared he must have been or how horribly those calloused monsters must have treated him.
"He slept on straw beds and ate rationed food. Toulouse was starved and isolated fairly often because he taught himself how to pick locks and frequently tried to escape that prison. Can you blame him? They put him through hell. Those monsters didn't do anything to comfort him or help him. They embezzled much of the money used to help the inmates and cut corners whenever they could!
"The day I came, Toulouse was trying to run away in a straitjacket. They were sending him to an institution so that their colleagues would receive more government money and they wouldn't have to deal with him anymore. It made me sick. I had to do something.
"So, I gave them a bigger bribe to let me take Toulouse in myself. He was in such bad shape. He was starved, scared almost to the point of mania, and unbelievably lacking in social graces. I was the only one who could speak to him or calm him down since I learned French in school and practiced it regularly in business. I had to teach him how to read, write, and speak in English. I had to teach him how to behave in formal company. I had to practically raise him. But Toulouse surprised me. He learned pretty readily. He was not stupid or mentally deficient after all. He only needed guidance, a steady hand, and a structured yet nurturing environment and he prospered. Wish I could say the same of his clones..."
"So, you're a kinder person than you seem," Angel said with a smile.
"No," Sir Pentious said defensively. "I knew he'd be the perfect assistant…"
"Your Eggheads don't look like perfect assistants to me," Angel retorted. "Admit it. You did it out of the kindness of your heart. You became the kid's family and he devoted his life to you, like a son."
"Awwwww!" the Egg Bois said hugging their boss more closely.
"So, what if I did?" Sir Pentious retorted. "They were going to send a mentally disordered but perfectly capable young man to prison! It would have been a waste!"
"Whatever you say," Angel said. "Ya big softie!"
Sir Pentious only glared at Angel for a moment before he returned to his own thoughts.
"Alright, guys! The meeting is over, and now…" Charlie said cheerfully grabbing her tuxedo and ripping it off to reveal a black and white bikini under it. "It's time to go swimming!"
Sir Pentious' mouth dropped open in shock as all the other misfits pushed the doors open and rushed into the pool area. Meanwhile, Austen got a call on his smartphone.
"Hey, Sir Pentious!" Charlie said cheerfully. "Aren't you coming?"
"Yeah, Pent-y!" Angel yelled from outside wearing nothing but his booty shorts. "Come play with us!"
"I…uh…" Sir Pentious said searching for the right words in his embarrassment.
"Boss," Austen interrupted. "It's Toulouse."
Sir Pentious took the phone and said, "Toulouse, what is…? Oh, God! I'm coming."
"Sorry, princess," Sir Pentious said quickly slithering backwards and trying to hide his relief. "I have something urgent I need to take care of at home! Cheerio!"
"Uh, okay…" Charlie said hesitantly walking outside. "See you later. Don't forget curfew."
Sir Pentious turned around and slithered quickly out of the room with the Egg Bois riding on his tail.
"Boss, what is it?" Thrys asked.
"Delilah's gone," Sir Pentious replied. "Remind me to thank her later."
