Chapter Text
Demencia, panting and her heart pounding, had finally arrived in front of imposing double-doors.
Black Hat’s office.
She didn’t have to knock, He already knew she was there, but she did anyway out of respect. She pounded a fist on the oak wood, her impossibly wide smile brightening somehow even more as she exclaimed in a sing-song voice :
“OOoooh BLAckiiie !!! It’s me Guapo, I’m back from the mission !”
Dead silence in the corridor.
It seemed to darken, as if a malevolent force was slowly dragging in the sunlight, to suffocate it into nothingness, or to corrupt it into the eerie red glow one could see seeping from under the big doors.
Demencia swayed back and forth on her feet. A few seconds later, a voice, deep and raspy, inhumane, resonated in her head :
“ COME IN. ”
She didn’t need to be told twice. Demencia hopped the cadaver on her shoulder, flung open a door and let herself in.
As she treaded forward, she finally took the time to admire her surroundings. The Office is truly a marvelous reflection of her Lord, she observed. The ceiling was even higher than the double-doors. The dark wallpaper was decorated in a seemingly infinite pattern of a top hat royal emblem, down to a dark floor, red like the finest wine, highlighted by a large rolled out carpet in a brighter red and rimmed with gold, leading to the end of the room. Giant window panes tainted in the same red filtered the light of the setting sun, its bloodied sunlight illuminated the desk of the Master of the Manor.
There he was, Black Hat. Her Lord, incarnation of Evil Itself, powerful and cruel beyond what any man could be. Her Boss, running his villain organisation with an iron fist, spreading death and misery in every town his influence infiltrated.
Currently though, he was merely sitting back in his throne-like desk chair. And, cast in its shadow, that the light seemed to avoid like the plague, he was reading an old yet elegant book, seemingly trying to relax after a day of paperwork and appointments with victims/clients.
Demencia halted in front of his desk. He didn’t look up.
She gave a very dramatic salute before giving her report :
“Demencia reporting in, Sir ! I’m back from the volcano city where I *successfully* offed that lava hand-puking gal for the nerd in a cheap suit guy ? and check THIS out !’
She reached into the bloody bag she beheld and pulled out a decapitated head.
‘I kept the head in one piece !...err, mostly. Some lava dried in her hair and I chewed an ear and cheek a bit, sorry Guapo- but it really adds to its,,, DEAD expression of TerrrrOar and AGONY she got!! Don’tchu think so mi Lord ?”
Black Hat looked up with a singular predatory eye. He nonchalantly gazed at the head Demencia was holding up for him, and his expression shifted from boredom to sadistic glee. He seemed to be taking in every gruesome detail, to suck in every ounce of perceivable pain from the victim. His monocle shined, and he began to smile, the unending stretching of his lips above his non-existent ears revealed a terrifying set of jadeite tinted razor-like teeth.
Demencia's heart pounded harder in her chest.
“I’ll always revel in a pathetic and disgusting mortal face contorted by its last moments of suffering” He leaned forward to get a better look at the head then chuckled low. Demencia internally swooned, she compared it to the dark omen of the rumbling from far-away clouds. “Poor fallen hero," he mockingly sneered, “Like you skewed monkeys say, looks like she’s been from hell and back.”
Demencia blushed and shakily laughed at his joke. She felt like she was in heaven. She knew he was pleased with her, and feverishly awaited his praise. She’s been waiting for this moment all her life, this moment of realization that she’s not only the perfect employee, but also the perfect future Wife, and that he’s just about to tell her, maybe even kiss her and in a passionate confession of love he’ll prop-
A shadowy tentacle shot out of the ground and easily pried the head out of her white-knuckled grasp, before disappearing in the interdimensional hole as fast as it came. In the split second Demencia had looked down and back at Black Hat again, he was back to reading his book, his neutral expression of perpetual sneering back on.
“Get the rest of the carcass to Flug and prepare for tomorrow. You have two more missions.”
…
Dumbfounded, Demencia stood slouched, her mouth slightly agape and her eyes helplessly darting to the sides. She felt-
No, it’s fine. Straightening back up, she spoke again :
“r-right…I’ll do that right away !’ Huh. Not as confident as she thought her voice would be. ‘But uhhh.. isn’t there like, something else you’d like to-”
“No. Get out.”
“...You sure there’s n-”
“Demencia.” Black Hat‘s frown deepened. She would normally have backed down by now, and frankly, he was getting annoyed by her lost puppy antics. “Do not make me repeat myself again.”
“b-but-”
“DemENciA-”
SLAM
“WHY WON’T YOU TELL ME YOU LOVE ME ?!”
…
As soon as they had hit the desk, Demencia yanked her hands back and bit her tongue hard. At her sudden outburst, Black Hat had looked up in indignant surprise (with a comically unrepressed jump in his seat). But now, he was staring right back at her. His face melted into a serious expression as he closed his book and slammed it on the desk.
SMACK.
The sound felt like a mocking echo. “…” His eye bore into hers.
SHit.
Demencia took a step back.
“hehe…w. woopsie?” Slowly, she raised her hands in surrender. “dunno where that came from, sorry I’ll just go-”
Black Hat silently rose from his chair, and the office darkened. “You Obstreperous Dim-Witted BITCH!”
Keep it cool. If you act submissive and apologetic, he won’t gut you. That’s how Flug does it and he’s still alive ! But his otherworldly voice vibrated ominously, louder at every word, like the incoming waves of a tsunami.
She took another step back.
“i-I’m really REALLY sorry guapo-” Black Hat kept rising, growing taller and slender by the second. Shadows followed.
“How DARE YOU YELL BACK AT ME !”
With his painfully booming voices, overlaying like the chorus of his damned souls, Hell’s garden broke through the floorboards with vines and tendrils…
The office became a living nightmare. Demencia’s heart pounded harder as she took another step ba-.
“Ah !” She tripped on a living thorn arching right behind her ankles and fell. She immediately tried to stand back up and flee, but Black Hat didn’t give her the chance to.
“HAVEN’T YOU LEARNED TO OBEY ME BY NOW, YOU OVERGROWN RAT ?!”
He stabbed the ground close around her with tentacles the size of lamp poles and shaped like icicles. Alarmed by one that hit an inch away from her head, she could only shrink in on herself and fall back down. Cold beads of sweat descended her brow.
She couldn’t do anything now, but look up at the eye of the storm.
Black Hat was high above, all the way up the ceiling. His dark animated silhouette continued yelling a stream of insults at her, that she mentally fogged out in artificial admiration. A vain attempt to twist terror into awe, like a mist trying to put out a forest fire. Then, finally, as he resumed his monologue and destruction of the room, she thought she might actually be allowed to leave unscathed. That was, until he got closer again.
“YOU’RE NOTHING TO ME BUT A TOOL”
Closer.
“A TOOL I WILL INEVITABLY REPLACE…”
Face to face.
STAB.
Her breath halted.
He smiled. “...WHEN YOU FINALLY BREAK.”
Then, she felt it . Slowly, calculatingly, it wiggled and twisted deeper in her arm. Sharp and cold, s e e p i n g into her veins…that familiar pain, like a poison transforming her blood into pins and-
Her face contorted from cold shock to horror with a scream. She cannot look, she just can’t. It takes over her shoulder, her throat, lungs, her brain . Her entire nerve system flares up, burns away with her mind. Her vision tunnels on His face and, suddenly, her world sizzles out in smoking static .
And He laughed.
* * *
Her senses brutally returned to her when the tentacle in her arm shot back out with a sharp yank. Her eyes fluttered open and caught a glimpse of a top hat retreating south.
Demencia pushed herself into a sitting position and immediately had to still at the violent swimming of her head. She willed herself to steady, and doing so she was forced to notice how messed up she still was : Her heart kept its desperate pounding against the walls of her ribcage, everything ached, and the shaking of her already treacherous body pulled her attention to her new wound. She winced.
Pathetic .
At that thought, she remembered where she was and urgently looked up in search of Black Hat. She spotted him immediately, hard not to : He was back at the center of the office, seated at his desk, behind which the remnants of the Lovecraftian conjurations were about done slithering away behind his back. Everything was back to its previous impeccable, pristine state.
Demencia hung her head defeatedly. Even as her gaze fixated upon the carpet, she took notice of the lingering darkness : the sun had gone down, and with it every one of its warm rays of light.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be ?”
She perked up, for He had spoken. Though he wasn’t looking at her, more preoccupied with fixing his flawless appearance. Ever the businessman, smoothing his tie and adjusting his sleeves, acting like he’d just got out of another boring appointment.
Demencia abruptly stood up and tripped on her own feet in the hurry to obey.
“Yes Black Hat Sir.”
She turned away and prepared to leave when Black Hat spoke up again :
“Demencia.”
“Yes, mi Lord…?”
“Were it any other day…’ He looked up at her, 'I would’ve rewarded your insubordination by a trip to the torture dimension' His head lowered to give her a pointed look. 'Am I being clear ?”
Demencia gulped, “Yep-Yes !! a-Always, sir !' and, forcing a smile, she nervously backed away. 'a-Anyhoo I took enough of your time’ Her foot hit the abandoned corpse on the floor. ‘Oh you wanted me to send this to Flug right ??”
Black Hat didn’t dignify her with an answer. He had stilled in his new position, leant forward, elbows on the desk and hands joined, appearing to have become a statue. Merely staring at her. Menacingly.
“Consider me already in the lab, sir !!” She exclaimed as she swiftly threw the body on her shoulder and booked it backwards for the doors.
Once she passed the threshold, she chanced a glance back. He had stayed the same.
Demencia barely had time to snatch her ponytail out of the door frame before it violently slammed shut, seemingly by itself.
SLAM
The sound reverberated through the whole mansion.
It felt like a mocking echo.