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Chapter Text

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I would shun the light, share in evening's cool and quiet
Who would trade that hum of night?
For sunlight, sunlight, sunlight
But whose heart would not take flight?
Betray the moon as acolyte
On first and fierce affirming sight
Of sunlight, sunlight, sunlight. –Sunlight, by Hozier

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Upon stumbling into Pentagram City, chances are your first act will be fumbling, groping about for a light. It must be said that you will be in all great likelihood, be wholly disappointed on that front. It is too dark, for the likes of real stars. It is too dark, for anything.

Sinners stagger into being, or nonbeing, at the beginning and end of the world, where the smog accumulates with all the alarming intensity of an invasive species. A sky the color of congealed rust appears to have been impaled by the belching factory chimneys that appear to have punctured the horizon. The artificial glare of electric lights murmur and mutter in frets of static. The streets with some dubious notoriety (Which is to say practically all of them) become glistening crimson tributaries that hold the sky.

Everywhere, everywhere, the pulse of bloodshot, watching eyes. There are far too many to place coins over. Sinners can have a staring match with them at their leisure, but it’s akin to having a staring match with the void. The void does it better. Still, better to watch the burning of the world, the sickly-sweet burning of flesh, then to be on a one-way collision course with yourself when you see your appearance in puddles of scarlet that run so thick they look like pools of brimming ink.

No sinner likes their appearance. Anyone whom insists to the contrary is lying. When you’ve got little, perhaps the more you simply have to boast. A sinner’s reanimation is both a parodic distortion and something cuts closer to the truth of you more so than one’s human body ever could. And even the most world-weary sinner has to admire the fact that there was no half-assing misery in the insidious designs of this dark topography. It wasn’t enough, to be flung in a perpetually-burning, nightmarish dystopia with no hope of checking out early, save for a sinner meeting the business end of an angelic weapon during exterminations. A body could very well become a casket, a mobile hell in a living hell. Only there’s not much living to be had for much of its citizens. And there’s little rest to be found here, either. The punctuation of ozone and the sickly-sweet must of urine persist.

Brothels have playplaces for children’s birthday parties. Porn matinees have early afternoon matinees, or in some particularly-colorful productions, 3-D Glasses. Drug usage is so rampant, restaurants had opted to simply have Crackpipe and Non-Crackpipe Seatings. The hardware stores had different sections for regular paint, and the industrial kind reserved specifically for huffing. The grocery store made two different sections for two entirely different kinds of coke. The city sidewalks are so pockmarked with the thin glisten of needles one might ostensibly think they were searching for a straw of hay in a needle stack. Imps, made outliers underneath their own horizon, might be found fumbling in the heaving trap heaps for food.

Hell was most uncanny not when the likes of creatures whom resembled nothing so much as stars in their own horror film franchises tore open throats for a scrap of pavement in territory. It was when it really looked much the same as Earth. Should you be unfortunate enough to visit Pentagram City, it will oblige you. Alas, it is not the sort of place anyone but the likes of destroying angels visit with a ticket back home in their pocket. It has all the gravitational hold of a black hole.

The clocktower strikes the hour one afternoon so murky with miasmic fog it squints to see itself. Whistling melodiously, with all the ease as if he were in a park studded with flowers, a trim silhouette neatly steps over a collapsed drunk upon the sidewalk. Amidst the slow, monotonous bleed of newsprint upon damp, cracked cement, where the surprise of a stray flower grows, a silhouette briefly pauses. They straighten their already smart, crimson pinstripe suit. The lapels are slightly tattered, fluttering in the hot wind like red flags.

A pair of thieves eagerly raiding a nearby pawnshop take one curious look at the flash of scarlet passing in the corner of their eyes, and drop the television they were carrying before bolting in terror to get out the newcomer’s path. Shadow convulsing in silent chuckles, Alastor Duvalier looks down at the shattered, sparking remains of the broken open shattered glass upon the street. The proper way, of displaying the likes of a television screen.

His smile deepens. All of the red of his apparel bleeds upon the page. The quiet pulse of an ember, that might yet wake flame. He carries a dark walking stick of marbled wood.

Nimbly stepping over a flower growing in the cracks of the scarred sidewalk, languid as a body of water in July, or the dancer that he is, Alastor folds his arms behind him at he takes off a brisk clip. Brightening upon glimpsing a plump cat demon in smart pinstripe overalls at a crosswalk, Alastor hastens over to greet them. “Hel—” His voice drifts in and out of the rippling static, a strong voice upon an uneasy frequency.

Greedily, the cat turns around, beady eyes hungry, as if in hopes of spotting a potential mark. Then, they pale as abruptly as if confronted with their mother’s ghost. The demon proceeds to dive off the sidewalk straight into incoming traffic, anguished yowls caterwauling in their wake. Alastor’s hand, raised in greeting, slowly lowers. The smile does not quite disappear from Alastor’s face—for never it truly does—and yet something hardens beneath it.

Determined to enjoy the rest of his stroll, Alastor continues walking on. A one-eyed parrot demon shrinks back into the throat of an alleyway at the telltale clickclickclick of Alastor’s smart cane, eyeing Alastor with the apprehensive distaste Alastor eyes dogs. A demon whose head resembles nothing short of an enormous, golden slot machine, emerges from a 117, clutching a handful of scratch tickets. Alastor brightens. “Top of the morning to you, good sir!”

Whirring around at the infamous voice, the slot machine hurriedly grabs the crank adjacent his head, and pushes it down. In a whirring of gears and cherries, the words OH SHIT appear thrice upon the slots. With that, the demon flings down the tickets and flees for his life, diving into a nearby dumpster, hurriedly closing the lid behind him.

“Typical.”  Alastor snorts, strolling on beneath the broken streetlamps, long ago gutted for their wiring. “You go on one little rampage—” Admittedly one was a conservative estimate. “—and everyone thinks: ‘Oh, goodie. There goes the neighborhood’ every time you walk by.”

When Alastor had first arrived in hell, or hell arrived in him, there had been that little inconvenience of no one fearing him. That was easily amenable enough, being a voodoo practitioner and an excellent showman. Now, there was that little inconvenience of virtually everyone fearing him. Alastor is admittedly a bit more at a loss as to what to do with that. It was what he wanted, what he thought he wanted. The stagnant drift of stale air however, ultimately wasn’t a very riveting conversation partner. Admittedly, it could only have more IQ than say Vox.

Alastor makes a face upon realizing that he inadvertently skirts the Entertainment District now, so lost in thought had he been. The heave of skyscrapers seem more like ascending scales of glass upon metallic trellises. The luxury apartments and towers of hell’s elite might as well occupy their own cosmos upon the Gram, as the citadel was called for short. He passes by a luxury electronics store, allowing himself to quietly seethe upon passing by a window display of blaring televisions. It’s a glaring assault of the senses, the Vees’ monopoly on the television industry; the 1000 channels were all the Vees, in various different spellings. More than one television in the display mysteriously implodes in on itself as if short-circuiting, sputtering. One gawping Pout fish demon, glistening liberally with sweat, flattens himself against the brick wall as if royalty passes.

Rippling with dark static, fair mood now made grim, Alastor stalks off with a smile-shaped grimace. “All hat, and no cattle.”  The fact that the populace still fears the Radio Demon after the farce of the Demon Duel is admittedly some balm to Alastor’s straining nerves. Briefly, from above his spectacles, his eyes lift, narrowing at the lurid fixtures of V Tower. The gilded bordello building was the tallest of all buildings in hell, save for the Morningstar’s Palace. The ugly structure rose out of the ground like one enormous middle finger to the tenements in the distance, like an obelisk to its own opulence. The Vs headquarter was, and is, an act of devouring.

It was on top of that very tower that Alastor and Vox had stared each other down in torrents of rain, circling one another like the foregone conclusion that they perhaps were from the start. Vox’s fatal had been to love Alastor, or the facsimile of love, anyway. Alastor’s miscalculation had been to assume Vox was far classier a man than he ever was. Willing and able to meet him for a tasteful gentleman’s duel to the death. One-on-one.

He might start might laughing, if ever he thought he’d stop.

Alastor’s eyes become open wounds, specifically of the stab variety, at the memory when Valentino and Velvette ambushed him, Vox crumpled, shivering in his own shadow. A dot hog vendor scrambles to hide beneath their cart, not wishing to run afoul of Alastor. Not for the first time, nor the last, Alastor wonders what possible sport there is, in hunting with the likes of rabid dogs.

“Hate to tell you this, old chum, but you’ve already good as well declared yourself the loser.” The fact that Alastor’s smile was now scarlet was no deterrent as he forced himself upright, clutching his ribcage. “You’ve already proved you simply can’t win a fight on your own.”

Fraying wires sparkling alive like hissing snakes, a staggering Vox took Alastor apart with his eyes. “In case you haven’t noticed, you outdated, shriveled old relic.”  And all the sweet, cloying ache of longing, and all the vitriol of sheer hatred, came tumbling out like arsenic put to honey. “You’re the one, who’s isolated yourself from anyone and everything that might’ve saved you.” Vox saw fit to spat on his bleeding form, screen still fragmented in spiderweb cracks. “And now you’re gonna die. And you’re gonna die alone.”

Yes, Alastor will kill him. Alastor decides this as casually and banally as he does upon ordering Earl Grey tea at a café that afternoon. The waiter’s hands shake so much he nearly drops the cup. Alastor quietly nurses the bitterness, savoring it.

Of course, this was scarcely settled. The one last, gentlemanly kindness Alastor can grant the likes of an old friend is to kill them by his own hands. The why of it has already been made clear. The How of it, however, still eludes Alastor as his hands fold over his teacup, surprisingly hungry for the warmth.

The Vees, as they currently stand, are far too powerful a syndicate for Alastor to take on singlehandedly. Cast your sights upon one; you invariably got three free for your trouble. It makes Alastor’s ego smart, among with the stark confession notes of scar tissue beneath his scarlet clothes. The Vees possess in their dragon’s horses an empire of souls at their disposal. Much of the products being manufactured in the coughing chimneys at the industrial plants belonged to them. There’s even talk of them making contracts with Mammon to sell and produce their wares in the Greed Ring. Each day, their presence grew like a stain.

Alastor’s shadow, longer than he, ruffles around the silent spasm of a growl. “Calm down, old chum.” Throwing the rest of his untouched muffin for the birds to enjoy, Alastor rises, and sets off his way again. The rare park makes him lift his head; a public one dedicated in the Queen’s name. You didn’t see the likes of public projects like that nowadays.

Upon glimpsing a nearby pair of elderly demons playing chess with one another at a spindly table, Alastor glides over with all the grace of an emerging debutante. If he had his fedora, he would’ve lifted it in afternoon regards. But the demons flee like the rabbits they are upon his approach, before Alastor can even speak. Their chess game remains abandoned upon the table.

Humming, picking up a White Queen Piece, Alastor turns it over in his hand. “There’s no need to outpower,” He muses, sliding the Queen Piece forward upon the checkered board. “What you can yet outwit.” Vox had amassed the likes of an enormous empire. And yet even a King could be checked, with the correct maneuvering. The painstaking waltz of the right pieces, at the right intervals. There had to exist, in all the vastness of hell, a loophole dark and deep enough that the Vees could yet be shoved into like an open manhole. A finishing move that could yet be extrapolated from his back pocket. Even the Vees were not entirely invulnerable, to the likes of hellish gravity that bound them all.

Save for Alastor, whom had made it his life, and his afterlife’s mission to break the laws of gravity. His chuckle marinates with the likes of a dark sweetness.

His Shadow takes it upon himself to move a Bishop adjacent Alastor upon the board. Upon completing their game, in which Alastor both invariably won and invariably lost, he pockets the Queen Piece, without quite knowing the why of it. Yawning, Alastor decides to take one last jaunt before returning home. His boots give pause upon passing a new butcher shop. Alastor’s empty stomach prods itself.

Before he can enter, he spies a lamb demon a pace ahead of him. In a relaying of muscle memory that had followed him even after his original muscles have long ago atrophied, and given themselves up to daisies, Alastor springs to open the door for the little one. Etiquette, Alastor, etiquette, Maman surely would’ve insisted. “Pardon me, ma’am.” The shop bell annunciates its name in tinkling. So innocuous, it could only be a warning.

Pleasantly surprised, the lamb flashes him a rare, warm, grateful smile before entering. If she knew whom Alastor was, she scarcely seemed to know it. For once, Alastor is not sorry to not be recognized. The daily static that characterizes every, increasingly-monotonous day life in hell recedes just a little bit from Alastor’s vision. For the first time that day, someone deigns to meet his eyes, if only just in passing.

But this clarity is not longwithstanding. The hulking shadow of a great boar demon in a smock spotted with blood and grease seizes the lamb in a headlock. The consequential cry carries throughout the shop like a dying fall: “Let go of me! Let go! Please!”

Alastor’s hand freezes upon the doorknob. His countenance calcifies, pales, becomes as good as a smile-shaped scar. The air gluts itself upon the lamb’s terror, the ravening edge of hunger. Alastor’s eyes flicker. The glistening, thick, fat, knife upon the butcher’s belt gleams. A shadow looms itself upon the floor like a fresh inkstain, writhing as if it would quite like to cut itself free from the serrated, glasslike teeth of a trap.

H̴̼͍̊͆͗è̴̬͖ ̵̜̱͎͂͝m̴̡͑í̷̠̜͎͖̾g̷̘̫͒̌̒h̵̙̪͐̀̕t̷̘̀ ̸̟͉̈́͜ḇ̸̨̰̪̽e̵̢̖̤̜͆ ̶̯̦͑̏͐á̷̳̤ ̴̠̠̹̗̆͒b̷̡͙̍͂ǒ̴͚̈̚̚y̸̗͋̓̆̕ ̴̣͐̇̽̀í̵̡̥̮͆͝n̷͚̣̙̽̌̎ ̷̒̈́͗ͅN̵̜̖̖̘͂͘ḙ̴̛̠͕̃͋w̵͎̰̕ ̸̱̯̗͆O̶̥̱̾̑ř̴̝͚ĺ̶̹ȩ̶̬̙̰̇̒̒a̸̘̅̓̑͋n̵͕͌̚s̴̺̏͘͜ͅ ̴͓̋̑̊m̸͖̬̀a̷̛͖̗̱d̴͙̥̾́e̵͉͔͔̲̾ ̵̟͍̩̈̅͊͜Ó̴̟͕̋l̴͎̾͑͗͋d̶̮͕̠̈́̃͜ ̸̭͙̲̜̑Ọ̴̳̈͜ŗ̵̫̑̀ḷ̶̔͋̉͆͜ḛ̴͌͠a̵̛̮͍͆̒͗ņ̷̱̑̈̇̏͜s̵̜͉͎̮̐͒͠ ̷̨̛͐̾͛į̶͗̓n̶̢̢͕͐͛͝b̶̩̙͐͐e̸̔̓ͅt̸͖̖̃͒ẅ̶͇̬́e̷̛̩̋̆̿e̴̺͈̪͑̏͝n̵̫̞̽̑̋͌ ̸̦̖̖͙̈́̾t̷̫͕̬̏̊̅̀h̵̡͋͘͜ȅ̷̥̦̻̰ ̷̖̯̲͊ṡ̷̢̡̠̦̋̾͝t̴̛͉͖̽ų̵̬̰̞͒̋̕t̸͇̗͗͝͝t̶̡̹̍̈̄ę̸̝͗̽͛r̵̹͍̗͋͛͜ ̵̻̘͊ö̶̦̺̝́̔ͅf̷̬͙͗ ̵̛̻̒̐a̸̱̙͈͔͋̏̎ ̶̧̰͙́̽͐h̸̠̥͚͔̅͒͒é̵͈̄͠ä̴̯͈͈́r̸̡̼͕̐́̚̚t̵͕̏͘b̷̛̼̮̾̅ẻ̷̬̲͙̐ä̶̳̲́̾t̷̲͍̋͂.̸̞̹̩͕͋ ̸̻̑̈́͜Ḧ̸̬̭̘̺́̈́̀͝e̸̢̔̅'̴̢̮̘̅͠d̴̢̳̓̒̄ ̴̥̰͌̃͒͠o̴̗͉̳͇̚ṋ̸͆l̶̻͜͝͠ý̴̪̹̇̈͝ ̴͙͕̫̚ồ̵͕͇͘p̶̱̥̄e̵͙͓͓̅͊͠ͅn̶̹̼̏̚͘͜e̶̦̺̝͆͜d̵̝̗̦̅͒̽̑ ̵̧̎̐́t̴̤͑̃͝h̷̗̗͚̊e̷̙͎̎̒̅̏ ̸̢͎͖̆d̶̫́o̶͚̬̓ǫ̶̡͖̻͆̐́ŗ̵͖̻̦̋ ̵̛̛̘t̸͙̃̽͘o̵͔͓̅͐̀̚ ̷̦̟̪̕͝ā̷̮̞͕̊̿s̷͉̞̆͐͜͠k̵̺͈̩̝̈́ ̶̮̮͊̕M̴̧͉͎̙̌ḁ̷͊̈́m̴̫̘͔̳̏́a̸̡̭͍̝̽̽͠ṇ̷͎̝͆̎̄͜ ̷̗̠̗́͐ͅẅ̴̨̧͖́h̵̨̠̮̄́̈e̸̢̲͚͒̑͌͠r̵̛̠̝̅͆é̶̮̈́͠ ̸̳̋̎t̶͍̊̽͒̎h̷̘̥̖̦͂͑͒̀ẽ̴̝̫ ̶͚̘͆̕̚͠ͅŝ̵̥̟̘e̷͙͖͠ẃ̶̜̬̳̟̐i̵̮͔̙͋̾̅ṇ̶͓͖̓̿̍̕g̷̠͚̫̒ ̸̨̙̮̽̉̽̎n̶̥̣̞̜̑̈́͘ȅ̸̤̓e̴̡͕͖̓̄d̵͔͓̊̾̉̉l̶̘̿̄e̸̪̬͇͎͂̈̾̐ ̷̧͚̙͐w̷̲̐͌͝ȁ̷̛̦̳̖̞̿ş̷̼͚̩̈́̍̌ ̸̮̣́͊͆à̷͔͙̮́n̵̗͛d̶͈̩̗͑͒͜ ̷̨̼̪̅P̷͓͒̇͑a̵̻̯̥̳̔͠ṕ̷͖̗̓̽͆a̵̲̮̯̞̎̕͠ ̵͍͚̈́̓̑t̴̲͒͆̋h̷̯̙̤̼͂͂̌́r̶͇͖̭̉̔e̷̢͚͔͂̚w̷͔̖̒̐̍͘ ̷̖̭̈́͌̓h̵̼͚̭͆̑ͅe̶̡̲͍͕̍̋̔r̸͈̜̯̃ ̶̪̣͉̎̆͝â̵̱̩̓͋ǵ̴̫͉̻̾̂̓ͅä̴̰͉́̽̂̚į̶̱̝̄̋͌ͅn̴͕̜͙̽̅̄̾s̴̝̩̏͘ť̴͙͊͠ ̸̧̧̳̫͌͛͆̚ṱ̷̙̘̓̀h̸͔̫͗̃̇e̷͙͇͚̋́ ̸͎̹̟̥͗w̷̩̒͗̓̐ä̷̼͓̫́l̵̻̲̩͋ͅĺ̵̢͝ ̸̖̆̚â̷̢̢͑ ̵̙̺̥̓c̸͉͖͑́å̶̭͍̗͝t̵̥̺̓͐͐a̴̺̬̔͛̀͘ͅc̵̢̏͠l̷̦̬̹̓y̷͙̟̲̑͆̀̓s̵͙̖͉̆̄͂͋m̶͍͍̱̖͠ ̷͈̹̝̎͝ͅǒ̷ͅf̴͔̈́ ̴̛̝̀̓͒s̵͕̺̈́c̴̞̪͚̍̆r̶̡͇̃̍͝ę̵͓͈͈̒a̴̗̽͂m̸̢͎̹̊̑ş̸͙̻̮̔̓̔̕ ̵͎̥͂̈́ͅ

The pupils of Alastor’s eyes take flight as the whites turned black.  His face is rendered ominous underneath the skewed, chiaroscuro pseudo-lighting panel above them. The door fell shut behind him, that bell tinkling inanely once more. Falling still, the lamb went stricken as the butcher rounded upon the entity that had swollen itself out of all human or demonic proportion.

“You know,” And the static makes him near inaudible, even as it builds to a roar in his ears, a nightmare in motion. Towering, horned, grotesque, horns branching like bare trees, the entity’s eyes appear to be bleeding. “I do really hate those who can’t show a little respect, for those of fairer means.” Briefly, it contemplates the wares in the meat freezer.

Trembling like mad, the lamb at least has the wherewithal to pull herself free, scrambling away as the butcher staggers back, mind blank as a spotlight.

Alastor is a strange geography. Bleeding sigils are cut into his skin. Those fathomless eye sockets swivel back upon the butcher, cowering as if upon the slabs of the marbling counter no better than a morticiary table. The plunging, recesses of the meat freezer. “It’s rather distasteful.”  The entity heaves itself forward. One step. And another. This ravaging, ravaged silhouette is appetite put to sight. “Like bad meat.”

H̵̤̋̀̑̒ù̴͕m̴͍̼̔͠m̷̜̬̏̌̊͜i̸̩̝̖͍͋̏͝n̷͙͑̀̂̕g̴̜̠͋̽͌͝ͅ ̴̢̧̪̭͘a̶̡̭̐̉̍̕ ̶̟̠̦͈̔̍̚͝t̵̪͒̅͋͌u̷̙̙̟̓͜n̵̡͂ě̶͇͍̽͜ͅ ̶̧̛̰͔̤̀̈́̉l̵̿͌̑́͜į̷̠̗̯̉̊͘͝k̵̨̘̏͝ë̶̦̱̻̾͆̓ ̴̗̰͖͓̌͘̕͠a̶̫͆ ̸̲̭̯̞̐̎̀͋c̶̘̿͊͂͑ḩ̵̤̻̱̑̆͗͝ö̵̦ḯ̷͔͜ͅr̵̦̓́͝b̵̪̏o̷̢͇̳̬̿y̸͎̲̩͋̍̃ ̴̦͎̺̍̓̏̚J̵̲̈́̈o̶̡̮͈̽͛̀s̴̛͉̯̯̓ḫ̸̖̣̼͛́́͝ú̶̙̘̭̙͗̕ȁ̸̡͙͗͠ ̵͊̀̓̋ͅF̵̟̘̾͒ï̵̜̬͋t̴̪͕̮̂ ̴̯̰̖̬̈́̌͝Ţ̴͖̒͠ȟ̴͎͋͌̚e̷͓̔̋ ̴̟̹͛̉̔B̸̭̀̾̂a̴̖̓͛t̸̤̉̉͜t̸͇̹͗̒̈́ľ̵̖̭̀è̸̡͕͉͐̓ ̴̧̗͓̱̿̀õ̶̭̦f̸̲̂͋̊ ̷̨̨̮̏̽́͘J̵͕̜̃e̸̟͚͌̇͊r̴̻̙̐͋̌͂i̶̗͗̌̕c̴̛̻͈̾ḥ̶̲̓͆͝ǒ̴̧͈́̓ ̴̬̓A̴̫̋͛̂n̴̜̠͚̄̆̌̋d̴͙͆͊̇̈́ ̴̹̓T̶͓͛̚͝͝h̴̜̙̔̍̄̑e̸͕͙̘͗̌ ̶̢̳̆W̶͎͗ȧ̸͎̿͂̃l̵̡̗̳̱̈́̈́͋͐l̷͚̺͋̒̂̕s̷̙͈̉̀̌͠ ̸͍̭̀͌̎̔C̵͖̈́ō̴̫͍͑̿̏m̴͓͕͓̓e̸͓͇̼͔͛͗ ̸̦̔͝T̵̤̱͖́̔́́u̷̜̣̬̬͋m̷͓̬̭͎̊ḇ̶͗̿l̴̈ͅĭ̵̧̐ṉ̷̢̻̀̍̚ģ̴̣͙̆͌͠ ̶̢̗̅̽̽D̷̨̼̝̃̃o̸͚͎̾͑͒͐͜w̷͓̎̊͊̄n̴͔̞͐́,̸̟̦̜̌̋̆͐ ̸̢̡͉̀̀̆À̵̳̝̅ḽ̸͔̘̝̈́͆a̵̠̝̳͋̒̿́ş̴͍̲͐̅͆͂͜t̸̘̅ơ̵̯̋r̵̠̺̝̖̐ ̸̫͉͈̫̋͌̾ḋ̶́̌͜e̴̲͊́͑́s̵̺̾̍̓̔c̸̜̈́e̷̟͊ṅ̸̛̥̅d̴̙͝s̷̥̮̒̈̆̚.̷̳̿ ̸̛͍͈͖̇͂̇W̶̫͖̺̃̿̑͘ř̴̜̟͘i̸͚̓n̶̳̥̣͗̋g̷͔͇̗̱̋̊͛͝i̵͓͖̼͎͊̈̔͑n̶̥͛́̃ġ̶̣ ̴͍̯͉͒̏h̷̖̲̍́̚͝ḛ̴͖̰̿̀r̴͇̙̗̔ ̷̡̱̐t̸͚̒e̶͔͆̅͗a̸̛͎̣͎̺̎̾̈r̵̭̹̋́̕í̵̜͠ń̴͇̩͍̰g̸̬̩̅̋̈́ ̷͓̱͚̋͘͘ę̶͌̏̏y̶̮̬̒͘e̶͔̝̰̎́͑͛ͅs̴̨̘̣͉͠ ̷̗́ș̴̈́̇̚ḧ̸̳͕̞́̏̈́͜͝ǘ̸̖̗͕͑t̴͔̉̂͒̚ ̷͎̮͇̩͊͌̋́ḁ̷͇̫̍͠g̷̘̿̕͜a̵̪͆̈́͒͝į̸̥̟̐͋̈́͝n̴̡͝s̶͓͑̌t̴̯͙͕́̽ ̴̨̦͊̈t̶̥̖̘͆̂̀h̶̯͖͈͗̚ë̶̖͙̺ ̵̖̲̤̖̃͗s̸͉̜̩͓͛̀̏͝ŏ̴̡̘̹͝r̵̎̊̊̚ͅḏ̸̠̜̈́̚͠͠i̸̞͍̼͌̉d̷̬̼͚̆̃́̀ ̷̨̖̜͒s̶̪̩̰͒č̷̘̽̽͘͜e̶̛̠̦̻n̸̡̯̳̓̈́͂͝è̵̱̭̜̌͐͜,̵͉̖͂̓̄ ̷̠͛͘̚͝ẗ̸̖̥̪́̈́̒̚h̴̖͈͓̙͊͘e̷̛̬͆̊͊ ̸̛̥̕l̸̻̰͊͌͠a̶̢̅̓m̷̤̘̫͌͒͘b̷̨͓̀̈́͑ ̵̡͕̦̃̋̎f̸͓̍̒̀̏ḻ̶̡̧͕̌̂̉ẻ̴̻̼̻́ê̴̅͝ͅs̵̡̍̃͝ ̶̧̬̈́̏́͝f̶̼͒̏̍̕ỏ̸͎̩̯̍̉͘ŗ̶͍͉̝́̈́̽ ̴̜͉̎h̶̩͍͓͋͘é̴̠̪̰ͅr̶̙̎͊̉͗ ̴̫͌̀͂l̵͙̼͕̐͂̇̀i̶͙̻͎͐͝f̶̫̪̫̹̓̆́ĕ̷̥͔̯̐͒.̴͔̫͔̾ ̵̨͇̞͎̅͠T̶̨̾͐̐̐h̷̢̛̯̰͓̀͆̀e̶̞̼͈͑̽ ̷̳͓̄b̴̫̆͑̔l̸͉̗̪̆ȯ̵̗̭̘̋̊͘o̴̢͇̭̚d̷͔̿̈́̈́͑ ̵͎͉̏͑w̸̙̻̝̕͠ḁ̵̡͉̪̒r̵̗̳͍͛̉m̴̩̦̹͐̃̈̕s̸͉̈́͑́͊ ̸̜̈͐͐͝ţ̴̋͊h̴̤̙͈̯̃͑͒̕ȩ̶̄̉̅ ̶͈͉̑͝͠f̷̧̩̾̒͂͠l̷̡̲̰͚͑́͑ò̵̭̻̌̈͗o̴̙͉̮͝r̷̨͇̺̣̓.̸̘̳̜̮̇͘ ̷͇͇̂͆̾̐I̴̢̭͚̹̒́̔t̸̙͈̼͊͜ ̵̯̲͔̺͗̈́̀w̵̗͙͆́̚a̴͙͈̯͒̈́̓̀ṙ̴̖͌̅m̵̮͇̎̆͘͝ŝ̶̰̩͎͓ ̴͖̓t̸͙͎̓́̋̍h̸͇̻̗̪̎̈́̈́̀e̶̻̐͑̑͝ ̶̺̑ẅ̷̤͎́͂̀à̸͔̌̑̅l̸͓͖̦̠̍l̴̥̥̉͋̊s̴̭̫̓̌͐̕.̴̻̠͉̓ ̴̢̹̪́͘Į̷͓̈́ṯ̴̤̉̒ ̶̡̮̖͔͂͒̓̈́w̴̘͗̏a̴̭̐ȓ̴̘m̵͙̔s̸̬̮̖̘͆͑̚ ̸̱̺͛t̵̩̃̿͑̆h̷̠̀̌͑ȅ̸̙͔̜̎̌͠ͅ ̷̘̤̜͐͂͋̇s̷̭̳̺̖̿͊̚p̴̪̀̌͜å̷̰̐t̸̘͙̅̀t̷̬̥̊͒͂͝ē̵̬̳̻̱̚r̶̥͇̜͎̋́̉e̷͙̹͚͘d̶̹͆͗ ̷̡̨̝͕̈́̒̊͐d̵̯̯̀̿̀į̷̦͐̀s̸͈̾͌͆͠p̷̛̼̩̈́̌̍l̷̺̊̓a̷̭̜̒͗̕ÿ̴̥̜͉͑̚̚.̶̗̑̒ ̷͇̦͐S̸̹̊ọ̵̮̀͂ͅo̶͍̩̠̒͗̅n̸̢̩̣̤̊ ̶̞̾̃ͅȋ̶̺̞̱̌̆͝t̴͈̐ ̵̪̈͋w̷͉̆͐́á̸̯̜́͝r̸̗̠͚̓̀̒m̶͎̗̞͐͊̉͒s̶͙̼̿ ̴̟̖͎͂A̷̗̠̣͊̀̕l̶̠̻͉̞̆͝à̷̟̱ş̸̖̟͎͛t̸͇͆̕ö̶͙́ṙ̸̬͎̌͜͝'̴̢̠̓̓̀̚ͅs̸̳̺̱̒ ̴̤͂s̸̲͍̞̆̈͂t̵̡̳̳́̂̒o̷̦͛ḿ̵͈̬̆͛͆a̵͍͈̳͆̈́̈͠c̴̛̥̹̰̍̌͐ẖ̷̪̯̀̒̓̽,̵̱̏ ̶̫̬͝ͅͅṱ̷̝͗̚ḥ̷̠̠̋o̸̹̓͗͗̉ů̴̹̰ġ̶̢̮̣̾́͗ḧ̶̭̗̮͝ ̸̝̦͑h̷̠̖̹̮͒͑͘͠į̶̮̜̓s̷̟̈́̏͝ ̴̻̟̺͐͆̊ͅc̵͕͙̳̅̇ḩ̸̢̃͑̀͗͜e̵̛̮̟͈͉̓s̸͇̼̺̓͛t̷̬̒ ̴͇̣̲͙̈͒r̸̢̛̞̫̰͂̒e̷̳͔͌m̸̡̤̺̿̄̑͝ȃ̴̛̯̠̂͠i̴͖̎ń̴̬̃͛s̸̰͖̄̆͝ ̷̘̠̊c̷̖̫̜̝̎̾͌͠ó̴͎̼͜l̴͔̉̆d̶̬̠̖͈̄̄̆̕.̵̭̮̌͜

The door tinkles once more, as Alastor takes his leave. The nice thing about dressing in red is that you don’t really need to worry about bloodstains. He’s saved a king’s ransom in drycleaning. “Not quite as tasty as venison.” Alastor wasn’t much of a pork eater, but waste not, want not. The Great Depression had impressed upon him the importance of never letting a perfectly good meal go to waste. “But it’ll do.” The last word punctuates itself like a flourish, or a resounding outro upon a piece of instrumental music.

Whistling once more, unsurprised to see that the lamb had fled for her life—smart little miss—Alastor turns and heads for home in the now silent streets, carrying a bag that quietly drips, drips, drips, in his wake. Pausing at a bench to partake of his dinner, Alastor finds his stomach pleasantly glutted; above it, his chest cavity feels the stuff of a casual vacancy. Doubtless the monotony of these restless days of fruitless scheming is catching up with him. Nothing the old phonograph and a brief visit to Cannibal Town can’t fix.

~o*oOo*o~

The very first words six-year-old Charlie Morningstar, whom wrinkles her nose like a bunny should you call her Charlotte, can recollect her father, the Fallen Angelic King of Hell, the First and Last Prince of Sin, ever saying to her were as follows: “You mustn’t go over the wall, darling.”   

Faintly as the illustrations of a timeworn children’s illustration, Charlie can remember having toddled in the vast outposts of the magnificent palatial gardens. She might’ve perhaps been two. She’d padded past flagstones, flowering trumpet vines scaling an intricate, statue of Lilith. In the impeccably-maintained geometry of everything, there was a living mural of color. Amiable ducks bobbed in little ponds amidst twinkling courtyard footstone. A mosaic of a great apple amidst an enclosure of white lilies. Little flowering saplings showed their faces almost timidly here upon the verdant grounds, as if peeking at onlookers from beneath the splay of their fingertips. 

 But Charlie’s eyes had been upon the great, towering walls, and what might yet lie beyond them beyond the immaculately-kept Magne District where the high of society held their court. Large red eyes aglow with curiosity, she gripped a flowering vine, intending to scale the wall. But Lucifer himself had hurried over to gingerly scoop her up amidst the red of the sky tapered just a little by gold here. “There’s nothing for you out there, sweetheart.”

And Charlie had said nothing as Lucifer carried her away to a nearby weeping willow tree deeper into the garden, where Lilith was waiting with a luxurious picnic spread for their lunch. Charlie had wondered even then that for all Mama’s and Papa’s talk of forsaking Eden in the name of freewill, Lucifer and Lilith appeared hellbent to have brought it with them. A garden, that locks. Not long after that day, Lucifer will breathe animation into Charlie’s beloved, winged stuffed goats, Razzle and Dazzle.

While ostensibly Lucifer had claimed it was to give Charlie playmates, Charlie soon suspects they’re also, like much of the servants around her, her guards and minders. Razzle and Dazzle are good fun, especially because they’re musically-minded and delight in playing upon the piano. They’re also liable to bleat up an alarm whenever Charlie strays too close again, to the garden walls.

Things had been different back then, when they still picnicked together. Lucifer had still been an architect always in-between six or seven creative public projects. Lulu World, the playpark, was his pride and joy. There’d been the dazzling architect with a wink still in him. The father whom had scooped his toddler up, twirling her around as Charlie giggled in delight. Lucifer had been a blur of motion; Lilith best described in stillness as she’d looked warmly on, her eyes shimmering with conspiratorial fondness. Between them, Charlie, a quivering wick of sheer joy.

That was back Lucifer still liked to do, much of anything at all, beyond ruminate in his study, More nights then she was years old, Charlie came to peek at him through a crack in the door, her little brow furrowed. The carrying power of your own echo began to magnify. More and more often, she came to miss, someone whom was in the house without being present at all. That had been before Lilith was understood best in her absence in her own home; her calendar as Queen of Hell began to swell, rising up like floodwater.

A great deal happened Before, Charlie supposed upon turning six, scurrying down the stairs and the pillared walkways flanked with gargoyles. She was giddy with excitement the way only a birthday child could be, dancing back and forth with excitement. She’d skidded to a halt in her stockinged feet upon discovering both Mama and Papa’s seats were empty at the dining room table, beneath the opulent webs of crystal and gold. Lilith had gone to a benefit hosted by the Von Eldritch family. And Lucifer, whose memory was pockedmarked by something insidious, was asleep at his desk when Charlie peeped in to check in on him. She’d wrapped a throw blanket covered with rubber ducks around his shoulders before tiptoeing away.

Charlie had thought better of saying anything at all to the servants as they served her a bowl of peach oatmeal that looked anemic beneath the chandelier. It had stuck in her throat, which in turn felt like a gordian knot as her eyes pricked with tears. Her crumpling face burned as Razzle and Dazzle helplessly flanked her.

Days later, upon glimpsing his calendar, a despairing Lucifer had materialized into Charlie’s bedroom with presents. Lilith, to her credit, had the servants prepare a feast and lavishly-opulent, buttercream cake frosted with the Magne family motto: Donec mors nos. And Charlie had smiled politely, and clapped her hands at what seemed like the correct intervals to clap.

But it was, just the same, the kind of thing you can’t take back.

For all the great, architectural splendor of the palace gardens, the air in the Magne Household ran synthetic and sterile. There were flowers in nearby vases perched on spindly little tables with no apparent purpose, but they were plastic, as Charlie discovered upon smelling them. There’s a graying noxiousness around the color scheme in this house, as if the color had been washed out at some point. The ceilings are cavernous probably designed in such a fashion as to humble guests, and to impress upon them the importance of their own smallness. Certainly it’s not something Charlie has the luxury of forgetting.

For a huge house whose labyrinthine apple and snake-patterned halls sweep this way and that, as if they’d become lost on their way to wherever it was they were meant to be going, it does very little to actually allow light in. The stained-glass windows behind heavy-hanging velvet curtains and the paint upon them are more opaque than reflective; the effect is stifling.

There’s at least the reprieve of primary school in the Magne District, where the extravagantly wealthy send their children. It’s where little Seviathan von Eldritch likes gifting Charlie handkerchiefs on his social-climbing mother’s behalf, and where his sister, Helsa, likes to push Charlie in puddles on the playground.

But the rest of Pentagram City, which Charlie has not even seen, due to her parents’ preference she stay in the immaculately-tailored, elite circle of hell, might as well as far off a distance from her as heaven itself. It sounds just as appealing as Charlie scribbles in her sketchbook one evening alone at the dining table, languid as her rainbow crayon-rendered daydreams. She seated two of her dolls at the table beside her for company.

An imp butler named Mr. Hutz whose spine was stiff as wrought ironwork, whose pleas to simply call her Charlie fell upon impassive ears, bows. It’s an elegant daily choreography. "You'll be supping by yourself again this evening, Young Mistress. Sire and his good lady have reported that they are seeing to an urgent manner in the East Parlor.”

Charlie slumps in her seat with a groan bigger than she. The worst part isn’t being disappointed. The worst part is being unsurprised. “But I need to talk to them about my school’s recital next week!” At once, she fishes a paper from her ledger. “My music class is gonna sing and everything. I even got a solo. I want for them to be there!”

A slight inclination of the head; “My regrets, your grace. As always, I hope your dinner to be to your satisfaction.”

Not in the least bit hungry, even as another waiter brings a platter Oysters Rockefeller, Charlie mutters a forlorn thank you, lip protruding slightly as she chases the food about with one of her countless forks, monogrammed silverware polished to flashing like the candlesticks at the lonely great table. The chinks from her plate are soft, but they carry, here in this drafty place where Charlie’s heart squeezes itself like a hand around a stone.

She can’t think, to eat anything, even as a waiter hurriedly fills her glass. Charlie’s eyes briefly flutter shut. Her feet dangle in the air; the chair, among everything else, is much too big for her. She gusts a sigh.

At her wits’ end, Charlie hops down to her seat. A spark briefly conduits her eyes as they flash open. And to her own surprise, she scurries off, out of the dining room, past the frescoes of the Garden of Eden, up the East Staircase. She’ll ask, Mama and Papa to come to the recital themselves. To dinner. To do the things, that real people do.

Upon these walls, there are countless pictures of the Magne family. Lucifer’s interest in portraits and pictures skirt a quiet desperation. After all, he had no memorabilia of his old life to take with him but scars upon the falling way down. Charlie skids to a halt upon the red velvet shush of the carpeting. Inhale. Exhale. The muffled sound of voices. Her little hand reaches for the golden doorknob, briefly freezing over it, paralyzed. Charlie bites the inside of her lip hard. On the cusp of another exhale, she manages to open the stately white door, and tiptoe inside.

Lilith and Lucifer are both standing upright by the cold study hearth; there’s no flame within it, but there certainly is in each other’s eyes. And surely not the good kind that proceeds the giddy, mischievous, breathless adoration everyone had once known them for. Neither of them take any notice of Charlie, whom is clutching the recital advertisement. "For the last time, I don't want to go to Sloth." It’s not often Lucifer, whom so often waits for his wife to voice the first opinion, and then emphatically agree with it, raises his voice in such a way. Maybe to a demon caught embezzling from the hellhound shelters, but never, ever, ever, to his beloved wife. Charlie’s features wring themselves with distress. “I can’t believe, you went behind my back in such a way.”

Eyes lidding, Lilith gazes down at him. "You won't even consider it as a possibility!" She’s as striking a figure as she ever was in her wiry gown that glitters like black ice. But her once-luminous eyes are matted now, overtired. "You speak as if I held a penknife to your back, Luci. I merely made an appointment.”

Lucifer’s boot comes thundering down. “Without my consent!”

Lilith’s smoky voice emerges in the soft of a plea: “People have benefitted from everything Belphegor offers. If only you explained the situation, of course she'd make a clinic appointment for us. I'd go with you for a few days. Charlie won’t even notice that we’re gone.” For the first time, Charlie notices clutched within her mother’s opera glove hand is a purple pamphlet.

Something that looks suspiciously like fear does a violence to Lucifer before he turns away, striding to the setting sun pouring its dusk and death colors into the window. "People have also been reduced to eternal stupors thanks to these so-called Happy Pills, Lil. Every Ring has a fantasy. This is the Sloth’s ring specialty—that there’s a quick fix in a bottle for the right price. Now convenient, they offer rehab to get over the pills. The poison, and the cure!”

Lilith’s hand wrings the pamphlet, horns bristling beneath the pale sweep of her hair. It appears like she’s doing everything in her power to avoid cursing like a sailor on three day shore leave. "If you'll forgive me. What sort of state do you think you've been in, for the past few years?" Her eyes flash beneath their eyeshadow. "Or have you been in too far a stupor to answer that?"

For all Lilith’s visible restraint, Lucifer flinches as if she had backhand-slapped him, eyes filled with the only kind of hurt that someone with skin in the game can quite manage. "I wasn't aware that you thought I'd be more pleasant to be around, if only I had handy dandy candy, Lilith."

"That's not what I mean, and you know it." For all the poise Lilith has perfected, her face becomes knotted with sorrow. "I for my part wasn't aware that you'd be so insecure as to not even try them. You keep withdrawing from society more and more, Luci—I barely see even you anymore—”

Their voices rise like fever pitches in Charlie’s ringing ears as she helplessly looks back and forth between the two of them. She feels like she might be paralyzed in the looming throes of Lucifer’s shadow.

An incredulous bark of laughter with no laughter in it. Lucifer’s already-pale complexion becomes waxen. “You’re away, from sunrise to sunset—our daughter probably doesn’t even recognize you anymore!”

Biting the inside of her mouth so hard she tastes rust in the claustrophobic room metered in shadows and shouts, Charlie dully supposes if this is in fact a haunted house, perhaps it’s haunted by the three of them.

Stung, Lilith recoils, incredulity and outrage in arms for supremacy upon her features. "You speak of our daughter. What kind of example are you setting for Charlotte? That’s it’s acceptable, to shirk your responsibilities forever? All the events we used to attend together, I attend now on my stead! We’re still rulers! There is still work to be had! We must still serve the people. You'd ask," Lilith asks, her eyes flashing acidic now, breast heaving. "That I be the subservient and dutiful wife to you, while you make rubber ducks all day in a burning city? You would liken to take up, Adam's dominion? Are you unhappy, because you resent me, for your fall from grace? Is it Charlie, making you sick?!”

Rankling as if her spine is overtaken by fire, Lilith scales several octaves in mounting desperation to a crescendo: “IF NOT MEDICINE, WHAT WILL YOU TRY, THEN?! BECAUSE NOTHING DOESN’T SEEM TO BE WORKING!”

Aghast, gloved hands flying up in a pantomime of alarm, Lucifer opens his mouth, only for Charlie to fling her hands over her mouth. At last, Lilith sharply turns her head at the sudden movement, her features clouding with trouble. Lucifer’s eyes follow hers. Mortified, Lucifer staggers back, his gloved hand fumbling for the air as if the words can yet be stuffed back in his mouth, swallowed. Too late. The song can’t be unsung.

"Oh, hiya there, sport.” Lucifer’s voice is so buoyant on false cheer it scarcely believes in itself. “So good to see you, champ! Whaddiya,” His lips are so dry that it’s hopeless to wet them. “Whaddya…overhear?" 

Lilith side-eyes him, lips thinning as she too kneels, placing a steadying hand on Charlie’s back. Charlie says nothing where she’s effectively paralyzed. Her hollowing eyes ghost a forlorn pale light, plead against what is happening.

"Daddy," Someone says, with all the refrain of a dying fall. "Are you sick?”

Someone might’ve taken a taser for Lucifer’s spine. He sputters. “No, no, no honey—”

“Yes.” Lilith crispy retorts, unblinking. Her tone is smooth, though her hand presses more firmly against Charlie’s back. “That’s what we were just discussing, darling.” Discussing. Such a banal word, as if they were having mild and vague speech reserved for balls or playing billiards. As if Lilith didn’t nearly tear her voice and her heart open, accusing her beloved of cowardice.

Lucifer rankles like a wet cat. He might even hiss. “Don’t bring her—” His voice turns itself over as Charlie furtively stuffs the stupid recital advertisement from stupid school right inside her stupid pocket.

At a loss, Lucifer grasps Charlie by the shoulders. “It’s okay, champ! No need to look so blue. Heck, everyone disagrees sometimes!” It’s probably not the best time that it had been a disagreement that led to Lucifer and Lilith’s fall, making Charlie’s fate their own. “Everything’s going to be just fine.” He turns to Lilith for support. “Isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

No one replies. Lilith bows her head. Lucifer closes his eyes. The resounding silence is perhaps worse than the screaming. Fumbling, he pats Charlie on the head. “So, uh.” With one last, helpless look at Lilith, Lucifer bares a smile playing ding-dong-ditch on the threshold of deranged. He’s desperate for the air to release its stranglehold. “Tell ya what: Who wants some ice cream?”

At once, Lucifer materializes a great towering sundae in a splendid golden dish, lavished in syrup, in caramel, in cookie pieces, in rainbow sprinkles, whipped cream twinkling with flakes of gold and slices of apple. Lilith crosses her arms, features hardening with frustration all over again as she looks away.

Lucifer hurriedly presses the sundae into Charlie’s hands. “Huh? Huh?” It’s awkward, and it’s sad, like a minimum-wage clown performing at a teenage birthday party.

Charlie gazes at it silently. In truth, the void actively blooming in Charlie’s heart is rapidly overtaking her stomach, too. She’d never felt less hungry in all her existence. Slowly, as a small gesture of grace, she accepts it. But her face simply rejects a smile like a failed organ donation. “Daddy, if you’re sick, you should go to the doctor.” Bewildered, wiping her filming eyes, she stutters: “Why are you scared and mad about being sick?” When Charlie was sick, she took cough syrup well enough, or one of her mother’s healing melodies from The Song. “Please. I don’t understand.” Or, perhaps Charlie understands too much.

Lilith perks up. “Pre-cis-ly.” The word quarters itself, lays at their feet. “That’s just what I mean.”

Cornered by his wife and daughter, as well as by himself, Lucifer pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m not…look, kiddo. It’s getting late.” Once more, Lucifer pats Charlie on the head, and Charlie knows, as the grandfather clock, a majesty of glass and gold and gears, that she’s being dismissed. “This is…this is grown-up stuff your mother and I are talking here.” And Charlie could scream too for a change. Did Papa still think she was a hapless two-year-old whom could be appeased with ice cream?

Lucifer steers Charlie to the door, kissing her on the head. “Why don’t you skedaddle on back downstairs with your sundae, wash up, and head on to bed, huh?” Exhaustion takes a chisel to Lucifer’s features; he really was sick. Charlie’s heart pales with the effort not to burst into tears. “We’ll…we’ll talk soon. Promise. Kay?”

Lilith tilts at her. Charlie squirms. By Lilith and Lucifer’s mutual admission, Lilith is easily the more discerning of the two of them. “Was there,” Her cool, satin-gloved hand rests upon Charlie’s brow. Charlie leans into the touch. “Was there anything you needed, darling? Our apologies, for disturbing you.”

Charlie tucks her arms behind her back, turning to the side, lest her mother glimpse the paper in Charlie’s pocket. How can she ask her parents for anything just now? “I just came, to say goodnight.” She smiles so waveringly it might be made of saltwater.

Wincing apologetically, Lucifer nonetheless blows her a kiss. “We’ll see you in the morning with banana pancakes, kiddo. You just know it!”

Charlie takes her leave as quietly as she’d come, padding across the study. Lucifer’s features fall like thoughtless scaffolding as soon as the door clicks shut in the ornamental latch. “What happened to us, Lil?” He asks despairingly, sagging in his chair, head falling into his gloved hands. His wedding ring catches the light. “When did this happen?”

Lilith says nothing, but silently grips his shoulder from behind.

Settling the ice cream dish upon her little desk for Razzle and Dazzle to eat, Charlie flings herself upon her the pale pink of her tasseled canopy bed. Her smile turns itself inverse, pieces streaming down her face. Features crumpling, Charlie buries her head in a satin pillow, trembling around a rush of helpless sobs.

~o*oOo*o~

Not even bothering to touch the melting ice cream—no small gesture, since sugar constitutes two-thirds of their food pyramids—Razzle and Dazzle anxiously flit about her, nuzzling, bleating. They carpet her in a veritable zoo of fuzzy insentient plush animals. Razzle tries playing the rainbow-painted toy piano. Dazzle goes to the tea table, miming taking sips from the daisy-covered little cups. They’re pieces of Lucifer’s heart, and they want so badly, to console.

Charlie, as it so happens, is inconsolable.

Twisted up in a blanket cocoon, her mind replays Are you unhappy, because you resent me, for your fall from grace? Is it Charlie, making you sick, like the notes of an intrusive thought, metered to her least favorite song. Snuffling, features flushed with anguish—what did I do, what did I do to make you so unhappy, I’m sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry—Charlie curls into a smaller, and smaller yet ball, hugging herself.

Little wonder Papa had become a sentient closed door against the world, particularly against her. And it was a losing battle. He'd already given up, judging by his refusal to get help for whatever it was that clearly was worse than your average cold. And Lilith was not far behind; she’d already proven that she was more than willing to leave a relationship if someone made her do all the work. Their family would be in shambles. Charlie wipes her face upon her nightgown sleeve. The sharp whine of a whimper carries as she attempts the task of being rid of herself. To disappear in proper.

Disappear.

Now there was a thinky-thought for the old noggin.  

Gasping, Charlie sits up boltright in bed, sending several stuffed animals rolling off. Her own audacity startles her not for the first time, nor the last that evening. She whom was a cardcarrying member of the Good Cupcakes Association at school. But it was an idea so ideal that it was an Idea+. Dazzle soars overhead, dropping her sketchpad. Charlie catches it, flipping it open to watercolored pages of spires. Soaring towers. City lights. Rainbows. The shining metropolis of her father’s kingdom. Away and above the garden. Granted, it was forever, in order to save her parents’ happiness from her,

Despite her great grief, Charlie finds herself, as she does a great deal of things, hugging her book with a thrill of gooseflesh rising up her spine. “We’re gonna see it all, fellas!”

Razzle tilts at her, clearly not keying upon what Charlie is getting at. “Baaa?” Dazzle, on the other hand, is shrinking back with apprehension at the prospect of one of Charlie’s Ideas.

Jolting all over again, Charlie rounds on her only, best friends. “Razzle. Dazzle. Shhhh.” She lifts a finger to her lips. “Let’s enter into a blood oath, not to tattle.” Then, Charlie makes a squeamish face as the goats simply trade off a glance. “Then again, I’m squeamish around blood, so let’s just shake hands—hooves? There we go.

“It’s gonna be too easy, for anyone to find me with a basic tracing spell.”  Charlie muses softly to herself. “I’m gonna need to get the tome from the master library for a blockage sigil to paint on me. That way, not even Prince Vassago could find me!”

Dazzle nods his horned head towards under the bed. “Baa?”

“No, we’re not playing Hide and Seek, Razzle.” Charlie smiles. “Well. We’re playing the Hide Part, anyway. First things first: I’mma need a proper disguise if I wanna look like a professional homeless person. I want them to take me seriously.” Features falling, Charlie slips into the closet to don her plainest, most innocuous hooded red cloak, one without a precious stone as a clasp. Charlie has spent so much of her life attempting to be seen, that it seems curiously fitting that she’s desperate to become a shadow in full.

“Baa?” Razzle looks in on growing concern as Charlie busies herself with filling her backpack. “Baaaa?” Dazzle’s hooves are already frozen over his mouth, eyes the size of dinner plates.

Forlorn, Charlie lifts her hands in a flurry of shadows, puppeting them across the powder pink walls, as Lucifer had taught her when she was much smaller: This one’s a duck. This one’s an elephant. The silhouettes of a man and woman. A little girl. Charlie wraps her arms around herself again as she slips on a pair of turquoise boots covered with apples. Her sotto voce slips out into song:

“I hear them whisper through the walls at night,
Voices sharp like shattered light.
A castle filled with golden halls,
But love feels faded, cold, and small.”

In mounting horror, the goats scramble to hurry themselves with barricading Charlie’s door with their bodies. Undaunted, Charlie watches the shadows play against the wall as her voice sets itself adrift:

“I see my Papa wiping his eyes.
Mama’s lost in heaven’s skies.
A princess should bring joy, not pain…
Maybe she’s the one to blame….?”

Seconds later; Charlie wills the shadowed specter of the girl to dissolve itself from the bones of this house. It seems like a mercy. The parade of wavering shadows give up the ghost as Charlie severs the spell, wandering to her little bookshelf.

“So she packs up her books and a silver comb,
Leaves behind her childhood throne—”

Both Razzle and Dazzle’s features are alive with dread as Charlie quietly takes out a piece of stationary and a little pen with an apple-shaped eraser. The crumpled note from school falls out upon the floor.

“With trembling hands, she writes a note,
Says, "Don’t come find me, let me go."

Don’t come find me, let me go."

~o*oOo*o~

“Shhh, Dazzling!” Charlie scolds as Dazzle bleats out a fervent SOS in Morse Goat. Hand flying to Dazzle’s mouth, Charlie tucks a wriggling Razzle under her arm. “Someone’s gonna hear you if you keep that up.”

Dazzle petulantly stuck out his tongue. “Baaaah.”

Charlie huffs, throwing her bag over her shoulder. “Look. You guys already promised me you’d stay quiet! We even shook on it! And don’t ya give me that look, Mister and Mister Wise Guy. You should know that handshakes are legally binding in hell. They decided upon it in the Supreme Court of Satan.”

“Baaaah.”

“Yes, hoofshakes, do so count.” Charlie releases Dazzle, pulls her hand away from Razzle’s mouth. Then, she clasps her hands in a plea, eyes huge. “C’mon, guys. I know your job’s to look after me. So, you simply come along with me! Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.”

Razzle places his head against Charlie’s side. The “Baaaaaaaah” that comes next is troubled and forlorn. Smile watercolored wistful, Charlie pulls them both in for a hug. “C’mon, guys. I don’t like this anymore than you do. But think of it as an adventure.”

Most reluctantly, the goats flutter behind her as Charlie pulls her door shut. Tiptoeing down the hall past an oil painting and a candelabra, Charlie gives pause outside Lucifer and Lilith’s bedchamber. It’s gone quiet.

Her voice emerges in a whisper:

“Runaway crown, city lights call,
Maybe without me, they won’t fight at all.
If I disappear, if I fade away,
Maybe love will choose to stay…”

With the biggest effort in her life, Charlotte Morningstar bows her head and walks on, past her parents bedroom.

~o*oOo*o~

Charlie’s hand wobbles as she squints to scribble the Spell of Binding runes upon her wrist in the enormous caverns of the library. Her nondominant right hand is a little wobbly in inscribing, the sigils a bit shaky. Charlie lowers her marker. The sigils glow silently upon the inseam of Charlie’s arm, tingling in their wake. Relieved, Charlie gusts another sigh. “At least it works.” She slips the book back among its countless fellows. “I can always keep touching it up with a marker to keep it fresh.”

Eyes welling at the knowledge that this will be the last time she’ll be in the library, one of her favorite chambers in the house, Charlie takes it upon herself to splay herself on the floor like a starfish, and hug the room. Rising, Charlie carefully tucks her hair beneath her red hood, and tiptoes out again. Her hand fumbles at her neckline upon realizing that her locket is still around her neck, one with her family’s portrait. Leaves it be.

“She trades her silks for travel clothes,
A locket tight in hand she holds.
Through hidden doors and secret ways,
She dreams of neon streets far away…”

Growing more and more unnerved by the minute, Razzle and Dazzle follow Charlie as they ascends an ornate, glassy, apple-shaped elevator. She hits the top floor button to make it glow. 13.

The glass dome lifts like a bubble, going higher, and higher, and higher, and higher, and higher, and higher, and higher, and higher yet. At last, Charlie emerges upon the marbled threshold of the palace. The blue cerulean wavering oval of a pool, and a swim up bar. Her mother’s favorite lounge chair by the water. Her father’s inflatable duck toys. Charlie looks on, from the top of the world. Her stomach might be a birdcage of butterflies. The wind rises.

“Baah.” Razzle jerks his hoof hopefully toward the elevator.

Bangs ruffling, almost smiling, Charlie strokes his horn. “I know. Last chance. But I need to do this.” Beneath the pale of the full moon, Charlie briefly holds her hands out and spins.

“So she steps through the gates, the stars shine bright,
A girl alone in the quiet night.
With hope and fear both hand in hand,
She takes her first step toward new land…

“Now, don’t transform, fellahs. You look very dapper as full-fledged dragons, don’t get me wrong. But we’d be spotted from miles away. You guys are just that dashing. Any chance ya both can fly me over to Pentagram City together?”

With that, Razzle and Dazzle each lift one of Charlie’s little arms. One moment, Charlie’s rainboots touch the rooftop. The gale picks up; soon, their tiny bodies might be riding the wind like kites. Stomach swooping, Charlie wills herself not to look back. For the first time, she wonders if Lucifer and Lilith had looked back when they’d been flung down, to a country of perpetual shadow.

Now, she will never know.

Attributing the sharp sting in her eyes to the winds, Charlie’s spirits briefly go on the uprise, like musical notes put to the wind. Hood fluttering back in the murky sky, Charlie allows herself to radiate with sheer exhilaration, adrenaline singing in her ears. Charlie’s eyes lock upon the oceanic surge of electric currents, new as nebulae and just as fascinating.

“Runaway crown, city lights call,
Maybe without me, they won’t fight at all.
If I disappear, if I fade away,
Maybe love will choose to stay…”

Chapter Text

A falling star fell from your heart and landed in my eyes
I screamed aloud, as it tore through them, and now it's left me blind
The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out
You left me in the dark
No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight. –Hozier, Cosmic Love

~o*oOo*o~

˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱

Outside the strobing lavender pulse of a club known as The River of Lethe, where music pounds like a common heartbeat, and shadows and echoes comingle upon the dance floor in a strange economy, Angel Dust paces from behind the red velvet ropes marking off the entry way. He’s far more accustomed to doing lines than waiting in them. Eyeing the hulking bouncer listlessly checking ID cards, Angel briefly debates taking a knee for the cause—and not just for the anthem.

A silvery streak in the horizon overhead briefly has him sharply startling, looking up. The only thing more fine-tuned than Angel’s fight-or-flight reflexes is perhaps his gag reflex. “A shootin’ star!” The last riveted word emerges like Stah in his Brooklyn accent. Briefly, both Angel’s eyes, one with the lights on, the other lights out, are starstruck. Funny; Angel’s no astrologist or astronomist or taxidermist or whatever the fuck it is Ivy Leaguers do for fun when not consulting their stock options. “When was the last one ya saw one of those?” He squints. Normally, Angel only ever Remembers, to Forget. “Hell, I think I was still pullin’ a pulse in New York.”

Beside him, Cherri Bomb leans forward, shading her eyes as she gazes up at the pentagram sky. The great X upon her singular pupil marks the spot of Angel’s line of sight. But Cherri seems unconvinced as she folds the pale of her bare arms, skin speckling like tiger lily pollen. “I dunno, man. That bolt of light’s movin’ kinda slow for a shooting star if ya ask me. When do we ever see those in Pride with all the damn light pollution, anyway? Your eyesight must be goin’ bad as Val’s.”

Angel snorts. “’Look’ who’s talkin’, Miss One Eye—”

“Bitch, at least mine works—” Cherri cheerfully elbows Angel in the side without thinking. Angel sucks in a deep breath through now grit teeth as he briefly stumbles. Cherri’s hands fly to her mouth in mortication. “Aw, shitshitshit, fuckfuckfuck.”  Cherri’s swearing is her vernacular of caring. Her arm slips over Angel’s back as he forces one of his gloved hands into a thumbs-up. “I’m so sorry, Angie. I didn’t realize.”

Steadying himself as his bruised ribs all but puncture his side with pain, Angel tastes rust; the gaiety of tonight is already curdling at the edges like a warning. “Bitch, ain’t nothin’ wrong. I’mma trooper. Ya know that.”

But Cherri is unappeased in the amnesic surge of dance lights emerging from the doors. Her hands spasm around fists, as if they both quiver around the edge of lobbing grenades. “He—” bust you up real bad today, didn’t he?” She doesn’t wait for a reply. Doesn’t have to. "I'll pound his fucking head so far down into his fucking torso, he’ll have to drop his pants to say hello.”

Angel cracks the wistful edges of a smile. They already know it’s hopeless, all of Cherri’s threats—there’s no dealing with Val unless you’d care to be at the business end of blackmarket blessed steel. But Cherri being enraged on his behalf is almost enough. “That’s already how Val says hi. Among other things.” Too many things. Things that bleed a static on Val’s phone.

Cherri lowers the spotlight of her gaze, forlorn. Angel flings one of his arms around her, keen to hide a dark rippling of violets rising on his skin like a shadow garden with his toothiest smile.

“Tell ya what.” Angel points at the sky, as if attempting to console his little sister. “Jiminy Rickets, or whatever the hell that creeper bug’s name is in Pinnochio, which totally don’t sound like a STD by the way, says ya just need to wish on the wishing star, right?”  He teasingly lifts a finger to the silvery streak breaking through the smog. “Then all I need to do is wish for the two of us to be free as birds, outta this mess.” Cherri’s not technically bound to Val, but she knows what Angel means. “Problem solved.”

Sighing, Cherri briefly presses her face against Angel’s arm. “Fuck,” Is all she says in a muffled reply, by far her favorite by-the-bootstrings curse and prayer and plea.

“Fuck,” Angel agrees kindly, ruffling the top of Cherri’s copper-colored hair. Neither of them are believers; this is the closest they’ll get to prayer.

Wiping her eye as the line moves along, and Cherri and Angel are admitted into the club after a cursory glance at their IDs, his partner-in-crime tugs on Angel’s hand. “C’mon, old man. Lethe’s got drink specials tonight called Lethal Injections that come in needles.”

With one last look over his shoulder at what must be a solitary star in the sky, Angel allows himself to be tugged in. The rhythm will yet drown the doubt as the night waits for no one, but the day lies in wait. And gravity will remember both their names, then.

Until then, here’s to forgetting. L'chaim.

~o*oOo*o~

Several blocks away, within the maw of an alleyway that smells of sewage, brick walls are rendered a graffiti crossfire of curses, genitalia, and overlord territory sigils. A little silhouette cuts its name in the darkness, amidst the rotten-egg smell pronunciation of sewage.

Vaggie appears in her height scarcely older than seven, though the wary cut of her eyes suggests decades older. This orphaned vagabond is far more looming shadow than the bone that projects it, her patched, tattered dress ostensibly more grime than fabric. A silver glass bottle, which Vaggie clutches by the neck, gleams silver and jagged where it has been shattered at the ends. The way Vaggie drums her thumb against the handle suggests she knows exactly just how many seconds it would take brandish her makeshift weapon. Mice scamper at her approach, eyes beady in the pseudo-light.

Her long, silvery hair is a careful curtain. One of her eyes has been reduced to a silvery, scarred continent of scar tissue, one souvenir among many of street fights. Upon ensuring she is alone, Vaggie prizes off a trash can lid to look for food. Her hands fly over her nose. The ache-song of hunger, carved in the brittle bone of her protruding ribcage, is now combatting with Vaggie’s empty stomach longing to turn its nonexistent contents out in revulsion at the emerging stench of garbage, which smells like a love song to decay.

Briefly, a silvery bolt of light pierces the sky overhead. Stiffening, Vaggie whips this way and that as she braces herself for attack. She relaxes a margin of an inch when her hawklike eye swivels to the sky. A shooting star. The novelty of such a sight renders Vaggie breathless. It’s the likes of something she knows as a hellborn exists, but certainly not something she’s ever seen.

Scowling, peering this way and that, as if surrounded by sniggering gawpers, Vaggie moves her weapon to her extension-cord belt at her dress, pressing her hands together, as if in hopes of lifting up a pauper’s prayer. Briefly, her calloused hand reaches for the celestial streak of light across the wound-colored horizon. As sirens erupt somewhere in the distance, Vaggie’s features set themselves to longing. Her mind vacates itself of everything but one word:

Please.

~o*oOo*o~

The flit of a feather duster frets over an ancient piano, ivories yellowed like molars. Graying feathers play over the golden bellflower of a phonograph. A typewriter upon a writing desk. The muttering to itself, of a grandfather clock. With all the great care of a paleontologist whisking fossils, does Niffty tidy Alastor’s radio, which is mounted upon the mantle with all the display befitting an altar.

For so many odds and ends that make noise in the Creole townhouse, Niffty supposes as she tidies a stack of records far bigger than she, it’s awful quiet, just a touch forlorn, when Alastor is away. Her solitary pupil flutters about the parlor. Dust is patient. But so is she.

From behind the bar, a morose Husk lowers his copy of The Great Gatsby to drain the amber-colored contents of a flask that never ends. “Don’t know why ya bother prettying up this fucking time capsule.” The constant burn of Niftty’s cleaning chemicals makes him wrinkle his cat whiskers. “He ain’t here to see it.”

Niffty blinks. “Husk, I’m surprised at you. You’re in an awful good mood today.”

Husk picks up his book again to conceal his face. “See above reply.” Niffty hopes that Alastor will return soon. Husk for his part hopes for nothing, but would rather that Alastor will never return.

Spraying an already-spotless window with the pungent citric clarity of the chemical bottle, Niffty lowers her rag, only to start back in surprise. “Oh, Husk—just look!” Clamoring up some Edith Piaf records, Niffty draws the curtains to reveal the stark ironwork and austere brackets of the balcony. “A shooting star!” Briefly, Niffty’s hands splay against the cool of the glass like a small child’s.

Husk doesn’t even look up from his book. “Oh look—a guy whom gives a flying fuck. Do you see one of those here? No? Me neither.”

Niffty briefly sags against the glass. A dangerous thing that, allowing your fatigue to catch up to you. She’d have to keep moving before long, outpace herself somehow. For right now, Niffty’s eye remains upon the solitary star in the sky. The night of her death, the only stars she’d seen were the ones being fired into her as she’d fallen back into the fireplace, in the Room Where It Had Happened. The small of Niffty’s gloved hands wander to the marks where the bullets had entered, and never left. Briefly, they fold over her heart. She turns. “C’mon, Husk. Make a wish, too. You must want something.”

Husk snorts. Just one day where you didn’t drown would sure be nice. But Husk has learned against wanting anything infeasible in this life, or afterlife, for that matter. He takes up a cigar between the tired of his teeth. A dry, shivering scrape of friction from his lighter. The solitary red pulse of the cigar is like the flare of a dying star, to match the one tumbling out of the sky. He used to gamble, with the likes of the stars. Pretty fucking morbid thing that, to make wishes on something that once overlooked the world, spiraling down upon its death throes.

 “You, to quit buggin’ me, already.”

~o*oOo*o~

Humming jauntily, Alastor emerges from an antiquaries shop. He relishes these little shops the same way he likes libraries; they invoke a pleasant, goosebump stillness within him. The curious odds and ends you found on display were after all, artifacts of someone’s life. They exhale history. The ghosts of their owners persist over sets of silver, faded candelabras, sepia-tarnished lockets. The faded grandeur of a violin that has seen better days, along with its lacquered box, is now tucked in the crook of Alastor’s arm. The petrified shopkeeper had given it to Alastor with a 100% discount. A very kind, if not entirely sustainable, business practice. Alastor is fond of visiting estate sales after overlords die in exterminations. You can make a real killing with what you can find.

The first thing that you needed to know about Vox was that he wanted to own nothing secondhanded; his pride as an overlord would settle for nothing less. And the first thing you needed to know about Alastor was that he wanted to own nothing that hadn’t passed through someone’s else’s hands, first. Perhaps these preferences were attributable to Alastor being a storyteller, and Vox a salesman. A wonder they were friends as long as they were.

Although, Alastor supposes, keeping his features impassive as a gaggle of school children turn and bolt to avoid crossing his path, perhaps it only stood to reason that they never were. Friends. Because, while Alastor’s no expert on the subject of friendship, he would imagine it would, first and foremost, entail knowing somebody. And for all the decades of mutual acquaintance, Vox and Alastor had not known each other, not ever.

His grip upon the violin tightens. Alastor loosens his grip before he can break it, among other things. Far better he save such animosity for the likes of Vox’s features—

Alastor looks up, features briefly releasing their murderous gridlock upon themselves in surprise. The wind scatters like a fresh exhale, sending his hair fluttering. A silvery arc of fleeting embers against the night canopy. He looks on appreciatively, though something puzzles his brow. Something quietly impresses upon himself that this is not a shooting star he’s looking at just now. Alastor comes to a stop, leaning upon his cane. Thankfully it’s not a glimmer of one of those unholy archangels hawking about; it’s a few days away, before annual extermination season.

Then what could it be? Alastor leans forward to stroke his chin as the whatever-it-is begins a death spiral. Across his ironical gaze, a rare glimmer of intrigue. “Interesting.”

With that, Alastor sets off once more, with a spring in his step.

~o*oOo*o~

Still clutching Razzle and Dazzle’s hooves, Charlie finds herself inadvertently, glowing against the rush of the night sky like celestial fanfare; part of the fun of being part angel. “Look, ya guys! We’re out of the royal capital! We did it! We really did it!” Charlie’s mouth opens in awe. Then, she finds herself herself gagging and sputtering. “Ewww! I just swallowed a bug!”

A scintillating landscape throws itself into focus like a panoramic view, with all its innumerable, hulking monuments of brick and mortar, obelisks of glass and steel in the distance. Winds tear and rent, making and unmaking themselves as a train roars with electric fury. Brass bells resound the echoing cry of the hour. Charlie looks on in astonishment. 

Through the upstream of coal smoke and tiny filaments of asbestos adrift in an envenomed veil, Charlie turns her watering eyes, bright like nameless stars, to the cloudburst in the heavens. The sky is empty, but it might also be open. Onto something. And somewhere. Between the ephemeral and everlasting, amidst innumerable souls nonetheless made desperately lonely, in a night the size of forever. Enough to make imagination reckon on your name.

Charlie starts hacking all over again as they pass by the smog coal plant, wheezing for good measure. “Yuck, it smells like death!” Seconds later, she sickens upon realizing a stray frog demon has been impaled upon a building spire. “Ohhhh, um, uh, so that’s why!”

Razzle gives her an emphatic look that flatlines. “Baaaa.”

“No, Razzleberry, pudding and pie. We can’t go home.” Briefly, the soft sweet of Charle’s features whet themselves upon the fresh edge of loss. “After getting this far? Are you nuts?” Her stomach squeezes itself in such a way that has nothing to do with the fact that will send Charlie tumbling to her death. “You didn’t overhear them fighting, like I did. I’m the reason Mama and Papa are so miserable now. So, the best thing I can possibly do now is disappear from their lives. Start a new life on the lam. How hard can it be? I’m sure we’ll meet lotsa nice people whom can point us in the right direction! We’ll be…I don’t know, snappy-dressing baristas with funny one-liners whom come to find themselves in the big city whom don’t need no man! Like in one of Daddy’s favorite soap operas.”

Wholly unconvinced, Dazzle and Razzle silently shoot each other despairing looks. Seconds later, both the goats’ little ears are pricked back, teeth bared in rumbling snarls, red eyes fireflies in the gloom. Puzzled, Charlie looks from both Razzle and Dazzle, before her own gaze settles upon just what’s zipping towards them in the sky.

The whipping propellers of a slate blue automation comes humming toward them, bobbing before them upon the air like a buoy upon water. You’d be forgiven in thinking that the machinery was some kind of insect, perhaps, as it boasts four protruding metallic appendages. In lieu of a head, a great enormous camera scope in its center, adjacent a red and blue V logo, rendered staticky and uneven, like the patterns upon a seismograph. Charlie tilts her head. “Um, hi there.” Mortified, she rounds on a mutinous Razzle and Dazzle. “Guys, be nice! Maybe the little bot came to play?” She almost extends a hand in greeting, before remembering she’s clutching Razzle and Dazzle’s hooves.

As if in reply, the automatron scans Charlie and the goats up and down with an infrared light. “Vox Voyeur Scope sensory motion detectors activated. Unauthorized trespasser breach in V-Tech airspace.”

Charlie is bewildered. “Um, sorry? Wait, how exactly do you trespass in an airspace? Doesn’t the air, by nature, belong to everyone? How can a company possibly own air?”

Seconds later, several sister bots are soaring over to encircle them like an opening claw, humming furiously like a torrent of electric bees. Charlie sickens with mounting dread. “Wait! Stop! I’m sorry! We mean you no harm—we’re just—we’ll go, we swe—”

“Rectifying breach. Targets acquired.”

And with that, the VoxTech security bots open fire in a torrential fury of light bolts, closing in for the kill. Reeling at the blinding assault, Razzle and Dazzle accidentally drop Charlie. And as she plummets through the air, crescendo of a despairing scream resouding, eyes dewing with wretched tears, she can only think of one thing—

She really ought’ve asked her parents. If it had hurt, that last collapse from Eden.

Transforming into magnificent, enormous pillars of blazing sparks, searing red dragonskin rippling with flame, the dragon beasts roar as they emerge like a ferocious firework display against the waning nightfall. Dazzle furiously tears his now enormous tail like a barbed whip against the ambush of security droids, sending them violently crashing to the ground in veritable hailstones of singed wires, fallen gears, shards of shrapnel that hold the moon like snow. Razzle for his part, desperately streaks down like a meteorite after Charlie, in a frantic race against the reaching ground.

From behind a great, glassine monitor, a young, reedy intern, gray skin mottled with blue like fishscale, has now become considerably-more ashen, cold as clay. His shivering blue pupils surrounded by red, and black respectively, look helplessly on as a great X punctuates the enormous sheen of his computer screen in the slow snow of static:

“SIGNAL LOST”

“Ummmmm,” He meekly bleaks, most apprehensively-turning around in his swivel chair as he goes for his receiver, with all the relish of a condemned man approaching the gallows. “Boss? Ummm, I think, you, ummm—you might want to hear about this one.”

~o*oOo*o~

A thimbleful of pale light spills across the dank landscape and rattletrap houses. In hell, morning doesn’t wake so much as it comes to, hungover. Light simply strains to exist at all here. The sky is the distinctly unwelcoming color of watery nicotine.

Still, the familiar rhythms of a city stir to its feet play out much as they always have, as the Extermination Clock resounds in the pentagram center, drawing the crude line of daybreak. Cawing red-eyed crows scavenge at the cut of the shore, where bootleg import boats wait for their turn to give the marina inspector their daily bribes.

Upon an enormous barge little better than a mobile island of trash, a once-again miniscule Dazzle perches on the boat guard rail like a vigilant gargoyle. A gargoyle with a banana peel upon his head. His once-smart suit now completely in tatters.

Features wrought with anxiety, Razzle pleadingly nudges a motionless little figure crumpled in a mountainous pile of all the refuse of hell. Charlie curls up with a moan, eyes still fluttered shut. She might be a baby bird fallen out of its nest. With all her might, she wills herself to be tucked under safely underneath a feathery warm wing, and clasped tightly there. A shrapnelsharp puncturing of lungs with longing.  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The trash clatters as she writhes. “Please, don’t hate—”

Razzle flutters over to lick her scuffed face. At last Charlie wakes, eyes tearstained. At once, she tries to sit up bolt right. Bad idea; the throbbing at the base of her head was lying in wait. With a machete. Hissing through grit teeth, wincing at the assault of trash upon her stinging senses, Charlie nonetheless waters a smile as Razzle and Dazzle rush in for hugs.

“Well, any landing you can walk away from,” Charlie pants, wiping her eyes. She inspects a smoldering broken scope beside her, perplexed. "Did ya give those meanie caboodle bots the old razzle dazzle treatment?" Charlie coos, stroking Razzle and Dazzle's chins affectionately. “Who in the heaven even owns the air? I don't even think Heaven tries to claim that.” Grimacing upon discovering just how filthy she is, Charlie most shakily gets up, wincing as she attempts to find her footing. Razzle and Dazzle flutter to steady her. “Aw, thanks, fellas.” She takes a guardrail in her perspiring hands. “Any chance you’re in fit flying shape to carry me to the harbor, please?”  

~o*oOo*o~

Razzle and Dazzle set Charlie upon the gum-and-band aid covered docks, overlooking a marina the color of dishwater. Breathless, Charlie wishes she had more eyes, like the ones that accost hell at every corner, or the ones she’s heard crown the heads and hearts of seraphim.

The rooftops are gritted with exhaust, dappled with chimney sweep dust. More demons than perhaps all of Magne District combined, coming and going in the rhythms of everyday life. Some wrinkled, weathered paupers, bloodied and bandaged hands holding up cardboard signs reciting reiterations of Satan Bless, briefly glance over. The beggars disinterestedly size-up the newcomer’s ragged red cloak. They look away again.

But Charlie gasps. Cheeks rosy, scarcely-minding her now cracked lips, soul singing full-lunged, her arms tauten like wings on the verge of swoopsoaring. Still, there’s something that needs to be taken care of first.

“Razzle. Dazzle. You’re gonna have to hide in my bag for right now. Don’t give me that look—I know, fellas, but we’re just too conspicuous, the three of us together! I’ll be sure to leave my knapsack open so that you can see, too.”

To her surprise, and her admitted relief, Razzle and Dazzle transform back into their stuffed personas with little fuss. With a guilty pang, Charlie doesn’t doubt that they’re probably exhausted after flying the whole night long and taking on their full demon forms to defend her from Whatever-A-Vox-Was. Kissing them both upon the head, she tucks both goats safely in her bag, before pulling up her scarlet hood

Charlie scampers off again, bag bumping rhythmically against her side, mind whirring as she dashes upon the crumbling sidewalks. Certainly Magne District, preening like a country club, looks nothing like this. The only landscaping going on here is that people are writing what Papa would probably call No No words all over the place.

“Hi, sir!” She joyously calls out to a nearby truck driver. Affronted, the bulging eyed, lizard demon cranes his head past a pair of fuzzy dice upon his mirror to indignantly shout: “What’d you say about my mother, you little shit?!”

Whistling melodiously, Charlie leaps over a rusty old fire hydrant with a broken valve, sprinting down a needle-laden alley, shadowed by a meat-packing company of dubious repute and hygiene. It’s been flanked by an abandoned steel factory, whose ruined iron fencing has been picked over by the poor. Everything is crowned with a turbid veil of dust; coal clings to everything it touches, like a rust snowfall. A purse thief attempts to snatch an elderly’s demon bag; she pulls out a glock from her pocket book and proceeds to mug him.

Charlie hugs herself, dancing up and down. She ought to be exhausted, for not having slept the night before. But her hummingbird heart draws her forward.

“Finally made it, now it’s true.

And so I’m feeling swell!

I simply have to tell you

About this wonderful place called hell!”

“Get out of the street, ya deranged, musical little maniac!” Shouts a robust slug demon selling pirated DVDs from the Outer Rings on a streetcorner. “Children should be put behind bars!”

“Have a good day, sir!” Charlie calls back gaily, cupping her hands as she skips past a demon clad in an Elmo suit stabbing a leech demon for a package of baloney. “We’ve finally made it to hell. And I can’t believe my eyes!”

The Elmo impersonator scoffs as he side-eyes his wrestling mate. “Just whom the fuck is letting this brat walk around unsupervised?”

Charlie twirls on, just in time for a demon ladybug to dump out a bucket of water from the window upon her. Sputtering, stumbling, regaining her footing, Charlie meanders on past a tigress demon dumping a canister of gasoline on an unwitting shrimp demon. Unnerved, grimacing, eye twitching just a little with a warning, Charlie nonetheless makes a fist and draws it through the air. And How.

“The flames are bright, but so’s my song.

Maybe it’s okay, that I fell.

Maybe I’ll find where I belong.

Hooray for hell!”

Charlie dances right into the streets unpaved by anything but excrement, squawking as the screeching cars appear to be hurtling in at her on all sides. She dashes upon the platform of a nearby statue, one she realizes with a pang seconds later is one of Lucifer. The denizens of hell don’t seem to think very highly of this monument, considering how much it’s spotted with gum, graffiti, and spiky-lettered curses. Someone has also seen fit to drawn a monocle and mustache on the Fallen Angel’s granite features, which at least look fetching.

Still, Charlie feels heartsick at the sight, to be in the loom of this inescapable shadow. Eyes stinging as the hour presses on the morning, Charlie wonders what is worse: Someone discovering her absence at the palace, or no one—no one, noticing at all. But Charlie steels herself over. After today, both Lucifer and Lilith could be free. Maybe they would even love each other again. Maybe Lucifer would take up his dreaming mantle again. Maybe Lilith could rest sometimes, too. Whom knew how much Charlie taking her own life in the small of her hands could benefit hell as a whole? Charlie twirls, and smiles, so as not to cry.

“Today, I’ll leave the past behind.

We only have today.”

Sure there are acid pits to find—

Well, to that, I say hooray!”

Well, to that, I say—”

Just then, traffic cop sees fit to lumber over. A hog demon, flaring his nostrils. There’s the red mark of a death wound upon his head, which curiously resembles a lipsticked kiss. A rat-faced demon officer is upon his heels. “That does it. You’re disturbing the peace.” And with that, he slaps a citation in bemused Charlie’s hands. “Now be on your way, you filthy, tiny little vagrant.”

Charlie shrinks away. “But sir, I was just—”

“What’s the likes of a miserable, scrappy vagrant like you even doin’ clamoring up Our Great Exalted King’s statue, anyway?” Demands the rodent officer, hands on his hips. “You won’t defame it on our watch.” Charlie wonders if it’s even worth mentioning that the statue’s already been defamed. To her surprise, the rat demon rips the citation in half. “Never mind. You don’t have to worry, ‘bout this.”

Lifting her head to the kindness like a flower starving for sun, Charlie beams. “Than—”

The rat leans in. “Cause in a few days’ times, when Extermination comes, and no one can be bothered to find your measly little urchin bones, what’s left of you will be scraped up from the ground with all the other nobodies, and sent to Cannibal Town for tea. How’s that sound, darling?”

Horrified, Charlie turns and bolts for a nearby alley. The mocking laughter reverberate all the way down, like a plucked string.

~o*oOo*o~