Chapter Text
Despite what anyone might think, dying can be quite underwhelming. If you are lucky, the pain doesn’t last long and it’s over before you know it, and then you’re drifting away on calm waters, finally free. Dying is easy, the problem is what awaits beyond.
Your last memory of the living world was falling, a seamless transition to the other side as you plunged into the void.
Chocking on suffocating darkness, a vicious hollowness consuming you from the inside out, the feeling that you would be forever floating in nothingness, alone, forsaken. All of that forgotten in the most excruciating of agonies as your body reconstructed itself from the speck of shadow you had become—bone and marrow, layers of muscle, flesh and skin, blood burning in your veins like being wrought anew in the deepest pits of the earth. And then, all at once, the devastating return of colors and sounds so vibrant and piercing you feared your head might explode, your own screams deafening, and the shocking vision of the ground rushing towards your face because you were literally falling to damnation. The pain was a cruel confirmation of reality, and for a while you just lay there, contemplating the meaning of life or the lack thereof.
You were dead. The end.
Except life went on, apparently, and it sucked.
There was no big heavenly trial, no scales weighing the magnitude of your sins. The worst part was not remembering what had happened before your demise; the last moments of your mortal life, every crucial detail that led you here, enshrouded in impenetrable fog… only the hazy image of your hands, shaking and soaked in red, and the fall. What had you done? As far as you could tell, you had always tried to be a good person, average maybe, no saint, but hard-working and well-meaning, kind. You hadn’t done anything to deserve an eternity of fire and brimstone… had you? Not remembering felt part of your punishment, but you feared that this ignorance may be a blessing even more.
After coming to terms with your mortality, you didn’t even have the luxury of wallowing in confusion and self-pity for long. No, you were fresh meat and there was a target on your head. The strange world around you was made of tall, dark buildings and blinding neon signs under an eerily red firmament, and everywhere you looked there were shadowy monsters with malicious, glowing eyes. It smelled of decay. Plumes of smoke rose from derelict structures, ongoing fires everywhere. The ground shook with explosions, half the street in ruins already, gruesome corpses strewn about. This was a bad part of town and you had been unfortunate enough to arrive in the middle of a turf war on the eve of the annual cleanse, unrest spreading between gangs, violence scaling without control.
So, you scrambled to your feet and ran; until your lungs burned, stumbling and crashing into walls, knocking over creatures whose insults followed your frantic race towards a safety that didn’t exist.
You caught your blurry reflection on a broken window and felt yourself dying for the second time when a monster looked right back. Unfamiliar eyes shining with an unnatural amethyst color, horns twisting out of your skull, what looked like long black feathers sprouting amid the tresses of your hair. Was that you? You reached for your face, traced familiar features, fearfully touched those new and twisted additions; the horns hard and textured, the feathers soft and delicate. Although some traces of humanity remained, you looked like something out of a nightmare, a demoness. Worst of all were your hands, perpetually stained a deep red, as were your memories, ended in sharp dark nails reminiscent of talons. You rubbed at the offending tincture until the skin broke and bled hot rivers down your forearms, but the crimson wouldn’t go away, an unforgiving reminder of your faults.
Your own body felt foreign. Your mind couldn’t wrap around the horrors of this place. Why was this happening? You wanted to crawl out of this strange skin, you wanted to get out of here, you wanted to go home.
The ominous gilded clocktower in the distance must mean something, you decided, but you didn’t know what and you were too exhausted and terrified to care. Towering above the cityscape, a glowing slowly-emptying hourglass. A countdown that reached zero on your second day in Hell.
When the bells tolled and the skies opened to rain righteous fire, you were caught in the middle of the chaos.
Over the previous who-knows-how-many hours, you had gloomily wandered around the unfamiliar streets, running and crying some more, observing how the other demons scrambled about, boarding up windows and growing restless, rudely shooing you away when you approached them trying to obtain answers. You found temporary shelter in a dilapidated house that wasn’t nearly as abandoned as you had thought; despite the place being big enough for everyone, the haggard group that claimed it first thought kicking you out was a better idea. Dead or not, you found out you could get hurt, feel pain, bleed and likely die again. You wondered if that would be preferable to whatever you were going through. Those who remained out on the streets seemed crazy, thrilled about the diminishing countdown, raging to jump headfirst into a suicide battle.
And then…
The vicious flying creatures you couldn’t reconcile with the idea of angels, the purest beings in Creation, luckily found more entertaining targets to kill before paying a pathetic thing like you any mind. You scurried down broken, smoky roads, frantic to find a good hiding spot, but they were everywhere.
It was an absolute massacre.
You spied some demons picking up discarded weapons and followed their example, dislodging a broken spear from the still-fresh corpse of an empty-gazed gazelle lady—apologizing to her, even if meaningless. It felt warm to the touch. Clutching it, you darted off a backstreet, curled up behind some debris and prayed for the first time since you were a kid.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t God who answered.
He found you cowering in that dirty alley, too pitiful a prey for someone who so loved the hunt. Bleeding from a gash in your side that couldn’t find the time to heal in the midst of mayhem, half-delirious from the panic, the lack of food and rest. There was a sting of fresh blood on your lips as well, where too-long canine teeth kept clumsily pricking at the tender flesh time and again, copper and ash heavy on your tongue. Screams and battle cries of malicious laughter rose in a macabre chorus that rang in your ears, and although you didn’t get what was happening it felt like divine punishment for everything you had ever done wrong.
Back then, you didn’t understand anything. You didn’t know you should have feared him more than any of those lesser sinners you had been running from, more than the exorcists whose weapons would have delivered a quick death. He could reach inside you and tear you apart in ways you couldn’t even fathom, but you didn’t know that yet.
Footsteps approached your hideout and you pressed yourself harder against the dirty brick wall, wishing to become small, insignificant. Your fingers closed around the spear so tightly it hurt, but you couldn’t simply go down again without a fight, no, even if that sounded like the easy way out.
There was a curious buzz in the air that made you frown, something that didn’t belong amidst the carnage. Music. Lighthearted humming carrying a vaguely familiar tune, accompanied by the tapping of elegant shoes down the alleyway. Whoever it was, they were singing to themselves.
“… if you'd be just so sweet, and only meet your fate, dear…”
The silence was deafening when they suddenly grew quiet, the clamor of slaughter a background noise that seemed far away.
The steps had stopped… right in front of you.
Holding onto your weapon, tearful eyes traced long legs clad in black, up to a red pinstripe jacket that had seen better days. After the amalgam of violent grotesque beasts you had seen since your fall, his perfectly composed appearance felt out of place. If not for the unnatural eyes and that weird haircut, slightly ruffled tresses of black-tipped red brushing his pointed chin, he would have passed for an almost normal dapper gentleman… Except, were those furry ears at the top? You would have thought him a fox were it not for the little prongs of dark antlers peeking between them. A deer, then. How utterly curious and absurd that you were taking the time to take all of this in, but he was acting in kind, tilting his head in silent wonder, not attacking you yet. His back was to the mouth of the alley, and in the semi-darkness, his gaze glowed like hellfire. He was bright in the way venomous animals in the wild are, fatal and inviting.
There was an uncanny wrongness crawling underneath that grinning mask.
“What do we have here? A little bird of ill omen, it seems. Well, hello there—”
Startled into motion, you thrust the broken spear in his direction, baring your fangs. “What do you want?”
A minute frown took over his smiling face (the smile itself, however, never wavered) as he used a single finger to move the blade away. It swung right back towards him, your grip unwavering, determination fierce.
“Come now, dear, there’s no need to be rude. It’s such a beautiful night for a walk around town, don’t you think?” A blood-curdling scream in the distance chased his statement in near perfect irony. His voice was unlike anything you had ever heard, as though it was coming through a filter. For the first time since you fell, a memory brushed your thoughts bright as daylight—the old radio in your grandpa’s office. Not just the staticky quality to it, but the intonation, the way he weaved words with such theatrics, deceptively personable. His head tilted almost unnaturally to the side, sharp grin becoming a curving half-moon both menacing and inquisitive. "But, oh, you look like a newcomer. Forgive me, where are my manners? The name’s Alastor, a pleasure to be meeting you! And you are…”
Hesitation was by no means brief before you reluctantly offered your name back in a whisper, ensnared in the confusing atmosphere of false comfort he provided. It was the polite thing to do, you supposed, for the first person down here that hadn’t outright greeted you with threats of violence… even if he was a walking red flag. Before the night was over, you would give away much more.
Your named rolled of his tongue in a way that made you shudder. “Quite a pleasure, like I said! It’s always refreshing to meet the new blood. But, my dear, you’re positively trembling!” He leaned over on his cane, as to have a closer look. “Why not get out of this dreary place and enjoy the spectacle? Allow me to properly welcome you—"
The spear returned to his face, point grazing his nose, your own furrowed in defiance, even if the shaking nullified the efficacy of your glare. “No,” you blurted out. “I-I don’t know you. I d-don’t trust you. I’m not going anywhere, not until those things are gone, until…”
Cocking his head to the side again, he exasperatedly swatted at your weapon with unexpected strength, ripping it from your fingers as easily as a toothpick so that it clattered several feet away (you had half a mind to crawl after it, feeling defenseless without it). “Don’t do that.”
“L-Look, sir—just leave me—"
“… alone?” The word dropped heavy as rock in the ensuing silence. His brow creased in something akin to sympathy, though it felt mocking, and you pressed yourself harder against the wall, returning the frown. “While I admire your bold determination, I can’t help but feel like you’ve given up already. The afterlife is full of wonderful possibilities for those with the right ambition—and you have so much untapped potential… this delicious spark in need of guidance,” while saying this, he waved his fingers around for effect, drawing attention to your own loathsome hands. He stared at them, too, intently. “Why let it all go to waste by surrendering to the inevitability of cowering and skittering around in dark corners, scampering for crumbs?”
Would he stop speaking in riddles? Was that a common thing, down here? Gods, your head hurt.
“I have not… given up,” you protested in a vehement whisper. “It’s just too much. All of this. I don’t know where to go, what to do, how I even…” Part of you remained half-convinced it was all a bad dream that would dispel once you opened your eyes, feeling silly to have conjured up such a dark fantasy to escape from the real world. “I don’t even know why I’m here. I’m… I’m a good person!” You clenched your incriminating scarlet fists on your lap, uselessly wishing to conceal them. “I was,” a sniff escaped amidst your babbling. “I don’t know what I am anymore.”
“Or what you could be,” he hummed pensively. “The past is of little consequence. Take it from a friend—”
“You’re not my friend.”
A screech cut the air, like a broken record, and his grin twitched with a passing shadow that made your recoil, hit by a sudden fright which nature you couldn’t entirely comprehend. (Oh, were you stubborn, insolent, but also so deliciously lost, promising, a curious little present to crack open.) His voice sounded different, distorted and lilting, when he said: “You better wish I were.”
The heat of battle seemed to move even closer, a flash of searing golden light and the horrific scream of another dying soul preceding the ground shaking with violence, rattling the whole block. Dust and rubble rained from above, a chunk of concrete from the top of the now crooked building coming loose. No time to run, you buried your head in your arms and closed your eyes… yet the impact never came. A gasp left your throat when you cracked an eye open, gaping at the tangible tendrils of shadow moving about with a sentience of their own, creating a shield of sorts above your head and tossing boulders aside like pebbles. Where had those come from? What were they? Was that… magic? Speechless, you watched as they dissolved into wisps of shadow, returning to their master. Alastor’s self-satisfied grin was like a knife while he distractedly cleaned specks of dirt from his pinstripe coat, as though nothing of significance had transpired—as though he hadn’t commanded a piece of nightmare without moving a single muscle.
He turned on his heels, using the cane—which only then you realized was a standing microphone—to dramatically sweep the reduced space within the alley. “See, darling, I could be the best of friends you would dream of having down here.” Something told you it wasn’t a lie. “And let this be a lesson, out of the goodness of my heart for a lost little bird… friends—allies, if you will—are important down here. It’s such a pity you spurn my proposal of showing you around, really, with how graciously I was offering my assistance for nary a price, all in good faith.” Now, that last part sounded like a lie. “Don’t worry, I won’t impose on you any longer. Hopefully, you’ll survive.”
And just like that, he seemingly decided to be done with you. He started to walk away without a care in the world, humming his song, headed straight towards the destruction. He wasn’t afraid in the slightest. More than unbothered by the danger, he seemed bored.
What manner of creature was he? You felt oddly excited, despite the amalgam of various horrors gripping your insides. Perhaps you were being too hasty in rejecting his kindness, fake and double-edged as it felt? Not three seconds passed before you were reaching a hand out, crying: “W-wait a second!”
“Yesss?” Alastor halted mid-step and whipped around, feigning surprise. Clenching your jaw to steel yourself, you accidentally bit your lip again and cursed under your breath. Stupid fangs. Stupid talons. Stupid horns. Stupid feathers. With a heavy gaze, he followed the tongue that peeked to lick at the wound, the hand you lifted to wipe the droplets of blood away. “What is it, darling?” His voice sounded raspier. “Did you forget something?”
In the crimson light of judgement day, the deer demon with the unwavering smile looked like an obscure pagan deity who could either save or condemn you, and at that moment you found that you didn’t care much about which one he chose.
“S-sorry, what you just did back there, I couldn’t help—you’re strong, right? They way you speak… I can tell you’re not just anybody, and I was thinking maybe…,” you mumbled, completely uncertain of what you were doing. It was crazy. It was brilliant. It was desperate and pathetic. The more you talked, the more you convinced yourself that this was your one chance at survival, a smile of your own spreading slowly because it was the first thing that made sense since you woke up here. “You were right, I could really use a friend like you, to help me understand how to subsist in this place, to teach me, to… protect me while I find my footing. I only want for things to make sense—to feel safe, to stop running. So maybe we c-could… make a deal?”
He seemed to freeze for a second, tense silence charging up the air, before he suddenly started laughing like a maniac. Doubled over from an amusement you failed to see, he laughed and laughed, clutching his stomach, hitting the brick wall until the hysterical fit receded and he released a lengthy sigh. “Ahh... precious, simply precious. Yes, what a marvelous idea, indeed. I just so happen to love making deals, and I’m in a particularly good mood tonight. You might even get a good one out of little old me.”
You had meant it as a figure of speech, more or less, a way of saying you would offer something in exchange, but now realized that demonic deals apparently were as real as in old wives’ tales. Of course, they were.
And suddenly Alastor was crouching in front of you, eclipsing everything else. Even in that position, the height difference was noticeable. He had a slim build but was incredibly tall, all sharp lines, and there was a broadness to his shoulders in contrast to his tapered waist that made him appear bigger. Up close and personal, however friendly-looking that smile pretended to be, it was full of yellowy razor-sharp teeth that looked capable of tearing through flesh. There was a foul smell to his breath, truth be told, not entirely hidden under the rest of him—hints of cologne and bourbon and something deeply woodsy. Another shudder wracked your huddled figure.
“What’s your prize?” you whispered. Ignorant as you might be, you weren’t that much of a moron and knew this to be a transaction with likely impossibly high stakes. “I-I don’t have much to offer. Nothing, truly, but I could work—I’m a quick learner, I could help you and…” The way he looked utterly unimpressed gave you a sudden epiphany. “Or could you possibly want… m-my soul?”
Alastor laughed again, softer. “Clever little thing. Cutting to the chase, hmm? Souls… they’re a dime a dozen, I’ve already got plenty of those. So many, in fact, I don’t even know what to do with them. Everybody thinks themselves worth something, you see,” he mused.
You swallowed, feeling your stomach plummet, completely at a loss. Selling your soul was like selling yourself away, wasn’t it? Something serious. Enslavement. He made it sound like a common occurrence, and then again, it wasn’t as thought you had anything else of value to trade, but… “I-I never said I was willing to give it away.”
“And I didn’t say I wanted it,” he retorted. “You have promise, but that’s all. It’s tempting, but not much more. And yet…”
You swallowed. “And yet?”
His seemingly got lost in thought for a few moments.
“I would be willing to accept a little piece. On top of your labor, as you mentioned, of course.”
You blinked. “… Just a piece?”
“A teeny-tiny fragment, you won’t even miss it,” he assured, grin becoming slightly crooked as he illustrated it with his hands, fingers almost touching in signifying an insignificant amount before clapping them and taking one of yours in them—which now you noticed were abnormally black, strangely soft, ended in magenta claws even sharper than yours. You couldn’t tell if he was wearing gloves or not, the touch of them unexpectedly pleasant, albeit unnerving. While he hummed contemplatively to himself, his thumb rubbed idly at the ruby discoloration of your skin, smearing the bits of blood you had wiped from your mouth a minute ago. “I happen to be terribly bored, you see, and I can’t shake the feeling… that there might be something remarkable about you. While we find out what it is, you would just be lending me your time, your loyalty, in exchange for so much more. Promise me those, and for as long as you assist me in my endeavors, I guarantee you’ll be sheltered and safe.”
“… Even from yourself?”
Another twitch in his smile. “Distrustful, aren’t we? Behave, and everything will go swimmingly. You’ll see, things aren’t so horrible here, even when they are honestly quite horrible. That's part of the charm. Ha-ha!”
“You didn’t deny it.”
“I will see that no unwanted harm comes your way, present company included,” he swore with a huff of mild exasperation, claw drawing an imaginary cross over his heart for emphasis. “Shall we shake on it now?”
“Not yet,” you declared.
A hissing whisper of impatience snaked into his cordial speech, unfiltered, making you flinch. Perhaps you were pushing too much, but something just felt wrong. “What is it, now? Speak, my dear, we don’t have all night and this is getting quite tiresome.”
You glanced nervously at the mouth of the alley. The flying monsters still hadn’t seemed to notice your hiding spot. The longer you stayed there talking back and forth, nonetheless, the more you risked being found (and you were pretty sure, if that happened before sealing the contract, the strange man before you wouldn’t give a damn about your protection before promptly getting to safety himself). This had become so serious, so fast, and you didn’t know what you were doing at all. Merely a few hours ago, you had succumbed to the idea of dying again, torn apart by vicious angels, and now… you found that you didn’t want that, that you wanted whatever this fiend offered. He promised mystery and excitement and sanctuary. He was dangerous. You were enthralled. You were grasping at straws. You needed him, but this wasn’t the time to be reckless.
“It’s only that… it doesn’t sound very fair,” you carefully mulled over his terms, frowning. “Considering where we are, aren’t we talking about eternity?”
He exhaled a wistful sigh. “You’ll find fairness to be a subject matter around these parts, but alright, alright. How does a thousand years sound? Plenty of time to get acquaintanced with each other, wouldn’t you say?”
You stopped breathing for a moment. Was he serious? A thousand years? Empires had risen and fallen in lesser stretches of time. The way your eyes widened had to be comical enough for him to chuckle, tilting his head this way and that while patiently waiting for an answer. He had to be bluffing. Any quantity you could think of sounded ridiculously high whereas it also sounded absurdly low in eternal terms. You hadn’t even gotten to live that long before dying, that you were aware. Grasping the intangible concept of endless time extending before you onto infinity felt impossible, and still, to ask for a millennium was…
“F-Fifty years,” you countered, voice shaky. Even if the difference was abysmal, it was far more than you had lived. You were starting to think this wasn’t a good idea.
His eyes bore into yours, ardent. “One hundred years. Final offer. Surrender a part of yourself to me for a meagre century, learn by my side, and you won’t have to worry about a thing for as long. Believe me, you won’t even notice the time has passed. You might even grow to cherish my company, who knows,” he drawled, low and sweet. “So, do we have ourselves a deal?”
Gods above and below, a full century was practically the duration of a human life from the cradle to the grave, even if he made it sound like nothing. Feeling nauseous, you stared at your conjoined hands, at that grin full of secrets, the glowing embers of his eyes… and nodded, ignoring the knot in your chest. “Deal.”
That night, both your freedom and common sense crumbled to ashes in a burst of green flames.
Life in Hell—in the Pride Ring where human souls were secluded, specifically—didn’t differ that much from what you could remember about living in a big city on Earth. After the annual angelic extermination was over, Pentagram City, as you learned was called, returned to its usual chaotic course. The piles of corpses were removed from the streets and plans of reconstruction began as the hourglass in the clocktower was replenished, silvery powder already spilling to the bottom in a new countdown. An endless cycle. People had been reborn as monsters for whatever sins they committed while alive, but ordinary things like jobs, rent, traffic or taxes remained a constant, which was a huge disappointment. The hellscape was the perfect place for the most rampant capitalism to prevail.
There was violence and perversion wherever you looked, but you soon grew desensitized to the worst of it, which was admittedly a bit worrisome. It was quite clear why most of these people had been banished to the fiery pits of the underworld, but you also noticed more ordinary citizens trying to carry on with their non-existence apart from the endless corruption. It must be difficult, nevertheless, when it felt as though everything around you intended to sabotage any good intentions, when whatever you had managed to build from scratch could crumble down like a sandcastle on the seashore. Trying to be a good person, even just a decent person, was an uphill battle. Why not succumb to taking whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted? You couldn’t win, after all.
Alastor had a great time enlightening you about issues like the overpopulation of souls and the different types of demons by means of colorful, hand-drawn diagrams—about Sinners and Hellborns, territorial Overlords and the Seven Deadly Sins who presided over one Ring of Hell each, the Lucifer Morningstar himself being the Lord of Pride and also King of all Hell. Although he rarely got involved with his subjects, you were told, isolated in his manor for some time now. It was the Overlords that kept a certain sense of order in the streets, but there were some strips of no-man’s land between their territories where the law of the jungle prevailed, and that was without taking into account any ongoing disputes between the kingpins themselves.
As your wounds healed seemingly overnight, you also learned that you couldn’t be killed again as easily as when you had been human, that it took actual divine intervention to obliterate you from existence—but that extremely powerful demons could also make you wish for said obliteration. You were glad to have retrieved the spear you had pilfered that night, broken as it was. Knowing it rested hidden underneath your bed, close to hand, just in case, brought some comfort.
Drinking all the information in, learning the ropes, things became less terrifying, more mundane. The worst part was that, as you eased into the horrors of this second life, you couldn’t help but think that, given time, if you had managed to survive on your own long enough, you would have made it by yourself. Perhaps you wouldn’t have an apartment as nice as the one you enjoyed in the bit of land Alastor called his own, close to the inner city, or the peace of mind that came with knowing you didn’t have to fight for your life out on the streets every second of the following hundred years, but this feeling gnawed at your gut… the concern that you had made a grave mistake out of hopelessness. Because then you wouldn’t be indebted to an overlord, to the infamous Radio Demon himself, the very sort of danger you had tried to avoid in the first place. You wouldn’t have become a puppet in mischievous hands bent on pulling your strings until they snapped under the pressure.
However, even if striking that deal willy-nilly had been a great miscalculation, you couldn’t honestly protest, for he kept his side of the bargain. He had gotten you a place to reluctantly call home, a job of sorts, and no sane demon that valued their sorry ass would dare harm a hair of your head, especially not after the time you were assaulted by those gangsters while doing groceries and Alastor… well, to this day you can’t say for certain what Alastor did to those guys, but word spread pretty quickly about your affiliation afterwards.
No, you didn’t want for anything—except maybe some time and space away from him.
Even when he left you alone for days at a time, you could see his shadow following you around. Sometimes you woke up and he was already there, in your kitchen, or you thought you would have a peaceful day before he showed up to drag you into whatever deranged plan his mind had devised for the day. If anything, he kept you on your toes. As the months went by, he also introduced you to some of his other ‘associates’, like Niffty, a tiny woman with one eye and too much energy for her own good. Sometimes, he would drop her at your place to have the weirdest of girl times while he was busy—even though at first you were reluctant, she quickly grew on you, not that you could complain with how spotless the house was afterwards.
Alastor seemed to cling onto the monicker he had first called you in the alleyway, taking to calling you ‘his little bird’ because of your subtle avian traits. It might sound somewhat endearing, but you knew it to be condescending, reminiscent of the state he had found you in—curled up over yourself, weak, trembling like an abandoned helpless chick that had fallen from the nest.
“Don’t look so miserable, Little Bird, it’s being so long seen I last saw your pretty smile! Don’t I take good care of you?” Alastor would ask whenever he caught you deep in thought, with that teasing lilt to his distorted voice that sent shivers down your spine. He would pat your head and chuckle. “Poor thing. Where would you be without me, hm?”
For someone so clearly averse to being touched unprompted, he seldom extended the same courtesy to everyone else. Where you least expected it—usually when you weren’t paying him enough attention—you would feel his clawed fingers playing with your feathers (no matter how many times you had told him they were sensitive), or maybe he would loom over you and rest his head on top of yours to take an uninterested peek at the book you were trying to read, until you lost patience, put down whatever you were doing and demanded: “What do you want?” The answer was, more often than not, ‘nothing’.
Something was certain—he seemed almost as fascinated with your hands as you hated them, probably because you hated them. It was upsetting, how he would trace the gory color down to where it dissolved into normal skin past the wrist, one finger at a time, so focused that you didn’t dare move until he was done. A sort of calming ritual he had adopted whenever he was particularly irritated, when the air crackled with dark energy and broken songs. Sometimes, you contemplated whether you were the cause of this frustration, that he hadn’t found the answers he sought in taking you in.
Alastor never hurt you, not physically. Albeit he couldn’t, technically, you would rather not know if he desired to. But he made a great game out of teasing and tormenting you, as he did with everybody else, and he was very good at it.
A showman and trickster at heart, he monopolized every thought, every moment of your time, as you had naively sworn to him. Whenever he had a bad case of ennui, he showed up to annoy you. Whenever he had something for you to do—since you were, after all, his personal assistant for lack of a better term—he sent you on errands, sometimes impossible ones. Despite knowing you hated being in the spotlight, he roped you into co-hosting the occasional radio broadcast just to hear you stutter and see you squirm. You did like spending time in his radio studio, though, simply watching him work, talk to the masses, and enjoying the music he selected. There was this time he scheduled an appointment with Carmilla Carmine and apparently forgot all about it, leaving you to weather the storm alone in a room with the affronted arms dealer. Still, no matter how far he pushed, you wouldn’t snap, just lowered your head and endured. You had heard the wailing voices trapped in his microphone, screaming throughout the air waves, and becoming one of them had become your new greatest fear.
There were better days, when he was feeling especially good-humored and treated you more like a person instead of like a pet. You enjoyed whenever he took you out on strolls to see other parts of the city and to visit his neighbor overlord Rosie—not that you would have been brave enough to set foot in Cannibal Town all by your lonesome. Despite her insistence to shove bloody, disgusting food on your plate, you found her to be lovely company. Not so much her husband, Franklin.
Dietary habits aside, her emporium smelled of fresh flowers, not dried blood, and she brew some delicious tea. She would scold Alastor for not pampering ‘poor dear you, so cute and shy’ enough and one time even persuaded him to play the piano, a beautiful melody that made something twist in your chest. Yet, as pleasant as that afternoon was, upon returning home you could tell his good mood had soured—and that night you woke up in a cold sweat, shaken, to a hulking shadow with glowing vermillion eyes and huge antlers perched at the end of your bed with a jagged, drooling grin. You thought he was going to kill you then, that he was going to break the deal and devour you whole. But as he reached a deformed, elongated claw to stroke the side of your head, you recognized the moment for what it truly was: a perverse reminder that you shouldn’t lower your guard and believe yourself better than you were… a wingless, frail little bird at his mercy.
Worst of all was swallowing your pride and accepting this lesson. You got used to the proverbial pressure of the collar around your neck. All of his sadistic games blended into the rest of your routine, they made you tougher, insensitive, you learned to play them. You lived in perpetual anxiety but, hey, you got damn good at navigating the intricacies of the underworld. Little by little, you started going out on your own more often, feeling daring enough to venture into more dangerous parts of town. If you didn’t know any better, you would have thought that he had been pushing you to overcome your fears in the most deranged, vicious way imaginable. Except, you knew better. You went the extra mile to accomplish the ridiculous tasks he reveled in burdening you with, handling demons that would have had you crying in fright months earlier just to see his smile tense, denied the pleasure of seeing you fail. Almost proud. Definitely pissed. Those were your little victories.
Then, close to the one-year mark into your deal, something changed.
Perhaps the thrill had grown old, but almost a whole month went by without you seeing him—the shadowy presence in the corner wasn’t always there, either, there were no jokes nor scares, no sight of his infuriating grin or the sound of his grating voice unless you willingly turned the radio on, and even then, his frequency only seemed to sputter static.
There was something in his mind, something different about him. He had been distracted with you for a while, a shiny toy who wasn’t good for much other than entertaining his most sadistic whims, but something else seemed to have caught his attention and he didn’t have time for you anymore.
You had already assumed that he probably wanted to get rid of you altogether when he showed up on your door one evening, unannounced, looking strangely jaded. And you felt the same preternatural horror deep in your chest as the night you had met, as the night he terrorized your dreams, offering you a peek of his real, twisted form. The air about him was so charged with dark emotions that you didn’t dare open your mouth, just followed silent orders when he shepherded you to the couch and froze, nearly felt your heart shatter from shock, when he dropped his head heavily on your lap. He wordlessly reached for your hands and started playing with them, tracing figures on the incriminating red with one of his deadly claws, a soft melodic humming coming from his chest
It was nice, even if completely bewildering, and as the night slowly wore on, your eyelids began to drop. You desperately wanted to stay awake, to demand answers about what he had been up to, why he was being so fucking weird, why he looked almost… scared. But you were lulled to sleep by his melancholy hum, his languid touch.
And then, he disappeared. Shadow and all.