[44] Sloth

Temporary fell. Tripped over—something! Who knew in this weird place. She placed her fist atop her head and stuck out her tongue. The only people around were creepy dead people, though, and they didn't even look. One of them yanked her up by her shirt and set her moving again.

She didn't really understand where everyone was going or why. They'd been climbing this tower forever without anything happening. Lately it was nicer when nothing happened than when it did, so Temporary didn't complain. She didn't complain about being made to open portals every so often, either. The nice rabbit girl, Pythette, who carried her and made small talk that Temporary enjoyed, had run away or something, so now it was just Temporary and a bunch of dead people. All the alive ones kept to themselves.

Maybe if Sansaime came along. At the arena, Temporary tried to talk to her often. They were both—they were both elves, after all! There ought to be some common ground, right? Sansaime looked different, but—Temporary knew this, knew it in her soul even though nobody told her and she never asked—but all the other elves were dead now, weren't they? So Sansaime was the only one left. Temporary wanted to be friends with her, even though she knew the Effervescent Elf-Queen must've banished her or something for her to turn out the way she did. Oh! And one had to consider the future. Right, right. How ridiculous of Temporary to focus on making friends when the future was so much more important, she always made mistakes like that. They would need—well, they would need a new Elf-Queen. It hurts when your friends die, but that was no reason to give up. If Sansaime and Temporary were the only elves left, one of them had to be the queen. All elves descended from the Effervescent Elf-Queen, so the question of birthright meant little. (Well, Temporary knew many elves prided themselves on their age, believing the older they were the closer they were to their father, John Coke, and there'd also been some who turned up their nose at elves who were born from other elves rather than directly from the Effervescent Elf-Queen, and it was all rather confusing and stupid and Temporary never bothered to worry about it.) Uh—where was she?

Sansaime. Well, Sansaime never said much of anything to Temporary. She definitely said nothing whenever Temporary broached the subject of continuing the elfin race. In fact, Sansaime never did much of anything except play the "video games" the Earth children loaned her, and she hadn't even gone with everyone else on this trip up the tower. Still—Temporary knew it had to be her. Let's face it everyone! Temporary was not queen material!

Not to mention, well, when it came to making more elves, which was the foremost job of an Elf-Queen... Sansaime already had a head start on that front, didn't she? Temporary, somehow, could tell. They may call her an idiot or a dimwit or a moron or a nincompoop or an imbecile or simply stupid, but she had a knack for telling about certain things, weird things, things a lot of people didn't care about.

She'd said it to Sansaime at the arena: "I can tell. I don't know how I can tell, but you're going to be a great mother, aren't you?" Sansaime looked at her coldly then, but not with malice. There was a terror in that look, one that momentarily snapped her from her self-imposed stupor. The video game's sound effects jingled, a few hundred people made noise around them, but in that moment it was silent.

It made Temporary happy to remember that moment, even in such a deathly place as this. It made her feel hopeful.

Not watching her feet, she tripped and fell again. Her body tumbled and rolled and flopped onto a patch of dead brown nothing. This whole room was dead brown nothing, with a blank blue sky above—blank except for what looked like a moon, split in half.

As she rose, ptooing grassy flakes, a pair of legs stopped in front of her. She looked up and saw—some guy.

Behind the guy floated Flanz-le-Flore.

It was the tail end of the caravan ascending the tower. The dregs of Princess Mayfair's dead tromped on unfeeling, while Queen Mallory's people kept near the front. Temporary's frequent stumbles must have made her to fall behind, especially without Pythette around to keep an eye on her. A quick glance and she could only barely see the tips of Demny's antlers in the distance. Behind the guy and Flanz-le-Flore, there was nothing, an emptiness that in this strange place felt like itself a threat of violence.

The guy wore glasses. He wore an empty face. In his hands he held a gun—a lot of people here had these gun things—and on his back were strapped more guns. He said:

"Oh. You're not a corpse."

"N—nope!" Temporary kept her eyes rooted on Flanz-le-Flore as she rose. "I'm Temporary, the—the elf. Pleased to meet you!" She extended a hand to shake, but he had his hands full of gun, so she awkwardly reached back and brushed a few dead leaves out of her hair with a nervous giggle.

The guy said nothing. He stared at her, or through her.

"I see," said Flanz-le-Flore, drifting behind him, hands on his shoulders, her eyes peeping out past him with frightening vitality. "I see! I see, I see!"

Even Temporary knew of Flanz-le-Flore. How could she not? She was the one who manipulated the fae council to eject the elfin race. The Effervescent Elf-Queen seethed to speak her name... What terrors could she accomplish?

"W, what do you see, Your Majesty?" Temporary asked.

"I see—I see that my thirst for vengeance is slaked. Killing her shattered the fetters that bound me. I feel, finally, peaceful."

"Killing... who, Your Majesty..."

Flanz-le-Flore only smiled.

The guy with the blank face, however, lifted his gun and pointed it directly between Temporary's eyes. Temporary went rigid. She understood well enough how these guns worked.

"Wendell, whatever are you doing?" Flanz-le-Flore asked.

Wendell betrayed no change in expression. "It's not just the devils. It all has to go. All of it. The fantasy."

"Oh Wendell, you mustn't be so silly. You're the hero. This poor fool is an innocent girl. Even I can see that, and I've infinitely more reason to despise her than you."

Temporary became aware that her legs shivered violently. She thought if they forced her to speak right now she would form no intelligible words, only random sounds. The barrel of the gun was black and nothing was inside it.

"Fantasy has no place in reality," Wendell said.

"And it shall not have one, hero. Once you have defeated the devils, this girl and all others who do not belong shall return to their world."

"Everything has to go back," Wendell said, his eyes squinted shut, his teeth clenched into a grimace. "Everything has to go back!"

"It will. It will. This place is not reality, is it? Look around you, hero. No, there is nothing real here. So the unreal shall be allowed to exist here, yes?"

Wendell fell silent. His face returned to blankness, but not as though Flanz-le-Flore's words mollified him. It was more like, more like he lost the capacity to care. The gun barrel lowered, but even so Temporary found him frightful. More frightful than Flanz-le-Flore herself...

"Now, elf," Flanz-le-Flore said, and Temporary eeped. "What is your name?"

"T—Temporary. Y, you can call me Tempo for short... Your Majesty."

"Very well, Elf Temporary. I see no reason for us to feud, despite our history. History is history, and now is now." Flanz-le-Flore checked over Temporary's shoulder. Temporary looked, trying to see what she saw, but she saw nothing. The receding backs of the dead. It would be bad to get too far away.

"Now is now, Your Majesty?"

"Now is now. Now, perhaps, instead of those humans, it would be best if you allied yourself with one closer to your own kind..."

The space behind Flanz-le-Flore rustled. It had been empty, or Temporary thought so. She'd never been attentive, things often escaped her grasp. But what she saw now seething in the black space she wondered how she ever could've missed. Animals. Creatures, large and small: rodents, cats, dogs, birds, bears, giraffes, elephants... animals that were not creatures Temporary knew, that nobody could have known, strange mutants with three horns or feline bodies with the wings of a hawk. A lion who possessed also the head of a goat and the head of a dragon, an ape with a snake for a tail, a fish with feet, a bird with arms, a strange thing that inflated and deflated like a bladder.

"That princess may be lord of the dead. But I, Flanz-le-Flore, am lord of all that lives. I shall spread life, multiply it, transmogrify it into new and varied forms. You have a power most unusual, Elf Temporary. A power that may aid me in my noble pursuit..."

Flanz-le-Flore leaned forward; Temporary stepped back. Her foot flew out from under her and she landed hard on her behind. The creatures crawling out of the darkness encircled her, staring with pitiless animal eyes. Temporary stammered: "Y—yes, Your Majesty!"

"Everything must go back," Wendell said, blank.

Flanz-le-Flore placed a hand gently on his shoulder, but her eyes remained riveted to Temporary. Did she expect something more? When people asked her to do things, she did them, it was simple as that, she disappointed everyone in too many ways already to display anything but utmost agreeability. She said yes and she meant it. What more did Flanz-le-Flore want?

Before an answer provided itself, a howl cut across the space, from the direction all the corpses shambled: ahead.

"I'LL CUT YOUR THROAT YOU BITCH!"

—

The scream came from Tricia of Mordac, the hornet. Mayfair suppressed the urge to sigh. She'd known there would be some such outburst. Truthfully, she deserved a little abuse. Pythette had been a devastating blunder on her part. Mayfair's thought process had been as such: Though Jay Waringcrane possessed a weapon similar to Demny's black sword—a weapon that killed anything it touched—he would not wish to kill Pythette, who was, if somewhat irksome at times, childish and innocent. As such, he would waste valuable time attempting to restrain her nonlethally, allowing Mayfair and her train to close the distance. Under this set of assumptions, the only true threat was the Eye of Ecclesiastes, as it could revert Pythette to before she ate the fruit and thus weaken her significantly. Much of the strategic advice Mayfair gave Pythette revolved around watching for and avoiding the eye's gaze, and all of that advice wound up irrelevant when Pythette actually encountered Jay's party.

So all of that constituted a strategic blunder, though Mayfair maintained that much of her plan's failure hinged on misfortunate timing. Pythette had seen Jay, Lalum, Viviendre before. The only ones she could not recognize by sight were the devils, and by mere chance she managed to blunder onto Perfidia alone, who easily manipulated her.

What a horrid flaw! The true crux of the problem was that Pythette's page, like those of Demny and Tricia, had been destroyed when Pandaemonium first rose. Otherwise Mayfair would have been able to watch and warn her. Mayfair had, again under the assumption that Jay's party would keep together, intended to observe the situation by watching Jay or Lalum's pages, but they were not present when Pythette met Perfidia. As such, Mayfair's move was countered effortlessly, and ended up only assisting Jay—who would have been slowed down by Rimmon and Ashtoreth anyway!—at the cost of one of her most competent lieutenants.

(That wretched Perfidia. Speaking to Jay and the others, she had claimed again and again that Rimmon and Ashtoreth were no obstacles at all, easily evaded. With Mammon dead and Belial seemingly also a non-threat, that left only a single powerful foe—Beelzebub—to stand in Jay's way, which was why Mayfair felt such an urgent need to stall him. Now Mayfair wondered: Had Perfidia intentionally exaggerated the ease of their passage specifically to force Mayfair into an error? Perfidia knew Mayfair possessed the pages, she knew Mayfair would be watching, could she have? These devils were not to be taken lightly, no matter how unimpressive they seemed!)

Well, things were not so bad in the end. Jay proceeded, but the fight slowed him anyway, and his victory proved Pyrrhic. Lalum and Viviendre dead, Kedeshah forced to remain behind—there she was now, trapped in the cage of her mother's ribs, screaming at the gathered crowd to let her free and kill her. If Perfidia was wrong about Rimmon and Ashtoreth, she might be wrong about Belial too. So Jay would have a difficult time keeping ahead of them—assuming Mayfair herself met no delays. Delays such as the current buzzing insect who screeched at her face, whom Mayfair had been content to ignore as she mentally catalogued more important matters.

Now, though, the screaming insisted upon itself. "I'LL CUT YOUR THROAT YOU BITCH!" Tricia bared her needlelike stinger to prove she meant it.

The moment she got too close, however, Demny pointed her black blade with no uncertain threat. "Come no closer, Tricia."

"Demny! You don't seriously plan to defend her, do you? Look at Pythette! Look at poor Pythette there. She sent her to her death. Look at her!"

The bodies of Pythette, Viviendre, and Lalum were arranged with accidental neatness on the dead grass. All three looked peaceful. Pythette even seemed to smile.

"She used Pythette as a pawn and let her die, just like Cinquefoil, and Obedience, and Charm, and all the others. She'll do the same to you, Demny, the first moment it's convenient. Or do you think otherwise?"

Demny's face never changed, nor did her flat and even tone. "Pythette wished to be useful. She was."

"You—you—!"

A slender, white arm reached around Tricia from behind and hooked her by the chest; one tug drew her back from the hovering tip of Demny's blade. The arm, of course, belonged to Mayfair's mother, the high and exalted Queen Mallory Tivania Coke, known for her ability to accomplish no governing whatsoever besides voicing disapproval toward Mayfair at every waking moment. Now, however, Mallory had nothing to say. Her pull signaled to Tricia all it needed; that this was not the time to fight, nor the time to fall prey to one's emotions.

For a moment, though, Mallory's blue eyes flashed from over Tricia's shoulder; her gaze struck Mayfair directly, and in that gaze was bundled all of it, an entire life's accumulation of disapproval, or more even than that: a hatred, pure and simple. Despite Mayfair's elevated position, despite her perfect safety behind Demny's sword, a shiver trembled the tips of her fingers.

When it came time to seize the Divinity, Mayfair knew, her mother would become an obstacle. One that would not be removed until she was dead.

The rest of Mallory's cadre stood behind her. Though there were many knights or men with guns, the most dangerous among them was one who was disarmed: Shannon Waringcrane, the brain that kept Mayfair's mother moving in any sort of sensible direction. Those dark, sunken eyes watched Mayfair too. Did Shannon suspect Mayfair was able to spy on their surreptitious conversations using the papers? Perhaps.

Demny could handle Mallory in a physical contest; their speed and strength were near equivalent, but Demny possessed a far more lethal weapon. The trouble would be Shannon.

However, the present threat of violence subsided as Mallory led Tricia away. Shannon watched Mayfair carefully until the last moment, then turned and followed, and the onward march of progress resumed.

Yes, Mallory would need to be eliminated at some point. Later, though. It did no good to fight now while Jay still held the advantage. A twinge creased Mayfair's brow. She wondered if, at the end of this, there would be anyone left from Whitecrosse to save...

"You won't reanimate their bodies," Demny said, once none of Mallory's group remained nearby. "Not Pythette, and not Lalum. Is this understood."

"Very well," Mayfair said. "I'll need to cut Lalum open, though. She swallowed the Eye of Ecclesiastes, and Jay was stupid enough to leave it behind."

"You will not desecrate her corpse."

Of course. Demny was quite loyal, but she insisted on such arbitrary restrictions. Nonetheless, Mayfair shrugged. "Very well."

"I'll know if you have one of your corpses take it," Demny said. "If I see you use that eye, I'll know what you did. Let them rest in peace."

"As you wish. Shall we proceed?"

Demny said nothing more. With one last look at the bodies on the ground, she continued her forward march.

Mayfair glanced over her shoulder. So neither she nor her corpses could touch the bodies, hm? But there was one other. A single knowing glance transferred from her to Mademerry, who lingered behind. Mayfair had spoken everything aloud with clear enunciation; Mademerry must understand. Indeed, a single short nod met Mayfair's glance, and that was all Mayfair needed. So Mademerry would prove useful after all. If Demny grew incensed anyway, all blame could be put on her. Convenient.

As the train moved onward, the red-skinned creature inside Ashtoreth's skeleton called out to them. Her tiny, shivering body was like a heart beating. She said: "You there. Deer girl. You're the only one here who can do it. That sword you got. One cut's all I ask. Kill me. Come on! Kill me. I've lost everything. Everyone I've ever loved is dead. Kill me!"

Demny continued without even giving Kedeshah a glance. When they reached the stairs leading higher into the tower, Mayfair looked back and saw Mademerry kneeling beside Lalum's corpse.

—

The stairs spiraled through a starry space, but all the stars were diamonds, and the walls pitch-black obsidian. Streaks of crystal sediment shone in every color like galaxies. Pasted between them, the higher they rose, were posters. Movie posters. Movies unseen on Earth. The faces of the stars so laughing, happy, as they froze in perpetual painted tap-dance: An American in Parnassus! But the letters were not always what they first seemed to be, and the posters were much longer than they looked from below, and if you fixed your eyes on them, the figures lengthened, drew upon a rack, their faces still smiling, their eyes glittering like stars, but the pinstripes on the carnival coats now transfigured into the shapes of faces, and in the reflection of the brass buttons a starlet sighing, and in her hand-mirror a Shakespeare gripping a skull, and in the skull's empty socket a ship tossed on a tempest, and in the depths of that dark water something great and massive rising up to meet you—

"Tuesday."

Tuesday. The worlds within worlds collapsed on each other like a telescope and Jay's swollen head swayed backward to stare up at the black void into which they climbed.

"Honestly we're making great time." Perfidia, a few steps behind him, snapped shut her pocket watch. "All today and all tomorrow to reach the top."

"Tuesday," Jay said. "You mean—we've been in here a whole day already."

"My watch doesn't lie."

It felt nothing near a full day. It felt like minutes. It felt like—

It felt like shit. It felt like tipping over and dropping into the pit between the coils of the stairs. It felt like God fucking dammit.

"Feeling glum, my man?" said the tap dancer in the poster, who was Makepeace John Gaheris Coke leaning out to transform the upper half of his painted body three-dimensional. "Feeling like you wish the whole bloody trouble would simply go away? Alas, my man, once the hooks of fate have their hold in you, there is no escape. No matter how far you flee."

The hooks of fate. So that was what he always wanted. Importance, meaning, value in his life, the way an RPG builds to some cataclysmic, world-altering point, the final boss some God in angelic affect, annihilation of planets via a wave of the hand, perhaps that was the fantasy all along, that any one person could matter so much to the world.

From Makepeace's brass button Pluxie the bear rolled out: "I'm sorry..." Even the weight of one life was too much.

Yet he killed Pythette, and he kept climbing these stairs, and at every step the thought of Lalum and Viviendre dwindled behind him...

At the top, if he did as Mammon asked—as Mammon asked and Viviendre didn't—he'd kill Perfidia too.

"Two days," Perfidia said, "plenty of time. Sure we lost Kedeshah. But the route's gotten narrower. Less room to get lost—"

"Perfidia," he said, turning away from the poster, remembering not to look too closely at the things in this place. She, at least, remained the same. Her coat hung about her: filthy, shabby. Her jaundiced eyes stared wide, her mouth a snaggletooth smile. "If I get the Divinity to you, what do you plan to do with it."

"Huh?"

"That power would destroy you."

"Eventually sure. If I keep it too long. Don't plan to. See humans get Humanity and it sticks with them. They can't get rid of it. Napoleon can't stop being Napoleon, can he? Throw him on Elba he comes back. But for devils, it's just a resource. It can be spent, traded out for something."

"You plan to spend it all before you're destroyed."

"Bingo." Before, as they climbed these stairs, Perfidia had been reserved. She must not have wanted to inadvertently provoke Jay after what he did to Pythette. Now, sensing him open, she opened in turn: "Though there's spending and spending, ya know? You can drop money on a car that depreciates the moment you drive it off the lot, or you can buy property and grow that money more in the long run. The devils out there in Cleveland, they're morons. Slaughtering humans in the streets, it's stupid. Where do they think Humanity comes from anyway? I gotta be the only devil in the whole of Hell who knows you can give to get."

Mammon seemed to know it too, Jay thought. "So you intend to change the rules of this world. To make humans prosper. To make them make more humans."

"You're shrewd Jay." Perfidia beamed, while the posters around her leaned closer to display their approbation. "Even tweaking major laws of reality, like hunger, energy, aging—that stuff costs big time. If I make humans live twice as long, require half the resources to survive, suddenly this planet can hold billions more of them. I can terraform Mars, or the moon, make a second Earth as plentiful as this one, shit why not more? Give em a new goal as a species, push them to something within their reach, make them strive—for the stars, for greatness, for permanent expansion, perpetual growth—and once they spread to a second planet they'll seek a third, they'll want more, more, more, and there'll be more humans, there'll be more Humanity, and I'll be there to reap it. What we in the biz call a win-win. Humans are happy, I'm happy. There's your paradise! Even you oughtta agree with a goal like that?"

Even YOU can't say no to a deal like that! Double the savings, double the product!

"Hm," Jay said.

"Course I'll let em all know you were the one who made it happen. A new era of mankind, ushered in by the great Jay Waringcrane. Any tweak to the script you want, lemme know. I'll slot it in."

She stared at him, smiling, expectant. Spieling. Selling.

In that instant Jay knew she knew he planned to kill her. She knew dying was not a deal breaker for him now. She knew she could not fight him. She knew she needed to sell to save her life.

"Can you bring back the dead," he asked.

She did not respond immediately. She considered, though nothing in her face betrayed deep thought, though her grin remained both cordial and confident. But he knew she was thinking carefully about her answer.

"Don't see why not!" she said. "That's what the Son did, right? You ran into Mayfair. You know her staff: Staff of Lazarus. The staff's a sham sure but I didn't make the name up. You want em back? Viv, Lalum—anyone else? Sure thing."

The long pause before she spoke suggested a lie. But not necessarily. Not this time. She needed to decide two things before she answered his question. What he wanted to hear—or rather what would make him more likely to want to give her the Divinity—and whether what he wanted to hear matched the truth or not.

She told him what he wanted to hear. In fact, he realized, he made it too obvious, he'd been too eager, hadn't concealed himself the way he always did, the way he was so naturally good at. She said exactly what he wanted. Viviendre, Lalum, Mother, Makepeace, Pluxie the bear (I'm sorry...), Charm, Charisma, Pythette, the Effervescent Elf-Queen, Flanz-le-Flore, even Shannon's boyfriend Dalt, if they could all be brought back, if he could go back—going back had always been the way—

"Oh shit," Perfidia said. "Oh fuck!"

Her eyes went past him and he turned, sluggish, realizing too late the possibility she wanted his back to her for a sneak attack, realizing for the first time he could not tell whether Perfidia Bal Berith were lying or telling the truth. They were no longer ascending a staircase, they instead moved through a long round tunnel, the sloped sides plastered so thick with movie posters no sense of their original state remained, posters atop posters peeling to reveal more posters, faces flickering and only sometimes human, six fingers to a fist and two sets of ears stacked atop one another, distinct and glossy. The tunnel narrowed ahead. At its end, lit from behind by something radiant like the shine of a projector, a man stood with his arms held out at his sides. One arm slowly rotating up. One arm slowly rotating down. Like the arms of a clock, slowly.

The man was Quentin Tarantino, the film director.

Jay raised his bat. Though the tunnel stretched and stretched he felt like with one full-powered leap he could sail across it. The more he held the bat the stronger he felt, or maybe he felt stronger after he killed Rimmon and Ashtoreth.

Perfidia's hand fell on his shoulder and she strode ahead of him, extending her arms the same way Tarantino did. Against the postered tunnel her coat became borderless mush. "Hey! Heya. Howzit? Perfidia Bal Berith here, and my human friend Jay Waringcrane. Just passing through. No need to bother with us at all really. Just a waste of your time and effort, y'know?"

Waste of time and effort. So this was Belial, Prince of Sloth.

"Hey..." Belial Tarantino said, "wanna watch a movie...?"

"Ooh, sorry. Sounds lovely. Really it does. Saw an ad for one of your movies out in Hell earlier. Great stuff I mean it. But we got places to be and times to be em. Besides there's a whole bunch of people following us. They catch up it'll be a big fight, big headache for you. Really wouldn't wanna bother ya with that."

"Ahhhhh... but you're hurt... and you're tired... and you've lost all your friends... haven't you...?"

"Ya win some ya lose some. Just gotta soldier on best we can."

"A moment to relax... a moment to grieve. A moment to wash it away..."

"We can sleep when we're dead. Come on Jay." Perfidia walked down the tunnel toward Belial without hesitation. Belial's arms kept tick, tick, ticking so slowly.

"Films are great for forgetting..."

Like Mother, Jay thought. Forgetting them all. Watching the films she'd already seen. He had to put it out of his head, it didn't matter. None of what happened before mattered, he couldn't go back. Mammon, Rimmon, Ashtoreth—they hadn't been able to go back. The only one who went back was Viviendre and it killed her. There was only one way: forward.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"I have a good new film for you..." Belial said. "I made it myself... I'm proud of it... Nominated for eight Academy Awards and four Golden Globes..."

Though the tunnel was long it wasn't endless, like the tunnel in Poltergeist—why did he remember Poltergeist—the tunnel that never ended no matter how much you ran. Six years old blanket on his head because the kid in the movie threw the blanket on the clown and it missed. "Watch out for this part," his father said. "Here's the scariest part." He laughed. It was the only time he laughed. Jay barely remembered.

"Starring... Brad Pitt... Michael Fassbender... Christoph Waltz... and also... the most popular human in Hell... that's right... it's... Adolf Hitler!"

The walls were changing.

"Shit!" said Perfidia. "Get him Jay! Get him quick!"

He shot forward like a bullet, the distance between him and Quentin Tarantino gone at once, but when he brought the bat down everything was different, the world was different, Pandaemonium vanished.

He stood outside a quaint cottage in a pleasant farmer's field. A man chopped wood with an axe. A girl put clothes to dry on a line. Cows. A few autumnal trees. Great care given to this image, a craftsman who toiled diligently to impress upon the eyeball this exact composition and color. On the small dirt road that wound past the farm a few distant vehicles approached.

The vehicles ceased. The farmer ceased. He went to the window and washed his face while the woman, his daughter, went inside. The doors of the vehicles opened. Nazis came out. There were four Nazis. Three, soldiers, remained by the parked vehicles. The fourth, an officer, with a long black coat and a peaked hat, walked over to the farmer and spoke in French. The translation, in English, appeared on the screen.

The farmer and the officer went inside the house and Jay was inside too, and Perfidia, and Quentin Tarantino behind the camera filming. The colonel was charming, he asked for and drank milk, the girl and her two sisters were dismissed and went outside, the farmer and the officer spoke. They spoke, and spoke, and the speaking was itself the hook luring them deeper, pulling them into the enfolding artifice of this landscape, speaking, speaking, speaking.

Nineteen minutes had passed.

"This film is based on historical fact..." Quentin Tarantino explained on the couch between Jay and Perfidia, holding the bowl of popcorn from which they both reached and ate. "History... the past... even a wretched past such as this... allowing them all for a moment to go back to it... to return to these horrors... what a delight."

A man killed a captive Nazi soldier with a baseball bat. Jay's own bat leaned against the couch.

"Here is the panacea for all other ills... all other sins. A steady erosion of the agony that propels them... a release from themselves into the eyes of another. I scalp my eyeballs and place what I see on film so everyone else can see..."

A man wore a playing card on his head. The card said King Kong. Which was another movie. A movie within a movie.

"Watching a film, 'you' cease to exist... That's the joy. Aldo Raine exists... Hans Landa exists... Adolf Hitler exists... 'you' do not exist. Absolute negation... absolute freedom..."

"Oou-oou-ouh! That's a bingo!" Hans Landa said.

In a video game, Jay thought, 'you' still exist. You are the one who controls the characters, and whether they win or lose depends on your effort.

"Your emotions are not your own but another's... even feeling is not something you need to do... Sadness, fear, hatred, love..."

The movie ended.

One hundred and fifty-three minutes had passed.

"Another...?" Belial asked.

"That movie sucked," said Perfidia. "That's not how it happened at all. It's fake, it's not true. Nobody shot Hitler in a theater booth. That didn't happen!"

"They shot Lincoln," Jay said.

"What?!"

"They shot Lincoln in a theater booth."

"I see," said Perfidia, mollified instantly. "So the historical revision changes the unjust death of a just ruler so that it becomes the just death of an unjust ruler..."

"You think too much..." Belial said. "Who cares what it means... What matters is that it feels... That 'you' feel... Even your disgust is a feeling. Sit back... relax... let it flow over you..."

The projector began a new film as soon as the credits of the previous ended. Belial stopped being Quentin Tarantino. His hair became scraggly and unkempt, with a beard. He spoke with an Australian accent... or maybe New Zealand... It must be New Zealand, because the film was set there. A man and his girlfriend went to the zoo... His mother disapproved of the relationship... He was white and she was brown... a domineering, hateful mother. At the zoo a rat-monkey bit the mother. Then the mother began to rot.

Viviendre leaned her head on Jay's shoulder. He wrapped his arm around her and held her.

The mother died. Then she returned, a zombie. She killed others, they returned, more zombies, zombies that crawled out of their graves, they pulled a local punk to the ground and his blood exploded around him. A priest appeared and kicked a zombie's head off. "I kick arse for the Lord!" And Viviendre and Jay laughed, and Mother laughed. She sat on the other side of Belial.

"I've certainly never seen this film before," Mother said. "I would remember if I had... Oh, isn't it so awful!" But she laughed. "Shannon would watch these types of movies all the time... She watched them even when she was young. I couldn't stop her..."

"Oh, I was fine!" Shannon said. "Something like this was nothing to me. I'd seen worse. I had to be an adult anyway. Don't you all have something better to do? Why are you sitting here watching movies?"

A strange sensation struck Jay as a chatter rose around him—a chatter Belial tried to quell by telling everyone to take their seats—and he thought, Have I seen this movie before? That was the kind of thought Mother would have. But the movie struck him as so familiar. He should ask Viviendre. He only ever watched movies with Viviendre anyway.

He looked down and she wasn't there. In the chair beside him sat Shannon, and beside her the Queen of Whitecrosse, and beside her a girl who was half-hornet, and beside her Gonzago of Meretryce, and when Jay looked behind him he saw rows and rows and rows of theater seats filled with corpses like those in the movie, zombies. He picked out amid the rows Princess Mayfair and in the handicap seat beside her the deer he once met at the monastery.

"It's fun to watch films with others..." Belial said. "And you thought they'd fight you, Perfidia...! Ha."

"Shh!" Perfidia said, as a zombie baby ripped open a woman's head from the inside. "I dunno how they did it, but they made a movie more terrible than Hell."

"It's fun... It's fun..." Belial said. "In a movie, even Hell is fun..."

The hero revved a lawnmower. A horde of zombies shambled toward him, all the dead of Cleveland, their arms dangling by strands and their eyeballs melting out of their sockets. But the hero had to save his girlfriend, who had been taken away by the now-gigantic, monstrous form of his zombified mother. He ran forward, pushing the whirling blades of the lawnmower into the encroaching crowd; they came apart, blood in whirlwinds, gore more filthy and repugnant than the true gore of Rimmon through which he had swam not long ago, a half-severed head slipping this way and that on the floor, kicked by the shuffling feet. Jay sat up. He'd seen this. He had! Where? When?

"Oh, I remember," Shannon said beside him. "Yes. I was in high school still. Mother was out. I was watching with my boyfriend. Of course, you had to interrupt us."

The giantess of a Mother reached down and lifted the hero kicking and screaming... her stomach opened... she swallowed him whole...

"Vile," said the quiet voice of Mayfair in the rows behind them. She could be heard because so many of them were silent. Jay glanced back, and beyond Mayfair the rows of theater seats seemed to rise forever. He spotted Wendell Noh crouched over a gun, Flanz-le-Flore cradling him in her arms.

The hero, wielding a small sharp pendant, cut and cut at his Mother's stomach, cutting his way to freedom, cutting his way out in a deluge of blood. His Mother howled, she toppled backward, fell into the fire...

The hero and his love interest walked away together, and the credits rolled.

"Bravo! Another!" shouted Queen Mallory, who gave an sitting ovation solus. Beside her, the hornet girl and Gonzago appeared queasy.

"I would go on to win many Academy Awards," said the New Zealander Belial, who the credits revealed to be Peter Jackson. The guy who did Lord of the Rings. "I made other films... but this was always my essence..."

A further one hundred and four minutes had passed.

"Well, it's been 'fun'." Perfidia checked her silver watch. "But we should really get going—"

"Just one more," said Peter Jackson, already in a state of transformation to something else. "Merely one more..."

"Something not so reprehensibly violent and depraved," Mayfair yelled from the back.

"Very well... this film is rated PG..."

There it was: An ordinary suburban home. An ordinary suburban family. A father, a mother, an older sister, a younger brother. Jay definitely remembered this film. He couldn't forget. He'd been thinking about it only a few minutes ago. A shiver ran through him. Was Belial reading his mind?

Watch out! That's no ordinary Prince—That's Belial! He may not be the strongest, may not be the fastest, may not even be the smartest one of us—but he's for sure the most dangerous! He's the only one of us who never decayed. Maybe he was even the one who decayed all of us. Get up kid! I didn't give you that bat for free! You still have payments to make!

Right. Right. He couldn't—why was he even still sitting here? Had he really watched two whole movies already? Jay grabbed the armrests of his chair and tried to rise. His body felt like lead. He strained, a wince pushed through gritted teeth, he lifted half an inch—then the little boy on the screen threw his blanket to cover the creepy clown doll and Jay dropped back into the chair panting from the exertion.

Well. He'd been climbing a lot of stairs and fighting a lot of powerful devils. Just a moment of rest...

A dark room with a bright white TV screen. The family sleeping on the bed, they fell asleep watching. The American anthem played, and the little girl placed her hands against the screen. "They're here," she said. And the ghosts came out of the TV.

A dark room with a bright white TV screen. Mother lying on the couch, taking in images without sense, without memory. Shannon with her latest boyfriend—hey there little buddy. Dad with his eyes wide and blank: Here's the scariest part little buddy. The next day they told Jay he died.

"I didn't actually make this one you know..." said Belial. He was now Steven Spielberg, the most famous director alive, a hat and glasses and a smile. "But poor Tobe... His career went to Hell after this... and nowadays they won't even give him credit for this one. Me, though... I won awards... I made lots and lots of money. Nowadays everyone wants me to be the one who made this..."

Viviendre laced her fingers with Jay's. "I'd like to watch movies with you," she said. "Wouldn't that be a nice way to spend our time together?"

Then Shannon leaned in. "See her?" She pointed to the older sister on the screen, who was Shannon. "Her boyfriend strangled her to death five months after this movie came out. I had a boyfriend once who told me that while we watched this movie on the couch together."

"They say this film is cursed..." Belial Spielberg said. "Basically everyone involved died—except the parents. And poor Tobe went to pot... Making Crocodile for the Syfy Channel. But me? Everything only got better after this moment. I avoided the curse and received all the credit..."

A tree opened up and ate a little boy. Someone far away made an excited gasp—Flanz-le-Flore.

"Is there not a single work of merit produced by this civilization," Mayfair said.

"This one's a bore," said Mallory.

Dad watched this cursed film and blew his head off the next day. Did Mother remember this one? Of all of them, did she at least remember this one?

A man looked at himself in the mirror. His face began to peel. He pressed his fingers to it and chunks came off into the sink, huge flaps of skin and flesh, exposing his jaws, exposing his bare eyeballs, down dropped his nose as a red fleshy thing—!

"Hoh? Perhaps it's worthwhile after all," said Mallory. Beside her, the hornet buried her face in her hands.

And suddenly it struck Jay, who had never thought about it before in his life, who until only a few minutes ago had forgotten watching this movie one dark night with him: Was that the moment? That scene, that face falling apart into the sink of this ordinary suburban home with this ordinary suburban family, was that the scene when he knew he would do it? Could it have been this shlocky PG-rated horror movie from the 80s, directed—or not directed—by the world's greatest blockbuster artist, this innocuously stupid film? Could a film have that much power? Could a game? Could his father watch a film the way Jay played a game and yearn to go back, go back, go back to some unreachable past?

"They say those who decide to kill themselves reach an inner peace..." Steven Spielberg said. "All the turmoil that brought them to that decision leaves them... As if every cruel emotion was suddenly released at once..."

The boy threw his blanket at the clown doll and missed. The clown doll coiled its long arm around his throat and choked him. Mother ran down a hall that grew bigger the more she ran...

"Oh," Mother said, "I remember this movie."

The movie ended. A further one hundred and fourteen minutes had passed.

Perfidia, whose hand tilted to the side to let her watch rest on her thigh, turned an indolent face halfway toward Belial and began to mutter some strained syllable, only for Belial to cut her off: "Just one more... One more..."

The next movie Jay knew he never saw. Some martial arts action-adventure flick starring Jackie Chan as a globe-trotting adventurer who stole ancient relics from indigenous tribes. Jay wasn't a huge actor person but he knew it was Jackie Chan because the character's name was also, inexplicably, Jackie Chan. Belial became Jackie Chan too.

The faint nostalgic sense for the past two films kept him sedate, but he possessed no attachment to this film, with its horrible dubbing and goofy camerawork. Shannon leaned forward, enthralled, and Perfidia complained about the time without ever rising. The tiniest voice in the world said: Hero! Hero! But where it came from, who knew. A voice he thought he recognized.

Then it left him. He sat on the couch again, the dark living room he remembered, and he held Viviendre's hand as she rested against him.

Hero!

Hero!

"The hero does so many flips in this one," Viviendre said, as Jackie Chan somersaulted in midair and kicked a man in the face before landing. A horde of African(?) tribesmen chased him, literally saying ooga-booga, ooga-booga, and Viviendre laughed her breathless laugh: Fehfehfeh. "You never told me you had all these films in your world. Why did we ever try to live at that ridiculous monastery? We can stay here and watch these movies forever."

Jackie Chan and his sidekick infiltrated a monastery, where a cult in black robes knelt and prayed before the statue of a serpent. They prayed to Satan.

Viviendre had once been a snake. He tried to look to see if she was again but her legs were shrouded in darkness.

"This is the movie," Shannon muttered. "This is the one she... Even if I were on the other side of the screen..."

"Here at last is a tale worth telling," said Mayfair even more distant, not even in the same room anymore. "A man on a quest for the relics of God, fighting against Pagan worshippers. Though the humor eludes me, there ought to be more of this type."

"There is infinite of every type..." Belial Chan said.

On the screen, his avatar was surrounded by cultists. They leered with their knives and encroached closer. Desperate, Jackie Chan opened his jacket and there he stood with a hundred sticks of dynamite affixed to his body, the armor of God that not one dared take another step forward to strike.

"I was not the original director of this film, you understand..." Jackie Chan explained. "But then I almost died..."

Jackie Chan hurled sticks of dynamite every which way. They exploded, the monastery walls ruptured, rubble and rocks came down. The hero hurried to escape the narrow winding corridors. Leaping, flying an improbable distance, he hurtled off the side of the mountain toward a hot air balloon as the monastery collapsed behind him.

The film ended. But as the credits played, it continued.

"A routine stunt... I leapt to a tree. The branch broke beneath me, I fell to the ground..."

And it was happening on screen, even as the credits played, even as joyous and triumphant pop music crowned the hero's successful escape from the clutches of Satan. Jackie Chan dropped fifteen feet. The camera's eye watched it happen.

"There was a rock... my head hit it... it broke my skull... a fragment of bone was driven into my brain..."

Jackie Chan lay on the ground, blood pooled around him, as people rushed to help him. His face did not move, his eyes did not move. The pop music played.

"They cut into my head... they left a hole there... I was unable to move for months. Motionless... stillness near to death... not a single wisp of activity beyond the mere fact of my survival. The film's original director refused to wait for me... he left... when I finally arose... only I could finish the film... finish the story..."

The ambulance carrying Jackie Chan drove away.

"Finish it... so you could watch... finish it... so you could sit so perfectly still... finish it... so you could know my sense of death. Finish it... to encase you in the armor of God..."

A further ninety-seven minutes had passed.

"Just one more..." Belial said, although Perfidia was an encrusted thing upon her pocket watch.

So one more played.

And one more.

And one more.

Each time Belial became the director, each time everyone commented on the action, and each time Jay slipped deeper into the couch surrounded by the people of his life who all sat and watched the white screen against a black background. The voices—the voice of Mammon and that tiny voice that said hero, hero—they grew quieter, more distant, and Jay's head lolled on his neck. There was not even joy in these films, they grew increasingly more boring despite Belial elucidating them with details horrific, tragic, or ironic. Jay watched simply to watch, simply because existing here in this quietude with Viviendre's hand in his and a warm homely aura suffused him with a sense of something building, a sense that it would eventually build to something. The minutes passed and the films marked a forward progression of time.

No. He blinked and looked around at one random moment in one random film, when the building thing revealed itself as utter boredom: No. Belial, Prince of Sloth, trapped him here against his will, he had a mission, a will, a desire, a striving for something more. He needed to rise. One gets bored of boredom sometimes.

He didn't rise. The awareness ebbed. Viviendre leaned against his ear and whispered: "It's best this way. You know it is. I'm not real anymore, Jay. Only in this tower of the damned can I still be real. This is our last chance to be together."

Jay knew. He understood it all, he even understood Belial's tactic. Minutes ticking by, minutes to the final deadline when his contract with Perfidia ended. The thing playing before him was no longer a movie even. Some play. Belial became the bald likeness of William Shakespeare and Jay understood none of the words being spoken but watched anyway.

No. He had to rise. Not even a question. Belial exerted a force, that was only thing that kept him here. Viviendre was dead. All of them were dead. He was alone, he was the hero, he was Napoleon, he was on the cusp of greatness. Every single thing he ever wanted was a few flight of stairs away. His fingers were thatched with Viviendre's. Her bones were brittle and weak, if he exerted the force to rise he'd snap them.

He could not exert the force. Enervation kept him bound.

Shannon leaned against her own partner—the queen, who wrapped a possessive arm around her shoulder. Of course, for Shannon there had always been those Friday nights where she retreated to this exact state of inertness. The way she talked about her boyfriends, as disposable as the rental DVDs she popped into the machine, always gave Jay the impression Shannon truly preferred work to play, that she didn't work so she might relax as a reward but that she relaxed because her physical body limited how much she could work. Try as she might, she could never become the machine she wanted to be. That was the key to Belial's power, then, the reason why Mammon or Mammon's voice inside his head told him Belial was the only one who never decayed. Because he was the essence of decay itself, and the more you strove against him the more powerful he became. From the few times he tried to lift himself from his seat already his muscles ached. He yawned incessantly. If he struggled again, he knew, it'd only make him weaker.

It happened every day, when people fell into their beds to sleep. It happened every life, when the old man retired. The harder he fought the more abused and battered his body became, until his back hunched over and his skin hung from his face in folds. For Jay—

Viviendre's hand remained warm in his. He'd let go of that hand before. Left her behind, fought against his feelings for her. Again and again he returned, again and again he left. Now a state of finality had come. The feelings he fought against so long crashed down upon him. He knew she spoke the truth: She only existed here, now, thanks to this tower, and if he rose again she would be gone forever. That weight pinned him to this seat.

"Catharsis..." Belial said. He looked utterly unalike the modern directors of before, or even William Shakespeare. He wore a toga: a Greek philosopher. "The release of emotion... the feeling of relief. Everyone always wants to get up, eventually... I cannot keep them pinned down forever. My paradox: When they fight against me, I grow strong, but when they succumb to me, they are allowed to slowly rebuild their strength while I weaken... How to prevent them from ever wanting to rise again, I wonder...?"

"Look at the time," Perfidia said. "There's so little time. We have to leave. We have to go!" She did not move.

"Catharsis... I have to free them of all desire. I must give them an image of exactly what they want... If I remove their wants, then they never have a reason to rise again. But I must know their wants... Well, Mammon was an excellent help in that regard, though he never knew he helped me. He discerned what they wanted, and I crafted the perfect facsimile of it..."

"Absurd," said Shannon. "Ridiculous. Nobody who wants money would be satisfied to see a picture of it in a movie. Or food, or security, or order...!" She remained motionless in Mallory's arms.

"It's true... I cannot provide material wants... I leave that to other brokers..." He nodded at Perfidia. "But there are things people want that have no physical element at all... A feeling... a complex feeling that shifts and changes... a feeling unique to them. The feeling of something lost..."

The thing you can never get back, Mammon had said.

Six years old. Poltergeist in the living room. His dad.

"Jay," said his dad, no more than a trace outline in the dark, illuminated where the TV light struck his contours, "Shannon. I'm sorry..."

(I'm sorry...)

"I was weak. I never should have done it. I had a responsibility to you all. To your Mother, too. But I was weak. The guilt ate me from the inside. Your Mother, she was so kind, she never even looked at me with a flicker of reproach. As though she didn't think I ever harmed her at all..."

"You did harm her," Shannon said. "You bastard. She was eighteen. You—"

"That was why, Shannon. When you started to look at me the way she should have, I knew I couldn't continue. The guilt she held back all those years crashed upon me."

"So now you blame me!" Shannon lurched upright. Amazingly—without even a trace of effort—she stood. Mallory's pale arms reached for her. They attempted to draw her back into her seat, but Shannon remained rigid as she pointed at their dad. "How convenient! I was eleven years old and you blame me for blowing your brains out! You are the most loathsome, reprehensible—"

"No, Shannon, it wasn't your fault. You were always the responsible one. You simply did what your Mother was too weak to do herself. I was the ghost in the house. I needed to be exorcised..."

"Bastard." Tears streamed down Shannon's face. Within the deep raccoon swirls of her eyes a lacquer glimmered. Mallory's hands gripped her firmly; slowly, she started to lower back to her seat.

"Wait," Jay muttered, "wait. Shannon. Stay up. The bat. If you pick up the bat—he's right beside me. One hit. Shannon!"

"It's not your fault," their dad said, "I'm sorry... Your pain, your stress, your constant need to keep churning... I forced that onto you. It's not your fault, Shannon... So don't feel bad. Say everything you need to say to me..."

"Awful, horrible human being. You took advantage of her! You ruined her! You were nothing but a plague upon her, upon us all. God I fucking hate you. God I hate you more than anything. I just want to—want to—crumple you up—toss you in the trash. Dispose of you once and for all. You worthless, worthless, worthless man!"

She reached. He stood upon the stage before her; even as she sank back into the seat her hands pressed around him. His faint outline twisted and contorted.

"You didn't even let me hate you! You couldn't even handle the hate of an eleven-year-old girl! Trash! Garbage! Waste!"

The image of him shattered in her hands. The lines unseamed and she wound them between her fingers. She pulled and pried, she opened her mouth and tore at them with her teeth, she dropped back into her seat, she fell within the arms of the queen, and when she finally let her fingers unfold the few white strands of their father that remained fluttered to the ground like strands of hair. She sobbed quietly.

"Catharsis..." Belial said.

But Jay had felt nothing about his dad. He barely remembered him at all. The whole display before him had been a piece of theater like the films that played before it.

"Shan-bear," said Mother. "Jay."

Her face was like their dad's a white outline, cast under the spotlight above the stage, a theatrical exaggeration in her stance of utter uselessness, total surrender. As with every film his eyes were galvanized to the center of this performance, while his fingers hooked around the ends of the armrests. Something else caught his eye, however. The shredded strands that Shannon had dropped floated in the stillness. Some, aimless in their fluttering, rose around Mother, carried this way and that at a slow and methodical pace, but as the silence elongated and the pregnancy of the moment grew fuller, he noticed with idle curiosity that the strands did not move randomly. A pattern governed their direction while they came together just past Mother's shoulder, first forming letters, then a word of gossamer strands:

HERO!

The tiny voice. He did not hear the voice but his mind remembered it. Someone calling out to him.

HERO!

"Jay," Mother said, "Shan-bear. I'm sorry..."

(I'm sorry.)

HERO YOU MUSTE RISE.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry. I was never... I could never be there. It was simply too much for me... It wasn't your fault. It was never your fault..."

Jay took in a breath. The words danced: HERO THIS IS NOT WHERE IT ENDES FOR YOU. Beside him, Viviendre tightened her grip around his hand.

"I wanted you both to love me. I thought you both should love me. I thought we should all be loved... But really I couldn't muster the effort..."

HERO YOU HAVE A DESTENY.

"When he—when your father died, I thought I was something pathetic. Feeling pathetic I really became pathetic, didn't I? It was too much for me to love you. I wanted to be loved so I could muster the energy to love... It was selfish of me, wasn't it? It's funny. I'm so good at understanding people. I don't know why, but how people feel just comes to me naturally. So I knew you were both cold to me, but I refused to think why... To think that it was because I was cold to you, too..."

DO YOU WANT GREATNESS? THEN TAKE IT! DO YOU WANT PURPOSE? THEN TAKE IT!

"Ha... Ha. I understood others so well, but refused to understand myself. I hurt you both, I know I did. Shannon: You wanted to be loved for your accomplishments. And Jay: You wanted—you needed—someone to push you, someone to spur you on... I couldn't be that person. I could only sit still and watch movies... I could only pass the time and wonder why I was so alone..."

THIS IS NOT AN ANSWER.

"I realized with Sansaime... Do you know her? She and I became friends after you left. I thought I needed to find you... I thought it was this dormant love for you awakened at long last by the danger of losing you forever... But in the end? This is truly awful, I'm sorry. In the end I was willing to leave you, if only she stayed... I didn't need you. I only needed someone. Anyone..."

THIS IS NOT A SOLLUTION!

"So it's not your fault. None of it is your fault. I failed you... I'm sorry. I'm sorry... I'm sorry. Now I see. Now I can feel peace. Now I can finally say it, and mean it: I love you. I'm sorry... I love you."

Now Jay saw. Now he fell back into his seat. Shannon bent forward as though she intended to rip Mother apart like the other but instead she slumped over her knees and shivered.

All the distance he felt all his life snapped to nothing in an instant. Like a long-drawn rubber band finally released. All this time, he realized, he'd been so alone. Alone in that room, alone with his games, alone in Whitecrosse, alone even when surrounded by others. He had been alone for so long he never recognized it as loneliness. But it'd been there, hadn't it? It'd been what let him run off to some other world and leave everything behind without a second thought. It'd been what caused him to push away all the creatures Perfidia tried to press close to him. It'd been what caused him to leave Viviendre every single time. He always had justifications, rationales, reasons. But there was something deeper. A reverse magnetism, something that made it impossible for him to get close to anyone. To distrust even his own desire for closeness—he held Viviendre's hand—he looked at her singular eye golden in the dim light.

Every single act of self-sabotage. An ingrained tendency toward loneliness. Every single goal of Napoleonic conquest, of Godlike paradise-crafting. Because it was like Mammon said, wasn't it? All those world-altering heroes stood above. Above was apart. Being that hero had always been a way he could give himself a purpose that did not rely on others, a purpose for himself and himself alone. And it all came from her, did it? From Mother. And dad. Their distance, their absence. An empty house, a ghost in a house. A dependence on isolation. But now, they were sorry...

It all seeped out of him and he sank into the chair. He held Viviendre's hand. Catharsis. The knot at the center of his existence came undone. Nothing held him together. When Viviendre placed her head close to his he accepted it. He sat here now with her, with everyone. Shannon beside him sobbed softly: "Why. Why. Why." The faint outline of Mother disintegrated.

All was peace.

All except the words in front of him.

THAT WAS HER STORY! IT IS NOT YOURS! YOU CANNOT LET HER STORY REPLACE WHAT IS YOURS! NOT YOUR MOTHER'S STORY NOR YOUR FATHER'S!

His head turned away from Viviendre and lolled to his opposite shoulder. Lalum stood there. A tiny Lalum, the size of a tarantula. Her legs gripped his arm while her hands gesticulated wildly. Her eyes burned bright as her wordless mouth mumbled in silence.

Did you drop this golden bat? Or this silver one?

I dropped my bat, Jay thought. Not those two.

Catharsis. A release of emotion brought on by a story. A way for the facsimile to trick your mind into believing, in some small way, that it was real, and receiving from it a satisfaction you could never find otherwise. Sadness, fear, happiness, love, hatred, any emotion could be played upon the screen. Any lack supplied.

But he couldn't blame his parents for everything, could he? He couldn't so conveniently supplant his own soul with their apologies—could he? He was Jay Waringcrane. He was as wretched and guilty as either of them: of distance, of absence, of uncaring, of unfeeling.

He wanted to feel. Like those games when he was young. For every magnetic pulse pushing him away from others that drive pushed him on. That drive put him in Perfidia's office, made him make that wish, kept his feet moving through that dusty world. Sitting still and watching a screen no longer slaked that thirst. He'd spent enough time doing that, until the screen only numbed him, until not even the most lurid displays stirred a single feeling in his heart. How long until the same happened here? How many movies, how many tragic confessions from his family until even Mother saying "I love you" no longer meant a thing to him? No. No. He could not let them in death force-feed him their feelings. If he wanted to absolve his guilt, only he could do it.

Only him. Only him. Only him!

He pressed his feet against the ground and tried once more to rise.

An anchor pulled him down. Enormous, uncontestable weight—with one final lock affixed to his right hand. Viviendre held him. She did not say a word, but she held him, and she would not let go.

"I'm sorry," Jay said.

His hand clenched. With his grasp her fingers twisted, snapped, shattered. She made no sound whatsoever, because she wasn't truly there, had never truly been there, she was dead, they were all dead, though when he looked her face remained and tears streamed from her eye. He strained. The muscles in his legs rippled. Groaning, grunting, growling the slightest part of him lifted from the base of his seat.

"Shannon," he hissed. "SHANNON! GET UP SHANNON! GET UP!"

The scream empowered him. Shannon blinked away her tears and watched in shock as he rose an inch above the seat. He strained with all his might and felt every single vein in body bulge under the thin tent-tarp skin draped over his bones. Viviendre's hand turned to mush in his iron grip, the fingers breaking, that hateful memory of Flanz-le-Flore, of his own guilt, of his own worthless self the spur embedded in his flesh.

"Jay," Shannon said.

"DON'T BECOME HER," Jay howled.

That was the last he could speak. His mouth stretched open so wide his cheek started to split. Every inch of him hurt and still all he could do was lift himself one inch at a time, one more inch, one more, each inch met by unbearable pain he forced himself to bear to claim at least one fucking thing he could call his own. His free hand gripped the handle of his baseball bat and with the same sluggish strength he tried to lift it. There was one way to end all this. One—simple—way!

Belial sat on the other side of him. Motionless. "Ah..."

It hurt. It hurt so much, too much, the magnet pushing him back into the chair, everything in slow motion, the bat in slow motion as it arduously angled toward Belial. The thought struck him: If he rested for a bit. Regained some of his strength. No—those thoughts were traps, those thoughts Belial thought for him the same way Mother and—and—But just one second. Simple stillness for one—one—one single second—!

A hand gripped his around the bat. Shannon's hand. Sweat ran down her brow. Her face was red, her breath ragged. Together, the bat moved again.

"I wonder..." said Belial. The tip of the bat inched toward him, but he refused to move. It would take only the slightest movement to avoid the bat. He needed only to get up and switch seats with Perfidia. He did not. Maybe, like them, he could not. "I wonder... Does Lucifer have the least clue what he's doing...?"

"AAUUUUUEEEEEAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH," Jay and Shannon screamed.

The tip of the baseball bat touched gently to Belial's knee.

Instantly, Belial burst into dust, and the theater lights turned on.

All the force weighing against Jay vanished in an instant and he pitched forward. The desolate theater stage caught him and he rose to see the seats of the theater, filled with occupants. No sign of Viviendre, or Lalum, or his parents, but Shannon was really there, and Mallory, and Mayfair, and even Wendell Noh and Flanz-le-Flore. Plus as many corpses as you could count. The living stirred in their seats, a groan rose among them, they seemed to be emerging from a deep slumber as they lifted their hands to shield their eyes from the sudden light.

"Jay." Shannon fumbled forward on her knees and reached for him. "Jay, we—I—"

"How much time is left?" Jay shook Perfidia, who held her pocket watch on her upturned palm. "How much time?"

Perfidia looked as dazed as everyone else. Only Jay still possessed his senses to any degree. If all these people woke up, though—it'd be trouble. He couldn't waste more time here.

He pulled Perfidia out of her chair. She shambled idly, but followed his guidance. A stairway appeared ahead, behind the stage. Shannon called out to him but he ignored her. To Perfidia, he kept asking: "How much time. How much time is left?"

Up the steps. Perfidia's movements became steadier and steadier and from behind a commotion arose as the theatergoers returned to themselves. Only one Prince left right? Beelzebub. What happened to Moloch? They passed Moloch already. Okay. So one more.

"Perfidia! How much time?" From a long time ago he remembered something and said: "Fidi!"

She snapped her eyes wide open. "Hh—huh?"

"How much time do we have? Before the contract. Before Lucifer defeats the angels!"

Her eyes went down to her watch. A low wince escaped her. Even so, she regained control of her own feet. Together they ascended the stairs, bounding two or three at a time. A rectangle ahead signified the doorway to the next floor. They passed through it and the final room appeared before them: filled with statues. Every statue the same person.

At the end of the gigantic room, someone who was not the person in the statues stood. If "someone" was the word for them. They were a massive, hulking insect, with compound eyes and a shiny black carapace.

"Zzo," said Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies, Prince of Envy. Around him buzzed innumerable tiny bugs. "All otherzz were worthlezz. Pah! To be exzzpected. Oh well. I'll annihilate you all—then he'll finally bezztow hizz love upon me!"

Footsteps clambered up the stairs behind them. Shannon, Mallory, Mayfair, her undead army, Wendell, Flanz-le-Flore, all of them—they were all coming. Jay and Perfidia stood pinned between them and Beelzebub, and the only way out was forward.

"Jay." Perfidia held up her watch. Her eyes stared ragged and hollow. "We've got seven minutes to reach the Divinity."