When You Deal With the Devil [https://cdn.midjourney.com/9f9069da-c094-4d96-a964-25223c3d7106/0_1.webp]

Remmy…

Under the card table, Remmy stretched his hands and rotated his thumbs. Most of the feeling had returned to his hands and his captors had given him enough pain medication to stun a medium size pony. The med student had sutured up his leg and face. He could still walk, but it felt like he was on fire with every step. As long as he didn’t forget himself and touch the hollow place where his right eye had been, he could bear it. Staying alive involved moving through this experience one step at a time. He’d already made so many mistakes.

Thankfully, Remmy’d made fewer than Sandy had. He was still alive. They’d locked the shackle on his ankle to a chain that sank into the cement of the cellar floor. They’d moved him from his apartment after he passed out to this hellhole where he kept regular company with a lunatic. He stared at the man in front of him, their tech bro. So far, he had been the least violent and unpredictable of the four. The group’s leader, a complete freak show named Balor, made him want to shit himself.

“Go on, it’s your turn.” Orp gestured toward the cut deck in front of him.

Remmy blinked to clear the vision in his remaining eye and looked at his cards. A pair of tens. Cautiously, he placed three cards face down on the rickety table. He wasn’t sure if playing poker with his captor was another form of torture or if the man left to watch over him was bored. When he’d woken up, the guy had been fiddling around on Remmy’s laptop. They were using his social media streams to look for other people who believed that the world was infected with werebears.

Orp clicked his tongue at the number of cards and Remmy almost reached out to withdraw them.

“I found something interesting today while you were sleeping.”

Remmy grimaced and forced himself not to look over at the stained mattress on the floor he’d been forced to use. The man delt him three cards as if they were two regular guys blowing through time on their lunch break. “All of my porn is in the file marked Grandma’s Birthday.”

The guy snorted and placed two of his cards face down on the table. “We found that two days ago. You like some crazy shit. What is up with your thing for popsicles?” Orp drew two cards for himself. “What I found more interesting was the section of coeds doing odd things with corn dogs.” He snickered, “Did you get your first handy at a state fair?”

Remmy forced himself to give a noncommittal shrug. He’d drawn shit for cards. His hand remained two tens, ace high.

“Someone has released a campaign trying to debunk your video. They say that it was all a planned fake, a big hoax.” He tapped his cards on the table. “If they are to be believed. That Kennedy girl is just an actress.”

“That’s bullshit. The video I posted is untouched.”

“Mmm…” Orp wrinkled his nose and tilted his head. “It’s edited.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m not stupid.”

Remmy explained, “The bear was in the kitchen a long time before it returned to the living room. It made the clip drag. All I took out was the section where nothing was happening but happy bear grunting and glass breaking beyond the line of sight of the camera.” Remmy placed his cards on the table. “What are they using as proof?”

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Orp changed the order of his cards. “Do you want to see?”

He shifted his foot under the table and the chain attached to his ankle rattled, reminding Remmy to be careful with his tongue if he wanted to keep it. “If you’d like to share it with me, I would.”

“I’m curious to see what you’d think about it. You seem pretty stuck on the idea that there couldn’t be a conspiracy going on right under our noses. There are people who have figured transformation out. Can you imagine the power of that kind of knowledge?”

“Eating a couch doesn’t strike me as a path toward world domination.”

Orp stiffened, and Remmy braced himself for violence. “They are saying your posts are a fraud. I thought that might bother you. And… their number of views is on track to overtake yours within a few days. You are being painted as a thief who stole their work instead of a whistle blower.”

“That’s bull shit. I bought that damn nanny cam bear for Sandy.” Anger made him grip his cards.

“Why? Were you trying to get some freebie shots of her and her roommate in their panties?” The smile on the man’s lips made Remmy’s skin crawl.

Remmy turned his miserable hand over and placed it face up before Orp on the card table. “I get to see plenty of panties without having to trick anyone. There have been break-ins around campus, and I was spending so much time at Sandy’s apartment I had my gaming systems there. That shit is expensive.” He watched Orp gather the cards without turning his own over. Maybe the two tens had been a winning hand. “And it never hurts to monitor what your girlfriend does when you aren’t around. It’s amazing how many women are shady.” He tapped the table with his ring finger. “That bitch Sandy hid that video from me.”

“But you found it.”

“Hell yeah, I found it.”

“Maybe you are going to wish that you had found this one, too. Are you certain that Kennedy didn’t send her out takes to Sandy from a film project she was part of?”

“The images came directly from the nanny cam service. I set it up to instantly transmit.”

Orp drew his phone out and Remmy’s hands itched to grab for it. He knew better, but the desire was powerful. Choosing to stay conscious, he kept his hands in his lap.

When the lunatic turned the small screen toward him, Remmy felt cold pour over him. It was Kennedy for sure, but from a different angle. She was on a god damn film set that looked like Sandy’s apartment. Is that where she had disappeared to? Was her ‘finding family’ story complete bull shit.

“I imagine they will sue you when they find you.”

“Can I see that? I just want a closer look.” Using two fingers, he zoomed in on the girl on the couch. “Fuck, Kennedy Bliss.”

“She is quite the actress. Look closer. Watch her hand.”

“That’s not the same couch. The coffee stain is missing on the pillow. And it’s not Sandy’s apartment. I’ve got the photographs of the damage and the quotes we got for returning the apartment to its previous state so that Sandy wouldn’t get kicked out. Why would they do this?”

“Indeed. Why? These clips happened in Texas… and we find that very interesting.” He opened his hand. “I mean, it could be a different pillow, an adjustment in lighting, another take… or…”

“It’s a fucking cover up. Those bitches are trying to screw me over.”

“They are indeed. But we might be able to help each other. There are ways to find out if someone can transfigure themselves. I’ve seen it.”

“In person?”

“Yes, and you can’t imagine how surprised we all were. There are human beings walking around in this world who have figured out the secret. That means we can, too.” He grinned. “I was thinking your rather eager and frenzied audience might enjoy content that included exposing more of this phenomenon.”

“They would be rabid for it. You have no idea.”

Steepling his fingers together, Orp touched the bottom of his chin. “I’ve been thinking we might help each other. The others are still very uncertain, but I believe the risk is worth it. You get the money you so crave, and we can unravel the secrets of transformational alchemy. Of course, because of the content, we won’t be able to post most of it on the web. We will need darker corners for our experiments. I’ve been toying with the name The Charnel House.”

“Why do you want to become a bear?”

“I want to become… more than a man.” He leaned forward. “All you want is to become wealthy. That’s easy in this country. Remmy, I want to become one of the gods.”

Remmy’s hands went clammy. These people actually believed that Kennedy had turned into a bear. What had excited him about the video was that the blurry sections gave that illusion. Kennedy had refused to tell Sandy how the damn bear had gotten into the house. This lunatic believed the bull shit story he had built in his edited videos. He was fucked because of his genius in marketing. Completely fucked because he had a gift.