Dear Diary,

Dante had it right. Hell is a city. Sinners only feel at home if they’re paying rent for their cage. Hell is where every street and stone burns with malicious purpose. A machine of systems and routines. A molten cauldron that is as hungry for kings as it is for rats. Business is open twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year.

At night, she burns so blackly you can see her from Heaven.

The city of Hell has many names. Tonight, she is Mahou Tokyo. She’s seen it all, poor girl. Tonight I’ll show her something new. Something unscripted and commercial-free. Something real.

With all the love left in my heart,

H.

-

The city of Mahou Tokyo sprawls out underneath a starless sky. All the stars are hoarded inside of her, a million dazzling eyes winking in dreamy neon hues. Her breath is the heady sweetness of perfume and blood and sewage. Her voice is a static hum, a playful purr that never quits. She’s beautiful. Like a siren. Like a venus fly trap. Like an anglerfish.

The city and I have a date planned. A dance. I’ve never been to a dance before. My heart throbs with the dizzying anxiety of a waking nightmare. I missed every class and she’s the final exam. I don’t need to pass. I just need to write my name so that she can learn it.

I wonder if I can even remember to do that.

The time and location for our date were arranged well in advance. I picked out an old haunt. A labyrinth of alleys in the eastside, walled by never-sold apartments. Those towering tombstones of misguided optimism. Not even ghosts live there. It’s perfect. A place where we can be our truest selves. That’s how I want her. How I want us. So that the two of us can dance the night away, the right way. Dance like nobody's watching.

It’ll be a blast.

-

She’s late. To our first date, no less. But I don’t take it personally. She’s a busy city. Busiest in the nation. She’s home to more Magical Girls than any other city in the world. She shouldn’t have any time for a roach like me. But I’ve learned that she likes the go-getters. The ruthless and the foolish. The ones who can survive the bombs she drops on them. So here I am, ready to skitter into the light. Bring on the boot. I’m ready.

She’s playing hard to get. She wants me to fly because all her favorite, precious girls can. I’m not one of her pretty stars. But I have to try and pretend to be one. It’s the only way to get her attention.

For what feels like hours, I fly from roof to roof. Crawl up fire escapes and pipes. Sweep and clear.

She doesn’t appear but I keep searching. She doesn’t appear but I’m too determined to turn tail now. She doesn’t appear and I’m starting to think that I’m not cut out for this. She doesn’t appear but I’ve decided tonight’s the night, the final night on this gray Earth, and there is no such thing as tomorrow. She doesn’t appear until I’m sure she’s stood me up and wasted my time and I swear that I’ll put all this behind me for good and start a new life. She doesn’t appear. And then there she is, in the spotlight. On the grimy dance floor. Her needy hand outstretched.

I’ve been floating around in her orbit for too long. I need friction. Collision. Blunt force trauma.

Mahou Tokyo, what will be our first dance?

-

I gargoyle from five floors up. Watch.

Enter: two figures.

A man in a business suit lets himself get swallowed into the gullet of the maze. He’s got the classic, tired look of a talent agent in the dredges of the corporate climb. His body language is experiencing a personal earthquake. It’s a little too relatable.

The other figure follows in right behind him. My heart skips a beat because it’s Sporty Striker, the national athlete and four-star Magical Girl who is undoubtedly going to cleave my skull with one stroke of her pinky finger. I’m going to die tonight. There won’t be enough left of me for a funeral. It’s fine. I fully come to terms with it.

Daring to look a bit closer, I realize that isn’t Sporty Striker down there after all. Just some knockoff. I’m going to live forever. I’ll never die. Her costume has a similar design and the same peaches and cream palette, but is overall somehow lower-budget and more complex. I don’t recognize her from any advertisements or merchandise. My classmates don’t have stickers of this girl on their phones or their lockers. She’s got to be a one-star, maybe a two-star at best. A nameless species of small-fry. I’ll call her Peaches.

Four floors up. Listen.

Sounds of disagreement. Our first song.

Peaches is too busy scaring the poor guy to hear me skulking down the fire escape. Mahou Tokyo’s night can still keep a handful of secrets. Gives her a chance to hide her ugly bruises and cigarette burns.

I pick up the discordant tune of their talk.

“Please,” the man shrinks away, “it wasn’t my choice. It came from higher up.”

Peaches shoves the man against the wall. His groans are melodious and pathetic. Another talent agent getting pushed around by the talent. Dogs walk their owners here.

“You said your name meant something. Now you’re telling me it’s just a noise you make? Like an animal?” she asks.

He can’t bring himself to make eye contact. “I can’t… disobey the board.”

Giggles. Starts low, then quickly grows into shrill and mirthless laughter that crawls up and down my spine and across my skin. I can’t imagine what it’s doing to him.

She’s a full head shorter but that doesn’t stop her from towering over him. “What makes you think you can disobey me?”

Three floors. Feel.

Peaches makes a fist.

One sucker punch to the mouth and a couple of his bloodied teeth clatter onto the thirsty concrete. He crumples, but at least his head is still attached to his neck. He only ragdolls a little bit.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

She gives him time to suck in a couple of ragged breaths and paw at his battered face.

“Please,” the man sputters and there goes another tooth, “the order came red-stamped. See for yourself-” he pulls out a folded document that she snatches up.

She crumples up the paper without reading it and tosses it aside into a dumpster. “You don’t get it. You can’t hide behind the board. I’m your boss. I pay you and you do what I say.”

Two. Smell.

The heady sweetness of perfume and blood is gone. Only the vague scent of my mask remains. Fabric. Detergent. Sweat. Sewage.

Peaches reaches into the man’s pocket and hands the man his own phone. “Tell the agency that you made a mistake and that the commercial spot is mine. Not that bony tramp, Pretty Pirouette. That prissy little upstart isn’t going to steal my glory. Tell them!”

He stares down his phone like the barrel of a loaded gun.

“They won’t listen to me,” he manages to say.

She shrieks in frustration, crushing the phone in her fist.

“You’re fired.” She grabs onto his head, pushing his forehead back against the wall, taking her time as he yells out in pain, yells out for mercy and forgiveness and his family.

One. Taste.

My mouth waters with that feeling of being so hungry that I’m going to throw up. I’ve been empty for so long now. The city looks at me with fear in her eyes and a mouth of broken teeth. It’s not fair. She knows I can’t resist that face. She's bad for me and she knows it and she won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

I smile back, a predatory show of teeth.

-

I pounce.

My fire axe comes down on Peaches’ forearm, severing it cleanly at the elbow. Flesh in my teeth. Her look of surprise feeds me with hope for the first time in years.

Then I’m flying across the alley, smashing into a pile of garbage. The hope in me breaks with the shattering of a million glass bottles. Something flutters in my abdomen and I gasp and wheeze like a deflating balloon.

Right, she has two arms. Well, had.

A death-sound whines and I’m rolling aside just in time to see the garbage pile vaporize in a burst of colors from an energy blast launched by her remaining hand. So she’s a two-star, then. Shrapnel from the blast tears through the tiny space, debris peppering all of us. I can only hope my makeshift armor is enough. Blood trickles from my nose, from the top of my head, from my everything. But I’m on my feet.

My grip tightens. My chest tightens. My eyes are fully open. Crazed. Alive.

My prey sizes me up in silence, but my mask is mercurial darkness. I give her nothing. I have nothing to give. I have everything to take.

“You’re dead meat,” Peaches says, summoning a spiked metal bat from thin air.

Together, we dance. My heart beats on the drums. Combat boots thump the bass. Her swings are cymbal crashes. They smash craters in the walls, the floor, but never me. My opponent might be physically stronger, but her technique is sloppy, hasty, desperate. I keep expecting more. She’s never had to try this hard to defeat a foe. She’s never fought someone like me. I’m an animal. I’m a shadow. I’m invincible.

No words no thoughts no feelings no fear only muscle memory

I find an opening and my axe sings, slices some flesh, making her leap back a few body lengths. She’s against the wall. I’ve got her on the back foot. Maybe. She doesn’t bleed from her wounds. If she’s in pain, she doesn’t show it. If she’s afraid, she doesn’t show it. Mercurial darkness.

Mercurial light.

She glows with power, melting my confidence for the umpteenth time. She’s already recharged her magical energy. That was fast. Lightning fast. Too fast. I underestimated her. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

With a growl, Peaches wills a multicolored mass of energy on her outstretched palm. A blinding torrent of wild force designed for indiscriminate destruction. I hate magic. Magic is why I’m here, in the embrace of this living nightmare. Magic is why I am the way I am. Twisted and fragmented. Restless. A vessel for indiscriminate destruction.

She laughs. “You’re gonna burn.”

It’s the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s so welcoming.

But the man tackles her side, and her shot goes upwards and astray. The alley walls explode in a shower of rocks and dust. Fireworks. I’m alive. Incredible. Impossible. I’ve been to this part of the nightmare before and it always ends there. I’ll wake up any second now, alone in bed with bloody knuckles and a screaming headache and a tear-stained pillow. But for now, there are fireworks.

The city leans in close. It’s just me and her and I’m more awake than ever before. She’s done teasing, for now. She tilts her head back and shows me her neck. Says it’s okay.

I dive in without hesitation. One leap into the cloud of debris. My axe strains to hit a high note. The climax of our song.

Peaches doesn’t see it until it’s lodged in her forehead. The sparkle in her eyes goes dim.

“Ah,” is all she says before her body glitters into a fine rainbow dust. It sparkles and swirls unnaturally in the wan moonlight. Forming tendrils, it flows into me, leaving phantom trails in its wake. My vision flashes red for just a moment, and it hits me like a wave of nausea. The sickening feeling of power. Not confidence, not strength. Just power. It’s a feeling I’m afraid of getting used to.

Peaches is gone, but her spiked bat remains. An orphan. My soft spot. I pick it up. So light. The weight of a soul.

The building crumbles. So do I.

-

I open my eyes to distant siren sounds. Police. Even in this graveyard part of town, you can’t just blow up buildings without attracting some attention. I bet the stringers are already here, snapping their pictures. Vultures.

Most of the wall has collapsed. It’s like opening a doll house. A window frame surrounds me. Lucky. My head only had to break the fall of one panel of glass.

A pair of shiny black shoes stick out from the rubble. Stillness. Blood is pooling from below. I scramble to shove off bigger chunks of stone, but it’s too late. He’s dead.

A flash of light and a shuttering snaps my world in two. The vultures are here.

I turn to the entrance of the alley. A lone camerawoman locks eyes with me, probably regretting her decision.

My hands jump to my face, making sure my mask is still on. To my ever-grateful relief, it is.

“Hello?” she asks.

“Leave,” I snarl. Bat in one hand, axe in the other.

She runs off like a scared rabbit.

I shouldn’t have let that happen. I should run her down and smash her camera. Smash her face in the dirt until she forgets this ever happened. I can’t be seen. I have to go. The world is spinning and I can’t keep up.

Sirens everywhere. I glance at the sky and see a beacon of light. One color. Two colors. Three. They’re sending three-stars to the scene. If the vultures are already here, there should only be a couple minutes before the Magical Girls get here.

There’s nowhere to go. I can’t fly like all her favorite girls. I can’t hide in the dark when her eyes are so bright. There’s nowhere to go. She’s laughing at me. I can hear the theme music. I’m just another villain of the week. There’s nowhere to go. I shut my eyes. The smell of perfume and blood and sewage.

Sewage.

I run off like a scared rabbit. I find a manhole cover and lift it like my life depends on it because it does.

This city sure likes to play it dirty for a first date.

I take a deep, shuddering breath and dive into the terrible darkness below with a splash. I’m a rock in the middle of a river, the current washing over me. Pieces of me erode, but that’s how we’re shaped. Defined. Until all that remains is our truest selves.

The vile river carries me through her bowels. Blood stains will be the least of my worries.

Eventually, it shallows enough for me to walk. To limp. To crawl.

Like a B-movie monster, I rise from the drains somewhere at the outskirts of the city. Underneath some highway. Infrastructure is still remarkably good here, this far from the gravity well of her center.

It hits me that I’ve never been this far from home. There’s grass here. Real trees. Mountains of dirt and rock, not steel and glass. I don’t hear her static purring or singing. There are only the songs of the insects.

I sprawl out in a patch of empty grass under the starless sky, and for the first time in a long time, sleep dreamlessly.