Pietro was reluctant to take my order, but in the end, he succumbed to my impressive negotiation skills. He wasn’t thrilled about delivering it to ‘the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen’, and ‘you’ll know exactly who I’m talking about’. He finally acquiesced when I promised she’d give a huge tip. By that, I meant money, not whatever you were thinking.

The message would take a while to get to her, and I was starting to get worried about Bucket. I had to make a move against the demons to further decrease their ranks or at least stall them for a while. I went back out into the hallway, where the guard nervously stood watching me. He wore a radio on his belt.

“Hey, can I use your radio?” I asked, reaching out with my mud stick. I couldn’t actually feel the muddy appendage and the focus required to maintain a hand was rather inconvenient. The man eyed the wet dirt with concern, but wordlessly, removed his radio and threw it at me while taking a step back. I cleared my throat and pressed the talk button.

“Atom and you other rabble, this is Ghost,” I said. There was a long pause. A moment later, a chirp came from the speaker.

“Ahh, Ghost. What a pleasure it is to hear your voice,” Atom said calmly. “How did you know we had a radio?”

“I figured you pretty much run this place, so…” I imagined him nodding on the other end.

“Very astute, however, we’re beyond negotiation and my offer is no longer valid,” he said.

“Aww, that’s too bad, since I have Bucket and the goods,” I lied.

“Hmm, how could you have Bucket, when I have Bucket?” he asked. I turned my head away from the radio and clenched my jaw.

“Uhh… that’s weird. You must have an imposter.” I shook my head at how dumb it sounded even to me. A raspy scream came from the radio.

“Sounds like the real Bucket to me,” Atom said. I sighed. “Now, if you have the book, bring it to the cafeteria and I’ll make Bucket’s death a little less painful.”

“All of this is over a book?!” I asked incredulously.

“I haven’t finished reading it yet,” he said, frustration entering his voice.

“For the love of the dead! That’s not enough of a reason to kill someone.”

“Look, this has nothing to do with you. Bring me the book or Bucket gets tortured to death,” Atom said with finality. Truthfully, I wasn’t particularly heroic, but I’d grown fond of the old guy. I wasn’t going to let him meet his end via one of those monsters. I harnessed my inner Al and crushed the radio.

Was he talking about the paperback with no cover? I wasn’t paying attention to what Bucket was doing when I told him my life story. I’d have to search our cell.

“Where are the cells?” I demanded of the guard. He paled at my intensity.

“W-which cell block?” he asked.

“How should I know? I just got here a few hours ago.”

I could never remember which lot I parked in at an event or which floor I parked on in a parking structure; of course I wouldn’t remember which cell block I was in. I chided myself for not being more observant and vowed to fix that in the future. But I knew I’d forget and get mad the next time it happened as well.

Stolen novel; please report.

The guard stared at me wide-eyed like I’d tear out his throat if he didn’t know which cell block a half mud-monster inmate was supposed to be in.

“Fine,” I said. “Can you show me where the cafeteria is?”

He pointed. “It’s that way.”

My expression darkened. “I said show me.”

He blanched but started walking as if I were holding a gun to his back. For some reason, I took that position with my mud stick in place of a gun. As we walked, I re-considered my situation critically.

This whole time, I’d been thinking that I could win in the end; that I was smarter, cleverer than Atom and his whole group. I was stupid. They weren’t just players in my game. They had their own thoughts and plans. I’d only been thinking of myself and from my perspective—again.

Getting distracted, getting injured, and wasting energy. Sure, I took out one of them, but it was by doing something so stupid that it was incomprehensible. I was falling into their pace, as if I was acting a role in someone else’s story, but not altering it to fit my narrative.

I was supposed to be the manipulator; I brought people into my pace; I controlled the outcome; I had command over their soul, over their energy. Their soul and their energy… A smirk spread across my face. A decent plan finally started to form.

When we made it to the cafeteria, the guard pointed at the double doors that led into the room. He gave me a wide berth as I walked past him. My mud stick had reformed into a death claw in preparation for my entrance. I kicked the doors in with enough force that they exploded into the cafeteria. The group of possessed convicts were waiting.

Floor tiles were missing from a large section where they stood. They’d been transformed into excessively elaborate restraints which held Bucket in place. He was bloodied and looked to be barely conscious. I hadn’t known him long but seeing him like that pissed me off and my upper lip curled back in a snarl. Atom disarmed my intimidation with slow, sarcastic claps.

“Wow, what an entrance. And my, how intimidating. You do not disappoint.”

“If there’s anything I know more about than anyone else, it’s disappointment,” I said in reply.

“Oh. Well, sorry about that?” he replied. I looked between the four: Atom, Bullseye, Poison, and Stitch. Stitch had regrown his hand, but I noticed it was a shade or two darker than his other one.

“Hey!” I exclaimed pointing. “That’s my hand!”

Stitch chuckled. “Finders keepers.”

“You can’t say finders keepers over someone’s limb,” I told him, but he shrugged.

“I did.”

“Give me the book!” Atom shouted, interrupting our back and forth.

“Tell him to give me back my hand,” I told him. He growled.

“Stitch, give him back his hand.”

“No, it’s mine,” Stitch complained, coveting it. Atom gave him an angry glare. It was exactly the distraction I was looking for.

I conjured and threw a ball of mud at Atom, catching him off-guard. While he was distracted, I shot forward with a burst of speed. Poison’s eyes-widened; I was on him in an instant. I tackled him to the ground and my momentum slammed my consciousness into his soul.

A cave filled with fetid water, fungus, and colorful plants greeted me. The form of the inmate, encased in moss, lay in one corner of the room. I ignored all of it.

In the soul space, I looked as I always imagined myself, wearing my white dress shirt, black tie, black pants, black shoes, and with my real hand restored.

I ran toward a grotesque blob of flesh with blisters, boils, and sores across it. It didn’t have a head that separated from its body, just two misshapen eyes placed haphazardly on its form. There was no mouth or nose to speak of. Tiny arms jutted from its sides, but its draping lumps met the floor, covering its legs, if it had any.

I grabbed a fistful of the creature’s squishy flesh, and thankfully the rest of its body came with as I dragged it back the way I’d come. When I plowed through the soul’s threshold, I was back in reality, the body beneath me unmoving. Barely a second had passed.

I rolled over to Bucket before the other three monsters could recover. My muddy claw tore through his restraints, and I threw him, as gently as I could, across the room. He slid through the doorless entry and a ways down the hall. With that action, the demons finally noticed my presence amidst their ranks, but I didn’t give them a chance to react. I rose my palm toward the ceiling and pulled on the disgusting creature that now resided in my soul. Energy flowed out of Poison, through my palm, and a rusty mist poured out around me.

My last thought, before a cloud of acrid smoke enveloped me and the three monsters, was that I hoped Al got the pizza and she wouldn’t melt my face off after executing such an awesome rescue.