Sweet Blasphemy

“Don’t call my name,” he says seriously, his electric blue eyes burning into mine. “Don’t say anything about me, anything about any other man for that matter.”
“I hardly think you qualify as a man,” I mutter.
It has been a week since the vampires fed on me. I have broken my vow of silence against Andy, but only to make snide and derogatory remarks on everything and anything he says, does, or insinuates. It has become a sort of sadistic sport for me- although he hardly reacts, I know that my comments bother him, that they must be doing at least some sort of damage beneath his pale, porcelain skin. And that gives me pleasure. Hurting Andy gives me pleasure. Hurting Andy was something I never would’ve considered a month ago- but now? Now, it is my sport.
Unfortunately, Andy ignores my jab and keeps talking like I had not spoken. “Do not use the same tongue with Him as you do with me,” he says sharply.
“Woahhhh, you got her to use her tongue? Damn, I want in on this shit. I get all the shitty assignments!” I hear an upsettingly familiar voice drawl from behind me.
“Fuck off, Ashley,” I snap.
“Exactly, that right there is the kind of shit that you can’t, you just can’t pull with Death,” Andy says fiercely. “You talk like that to Him, and you’ll be so fucking sorry.”
“What the hell is He gonna do to me, huh? Kidnap me? Torture me? Feel me up?” I bite out, my voice acidic, so acidic that I feel it taint the air with a bitter flavor. “What the hell is that bastard going to do that He hasn’t done already?!”
“Sera,” Ashley says, all of his usual bravado and carelessness missing from his drawl. Hearing Ashley address me so pointedly with no allusions to something dirty makes me shut the fuck up and listen. “Ser, you can’t talk to Death like how you’re talking to Andy, or even like how you used to talk to us. You have to… tread carefully. Yes, He’s captivated by you, but He’s still Death. You have to respect Him.”
“I have absolutely no respect for Him, or you for that matter,” I say, my voice as sweet as peach pie, dripping with arsenic-laced honey. “You two-faced, manipulative douche-canoe.”
Ashley snorts at my creative choice of insults. “Douche-canoe? What the fucking hell is a douche-canoe? I’m pretty sure no one can fit a canoe-sized douche inside of their-”
“Ignore the idiot, please,” Andy cuts Ashley off, clapping a hand over his mouth to shut him up.
“I’m trying pretty hard, but I think it’d be way easier if both of them just left,” I retort. Andy gives me a dry look.
“Seraphina,” he says slowly, like he is trying not to blow a fuse. “You won’t fucking listen to a word out of my mouth, but I don’t know how else to make you understand: Obey. Death. Or. He’ll. End. You.”
I glare up at Andy. I do not know what is even going on. I’ve been awake for hours; I think it’s almost mid-day. On Earth, it would be sunny at mid-day, and therefore obvious to tell if it were noon or not. But down here, it is perpetually night, and I do not have the sunrays to assist me in my time-keeping quests. It is very confusing; I didn’t even get the slightest handle on it until a couple days ago. And now that I have made even the littlest bit of sense of this crazy, chaotic nightmare-world, Andy is fucking with it.
“I don’t even understand what’s happening,” I protest, crossing my arms and trying very hard not to say something rude to Andy and Ashley. “Why am I not wearing one of the fruity, floofy, boob-deflating dresses? Where the fuck are we? Why are you both being so… big brother-like? Ashley, you’re a motherfucking pervert, and Andy, you let me get assaulted by vampires. Neither of you has any reason to act like my great protector.”
A few minutes before, Andy had dragged me from the relative safety of my room to a strangely grand (yet quite morbidly decorated) corridor. Despite my demands and shrieks of indignation that I’d shot at him while he dragged me all throughout the castle, Andy had not explained anything to me. He’d just started giving me advice, advice that either made no sense or was something I could never follow. Needless to say, I am getting more and more ticked off with each second.
“What are we doing here?” I demand. “What’s going on?”
Andy’s gaze lowers to the floor. “Nothing,” he says, a muscle working in his jaw.
“You know, for a creature of Hell that’s supposedly good at all things dark and wrong, you’re really a fucking terrible liar,” I remark, crossing my arms over the silky-soft fabric of my clothes. I am wearing some type of pink frilly nightgown. Well, to be realistic, it’s more lingerie than a nightgown, but I’d prefer to think that I’m wearing a nightgown. The fabric is extremely soft and flowy. It only goes to around the bottom my ass at the lowest. Tendrils of fabric are draped from my body strategically, giving the outfit an overall ethereal look. Soft lace covers my boobs, but just barely. The whole thing is dark rose-coloured, as if to top off the embarrassment. As if it wasn’t bad enough that I’m almost naked, I’m almost naked in pink.
Lovely.
Right before Andy had showed up and dragged me out of my room, a group of women with glittering scales and sharp, pointed ears had just finished bathing me and waxing me and making me up. They’d stripped me although I’d tried to fight, and had stolen my clothes. After forcibly bathing me, they’d toweled me dry and had curled my hair and painted my lips pink and put shimmer on my eyes, all while I was still naked. Then, when they were satisfied with playing Barbie doll with an unsuspecting, innocent mortal girl, they’d put me in this and left.
The second the scaled women had vanished, I’d left my bathroom and went to shuffle through the armoire to find something else to wear, but I found it to be empty. In horror, I had searched everywhere for other clothes, but had found none. When I’d turned to my bed, hoping to cover myself with a sheet, I’d found that they’d magically vanished. In a last-ditch attempt to find a cover, I’d ran into the bathroom and had found that the towels and robes were all gone. The only other article of clothing left in the room had been two pink satin slippers of a lighter shade. They were like ballet slippers, with the ribbons of toe shoes. Reluctantly, I had put them on. Obviously, something was going on. And if something was going to happen, I wanted to be wearing shoes. It was stupid, but having shoes on my feet made me had feel more secure.
Fat lot of good that had done me.
“I’m going to ask you one more fucking time,” I narrow my eyes to slits. “Why was I stripped and put into this, and where the fuck are we? What the hell is going on?!”
Andy is silent. He keeps his eyes trained on the ground, and I want to fucking smack him. I turn to Ashley. “Ashley?” I ask him. “Have you got anything you’d like to tell me? Anything?”
Ashley shakes his head. “What I’d like to tell you right now won’t answer your questions,” he says. “All the things that I’d like to tell you right now are lies.”
“I can’t imagine that you’d have any problem telling me lies,” I say glossily. “It’s not like it’d be the first time.”
“Sera,” Ashley says in a pained voice.
“Save it and shove it, asshole,” I snarl. “You know what? I’m not an idiot. I can guess what’s going on right now; I was just hoping that either one of you would confirm my fears, or that you’d tell me they were of no purpose, and that I was wrong in thinking that you’re sending me off to get felt up by some other horrible creature.”
“He’s not just ‘some creature,’” Andy snarls. “He’s your fucking husband, and my fucking master. And I’m trying to help you, you idiot, but you’re fighting me every step of the goddamn way.”
My heart stops. “D-Death?!” I squeak. “You’re, this is where- you’re going to hand me over to Him?” Horrified, I try to back away from the two men I had loved for so long, only to feel someone’s hands on my lower back, stopping me from running away.
“He’s their master, what do you expect them to do?” I hear Jake’s voice ask me. “He’s my master as well. He’s everyone’s master, even yours, and it would do you well to come to grips with it.”
“‘Both, both, my sir:
by foul play, may I say'st, was I heaved thence, for thee to blessedly holp hither,’” I quote at him, paraphrasing one of my favorite lines from Shakespeare’s Tempest, a play that Jake and I had read together when I was younger. It’s a line that Prospero says, about how through treachery he ended up on an island, and how with someone else’s loyalty, he was able to survive and prosper. The changes I’d made in the quote had simply been a restatement of what I’ve been saying this entire time: by betrayal, I had been brought to Hell, so that the men I had loved could benefit from my torment.
I can feel Jake’s body tense behind me. I rip myself away from him, but I am too proud to run away from the current situation. I know that one of the boys will just catch me, that most likely, Jinxx and CC are lurking in the shadows, waiting to snatch me up when I try to escape. I am too proud to run, to turn away from the horror they want to subject me to. Knowing that this is the only way to keep a shred my dignity, I hold my head high.
“Don’t touch me,” I say coldly. Before Jake can respond- before he can wipe the shocked look off of his face- the temperature in the corridor drops several degrees and I know that He is here. “Are you ready, then?” I ask Him, my voice sharp, like a knife right into each of my fallen angels’ hearts. I enjoy the sharpness; I enjoy their dumbfounded expressions. I know that I am right about Jinxx and CC when I see them melt out of the shadows, their eyebrows furrowed in shock. I look behind me, and I see Death there. He is smiling a wry smile, seemingly amused by His awestruck fallen angels.
“Yes,” He responds, His voice scratchy, sending invisible shivers down my spine. I do not shudder. I refuse to. I slip my hand in His, and allow Him to guide me towards the ornately carved door, made of black ebony and glistening with embedded rubies. He opens the door with ease, despite the fact that it probably weighs a million pounds. Before I slip into Death’s domicile, I look over my shoulder at the flabbergasted boys behind me.
“He is my master, you know,” I say sweetly, and then I shut the door on their faces.

Despite the show I put on for the fallen angels, I am terrified. I am with Death. I am alone with Death. I am alone with Death, in his bedroom, and I am terrified. He is going to rape me. And I have no way of stopping him. I can’t run away- I don’t want to fucking try to run away, because He will catch me. Hell, even if He doesn’t, one of the fallen angels will, and I would rather die than face that shame.
So I will remain in here, in this lush prison, with Death as my warden. My lip quivers as His hand brushes up my arm. Violent fear trembles in my gut, and I am horrified to hear a small cry escape my lips. At this noise, Death grabs me roughly and crashes His lips into mine. I shriek, but the sound dies behind His lips, and never really makes it into the air around us. Death’s lips are warm, and so are His hands on my sides. They radiate delicious warmth through the thin fabric of my nightgown. He is warm, even though His very presence usually chills a room. I am taken aback by this, and I only realize that His hands are on me and that He has opened my mouth when I feel my stomach leap.
I pull back and turn my head away from Him. I am breathing hard from fear. Goosebumps stand out on my arms. “Please, don’t,” I beg softly. “Please, please.”
“Come here,” Death responds, His voice breathy. His grip tightens on me, and He throws me down onto His bed. I close my eyes. I do not want to see Him. I wait for Him to tear at my clothes, and to dirty my body and innocence, but all I feel is the touch of His lips at my neck. “Haven’t you ever wanted,” he pants, “to be a whore?” Hands on my waist. Hands on my thighs. Hands sliding up my skin, under the fabric, hands on me. “Haven’t you ever wanted to be bad?”
I am hyperventilating. Somehow, this is worse than it would’ve been if He’d just stripped me and put it in. This is taunting, tormenting, and His touch is strangely… persuasive. “Haven’t you ever wanted to fuck someone so hard that they pass out? Haven’t you ever wanted to hurt in the best way? I can make you hurt like that, Seraphina.” Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh fucking Hell. Why is my skin betraying me like this? Why does it like His touch?? “I can make you a whore,” Death whispers in my ear. “Would you like that?”
“D-don’t,” I manage to cry out. My body shakes as He tugs at the straps that keep my dress on my body. “Please, don’t…” I know that He isn’t going to listen to me.
“Mmm,” is all He says. He slides the straps down my shoulders slowly, ever so slowly. Stop. Stopstopstopstopstop. My body responds to this, this horrid touch from this horrid being. I want it to stop. I want, at least, my body not to betray me, but it likes this. It wants Him to keep going.
“I don’t want this!” I say, my voice as loud as I dare raise it. I do not want the fallen angels to hear me begging their master. Death slides the nightgown down my body, and then discards it, somehow managing to get rid of my shoes at the same time. Suddenly, I am only wearing my underwear. Death brushes His fingers down my torso, in between my breasts. One simple touch. One simple brush of His hand, and I lose control of my body.
He sees, and laughs. “You don’t want this, right? Isn’t that what you just said, darling?” He touches me, down there, and I know that my body is just as much of a traitor as the fallen angels when His fingers come away wet. “What is this, I wonder?” He smirks. I close my eyes. I want to die. I want to beg Him to stop, but my body won’t let me. I can’t even open my mouth to say it. “Don’t be embarrassed, little Sybil. I like it.” My eyes open and I see Him lick His fingers. “You taste good.”
Kill me. Kill me. Kill me.
I am now naked. I can’t control myself as He kisses me, and I start to cry. My body likes His touch, but I refuse to let it move against Him. I refuse to meet His aggression with mine, even once He is bare.
I do not scream, because I know that even if I do, no one cares enough to save me.

I am in pain. Sharp pain shoots up my torso, all inside of me, all over my body whenever I take a breath. I am so sore. I want to die. I want to die. I am covered in my own blood and tears. His sweat and my sweat mix on my body, and I cannot move to wipe it off. I am left, lying broken. I do not know how long I’ve been lying here. I want to be dead. Why am I not dead?
I scream out. Someone just touched me. It takes me a second to remember that I can open my eyes. Someone is lifting me up and carrying me. I scream, in pain, anger, and fear. I cannot see through the blinding haze of my tears who is carrying me. Their touch is gentle, but I know that must be a hallucination. No one is gentle, down here in Hell. I also think that I hear running water, but that is bizarre, so it must not be real either. I blink, several times, and the first thing my eyes focus on is the piercing blue gaze of another being.
I close my eyes again. I do not want this to be real. Maybe if I pretend that it’s a hallucination, it will vanish from my memory the second it’s over. I cry out in pain when he lowers me into the lavish stone and gold tub that is now filled with water.
The water feels good on my sore skin. I imagine all of the blood and salt of tears and sweat falling from my body, leaving me pure. With closed eyes, I tilt my head back. He understands, and he pours warm water over my head. I try not to focus on the pain or the electric shivers as he cleans me, as he washes my hair and scrubs the dirt from my body. As I am being bathed, something weird happens. The more and more he purifies me, the less my body hurts. By the time I am clean and he pulls the plug to let the water drain out, I am as good as new. I want to open my eyes, but seeing his blue eyes will make this real. I do not want it to be real. I do not want to see him, not after what he did to me, after he gave me up to Death. I do not want to see him now that he has seen me in my entirety, now that he has felt my body and cleansed it. I do not want to see him.
When I finally work up the nerve to open my lids, he is gone, and I am dressed in an oversized Pierce the Veil shirt and baggy black sweatpants. My breath leaves my body in a woosh.
Andy.
“No,” I shake my head. “Don’t focus on it. Don’t focus on him. Don’t. Don’t.” I take a deep breath, and leave the bathroom. No one is in Death’s bedroom. I do not know where He is, but I do not care, as long as He is not with me. I try to ignore the bloody mess and torn fabric of his bed, but I know I have failed when I feel the shame clench inside of my gut. “Don’t focus on that either,” I tell myself. “You’re alone. You’re alone. Run.” I clench my fists. “Run.”
Without a second thought, I burst out of Death’s room and sprint down the hallways of His castle. I encounter no one, which to a logical Sera would’ve been a good thing, but to me, right now, it is a shame. I could kill right now. I could murder and snap and tear and bite. I could torture right now, and not feel any guilt afterwards.
The hallways do not seem to be working against me today. I run down them, and do not find myself running down the same ones again. I am sprinting for what seems like a second, and before I know it, I have reached a set of doors that lead for the outside. Powered by rage and fueled by the hope of escape, I throw them open without breaking a sweat.
I am running across burning black dust, snapping bones underneath my bare feet, and I do not feel pain. I run and run and run until I trip over a half-buried skull sticking out of the ground and tumble down into the charcoal ashes. For a minute, I just lie there, hoping that flames will burst up from the ground like they had when I first saw Hell, that they will erupt and I will die. They do not come. They do not come, and I decide to take matters into my own hands.
I scramble to my knees and paw at the ground, searching for perfection. I find nothing. Frantic, I crawl around, digging and clawing at the earth, trying to find exactly what I need. Finally, I find it.
It is a broken bone, sharp and lethal. I smile at its wickedness. It is perfect. I run my fingers up and down its sides lovingly before purposefully pricking my thumb on the sharp point at the top. I watch in rapture as a little bead of red blood grows into a little puddle, then spills down my thumb.
Perfection.
I was never one for blood. When I was little, it used to scare me- terrify me, to be honest. But once I realized that I was seeing ghosts, I became more accustomed to it. Some of the ghosts that visited me had been forever immortalized with blood on their clothes or dripping from their bodies, indicative of the way they’d died. I had never thought much of self-harm, or of suicide. If someone had mentioned it in a book, or on TV, I’d always think that it was horrible, but it had never been anything personal to me.
Now, I think it is time for it to become personal.
It’s a shame that I can’t get closer to self-harm. It truly is. I wish that I had the luxury of seeing my blood leech from my skin over and over again, but I do not have the time for that. I have to make this quick, for soon, someone will notice my absence and come looking for me. Soon, someone will find me, and steal this beautiful bone and my escape.
I lick the blood off of my thumb. I suck on it, wanting to drown in the taste of my self-inflicted pain. Too soon, the blood stops coming, and I have nothing left to suck on. Thirsty for more pain, I slash the bone down the palm of my left hand. To my delight, blood pools almost immediately. I lap it up like a thirsty dog. It isn’t that it tastes good. I am not a vampire, like the Nightshades. I like the way I hurt myself, and I like the way that by drinking my own pain, I leave nothing of myself behind for anyone else. I lick blood off of my palm until that too runs dry. I want to drink more, but I cannot wait any longer.
I must die.
Screaming for all of the things that’ve happened to me, I raise the bone and go to plunge it into my heart.
I do not feel the pain, or the release of the end. All I feel is the bone being torn from my grasp, and the weight of someone on top of me. I hear roaring, and I think to myself that the heavens must be falling. After a minute, I realize that the roaring is the sound of someone yelling. I blink, and I see that Andy is yelling at me.
“-could’ve fucking killed yourself!” he screams.
“What the fuck do you think I was trying to do, you dumbass?!?!” I shout right back at him. “Killing myself was the entire point! It was the point, my point, the point of the bone, and you’ve stolen them all away from me!”
“I just saved your life!” Andy yells in response. “I can understand you being mad at me for working for Death. I can understand you being mad that I let the vampires feed on you. I can understand that you’d be furious that I let Death rape you. But are you fucking kidding me!?!? I can’t fucking believe that you have the audacity to be mad at me for saving your life!”
I struggle against him. “Give me the bone, you bastard!” I screech.
“No!” Andy shouts. He pins me even harder against the ground, and bares his teeth at me. “What, exactly, were you hoping to accomplish by killing yourself, Sera?!?” he demands.
“I’d think that’d be obvious!” I retort. “I was hoping to accomplish being dead by killing myself.”
“Death won’t save you!” Andy yells. “Death won’t let you escape! How the hell could you ever imagine that dying would save you from Death?!? It won’t fucking save you from Him, Sera, it’ll just change your species. You’ll go from being a human to a ghost, that’s all!”
Tears burn in my eyes. So this is it, then. I can never escape Death, that is basically what Andy is telling me. It doesn’t matter what I do, how far I run, or how desperate I am- I will never escape Death.
“What the fuck does it matter if I’m dead or alive then??!” I choke out. “If I’m a human or a ghost, it doesn’t matter! He still owns me either way, doesn’t he?!”
Andy is silent as I break down into hysterical sobs. All I want is to die. All I want is for this to end. I want to go back to the Land of the Living, but I know now that that is impossible. So instead, I tried to die. Now I know that that will not save me.
There is no redemption for me, is there?
“Tell me,” I cry. “Tell me, Andy, was any of it real? The drawings, the words, the laughs, the promises- was anything we ever shared real?!?!? Was it real when you promised to kill Colton for me, or was it fake? Was it real when you hugged me, when you smiled as I walked into the room, or was it fake?! Was is real when you slept beside me, or was that fake as well?!?!? Tell me, Andy, tell me- was any of it real!?!?!”
Andy’s eyes darken and his lips press together. “Be quiet,” he hisses.
“No!” I scream in response. “I won’t be fucking quiet! If I want to yell, I shout the fuck out loud, as loud as I fucking want to!” I am screaming at him, screaming at my best friend, well, at the man I had thought was my best friend. I am screaming so hard that I fear my vocal chords will snap, but I do not stop. If anything, the pain and danger compel me to keep going. “You can’t tell me what to do! I don’t care if you’re a fucking fallen angel, or if you’re just plain old fucking human- you don’t get to order me around! I am my own person, goddamnit! Maybe it’s okay for you to live your life defined as a servant, always serving your master life a motherfucking lapdog, but that isn’t okay with me! I am not His! I am not yours! You can try all you fucking want to, but unless you physically force me, which I’m finding out that you’re very fond of doing, you cannot control me!”
I can tell that I’ve struck a nerve. “I am not a lapdog,” he hisses.
“Aren’t you, though?” I ask, my eyes burning into his. “You do everything he tells you, don’t you? Have you ever even had an original thought in your life?!”
Andy grits his teeth. “News flash, Sera,” he snaps, “Death didn’t tell me to take care of you after He raped you. He didn’t tell me to bathe you, and to take your pain away and make it my own. He didn’t tell me to do those things, but I still did them. Death didn’t tell me to be your friend all those years; He didn’t tell me to make myself ten years old again, to make myself young so that I could grow up with you, so that you felt like you had a friend. Death didn’t tell me to do that, Sera, but guess what, I did it! And Death didn’t tell me to save your life, Sera. He didn’t tell me to chase after you. He didn’t tell me to put up with your insults and taunts and vulgarity, with how you’ve been treating me since we brought you here, but I fucking did. I did all of those things, Sera, because I wanted to.”
“I never asked you to do those things!” I shout. “So don’t you fucking hold them against me, or use them to try and make yourself seem like a good person!”
“I never said that I was a good person, Sera,” Andy says, his voice low. “All I’m saying is that I did the best by you as I could’ve.”
“You did the best by me?!?” I explode, my voice somehow even louder than it’d been before. “You fucking kidnapped me and let me get raped!”
“I could do so much worse,” Andy growls. “I can be more of a monster than Death ever can, Sera, remember that. He may be the one everyone fears, but He was born to be that way. Me? I was cast out of heaven, despite my lineage. Personally, I think you should be more afraid of me than him.”
His gaze holds mine until I have to look away. Fear trembles down my spine, but I know- I just know- that it’s irrational. Andy would never hurt me. I don’t know if I’m insane for thinking that, but I believe it with ever fiber in my being. No matter what happens in my life, no matter what I find out about him, one thing never changes in my mind- Andy will never hurt me.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I whisper.
Andy gets off of me, and gets to his feet, carefully blocking the discarded bone from my field of vision. He offers me a hand, but I do not take it. I stand up on my own, and I glare at the bone as I start to prowl away from Andy.
“If you think I’m going to let you walk away, you’re insane,” Andy says flatly. He grabs my arm and tugs me backwards. I stumble, and he catches me. I promptly shove him off of me, and start off in the same direction I’d been walking in. He wants to take me back to that godforsaken castle.
“I’d rather die than go back to that castle, especially with the likes of you,” I snarl.
“You don’t mean that,” Andy says, an infuriatingly self-satisfied drawl in his voice.
“Uh, yeah, I think I do,” I snap.
“Sera, if you die, you’ll never be able to escape Death,” Andy says. “Sure, you’re physically trapped now, but if you die, you’ll be trapped down here spiritually on top of that. Ghosts can only leave Hell if He allows them to. And if you think that He’s gonna let you waltz out of here, you’re sadly mistaken; the only way you’ll be able to get away from Death is if you escape while you’re still alive.”
I stop dead in my tracks. If I didn’t know better, I would think that Andy had just given me advice… on how to escape Hell. But that was crazy- Andy was Death’s henchman; he’d always been. Up until now, he’d proven to be Death’s loyal dog. So why would he ever help me out? I’m just a mortal girl, a mortal bitch, he’s said it himself. He doesn’t care about me.
But I can’t help but think that what he just said made a lot of sense.
Death obviously has power over everyone, but He can only exercise it spiritually once the person is dead. Sure, He’s restrained me, but physically. If I could find a way to escape Hell without any tails, He wouldn’t be able to find me until I died. But if I killed myself, it would immediately give him the spiritual control over me that He naturally wouldn’t gain for years.
Andy takes advantage of my contemplative state and grabs me again. He starts dragging me back to the castle, and I’m too absorbed in my thoughts to fight him properly. It makes perfect sense. I need to stay alive. I need to stay alive, and find a way to escape from this place. While this is the same thing I’ve been thinking for the past week, it suddenly feels like a fresh idea.
The only thing that’s bothering me, the only catch in the velvet, is the fact that it was Andy who helped me. If it didn’t make perfect sense, I would think that he was manipulating me.
I am deep in my thoughts while Andy drags me back to the castle. I don’t try to escape; it’s clear to me now that a haphazard, spur-of-the-moment attempt at escape won’t worth. I need a solid plan, and definitely an ally. I need someone to help get me out of here- I know nothing about Hell. I’m not even religious; I’m agnostic. I know almost nothing about religion. All I know is that I don’t really see the point in going to church every Sunday to eat shitty ass wafers and listen to gay men talk about how much better they are at life than you.
When Andy locks me in my room, I don’t protest. I sit down on my bed, idly noticing that my sheets are back. I draw circles on them over and over again absentmindedly. I need an accomplice. I need someone to assist me in my quest to get out of here. I need an ally- the question is, how the hell am I supposed to find someone sympathetic to my cause in Hell?
I stand up, feeling too tightly wound to just sit and do nothing. I want to call Andy back in here and interrogate him for more information, but I know that he won’t give me any.
Frustrated, I grab the nearest thing and throw it at the stone wall. When I hear a loud clang, I see that I’ve thrown the candle-holder. The candle rolls across the maroon carpet, and the candle-holder itself lies on its side, dejected. I understand how it feels completely- being thrown away from your home and into a painful new reality by the one you’d least expect to hurt you.
“Damn it,” I mutter. “I’ve been here so long that I’m starting to sympathize with motherfucking candle-holders.”
I turn away from the discarded candle-holder and candle, and I enter my bathroom. Suddenly, a great idea strikes me, and I am digging through the black cabinet that holds makeup and whatnot. I dig through sparkles and blush and lipgloss until I find it- liquid eyeliner. Waterproof.
I lift up my shirt. I need to make a note in a place where no one else will find it; I need to write something down to make sure that I remember it tomorrow morning, but I can’t have it floating around. After all, the guys had decided not to tell Death about the time I followed Jinxx down here; I don’t want anyone to find my note and question everything and make my plan unravel. Yes, I need to keep it hidden from others, but I also need to write it in a place where I’m sure to see it.
I lift up my shirt and write it on my stomach:
Accomplice-
Lavinia

Notes

Okeyyy, so that chapter was the slightest bit shorter than the others, but I wrote it all in one sitting and a lot of shit happened in it anyway, so I thought what the hell. A lot of shit happened in this chapter, and I'm really excited because the plot is advancing. Woohooo! XD

Sera's "nightgown" and slippers:




*chapter title cred: "My Understandings" by Of Mice & Men*