This can’t be happening!
I died. I know I died. The death shudder, the last breath, the silver cord parted. I even pissed myself. I’m dead. I should be free, but
I’m trapped in here.
No. No. No. No. No.
The Marley’s gone wrong. I can feel it. It’s like a door that opened enough to let you see out, but not enough to fit through it. I’m bound here. Right here.
I’m trapped in a zombie. Stuck inside the reanimated corpse of a demon. A scrap of consciousness in the back of a dead brain. At least until one of these trigger-happy soldiers decides to …
Oh. Oh, no. Oh, Jesus. I’m bulletproof. They can’t shoot me in the head. I’ll be trapped in here forever. No, no, no, no!
No, be calm. No, I won’t. Stealth had the Dragon putting down all the superhuman types who changed. He’ll find me—find Cairax—break his neck or crush his skull, and that’ll be that.
Of course … we fought once before and it’s not like he hurt me. Hurt Cairax. He won the fight but only because I backed off.
I realize I’m much more conscious than I should be. Enough so that I can understand that I shouldn’t be able to think about why I can think. Something has changed in the dark corners of the mind. Something has been added to the mix, something not-me I can differentiate myself against.
And then I realize what it is. I realize what’s just woken up in here with me. Oh, no, no, no, no, this can’t be happening. This cannot have gone so wrong. It just can’t.
The Marley’s trapped him in here, too.
Trapped him in here with me.
I scream for a month. Or maybe two.
If I was using vocal cords to scream, they would’ve gone hoarse ages back. They might have snapped. But this is a silent scream. It goes on and on.
Again, I have no language, because I’ve been blinded to everything except the pain. Now that we’re alone at last, Cairax Murrain is making me pay for binding him in the Sativus. Lacking his usual tools, he’s forced to use what he has at hand to torture me.
My memories. Memories of every scrap of physical, emotional, or spiritual pain I’ve ever suffered. Thirty-three years of agony.
I’m hurled across the room during an exorcism and my elbow breaks as I hit the far wall. I find the letter from Marie-Anne saying she’s left me for Anselm. A tooth cracks as I bite down and the cold air hits the nerve. The flu wrenches my stomach and my throat convulses from food and bile going the wrong way. An excruciating hangover at nineteen. The bitter cold outside the womb. A sharp kick to the testicles six months before I die, followed by a rifle butt to the jaw.
And of course, again and again, the feeling of my flesh turning inside out when I use the Sativus medallion to take possession of Cairax’s body. Every muscle in my body spasms. Horns tear through my forehead. New teeth shred my gums and lips. Talons rip open my fingertips. He appreciates the irony in this. What was torture for him is now torture for me. After my death I make the transformation tens of thousands of times more than I ever did in life.
After two months of screaming, or maybe three, he stops. I don’t know why. When he talks to me, it’s with the voices you hear in the back of your head. He speaks with the sound of imagined conversations and half-remembered dreams.
It shall give me great pleasure to destroy you for this disgrace, little soul.
I shout back, “No.” My voice only sounds different because I want to be heard. In this place, in the state we’re in, neither of us has a real voice.
To make one such as me a mortal plaything is a dishonor beyond measure. To sully the unholy titles of Cairax Murrain with acts of selflessness and charity. To make mortals cheer my name when they should shriek and cower and beg. Such a painful insult must be returned in kind.
I manage another “No” before he begins again.
My screams are the chorus for a symphony of pain that goes on for another four or five months without interruption. Almost half a year with every agony of my life on a loop. The tattoo needles stab down again and again. A kneecap shatters on my twenty-eighth birthday. Three fingers burn on the stove when I’m four. An absolutely gorgeous dead woman bites down on my tongue and tears it away. My skin crawls with infection while the straps bite into my wrists and ankles. My dog, Muggsy, hit by a car and dies in my arms when I’m nine. A broken nose in a bar fight. Marie-Anne tears away a clump of my hair for the doll and leaves my scalp bleeding.
Cairax stops again. The pauses let him enjoy the torture even more. He’s a gourmand of agony, making himself wait so he can savor each sweet morsel of my pain. He breathes in my suffering.
You shall long for the feeble torment of this imprisonment. You shall look back at our time here together with such pleasure and happiness. These shall be the happy memories that sustain you.
My head is spinning from the lack of torture. It doesn’t know how to work with the constant agony, but it’s hit the point I’m having trouble without it. Part of me wants to give up and just accept it. On some level, I always knew this is how I would end up. Despite all my attitude and style, I knew nobody beats the house in the long run.
I don’t beg. Begging will just make it worse. I don’t know how it could get worse, but I know it will. “We both know this wasn’t supposed to happen,” I say. “This isn’t my fault!”
Only the worst of craftsmen blame their tools
