“And here I was about to compliment the beautifully deep inset of your wrinkles and the way they highlight your frown.”
I stepped through the narrow opening, trying my best not to shoulder past the scary woman to my right. Barb had to have been at least eighty when shemade her deal with Lucifer. Had I ever asked the details, though?
Abso-fucking-lutely not. In demon culture, it was rude and taboo as fuck to ask about the deal they made. Each deal was tailored to the individual and was an intimate bond between them and Luci.
I never understood it, but stopped asking questions after the third or so stab I’d received because of my curiosity.
Lucifer was supposedly the only one who could kill me in the afterlife. It had to be a lie, though. I was convinced that if Barb wanted you to die, you were going to fucking die, even if it was second death.
Barb’s apartment was less cozy than mine. Where I was rocking the burnt orange and mahogany of the eighties, she preferred the sterile white of an operating room. I kept Camp Crystal Lake, thriller murder vibes; Barb liked to sport more of a Saw atmosphere.
Her humble entryway led into one square room, completely unfurnished and lit with searing white bulbs. A chill skated across my skin. Whether it was from the refrigerated temperature or the doom and gloom creepiness hanging over the place like a curtain, I loved it.
“Can you imagine being knocked the hell out and waking up in a place like this?” I asked out loud to no one in particular. “I would shit my pants.”
“Hmph.” Barb shuffled past me, not concerned as to whether or not I followed, and entered through the only other door in sight.
“Uh, Barb? Can I like, come in orrrrrr…?”
“If you don’t be a pussy about it,” she called.
“Noted.” She didn’t see my air salute, but it felt right.
I crossed the threshold into my favorite room in Barb’s apartment: the kill room.
Four concrete, sound proof walls were divided by a two-way mirror: one side for experiments, the other for observation. Monitors covered the entirety of one wall, showing different views from traffic cams, private security monitoring devices, computer cameras… If it had a camera, Barb could hack it.
Usually you’d associate old people with technical incompetence, but not Barb. She was clinical, analytical, and loved to learn. She evolved alongside technology and, oddly enough, had become its master.
Which was perfect, because I was going to need it.
“What’s on the docket today, Bayou Barb?”
“What the hell does it look like?”
“Welp,” I said, drawing out the word as I took in the scene before me.
Two humans were chained to the floor on opposite sides of the room, naked and bloody as the day they were born. All variations of wounds covered their skin; burns, jagged tears and clean-cut lacerations, bite marks big and small, and others that I’d need to be closer to identify. Other than that, there wasn’t much going on.
“I honestly have no idea,” I admitted. “Did you brutalize them with the power of manifestation? Voodoo? Oh! Did actual daggers fly straight out of your eyes?”
“Stupid, pain in the ass girl,” Barb muttered under her breath.
“I mean give me a break here, Barb.” I threw my hands up in mock frustration, slapping them down on my thighs for added effect.
With a dramatic harrumph, she clapped her gnarled hand over a button on the wall. An ominous buzzing sounded along with the slow creak of metal hinges. A small, doggy sized door opened on the right side.
The two chained inside the room began to stir, almost like the combination of sounds had a Pavlovian effect: pair a sound with pain long enough and the brain files them together, so the sound alone makes your body react like it’s already being hurt.
When I was in middle school, my science teacher gave us all a heap of powdered lemonade and when she rang the bell, we had to eat some. The drink mix was sour and caused a flood of saliva to pool in our mouths. After a few times of this set of conditions, she gave us a new rule: when the bell rings, don’t eat the powder. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t for my mouth to salivate just as much as it had when the powder touched my tongue.
My eighth grade science teacher rewired my brain with lemonade powder and a few stupid bell rings. I shivered to think what Barb would be capable of.
To confirm my theory, three bells tinkered in uniform succession. By the last one, both humans were wide awake and in complete panic mode.
Nothing crawled out of the hole in the wall, and yet the human’s eyes weretrained intensely in its direction. The one closest, a scrawny man with a terrible hairline and platypus feet, crawled as far away as the chain would allow which… wasn’t far.
“You sick bastard, Barb,” I smacked her on the shoulder. “How long did it take you to condition them?”
