Page 13 of Interior Design for Demons
Linnea and Aghilas strike up a conversation, comparing career notes and design philosophies in low tones. I feel a little left out. After all, I’m the youngest contestant. Just a junior in college, with no significant work history. It’s honestly unfair to ask me to compete with all these skilled, experienced designers. My blood heats at the injustice of it. I don’t care what Rath’s reasoning was for picking me—it wasn’t right. If he were here right now, I’d punch him straight in his smug face. Next time I see him, I’ll give it a shot. It’s not like he can hurt me anyway. I’m one of the oh-so-important contestants—a special little snowflake in Hell.
The thought of punching Rath floods my heart with a savage joy that carries me through the first half of the tour. Our guide takes us through the corporate centers—bland dining areas, dull “recreation” spaces, dreary meeting rooms, undecorated offices. Then we descend to the older portions of the city, like the file rooms outfitted with iron racks stuffed full of papers and scrolls. “We’re all digital now,” says the guide. “But we have to keep these old records. The Infernal Sovereign requires it.”
We climb a series of footworn stone steps to a broad field—except instead of grass, the surface is actuallyhair. Human hair, waving gently in the hot breeze gusting from a deep rift nearby. The other contestants cringe away from the hair, keeping to the center of the paved path.
If Rath were here, I’d ask him about the hair, but I haven’t seen him since last night when he left me alone in my room. I ate my shrimp carbonara, drank my wine, and suffered through a nightmare-studded eight hours of sleep until a shrilling alarm clock woke me. Breakfast was already at my bedside—warm French toast with butter and syrup. A demon with jutting lower teeth came to escort me to join the others for the tour.
That was a few hours ago, if my internal clock still makes any sense in this alternate plane. The other humans and I have been through most of the boring corporate parts of Hell now, and I can only assume the hair field signals the beginning of the more interesting and terrifying portion of the tour.
The woman who wore the coffee hoodie yesterday is directly in front of me, clad in a crisp pencil skirt and a pale blue blouse. Her black hair shines with purple highlights in the reddish glare of the Hellscape.
When her slim heel catches in a nook of the sidewalk, she stumbles, and I catch her arm. “You okay?”
“No,” she says, her voice softly accented. “Are any of us okay?”
“Not really.” I give her a feeble smile. “I’m Grace.”
“I’m Kanda Hisae, designer for many of Tokyo’s richest families. You can call me Hisae.” Agony shines in her eyes. I can only imagine what she’s enduring, now that her hard-won career has been ripped away, probably forever.
“Do you have a family?” I ask.
“I do. A husband and three little boys.” She smiles at me sadly. “I have good life insurance. They will be all right.” Then she reaches out and tucks back a stray lock of my hair. “You are very young to be here. I am so sorry.”
At her words, tears spring into my eyes. I’m not sure how to answer her, or how to accept the sympathy she offers.
The tour guide calls sharply from up ahead, “Watch your step on the bridge, please!”
I refocus on the path. The contestants ahead of me are stepping gingerly onto an immense bridge crafted of red rock, with human bones and skulls protruding from it like seashells from limestone. The bridge spans a massive ravine in the Hellscape, a yawning black maw that belches sulfur and steam and hot wind.
“It’s like a giant butt-crack,” I say, and Aghilas chuckles deeply. Linnea laughs too, and even Hisae smiles. Zombie-eyed Charlie does not react. If he doesn’t pull it together soon, he’ll be the first to die in this competition. Is it sickening that I find a little relief in the thought?
The second half of the tour is more classic Hell—tall columns of black stone stretching into space, with rings of iron cages twisted around them—bubbling pits of tar or lava from which groping hands protrude, fingers flexing desperately. We’re even allowed to stand on the edge of a cliff and peer across a vast emptiness at the concrete walls and crooked stone staircases of the Abeyance, the maze where souls wander in eternal restlessness, anxiety, and boredom.
But our tour guide does not show us the Pit itself. “It would be too much for you,” she says cheerfully. “Your brains would pop like pretty little balloons, and we need those creative minds intact! So come, let’s visit the library. We’ll pop by one of the less disturbing torture chambers on the way.”
The torture chamber is a blank gray room that we view through a two-way mirror. A figure lies outstretched on a table, arms and legs straining, bound to the limit. The man’s mouth is open in a soundless scream—he can’t scream, because his throat has been laid open and taken apart, tendon by tendon, by a naked sweat-slicked demon in a plague mask. The demon’s own spinal column has been thrust through with jagged blades that stretch and split his skin.
Aghilas retches. To be honest, my stomach’s feeling pretty rebellious as well.
“Ever seenHellraiser?” I whisper to Aghilas as we move on, a few steps past the window.
“No.” The word is a croak as he bends over, drawing shaky breaths.
I chatter on, trying to distract him, to normalize in some way the sickening thing we just saw. “It’s a horror franchise—some books and like nine different movies—it’s got these really ugly masochistic demons who are basically in a constant state of agony themselves, because of all the crazy shit they’ve embedded in their bodies. Anyway, this reminds me of that movie. I wonder if anyone who worked on the movie actually visited Hell. Looks like they got something right.” I rub Aghilas’s back until he nods and straightens, breathing normally again.
When I look up, the tour guide’s eyes are locked on me. “Hell has many faces.” There’s nothing chirpy about her voice now; it’s steel and serrated edges, blood dripping on ice. “Most depictions of Hell in your books and shows are accurate in some way. I show you this because I am not one of those demons who delights in lies. The truth is far more brutal than lies. And it can be an excellent motivator.”
I don’t know whether she expects me to reply, so I nod once, because I see what she means. Showing us that terrible room was a kind of mercy.
Next is the library, a labyrinth of overstuffed shelves that includes literally everything, from ultra-ancient tomes bound with human skin and branded with demonic sigils to modern novels likeThe Starless Seaby Erin Morgenstern.
As a lonely foster kid, I spent most of my free time buried in books or TV shows, so this place is irresistible to me. When our tour guide says we may each take a book back to our rooms, I can hardly contain my excitement. To be one of the few human beings to ever access this library—I might have sold my soul for that privilege alone. While most of the others stay in the wide atrium, with its seven levels of balconied bookshelves, I wander deeper into the stacks. The path I take is basically a tunnel through rows of books, with more books laid on shelves overhead and others stacked along the way, so that I have to turn sideways to fit between them. I take turn after turn, pursuing the most fascinating spines—leathery, embossed, gold-plated, embroidered, imprinted with strange symbols.
It’s so quiet here, so peaceful. I could almost forget I’m in Hell.
But as I walk, a soft sound disturbs the quiet—a heavy, rhythmic panting, punctuated now and then by a low growl. It’s coming from up ahead, from a shadowed archway crafted entirely of books.
Clenching my fists, I creep toward the sound.
