Page 54 of Interior Design for Demons
“If they do, it doesn’t last long,” he says shortly. “I’m not often involved in torture sessions. Like Rath, I’m more on the sales side of Hell, not the delivery.”
“But you kind of enjoy it, though.” I eye him, my head tilted. “You like finding the right threads to pull, the perfect application of fear or pain at the right time, like you said.”
Apollyon glares at me and hoists himself out of the bath. “We should get you back to your torture chamber soon, before anyone decides to check on you. Rath might, you know. And if he finds you missing, you’ll get your post-mortem torture fantasy soon enough. They could disqualify and eliminate you on the spot.”
I swallow, the warmth draining from my face. “They could?”
“Certainly.” He flashes me a savage grin. “So dry off that pretty body, dove, and let’s make it sting some more, shall we?”
I climb out of the tub and snatch a towel. “You knew they might kill me if you took me out early?”
“Possibly. As for me, I’d probably get a very severe punishment, but not complete annihilation.”
Earlier, when he saved me, I was too grateful to realize how dangerous the rescue really was. And now I’m mad. “You should have left me there to endure it.”
“I was afraid your mind would crack,” he says. “And I couldn’t watch you scream and writhe anymore. Some of the other demons jerk off to torture feeds, you know. But I—”
“Yes, yes, you’re the demon who’s different, the merciful demon—I know, I know. Shut up and take me back.” I want to ask him for clothes, but I was naked when he brought me here and I need to be naked when they end my torture session. Seething, I cross my arms over my wet chest, but that only makes my breasts bulge more.
Apollyon notices and gives me a wicked smile, razor-teeth and sexy bedroom eyes. Paired with that sinfully glorious body of his, the effect is overpowering, and god help me, I have to bite back a whimper. But I can’t risk staying any longer.
“Take me back,” I say.
“As you wish.” He swirls a silky robe around himself and takes me in his arms, whirring me through hallways and levels so fast that no one could possibly discern who we are. The dark hall outside my torture room is empty, as far as I can see.
When Apollyon sets me down and opens the door, I quickly kiss his mouth. “Thank you for this. I think you’re right—if you hadn’t pulled me out, I would have gone to a very bad place.”
“Apology accepted.”
“That wasn’t an apology—”
“I’ll see you on the other side, dove.” As I enter the room, he smacks my rear sharply. I cup my stinging ass cheek and turn, indignant. He’s laughing—brilliant, beautiful. And then the door closes on the best thing in my life, and I’m back in the hell he created for me.
My tryst with Apollyon carries me through the next hour or so of torture. When the door finally opens again, I’m in very real pain, just as itchy and headachy as before—but my spirit is still strong, and I have to pretend to be cowed and broken. Rath cradles me against his chest and carries me to my suite. He even takes away some of the headache, though he doesn’t draw the itchy burning of my skin into himself. When he offers to bathe me, I decline, but I request something to soothe the itching and while he goes to fetch it, I shower. I don’t even bother turning off the lights or concealing myself from the hidden cameras. Everyone’s going to see me naked and tormented in Episode 3. What’s the point of modesty now?
The contestants are given twenty-four hours to recover. Rather than ordering food to my room, I spend some time hanging out in the dining mall, watching some of the TV feeds from the Earthly plane and waiting for my fellow competitors to show up. A few of them do, looking haggard and haunted, and we swap whispered torture stories over our trays of food. Amanda doesn’t show up, and neither do Aghilas or Linnea. Hisae tells me a little of what she experienced—a lot more physical damage than I went through, apparently. Every one of her toes was dislocated during her session, and even though she says they were all healed afterwards, her feet keep twitching, as if from phantom pain. And one of the other male competitors was chewed up by dogs. Despite his healing session, he now has faint scars along both arms and legs.
A couple of the contestants won’t talk about what they endured at all. They sit quiet and vacant, poking at their food, startling if anyone speaks to them.
At the end of our recovery period, we’re each hustled off to our assigned torture chambers, where we have forty-eight hours to create “the perfect environment for agony,” according to the assignment. We don’t have to invent all the tortures, but we’re supposed to have elements of pain and discomfort in place, and we’re told to provide storage for specific tools and implements of torture. After what Apollyon did for me, my goal is to create a room that gives the victim moments of relief or wonder, hopefully subtly enough that the judges won’t realize what I’m doing.
I paint the walls in the darkest red Rusala can find for me, and I set yellow track lighting along the center of the walls, around the entire room. It’s like a chair rail, except it’s a narrow tubelike light fixture. And it’s monochromatic light, which saps the color from everything in the room. I saw it in a documentary series on Netflix, in one episode about Olafur Eliasson’s art installations. When I first turn it on, Slate gasps and Rusala stands open-mouthed, staring at his hands, his body.
“Where did the color go?” Slate asks.
Smiling, I switch off the track lighting and illuminate the overhead fixture, a savage-looking geometric cage fitted with panes of smoked glass. The deep crimson of the walls returns, along with the natural colors of my team.
“Color is an illusion dependent on light,” I tell them. And of course everyone knows that, but it’s one thing to know it and another to see it practically demonstrated.
My assignment specifies that a chair and a surgical table must be installed, bolted to the floor of the room. I don’t want to think about what will go on in those horrific pieces of furniture, or why the floor slopes slightly to a drain in the center. But I craft a chair and table design that mirror the brutal light fixture overhead, and Slate takes the design off to be manufactured. I sketch the angular storage units that Rusala will build, considering all the torture implements I was shown in the briefing video, reviewing their specifications and planning how they will fit into the various drawers and on the shelves.
While Rusala works on the storage units, I install mirrors—a wavy one like in a house of illusions, to stretch and distort the body image of the torture subject. Then an elliptical mirror, which at certain angles slows every reflected action by a second or so. If I stand in the right spot and snap my fingers, my reflection’s finger-snap is delayed. It’s a weird experience, sure to throw the torture subject into a mental tailspin.
By the end of the second day I’m exhausted, and I’ve only had a couple hours of sleep. There’s a little more to do before our deadline, but unless I get some rest I’m going to be useless, and I’ll probably sob my way through elimination. Even Rusala and Slate are looking weary, and as demons they don’t need to sleep nearly as much as humans do. When I dismiss them, they leave all eagerly. Their destination lies in the opposite direction from mine, somewhere in another building of the Hellscape. As they trudge down the corridor, they let their human aspects fall away. Rusala is all spines and lizardlike scales, while Slate is a crooked creature whose bones emit tendrils of sickly yellow smoke. I watch, shivering, until they’re out of sight.
I manage to find my way to my room, and I immediately crash on the bed for a few hours. When my alarm goes off with a Hell-screech, I drag myself upright and trudge back to the torture room, which is way, way down, deep beneath the skyscraper. It’s an ancient part of Hell, hewn from black rock. Electricity—or whatever equivalent the demons use—flows through thick black wires along the edge of the hallway, but in places the only light still comes from sputtering torches. And there’s an incessant chorus of shrieks and groans and sobs, distant yet poignant. Rath uploaded a map to my work tablet, which guides me right to the room.
Slate and Rusala haven’t returned yet. I’m not worried—I can get a jump-start on the rest of the work by myself.
