Book Six, Chapter 18: A Downward Direction

I always liked to think that I was calm and collected. It was likely that all my teammates thought that, too, although they might have called me cold.

The truth was, I have always locked my emotions in a box. Ever since I was a little kid, my face could stay still even if I was in agony, or happy, or surprised, or sad.

All of those emotions were locked in a little box at the back of my neck. It felt like that, at least, crammed in a box along with every part of me that felt vulnerable.

Carousel put that to the test constantly.

I’ve learned that I do show emotion without meaning to sometimes. Like when I was on fire. Or when I forcibly broke my own bones to reject wizard possession.

While Ramona was being hauled in the back door and shoved down into the wide-open mouth of Hot Head, she glanced up at me, and I wished I could have shown the right emotion. I wished she had known how scared I was for her, for all of us, really.

Comedy or no comedy, the hell they were being sent to was real. I knew that the moment that Hot Head opened up. That place was evil and terrifying.

But my emotions were in a box. So when she was forced to be Second Blood, I was mentally ready to watch her take the fall.

But I wished that I could have at least somehow found a way to show what I was feeling, so that she would know I wasn’t cold or uncaring.

The look on her face as she glanced over at me… I really hoped I was wrong. But it looked like she felt betrayed somehow, as I stood in the shadows, unseen by the cameras.

Maybe she was hoping that I would step in to save her, even if she knew I couldn’t. That didn’t mean the hope was misplaced. We all want to be saved.

She screamed and raged and cursed. The camera didn’t cut off when she cursed. Instead, the demons just kind of took a few steps back and redid the shot so that Carousel would have something to put in the final film.

I couldn’t do anything to save her. My character wasn’t even there. Not really.

Camden could save her, though. Or at least he could try.

“Poor girl,” Miss Pryce said. “Condemned to hell for murder, it would seem. Tell me, do you remember it? Do you feel it inside of you, the sin?”

“I didn’t do anything. I didn’t kill anybody,” Ramona said. “Just let me go.”

Miss Pryce laughed, and it wasn’t a fake laugh, I knew, because there were screams inside of it.

“Okay. You’ll be very alone where you’re going. You and everyone else.”

The two demons that held her arms moved her closer toward the oven. She glanced back at me, and I tried to put on a nervous face. A kind face. Ellidel, how did you make a face that could comfort someone in a situation like this?

As two demons tried to force her into Hot Head, a third demon came in the back door and up the hallway toward the front of the restaurant.

He was in pitiful shape. His skin-suit cut to ribbons, his shadowy figure trying and failing to rid itself of its destroyed form, but unable to, as if the demon itself had been injured.

Ramona had used my knife. I could see it now. She was bleeding from her upper arm.

One of the demons holding her was missing a right arm. I expected she was the reason for that.

But in the end, she was Second Blood.

There would always be more demons. She was never going to escape this fate. The trope that guaranteed she would fall here had also guaranteed she would live until this moment.

It was a double-edged sword. Or a double-edged knife, rather.

“Stop,” Camden finally said, after having worked up courage for what felt like ten minutes. But I wasn’t going to criticize him, because I knew how hard this was.

All the demons suddenly turned their attention toward him.

Camden started to speak, saying, “You don’t have the authority to send her to hell because—”

Miss Pryce saw the book in his hand and seemed to recognize it.

“Drop her now. Send her to hell!” she screamed. “Hurry!”

And the demons did just that. They managed to force Ramona into the mouth of Hot Head, where her screams got quieter and quieter like she was going down some demented slide that went forever underneath the earth.

Camden looked on in horror as the demons turned their eyes on him.

He ran toward the front door, but of course, that was locked. He rattled it and seemed to contemplate grabbing a chair nearby to break a window, but before he could, the demons were on him.

I told him that he didn’t have to try to save her. And that if he didn’t try to save her, maybe this could have been prevented.

But Camden was willing to risk it.

“No, you can’t!” he said. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t eat one of those pizzas!”

“You didn’t eat one of our pizzas?” Miss Pryce said. “Well, that’s a shame. I hear they’re delicious. Unfortunately, you’ve trespassed, and as it turns out, trespassing onto our property is just as good as eating one of our special pizzas for our purposes.”

She looked at the demons that were holding Camden.

“Take him. We’ll see what use we can make of him.”

“You can’t do that,” Camden said. “By Common Man’s Law, only the owner of a property can evict a trespasser with force!”

Stolen novel; please report.

He had been studying that book and the ancient laws that demons had to obey.

Miss Pryce laughed. “So you do know how this game is played,” she said. “I had worried when I saw the book. You see, that objection would be true except I entered into a deal with the owner of the restaurant to be a business partner. Which makes me a part owner. Which means that I can remove you from this property and down to hell, where the rules won’t matter any longer.”

The demons continued to carry Camden.

But then he said, “Demons are not permitted to own property outside of Hell. Elidel condemned you not to touch the world of his creation. There’s no way you could own this restaurant or this property.”

The demons stopped.

Miss Pryce looked at Camden as he was held up in the air. She didn’t seem quite satisfied with what he had said, but she did seem amused.

I couldn’t quite understand the emotions on her face, but that might have been because it wasn’t really her face.

After a few moments, I was certain he had failed. Unlike with Isaac, whose release had been prompt, she was taking her time deciding whether or not Camden had properly poked holes in the rules or the legal theory by which they were sending him to hell.

There were always flaws, but the burden was on the condemned to find them.

“This is not your property,” Camden said again, as confidently as he could muster. “So you have to, like, let me go, dude. If it’s not your property, you cannot evict me. You have to obey the Common Man’s Law.”

She was frustrated. I could see that right through the skin suit. I could practically hear the thousand tortured voices screaming in her head.

“Let him go,” she said.

“Even if I can’t evict you,” she added, “I can fire you. If you are afraid of hell, you’re going to hate the job market. And if you ever think about coming around here again, I promise you the punishment will be unavoidable.”

The demons dropped Camden like a sack of flour.

He jumped up to his feet and looked around at the demons to see if they were coming at him, but they didn’t.

He then took one last glance in my direction, one that almost read like he was concerned for me. And then he ran down the back hall and out the back door as fast as he could move.

“I hate that book,” Miss Pryce said. “I much prefer humans who don’t read… Don’t you?” she asked one of the demons.

His answer was in tortured scream language, so I didn’t quite catch it.

Then everyone went Off-Screen.

That wasn’t as comical as I would have liked, but it would have to do. Just because this film was classed as a comedy didn’t mean the process of making it would be a laugh.

For a moment, no one did anything. Not me. Not them.

There was silence.

Enemies could attack you Off-Screen, and the mindless ones often did. Back when we were filming Itch, those mutant bed bug monsters we created were terrible at following the script.