chapter 2 : The greater cost

Slowly a thought rushes over me like a wave and click, just like that a serene calm returns and a smile too. The crazy chick's smile disappeared and her expression turned still.

"Why?" She asked in monotone.

I place my steps forward and with my newfound confidence I proceeded to put my hands on her shoulder.

I could feel my laughter growing, "did that idiot josh put you up to this?" I started

"Alice you can get up now, the jokes on me I know."

Crazy chick smiled innocently putting her hands over her face hiding her blush. "Mmmhn my, how brazen you've become." She then placed her hand on my neck slowly, gently moving it down until her fingers brushed lightly against the knife handle protruding from my chest.

Her fingers now red with the blood that stained my shirt.

I watched as she licked them clean before realizing what she'd done, before realizing the coldness which spread throughout me and as she realized, reacting "oh no! Look what you made me do." Her surprise fake but the smile behind it made just how insane she was all-the-more apparent.

"Why?" I managed before my knees buckled. My vision swam in and out of focus and through the haze I realized crazy chick had mounted me her nakedness a small foreshadow of what she held in her hands raised above her head but even that couldn't prepare me for what I saw next.

Her eyes black, deep and endless.

In a flash she brought the blade down once again and blood splattered, my blood.

It didn't hurt, not at all. In fact that I felt was something very different. Though paralysis disabled my body I couldn't help but feel a certain impossibly wrong pleasure.

"Look! Look! I can be brazen too y-know!" She stated in absolute glee.

My breath floated, trapped like a hot breath in cold winter.

She stopped to catch her breath while giggling madly.

"Yes, that's it that's the answer I've been waiting for," calmly she leaned close whispering in my ear. "Die for me, die so I can live, 100 random people will be grateful to you, now die so that they can live~."

In the corner of my peripheral I noticed something.

Something that had I not been drawing my last breath so desperately trying not to give up, I would most likely fail to notice.

Alice's hand moved slightly, then up towards her face. Then to the back of her head.

She had regained her consciousness, my vision faded and even though it felt like only a second had passed the next thing I saw was Alice standing behind crazy chick, her expression something I never seen her wear before.

Shock, eyes wide and lips tightly pursed. In her left hand a large sharp piece of acrylic.

Then, with steel cold eyes Alice drove the acrylic shard into the crazy chick's neck.

Looking down at me the shard protruding from her neck her blood painting the bathroom wall a light red.

She fell and I could see Alice peering down at her, disdain and disgust in her eyes and from her eyes, tears.

She turned her gaze to me and I could see the urge to sob uncontrollably almost overcome her as she placed her hands over her mouth.

Maybe she wanted to puke... sometimes I wonder, just how disgusting did I look?

I'm sure I was stabbed over 20 times. I felt the hard steel plunge into my depths countless times and yet even though I was hypothetically dying what I felt was unmistakably, pleasure.

Did it show on my face? Did I smile?

Finally I could feel the cold abyss swallowing me and peer into its depth I did.

Slowly.

Ever so slowly.

Creeping and clawing

And finally

Gnawing until nothing was left.

***

1989

"Ok listen up cause I'll only be saying it once not because I'm lazy, cause I'm not," she had bought the Montelione hotel, Vieux Carré La Nouvelle-Orléands from Madamé Montelione herself after a nasty incident in which said person's soul happened to become a bargaining chip.

by "she" I meant Eloïse Guntram the daughter of a well known historical figure who died ages before. It's weird I know but it's one of the more mild of her commodities and even now I get the feeling she's about to tell me something weird.

"I don't understand why you had to make everyone leave." I stated under my breath then more audible. "Also why am I wearing the waiter staff's uniform?"

"Don't sweat the small stuff and are you listening?" She eyed me with what I've come to call her serious smile. "This is very important you know."

I nodded.

"Good," she replied sharply before continuing her legs crossed and her hands together fingers interlaced.

"As I am a fiend and your master there are certain things you need to do, things essential for me to live a normal life or should I say maintain a normal appearance." She smiled. "As you know Parties, liquor and the like are a few how-ever the things I really need are of a more brusque nature."

"What I need are what you call souls."

If you're thinking something along the lines of 'Wow that escalated quickly!'

Then you're not alone, even though she already told me this I still get the creeps hearing her say it with that much certainty.

Anyway the fact is, she did tell me before and to be clear, she showed me.

Yellow snakelike eyes, horns that grew backwards towards her ears, very sharp teeth, nails and a very dangerous appetite for life.

She smiled a seemingly genuine smile, and I could feel her mischievous aura from where I stood, "don't worry this is safe ground and I wouldn't harm you even if I were starving, " she pretended to think and then "you probably don't taste good either."

She laughed a little.

"Anyway," she continued before placing her elbow on the plush hand rest of the arm chair and with a wave of her hand I suddenly 'noticed' a scared and trembling woman in the corner of the room. This wasn't the hotel's previous owner, but instead someone I had yet to see.

Her appearance was so sudden that it gave me quite the scare.

"This fine upstanding citizen here owes me and its funny it really is," she chuckled a little then "she refuses to release her soul to me so I want you to do something about it."

"Is that possible?" I asked.

"No." She shook her head before answering. "But this one is different she's protected by something, a ward perhaps?"

"Hmm, I sense it on her person, but it's probably well hidden and I don't like you touching filthy things, especially humans, what to do?"

She genuinely seemed perplexed "Should I do it myself after all?"

She looked directly at me, "ok it's decided, I'll allow it just this once, now do it quickly before I change my mind."