The Cost

by R. W. Holmes

  “Y-Yeah” said the imp. “As in th-he horseman? Of the apocal-l-, ap-p-pocaly-, aplocalisp.”

  The fierce need to purse his lips and refrain from laughing overtook Gael, but failed to keep him from snorting at the imp's expense. The imp had gotten over much of her frigid stammering, but seemed almost incapable of properly pronouncing the world 'apocalypse' all on her own.

  “Stop it!” the imp exclaimed sheepishly. “I don't know b-big words! A-And it's c-c-cold!”

  “I don't know how to send you back, though” Gael replied awkwardly. “I don't even know how I brought you here. Most of this was on accident, you know? It wasn't supposed to work!”

  The imp looked back out the window at the the most beautiful blue marble she'd ever laid eyes on.

  “W-We have to figure it out” she insisted. “War will be upset if we don't. He'll k-kill you if we don't!”

  Gael narrowed his eyes at the imp as his mind threw a very obvious fact to the forefront.

  “But he can't get here.”

  The imp blinked. “Oh yeah” she said with an unsettling, toothy smile. “He'll kill me, though. Over, and over, and over, and over again. Till the day I waste away.”

  Gael nodded and said, “Okay, we'll figure it out.”, before looking over to his computer and cursing under his breath.

  “Not right now though!” he added quickly. “You, uh, stay here. The matter printer can make whatever you want, so get some clothes or food or whatever, but don't leave the room. I have to go to class, and we can figure this out when I get back.”

  The imp nodded dumbly as Gael hurried out of his dorm and into the hall. The flurry with which he moved was so frantic that he hardly noticed his hand still had yet to be bandaged, or that his gaunt, stupefied expression was drawing odd stares. In fact, only one thing was on Gael's mind as he hurried to his sociology class.

  'I have to tell Clarissa. I have to tell Clarissa. I have to tell Clarissa. I have to tell-,'

  Gael's thoughts came to an abrupt end as he arrived at Clarissa's lecture hall, and were instead replaced with the realization that he still had a class to sit through.

  'Oh God... I left a demon I know nothing about in my room' Gael thought worriedly to himself. 'I told her to stay put. Why would she do that? Why in the world would I think she'd bother listening to what I'd say?'

  Gael stepped inside, too shell shocked by the day's events to turn himself around, before taking his seat and dropping his head into his hands.

  “Whoa, are you okay?”

  Gael sat upright and shot the girl a look that would inspire nightmares for months to come, and then immediate regretted it when he realized it was Angelica.

  “Concussion!” Gael said quickly. “I skipped my morning classes because I was worried I have a concussion. I don't feel great, sorry.”

  Angelica nodded and cautiously eased herself into the seat next to Gael.

  “That's good” she said, genuinely glad. “No one saw you at lunch, and we were worried that Kennedy might have...”

  “What? No, Kennedy is fine” insisted Gael. “We talked it out. He was really amenable to things after you'd, uh, ripped his heart out with your article...”

  “Yeah, that was crazy” Angelica replied with a smile. “I still get goosebumps when I think about it, and then, when I got here, I realized we had the same class! And that's great, because none of my other friends are in it.”

  Gael twiddled his thumbs and looked forward, eager for the lecture to begin, and completely oblivious to the fact that Angelica was expecting him to reciprocate her small talk.

  “Gael? Hello? Do you want me to leave?” asked Angelica.

  “Hmm?” queried Gael. “No. I want to leave.”

  “Oh, because you don't feel well” Angelica knowingly added with a smile. “Of course that's it. I guess it'd be kind of irresponsible to just abandon you here. Do you want a copy of my notes after the lecture is over?”

  “Right, off topic” Gael said suddenly, before backtracking and realizing there was no way to explain what he wanted to. “Actually, do you want to get out of here?”

  “E-Excuse me?” Angelica replied fearfully.

  “I don't have a concussion!” snapped Gael, his sudden forwardness catching Angelica off guard even more so. “I did something extremely unbelievable while I was taking my first two periods off, and if I don't tell, no, show someone, I'm going to explode.”

  The consternation reflected in Angelica's face made it clear to Gael that things weren't about to end as he'd hoped, but what she said caught even him off guard.

  “Unbelievable how?” she asked cautiously. “Like, those guys who invented the matter printer twenty years ago unbelievable, or...?”

  “More” said Gael. “And potentially way more controversial. I think I discovered something that cannot exist. If this got out, humanity would have to go back and double check everything we thought we knew as fact.”

  Angelica narrowed her eyes suspiciously and asked, “Why does it seem like you're telling the truth?”

  “Because I am!” exclaimed Gael.

  “This is sociology, Gael” replied Angelica. “What other class could you possibly be taking that would even allow a discovery like that?”

  “Listen, you can shut up and follow me, or you can stay here and sit through a class that we can apparently live stream from our dorms anyway” said Gael. “Either way, I have to go now. It is dangerous to leave the thing I left behind alone!”

  Angelica backed her seat up as quickly as she could when Gael made good on his claims and practically crawled over her in an attempt to flee the classroom. He was out the door and walking away very quickly mere seconds later, and the nagging, investigative need working at the school paper had earned her wormed its way through the foundation of her better judgment. She got up and hurried out the door after him a moment later, and succeeded in catching the addled young man as they reached the far end of the hall.

  “Please still be there” Gael said as he hurried Angelica and himself back to his room. “For the love of God, please still be there.”

  “I didn't know you were religious” said Angelica.

  “You know what, I get the feeling it's going to be contagious pretty soon” Gael replied through an exasperated snicker. “That's the king of crazy we're dealing with now.”

  Gael and Angelica arrived at Gael's dorm a moment later, and Angelica immediately found herself set to the side and asked to wait.

  “It might not be safe” Gael said to her. “If I yell for you to run, or you hear me die, go get dormitory security.”

  “Is that really nece-,” started Angelica.

  “And make sure they bring guns” Gael added as he slipped into his room.

  Much to his surprise, Gael found the little imp demon he'd summoned from across what may have been all of existence itself was waiting patiently on his bed where he'd left her. She was still bundled up in his blanket, and still looking out the view screen at Earth.

  “Oh, you're still here” Gael said in relief. “Thanks for not wandering off.”

  “I couldn't” said the imp.

  “Yeah, I know, it's a pretty scary situation for you too I bet” Gael replied sympathetically.

  “No, I tried” the imp added suddenly. “I think I have to do whatever you say.”

  Gael's eyebrows made an attempt at leaping off his forehead as the revelation hit him.

  “Really?” he said in surprise. “So, what? I command you, and you obey? Am I some sort of warlock now?”

  “Um, Gael?” Angelica called from outside.

  “Oh, right, come on in” Gael called back. “I think everything's fine.”

  Angelica joined Gael and the imp in his dorm, and immediately dropped her purse when she locked eyes with the imp. For a moment, she was convinced her eyes were lying to her.

  “What the hell is that!?” she asked, too shocked to manage anything else.

  “That,” replied Gael. “Is a demon. A
s in, from Hell. Actual Hell.”

  Angelica snapped her gaze back to Gael, and her incredulous expression made it very clear that what she'd been told had done nothing to adequately answer her question.

  “I was performing demon summoning rituals as part of my sociology thesis,” added Gael. “It wasn't supposed to be serious, though. It was to better understand how superstition managed to remain at the forefront of society for so long in the face of science, and, uh...”

  “Okay, first of all, that's an awesome thesis idea” said Angelica, her stupefaction finally beginning to fade. “I wish I could get that excited about school. Second, WHAT THE FU-,”

  Gael clapped a hand over Angelica's mother before her scream could reach the peak of its crescendo, and looked to the imp fearfully for what its reaction might be.

  The imp pointed a finger at Angelica and very nonchalantly queried, “Kill?”

  “What? No!” snapped Gael. “Don't kill anyone.”

  “Anyone!?” the imp groaned drearily. “We kill people all the time in hell. What's more fun than murder and sex?”

  “Yeah, well, we value a person's life a little more up here” replied Gael.

  “Why?” the imp queried incredulously. “You'll just come back anyway.”

  “Uh, no” Angelica said as she clawed Gael's hand away from her mouth. “We stay dead if we're killed.”

  The imp gasped as what was truly the most horrific thing she'd ever heard rocked her impish insanity a little more closely towards sanity.

  “People stay dead here!?” the imp shrieked in horror.

  “Yeah? Why, what happens in hell?” asked Gael.

  “We just come back to life” said the imp. “That's what always happens. I've died hundreds of times, but I always come back to life in hell.”

  Gael narrowed his eyes thoughtfully.

  “If we killed you here, would you stay dead, or go back to hell?” he asked her.

  The imp paused to think for a moment.

  “I would go back to hell” she replied, oddly certain of herself. “Demons only die for good when they waste away. Or Death kills them.”

  “I mean, you said you needed to go back” added Gael. “Couldn't you just-,”

  “Good idea” the imp said quickly. “Don't call me back right away though, okay? I need to talk to War.”

  Angelica shrieked, and Gael gasped as the imp reached up without another word and actually clawed her own throat out, and the horrific sight of the imp collapsing to the ground and gurgling pitifully as her lungs filled with blood forced the two to take a step back. The pitiful creature flailed around wildly atop Gael's bed for what felt like several minutes, but was in actuality about thirty seconds, before finally expiring from the extreme blood loss.

  “Oh God, she died on my bed” Gael said weakly. “There's a dead body in my room now. How could I think that was a good idea? How could I ever-,”

  Gael stopped as the imp's body began to smolder. It, and the blood that had leaked all over Gael's bed and floor, erupted into a strange, red flame that scorched nothing but the imp's remains, until all that remained of her was a pile of ash.

  “Oh...” Gael murmured awkwardly, his fears finally receding. “You know, I'm feeling pretty confident that she actually went back to hell just now.”

  “GAEL!” blared Angelica. “WHAT DID I JUST SEE? IS THIS A HOLOGRAM THING, OR-,”

  “No, that was real” Gael said as he stepped over to the imp's remains. “See?” he added as he picked up the ash. “She was really here.”

  “Oh God...” Angelica groaned sickly. “I want to take it back. I want to be in class right now listening to Ms. Thomas lecture, not-,”

  In response to Angelica's words, the view screen automatically changed from 'window mode' to a live feed of the sociology class going on down the hall.

  “That's not what a I meant!” Angelica whined fretfully. “Gael! Why did I have to see that?”

  “What? Would you be able to keep all of that to yourself!?” snapped Gael.

  “No...” Angelica admitted sheepishly.

  “Yeah, I thought so” said Gael. “I'll make it up to you though: the next time something really crazy happens to you that you feel like you can't tell anyone about, you can tell me. I don't care if you killed someone by accident, or on purpose. I'll keep my mouth shut.”

  Angelica pouted and stepped over to Gael's bed, her eyes glued to the lecture hall on the view screen.

  “When I was eight, I thought it would be funny to drink from my little brother's goldfish bowl, but I accidentally swallowed his fish” she said glumly.

  “That's more funny than awful” Gael offered awkwardly.

  “No it's not” Angelica added bitterly. “I blamed it on my cat, and my brother thought he could get Mipsy to puke it up. He tried to give her the Heimlich maneuver, but he was only six and didn't know any better, so he ended up just squeezing her to death.”

  Gael frowned and picked up his computer, before taking a seat next to Angelica.

  “And I will take that to my grave” he said reassuringly.

  Angelica nodded absentmindedly, her thoughts now wholly occupied with the welcoming banality of school work.

  Chapter 3

  What's Good For Hell...

  When you're a nameless imp who's worthless in the eyes of the greater picture of hell, it's easy to have a fractured sense of self. That was how the imp felt when she reappeared in hell, her coming foretold by a roiling flash of hellfire from the sky that descended like lightning and boomed with the screams of the billions of tortured souls that languished in the burning storm above.

  It was, admittedly, a bit more grand than the usual return to life that most demons experienced.

  The imp hadn't ended up anywhere near where she had departed though, and had no familiar faces to inquire about what occurred. She had, curiously enough, landed what would amount to a mere half a mile of walking from where she needed to be though.

  The looming tower of cinnabar and sulfur crystals that was War's domain loomed terribly, its architecture plagued by a plethora of flying buttresses in much the same fashion of the more intimidating and looming Gothic cathedrals of old.

  This was nothing to say of the tower's height, which rose higher than any man-made skyscraper ever had despite being made of materials that were far less suited for it. Whatever knowledge made such a thing possible, likely harvested by demon experts of architecture with many centuries of expertise under the belts, had long since been lost, and so even in hell it was a wondrous and inspiring oddity.

  The ten minute walk to the structure was especially unsettling for the imp. She'd never been there, and never planned on it, either. The creature that called it home had long since taken to cruelty to pass the time, and while her place of birth put him as her superior, no greater demon in hell had had an actual reason to call on someone like her in thousands of years.

  When the imp finally arrived, she found it unguarded and seemingly abandoned. No winged horrors kept watch from the parapets, no hoof-footed titans stood before the wide, open entryway, and not a single demonic essence was around to refill the thousands of sconces of their long since burned out candles.

  The halls echoed something fiercely ominous with each minuscule tap of the imp's nigh nonexistent footsteps as she progressed through the stark, open interior. In the dim light, she spied hallways that crept high into what was an indefinite number of floors stretching upwards, but the open halls, long since pillaged for its finer furnishings, gave the imp the impression that a more important room awaited her ahead on that first, terrible floor of the tower.

  Then, it let out into a great chamber with a ceiling so vaulted she wondered if it stretched up to the very top of the tower, and a single ray of fiery light lazed in from above as if to reinforce this theory. It landed upon a pitiful figure slumped over in an equally pitiful, crumbling throne, a figure that the imp dared question the vitality of, until it stirred from its rest and turned
its piercing, glowing red eyes in her direction.

  “It's been quite some time since I'd had a visitor...”the creature rasped. “My loyal have passed, and I've not had the inclination to produce proper replacements. Tell me, curious one, what brings you to my halls? Answer well, and you might yet leave with your true nature in tact.”

  “Oh...” the imp murmured nervously. “Hi. The others, they always said to come if something important happened.”

  A low, unsettling cackling erupted from the throne as War sat up, and for a moment the imp wondered in the entire tower would collapse under his laugh.

  “Fortune, you arrive!” he exclaimed mockingly. “Tell me, little imp. What in your pathetic world is important? What is it that ushers you into my castle?”

  “I-I've been summoned” replied the imp.

  “Who tells you I or my brethren summon you?” asked War, his tone giving away that he was legitimately a little annoyed by the sudden turn of events. “Tell me who they are, so that I can spend the next century torturing them.”

  “No, not you” the imp clarified. “Gael Walsh, the human. He summoned me.”

  Every sconce in the tower suddenly found itself with a new, lit candle, and before the imp could even put together that it had happened, she found War's face mere inches from hers, and herself lifted bodily into the air by the seven and a half foot tall giant of a demon.

  War's eyes nearly eclipsed the imp's view of his gaunt, eldritch face, which in itself seemed to be carved from alabaster and covered with lines that splintered his face like tree bark.

  “What did you say” he whispered to the imp.

  The imp promptly lost control of her bladder at this turn of events, and may have even cried, but a sudden blaze of fire engulfed her form and scrubbed her clean so quickly she wasn't even sure if any of it had actually happened.

  “I'm not immune to fire” the imp said dumbly.

  “It burns what I tell it to” hissed War. “Now tell me again, very carefully, what you just said a moment ago.”

  The imp swallowed nervously, her arms and legs visibly shaking as she tried to keep her wits about her. How she'd ever speak clearly, she didn't know, but refusing War's demands wasn't an option either.