02- Satan!

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “I don’t even think I have time to cook you tandoor style,” she tsked as she shook her tiger head. Then she looked at the bottles and bags of spices on the center island of her grand kitchen. “I already have the masala spices out. I will cook you that way. Again, Richard, I am really sorry about this.”

  “Why do you have to eat me? I kind of still don’t understand.” My voice squeaked when I talked.

  “Oh, you have powerful magic. We have a spy in Satan’s throne room and heard Charlotte’s report about you. Being able to see Earth’s Warriors while on that plane? Good stuff. I almost didn’t believe the stories, but you saw through our disguises when we hid in the lobby. Once we eat you, we will probably gain the similar powers.”

  “I didn’t really see through your disguises though, you looked just like the statues,” I said to defend myself. Maybe I could convince Divyia that I wasn’t worth eating.

  “But you did notice us. Our magic is very powerful. We can change shape almost as well as doppelgangers, but their power is innate, and ours is magic. No, you did recognize us. I imagine that if you had training, you would discover other powers. I’m sorry, but we do have to eat you. It has been a joy cooking for you.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, thank you for the food. It was really good. You’ve treated me much better than I would have thought.” I wiped a few more tears away from my cheeks. At least I’d soon be with Charlotte.

  Then I screamed.

  The tiger demon had appeared beside me, grabbed both of my hands, and hoisted me into the air as if I weighed as much as a throw pillow. After she lifted me, she pulled my arms together and then wrapped a single cat paw around both my wrists. Her strength was absolutely beyond comprehension, and I felt my spine crack down its length as I hung suspended from my wrists.

  It was at this moment, that I noticed the sharp and various sized meat hooks hanging from the ceiling. They hung all around the room, and I felt more than a little dumb that I hadn’t bothered to look up the whole time I had been in the kitchen. Despite my attempts to be manly, I couldn’t help but let out a panicked screech when Divyia pushed me up toward one of the smaller hooks.

  Then I screamed again when the point of the metal hook ripped through my forearms.

  I knew it was going to hurt, but I couldn’t have possibly comprehended the pain that radiated from my arms. The demon let go of me as soon as the hook threaded through both of my limbs, and my bones, tendons, and flesh was suddenly left bearing the full weight of my body.

  I screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

  “Shhhh. Oh, I am so sorry, Westley,” Divyia said as she reached into a drawer of the center island. She pulled out a strange leather sack, placed it on the counter, and then unrolled it to reveal a collection of knives. There were long ones, short ones, fat ones, skinny ones, and blades that looked more like saws than knives. I almost couldn’t see her movements through the tears streaming from my eyes, and my head swam as I fought to stay conscious.

  I didn’t think pain like this was possible.

  “I’m afraid that I have to cut the pieces off you while you are still alive. Something about the terror and agony just makes the flesh more powerful. I’ll try to go as quickly as I can once I begin though. I know it probably hurts a lot right now, but it is going to get far worse in a minute.” The demon was testing each blade against a furry finger. One of them, the longest and thinnest, she judged to be dull, and the tiger woman quickly sharpened it with a metal stick.

  Blood poured down my arms and dribbled onto my head like a rain shower.

  So this was how my life would end. Eaten by a crazy Indian cannibal-tiger demon that had killed my wonderful girlfriend. My life replayed itself in a superfast video feed when I closed my eyes. I thought about all the video games, manga, comics, and anime that I’d spent my life watching. My life really hadn’t started until I decided to follow Charlotte into the basement of my high school. Sure, that decision had eventually led to this point, but I didn’t regret the decision. We’d kissed, held hands, and I had gotten to enjoy her company.

  If I could go back in time, I would have still followed her into the basement.

  But I probably would have told her not to go through the lobby.

  “Okay, I’m going to start with your left leg. Most of the time, humans pass out after I begin to carve one of the limbs off; but I put some herbs in your food that will keep you awake. It does this by slowing your blood a bit, dulling your emotions, and heightening the sensations of the pain.” Divyia held a knife in her hand and had teleported to stand next to me. “I’ll need to take your pants off fi--” There was a slamming sound, and the tiger woman’s face froze mid-sentence.

  Then she tumbled to the ground.

  And I saw Charlotte standing behind her with a rolling pin in her hand.

  Her school uniform was torn and burnt to pieces, as was her lace bra under the shirt. I could easily see the shape of her breasts, and a pink nipple revealed itself while my girlfriend smashed down on the back of Divyia’s head a half a dozen more times. Her skirt was more of an idea than an actual garment, and her heart polka-dotted underwear was more skin than fabric.

  “Don’t! Eat! Sherman! You! Ugly! Bitch!” Charlotte yelled with each slam of the wooden rolling pin. With the last one, the thick piece of wood broke in half, and the succubus tossed the makeshift weapon to the kitchen floor with an angry growl.

  “Uhhh, Charlotte? Can you get me down?” I hissed through pain-clenched teeth.

  “Oh shit. Sorry, Sherman.” The succubus floated into the air with a beat of her wings, and then she pulled me free of the hook with a gentle movement. The release from the hook was both wonderful and agonizing at the same time. There was no more pressure on my arms, but my limbs had started to numb against the pain, and the release made my nerves scream about the injury.

  “Shit. Here. Hold you your arms out.” I followed her instructions, and she wrapped two clean-looking white dish towels around my forearms.

  “Thank you. Owwwiee,” I gasped when she tightened the towel.

  “We have to go. She will only be unconscious for a few more minutes. We have to get you to Satan,” Charlotte said as she grabbed my bicep and pulled me out of the kitchen.

  “How did you survive? I thought they killed you? I am so happy to see--”

  “Less talking, more running,” she urged as we sprinted through the elaborate palace hallways.

  I didn’t see any of the other rakshasis as we fled through the corridors, and I wondered if Charlotte had killed the others. Then we rounded a corner, and my girlfriend yanked me away from a teal-colored fireball that would have turned me into a roasted high schooler.

  As soon as the fireball exploded, Charlotte dove past me and flapped her right wing to twist around the corner. The sounds of a horrific cat fight screeched into my ears like fingers across a chalkboard, and I poked my head around the corner.

  “Let’s go!” Charlotte screamed at me. She was covered with cuts and blood, and her right arm hung to her side as if it were broken. As beat up as my girlfriend looked, the rakshasi looked far worse, and the tiger demon lay face down in a deep pool of crimson.

  I ran to the succubus, and we continued our sprint down the maze-like hallways. Then we were suddenly in a grand foyer, and Charlotte jump kicked the two massive doors that blocked our exit. The wood exploded outward as if her foot was a giant battering ram, and we emerged onto a beautiful paved driveway. Even though my arms still hurt, with an unbelievable amount of agony, I gasped with pleasure when I saw the wondrous bushes cut like elephants, tigers, and bulls lining the side of the path.

  The sky was a dark gray though, and pieces of ash fell from the sky like snowflakes. We were still in Hell.

  “Get in the car!” Charlotte yelled as pushed me forward past the bushes that flanked the front entrance of the Indian-themed palace.

  It was the Bugatti that she had driven in Satan’s parking garage earlier today. I stumbled a bit as I spr
inted toward it, but I didn’t trip, and I managed to get the door opened despite the pain in my arms. Charlotte was already in the driver’s seat when I closed my door, and she pressed the engine starter button while she looked out of the window at the palace door.

  “Shit! Here they come. Seat belt!”

  She reached over with her left hand, shifted the car into drive, clutched the steering wheel, and slammed on the gas. My body sank into the seat as if an elephant was sitting on me, and I felt my vision blur as the car tried to race faster than my blood could pump to my brain.

  The engine roared in my ears like an actual tiger, and Charlotte aimed the front of the car through a beautifully paved roundabout in front of the palace. I saw three of the rakshasis emerge from the door, but I couldn’t pick Divyia out of the group because of the speed the succubus drove. They did seem more than a little upset that we were escaping, and their hands began to illuminate with teal magic.

  “Seat belt!” Charlotte screamed as she twisted the steering wheel with her left hand. A fireball exploded on the pavement a dozen yards in front of the car, but my girlfriend piloted the Bugatti around the explosion without even losing traction of the tires.

  I reached to the sides of my seat with bloody hands and found the harness. I slipped my arms through each of the loops, but when I went to buckle the thing over my chest, I saw the driveway ahead of us shimmer like the surface of a swimming pool.

  “Look out!” I screamed as one of the tiger demons appeared ahead of us. The monster already had a fireball ready, and it tossed the massive ball of teal flame at us as if pitching a softball.

  “Hold on!” My girlfriend slammed on the brakes and twisted the wheel hard to her left. The wheels of the Bugatti did cry out this time, and the car slid sideways for way too many feet before the tires caught.

  The fire exploded to our side, and I knew that we would have been toasted had the succubus not made the maneuver that she had. Charlotte managed to twist the wheel back the other way, and we avoided driving off the paved road by only a few inches.

  Then there was another shimmering pool-like spot in the road a few hundred yards ahead of us.

  “Do you see where they are going to appear?” Charlotte asked as she opened up the sixteen-cylinder engine again.

  “Up ahead, to our right. Like one o’clock!” I hissed through the pain of my chest and the agony of my hands. I tried to buckle my harness again, but my fingers were slippery with my blood, and I couldn’t get the metal pieces together.

  “Up there?” she asked with surprising calmness as the supercar picked up speed and aimed right at where I thought the demons were going to appear.

  “You are driving right at them! Look out!”

  Two rakshasis appeared in front of the car. Both of them clutched teal fireballs, and it looked like they were about toss them at the car. The sneers on their tiger faces suddenly turned to surprise when they must have realized that the Bugatti was really fast and that Charlotte had intended to run them over.

  The Veyron Super Sport World Record Edition smashed into the two demons like a vermillion-striped bowling ball would plow into pins.

  At over two hundred miles per hour.

  The two women screamed, but it lasted only a fraction of a second, then they both turned into a spray of furry-striped meat parts and blood splatter. The car didn’t even seem to notice that they had been in its way, and a sudden growl of the quad turbo engine made me wonder if the vehicle actually liked killing the two demons.

  “Wooohooo!” Charlotte screamed with delight.

  “There is another shimmer up ahead on our left!” I shouted as I pointed into the distance.

  We were going so fast. I almost wondered if we would pass the teleporting demon, but my girlfriend couldn’t get the Bugatti over to ram the rakshasi in time, and the supercar was suddenly engulfed in flames.

  “Eeeeek!” I screamed as fire came through the air vents. I couldn’t see anything out the window beside a wall of blue flame.

  “Turn on the air conditioner!” Charlotte commanded as she hit a switch by the steering wheel that turned on the windshield wiper and water spray.

  “That can't possibly-- Oh. That worked.” I said as I pressed the button for cool air on the center console of the car.

  The water spray also seemed to have worked, but while the wall of teal fire over the windshield was now gone, I saw that the rest of the car was smoking. The front grill was also really trashed from where it had hit the two tiger demons, and I was surprised that it could still drive with the engine compartment that damaged.

  “We can’t take another hit like-- Ahhh!” Charlotte yanked on the wheel and the smoking car drifted around a fiery crater that appeared in front of us.

  The color of this explosion had been a brighter teal than the others, and there was a trace of magenta in the flames. In video games, bosses normally had stronger magic than their underlings, and the game designers often added extra colors to their special moves. I guessed that Divyia had woken up.

  “Up ahead! Two o’clock, right at the side of the road!” I yelled when I saw the shimmer of the demon teleport magic.

  “Here?” Charlotte turned the wheel slightly, and the Bugatti’s engine roared with hunger.

  “Yes!” I confirmed a half second before the rakshasi appeared in front of the car. I didn’t even see a spray of furry-striped demon parts this time, the car just seemed to eat the woman as soon as her teleport finished.

  “That’s all of them,” Charlotte said with a sigh.

  “No, there is one more-- Look out!” I screamed as the entire driveway in front of us turned into fire.

  “Hold--” Charlotte didn’t even bother to finish her sentence as she ripped the wheel to the right. The supercar plowed through a row of animal-shaped bushes with a horrific scrape and then clawed at the manicured gray grass that lay beyond.

  My girlfriend turned a hard left again, and the back end of the super car swung wide. For a few agonizing seconds, the vehicle drifted sideways over a long field of grass. The engine screamed with dismay, the air filled with clumps of colorless grass and black dirt, and then I saw Divyia materialize on the slope of the hill in the direction that we slid.

  Her paws glowed with the powerful teal and magenta magic.

  Charlotte grunted and cranked on the wheel with her left hand. The car didn’t seem to change its trajectory, and the world turned in slow motion as the Bugatti approached what I guessed would be the final blast of fire.

  Then the supercar’s wheels caught on the grass, and we plowed back through the bushes.

  The side of the road exploded with magic, and the entire row of animal-shaped bushes on the right side instantly turned into flames. We had narrowly missed Divyia’s fireball, but I didn’t know how lucky we would continue to be. The demon seemed amazingly powerful, and I guessed that she could keep throwing magic fire at us all day.

  “Grrrrrrr,” Charlotte growled as she yanked the wheel back around to point us straight on the pavement.

  “How long is this driveway?” I tried to buckle the harness again, but my hands were beyond trembling now, and everything on my lap was covered with my own slippery blood.

  “Too long. Do you see her?”

  “No-- Yes! Up ahead, way ahead,” I said as I saw the shimmer on the curve of the road. I guessed that Divyia was placing herself on the road so that she could aim at us easier.

  “Tell me where to steer, and I’ll ram--” The car was suddenly engulfed in flames, and Charlotte hissed while she tried to keep control of the Bugatti.

  I saw all the warning lights blink on the dashboard, and the wheels started to shriek while the supercar trembled.

  “Seat belt!” the succubus screamed a second before she slammed on the brakes.

  I lifted off the seat and wrapped my arms over my chest so that I didn’t slip through the unbuckled harness. The front of the car seemed to push into the ground, and the tires let out a sound that sounded like
a thousand squirrels being murdered.

  Fire fell away from the surface of the Bugatti like water, and I saw that teal flames burned on the paved road about thirty feet in front of us. The fire must have burned because of some sort of napalm-like fuel, and the powerful braking of the supercar had shed the oil like a dog shake would shed water.

  My girlfriend let out a long sigh of relief, but then I saw the air outside her window shimmer.

  “Charlotte! Outside your win--” A clawed hand punched through the glass, and the nails sunk into the succubus’ perfect skin at the right shoulder.

  My girlfriend screamed, but then Divyia yanked hard, and a chunk of the succubus’ arm ripped free with a spray of blood.

  “No!” I shouted again, but the tiger demon had pulled Charlotte out of the broken window. I heard my girlfriend scream, but I couldn’t see exactly what Divyia was doing to her past the door of the Bugatti.

  I didn’t know what to do, but the spray of blood in the air, combined with screeching on the other side of the car, was a clear indication that my girlfriend was getting ripped to shreds. I needed to do something or Charlotte would die, again, and Divyia would definitely eat me for real.

  I slipped out of my harness and rolled into the driver’s seat. I didn’t think I could drive the car that well, but I had to save Charlotte. I raised my bloody hand, pulled on the lever for the door, and then kicked against the inside panel as hard as I could with both my legs.

  Divyia grunted when the metal door smashed into her face, and I reached down with my bloody hands to grab onto Charlotte. I saw that half of her chest was carved open, and blood gushed out of her like a garden hose. I didn’t know how I found the strength to pull her into the car with me, but the succubus was suddenly in my lap in a bloody heap.

  “Fredrick!” Divyia growled and made a grab for the door. She was a second too late though, or her hands were too slippery with succubus blood, and I managed to get it closed.

  Then I slammed my right foot onto the gas pedal of the supercar.

  The beast sped forward, and I grasped onto the vermillion leather wheel with my slippery hands. This was like playing a video game. I just had to control the car and get away from a teleporting, fire-throwing demon that wanted to kill my girlfriend and eat me. I could do this. Just keep on the road and don’t die.