Satan's Affair, page 13
I laughed when she told me that.
I’m not fucking crazy, I’m enlightened! I’ve been doing a goddamn service to this world by getting rid of the evil. Who else was going to do it? That’s a question Dr. Rosie could never give me a straight answer to. She always spouts the same thing. That’s not for you to decide. You’re not the judge and executioner.
Yeah, whatever, bitch.
I am. I’ve been doing what everyone else is too weak to do. Sniffing and snuffing out the evil. And I’m being punished for it.
I’m busy glaring into my applesauce when I feel someone sit down next to me. I ignore whoever it is, too focused on my daydream of maiming every single employee in this place and escaping.
Every time I fantasize, I always see myself covered in blood and holding onto my pretty knife, running out of the building and straight into my henchmen’s arms. They’re all there waiting for me, big smiles on their made-up faces. They scoop me in their arms and tell me how proud they are of me.
And then they whisk me away and show me how much they missed me with their tongues and cocks.
The unwanted person leans too close to me. I get a whiff of poison berries, the kind Daddy had me pluck from the bushes and bake into pies when he deemed a follower unworthy.
I snap my head up, glaring at the intruder. Glenda. She’s looking into my applesauce, a contemplative look on her face.
“Did the applesauce wrong you somehow?” she asks, the wrinkles on her face crinkling as she speaks.
She’s an ancient woman. Apparently has been here since she was sixteen years old. There are rumors that she murdered her family with an axe because she believed they were all possessed by the devil. Chopped their heads off and then burned the bodies. I’ve never heard Glenda admit nor deny it. She doesn’t speak about it at all.
For whatever reason, she’s content in this place. It’s safe for her, and it’s all she’s known for at least sixty years. I guess they’ve tried to release her several times, stating she’s been rehabilitated and is no longer a danger to society. But every time, Glenda would attack a nurse, biting them until their flesh is ripped away. Just so she can stay in her home.
My brows furrow. “Why would you ask something so stupid?” I snap, before scooping another mouthful of applesauce into my mouth.
She didn’t deserve that. I deflate.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
Glenda has an odd smell to her. I’ve never smelt poison berries on anyone before, but I’m thinking she’s like Zade—like me. Another one of those people who have blackness residing in their souls, but not completely consumed by it.
I wish someone else could sniff out evil the way I could, just so they would tell me what I smell like. Daddy would say I smell like a demon. That was his favorite thing to call me.
“You reek of sin and evil, Sibel. I don’t know how I created such an abomination.”
Glenda leans away, a smile on her face. “That’s okay, child. We all have bad days.”
“You say that as if good days exist,” I murmur, my anger bleeding into sadness.
I’m really sad.
“They seem far away right now, but you’ll see them again.”
I don’t answer. I don’t believe a word coming out of her mouth. What does she know anyway? She’s content spending the rest of her life in this hellhole. She’s content being locked up, away from society because it’s easier that way.
It’s easier to give up on life. To have no will to live. To have no desire for freedom.
I want all those things and more.
I want my henchmen back. I want to go back to my life’s mission. Executing the demons, all across the country. I want to feel my pretty knife plunging into flesh, tearing away at the sinewy muscles and hitting bone. To feel the warm blood spraying across my face and chest, coating my skin like oil. And then I want my henchmen to fuck me afterwards. Just like they always used to do.
Satan’s Affair provided me a luxury unlike anything else, and I’ll never have that again. They’re the only travelling haunted fair that I know of, and just like I’ve suspected, they are now taking serious precautions to make sure another person doesn’t slip under their radar.
“I’m never going to get out,” I whisper, my heart breaking as I say it.
I spent a couple months in the hospital first, healing from a severe concussion, several broken bones, a punctured lung and nasty lacerations across my body. I was chained to the fucking hospital bed, scared and alone. I pleaded to see my henchmen, but they would just tell me to rest, refusing to let me see any of them.
They don’t visit me here either, and after I asked Dr. Rosie if they could, she told me that we’d talk about it when I start healing. Always that stupid word. Healing. I am healed.
I was healed when I got to jail. And even more so when I saw the opportunity to kill another demon there.
My trial still isn’t for quite a while, but they threw me in the mental institute after a month in jail. After that, they gave me a psych test and ultimately determined me as insane and delusional. What can I say? The demon smelt of rot and decay, and they looked so cute with a shank sticking out of their eye.
“Is that what your lawyer is saying?” Glenda asks, just as quietly.
I nod, a lone tear slipping down my pale cheek.
Another sad part—I don’t have any make up in here to hide behind. In here, my face is bared to the world. It feels like walking into war without any armor. Without a sword and shield, and heavy metal to protect my body.
I just feel… vulnerable.
Every day, I look in the mirror—the kind that doesn’t break, much to my dismay—and stare at the girl I’ve become. Pale face, round cheeks, plain brown eyes and a crooked nose. Dark circles rim my eyes, and my lips have become painfully chapped. My dark brown hair falls limply past my breasts, and every day, I’m tempted to cut it all off.
I stare at the mirror every day, and Mommy stares back at me.
“You look just like your mother. Are you even mine, Sibel?”
Every time he said that to me, I wanted to tell him I wasn’t. Just for the small hope that he’d let me go. But then, I knew he’d kill Mommy for infidelity. None of the women there were allowed to bed anyone else but him.
I hate that I look like a ghost, which is why I was happy to cover it with makeup. I can’t even bring myself to wear my pigtails anymore. Not when I don’t have my doll face painted on and my pretty knife in my hand.
“I don’t want to, but they say I’m crazy. I’m being forced to plead insanity. The lawyer said Willowcreek Institute will provide me the best possible life, compared to prison.”
At least in prison, I could continue carrying out my mission. Prisons are filled to the brim with evil people. If I was sentenced to life, at least then I’d have nothing left to lose. I could keep killing, and still find some semblance of happiness. Even if my henchmen couldn’t be by my side.
Glenda stays quiet for a moment.
“The outsiders—people that think they’re normal—they don’t understand people like us. We see the world for what it is. This Earth is layered, just like an onion, and we’re only living in one of those layers. Us—we see the other layers. The energies that exist in this world and all the ugly and evil that comes alongside it. These layers are thin and strong entities can walk through the cracks, into other layers and wreak havoc.
“They say it’s all in our head. But I think they’re just suppressed. The things we see—they’re not in our heads. They’re in our faces. In our lives. And sometimes, in our bodies. They just can’t see them.”
I sigh. Despite what the doctors say, I’m not seeing or feeling anything that isn’t actually there. Glenda’s right. I know that the people I’ve killed were evil. I know that with every fiber of my being. I can smell their souls. I can smell the rot that’s festering inside their bodies from the inside out. And I’m not wrong for extinguishing those rotted souls.
I’m not I’m not I’m not I’m not I’m not—
“Sibby?” My head snaps up. Glenda is staring at me, concern etched into her wrinkles. She’s not looking at me like I’m crazy. Like the nurses or doctor would be. And especially the rotten guards that leer at us like we’re scum. She’s looking at me like she knows exactly what I’m feeling.
“Did you do it?” I whisper.
She stares back at me, an unreadable emotion flashing in her eyes.
“Did I do what, dear?”
“Did you kill your family? Because they were demons?”
She smiles—almost a tired smile.
“Honey, they weren’t my family. They were Satan’s.”
That’s all the confirmation I need.
Glenda’s like me. She sensed the rot. She knew it to be true. And she got rid of them.
“I’m glad you’re here, Glenda.”
I don’t say I’m glad I’m here because I’d rather be anywhere else but here. But I know Glenda is glad she’s here, and since I’m forced to be here, I’m glad she is too.
She pats my hand.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think what you did was wrong.”
I open my mouth—to say what, I’m not sure. But I’m interrupted before I can figure it out.
“Sibel Dubois, let’s go!” The same, greasy guard is yelling for me. Summoning me to see Dr. Rosie. I sigh, and Glenda winks and offers me a good luck.
Normally, I don’t need good luck. But lately, I do. Dealing with Dr. Rosie is a headache, and she claims every session is a new breakthrough. If you ask me, the only thing she’s breaking is my control to not fucking rip her eyes from their sockets.
The guard escorts me to her office, knocking once on the door.
Doctor Aberlyn Rosie is written on a pretentious gold plaque on the door. I want my pretty knife so I can carve the word Bitch into the plaque alongside her name. Only then, would I be able to stand to look at it.
“Come in, Sibby,” she calls. A shudder works through me. She’s not my friend. Only my friends call me that.
I shoot the guard a nasty glare, purely for just existing and it makes me feel better, before storming into the room. The first thing that greets my nose is a woodsy scent. Dr. Rosie smells like pine trees. I wrinkle my nose. I don’t like the smell of pine trees, I like the smell of flowers.
“You’re not allowed to call me Sibby,” I gripe, aiming my glare her way. Her bleached blonde hair is pulled back in a low ponytail and pink lip gloss is painted on her lips today, making her sterile blue eyes pop.
Every day, she wears a different color lipstick. She says it brings a little bit of brightness to an otherwise depressing place. I wanted to pluck her pen from her breast pocket and shove it in her throat for saying that.
She says that like it’s our fault it’s depressing. No. It’s theirs.
Crazy people are the most interesting people in the world if you’d just let them be who they are. Medicating and drugging people until they’re mindless zombies would make anyone depressed, you dumb bitch.
“Still don’t consider us friends?” she asks, her sculpted brow cocked with amusement. She doesn’t look intimidating like Zade did. She just looks like she’s trying to look cute and failing miserably.
What a miserable person.
“No,” I snap. “Friends don’t call other friends crazy.”
“Sibby…” at my dark look, she clears her throat and corrects herself, her patient tone undeterred. “Sibel. I never said you were crazy. I said you’re suffering from severe schizophrenia and delusions. There are millions of people who have the same condition, and live normal lives.”
Normal? What does normal even mean? Normal is subjective.
“I wouldn’t say they live normal lives, Dr. Rosie. Seeing things you aren’t capable of might be normal to them, but it certainly isn’t the same definition you have declared as normal.”
She smiles. “You’re right, Sibel. I suppose it's very uncultivated of me to say their lives are normal.” Before I can open my mouth and tell her about herself some more, she moves on. “Tell me about your henchmen.”
My brow lowers and my heart sinks. Everything sinks.
“I don’t want to talk about them,” I growl.
She cocks her head. “Why is that, Sibby? Is it because they left?”
I sniff. Tears burn my eyes and line the edges of my lids. I refuse to let them fall. I refuse to show any kind of weakness in front of Dr. Rosie. She’ll eat it up like a starved dog.
“Yes,” I hiss through gritted teeth.
“Why do you think they left?”
I shrug a shoulder before crossing my arms and looking away. I’m sulking, and I have the right to. We promised we’d always be together, and they left me. They lied.
“Probably because they didn’t want to get caught, too.”
She writes something down in her notebook. The urge to stab the pen in her eye comes back with a vengeance. I’d really like to know what she writes about me.
Crazy. She's saying I’m fucking crazy.
“Sibby, how did you meet your henchmen?”
I sigh with impatience, but don’t bother correcting her this time. “At Satan's Affair in a small town in Ohio. I had just escaped from Daddy’s cult when I came across the travelling fair, and snuck into a haunted house after it closed down. I didn’t have anywhere to sleep, nowhere warm, so I decided to sleep in one of the haunted houses for a night. There, I met my henchmen, standing over a dead body. They told me he was evil and it was like the world aligned. I knew my purpose in life but I knew it wasn’t the right time to start until I was positive I could do it undetected. You know—by the normal people?
“My henchmen offered me that. They said I could stay within the walls and cast my judgements. Once I did, they’d help me carry out their punishment.”
I had already told her all about Daddy’s cult and how I ultimately escaped. It was five years ago when I had enough. He had just murdered an innocent woman for not following his rules. I don’t even remember what exactly she did wrong anymore—Daddy always had rules that contradicted each other.
A woman cannot take a man's seed into her body unwed.
If you don’t drink God’s nectar, you will be damned to Hell for all eternity.
Don’t fuck without being married, but oh no, if you don’t suck on my cock, you’re the unholy one.
I snapped when I saw an innocent woman dead because of a deranged man. If anyone was crazy—it was Daddy. He wasn’t listening to God's voice in his head. He was listening to Satan’s.
So I killed him. I grabbed the same knife that he stabbed into that woman's ear and turned it on him. I stabbed him well over a hundred times, until I was sitting on two hundred pounds of meat and bone, and I couldn’t physically lift my arm anymore.
And then I set everyone free. Most were angry and cried. But I saw it deep in their eyes—they were relieved, too. They were just angry that they had to find their own purpose in life instead of blindly following the purpose that was handed to them by the devil.
“The other employees that worked in the dollhouse. Did any of them have friendships with your henchmen?” Dr. Rosie asks, bringing me back to the conversation.
I shrug. “Not that I know of. They stayed to themselves. They did their jobs and then helped me with mine.”
Out of anger, I told my lawyer that I had help from my henchmen. My lawyer said they would look into it, but since then, he refused to talk to me about what’s going on with them. If they’ve ever been caught. Or if there’s an active manhunt for five deadly men.
He says I need to focus on myself right now, and he'll worry about the rest.
There’s no point in trying to protect them now. They didn’t protect me, and law enforcement already knew I had help since they were chasing after them, too.
“What about you? Did any of them know about you?”
I scoff. “No, I stayed inside the walls. The less they knew about me, the better. If no one ever saw me, then they wouldn’t be able to pin anything on them in case I was caught.”
Dr. Rosie hums, writing more baseless words down in her leather notebook. I wonder, is she one of those girls who write in their feelings in journals? Does she take a pen to paper every time she’s called a bitch by a patient? Does she talk about how unappreciated she is in her job, but if she could help just one person, it would all be worth it? I scoff again.
“Sibel, did you ever see your henchmen interact with other staff?”
I frown, furrowing my brow. “Why—”
“Just think about it. Humor me.”
Irritation flares but I do it anyway. I think back to all the times during operation hours. I’d see staff look at them, but they always passed on by without talking to them. Everyone always seemed to look through them. Like they were so insignificant. My henchmen never seemed to notice or care.
“I guess not,” I finally answer, confused on where she’s going with this. So what if others didn’t talk to them? Maybe they were scared of them.
“Why do you think that is?”
I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. “What kind of question is that?” I snap, my irritation growing. But it’s not just irritation I’m feeling. Its fear, too.
My heart kicks into overdrive and Dr. Rosie eyes me.
“Do you think they’re real?”
I jerk back with widened eyes, taken aback by her question but yet, not surprised by it. That question is exactly what I was fearing.
“Why the hell would you ask me that?”
Dr. Rosie shifts, as if she’s settling in for a long conversation.
“Sibel. We found your henchmen.”
Whiplash. She's jerking me back and forth. I can’t keep up.
“Okay, and?” I snap. “Have they been apprehended?”
Her lips tighten into a thin line. “Sibel,” she starts again. “They’re mannequins.”
My world tilts on its axis. A rock forms in my throat, steadily growing until I feel the need to claw at my throat. I can’t breathe past it. My hands dart to the armrests, gripping them so tightly, my nails start to crack. Everything is spinning and Dr. Rosie's clinical voice is muffled, sounding like I’m trapped underwater and she’s yelling at me from above.
