Heaven and Hell is pretty cringe, actually: Part Three

*This story is underneath my folder titled “Heaven and Hell is pretty cringe, actually”. Gacha Club character designs are under my forum titled “My character designs<33[2]”. Enjoy!*

As soon as we step into the Cannibal Circus, my eyes are assaulted by blinking strobe lights and terrible red lighting that doesn’t do anything to show me my surroundings. Adele is already running ahead of me and the ghostly wooo dance music is sound loud that I can hardly hear myself think.

It’s just like the haunted house attractions me and Amanda went to. The ones she was scared of but still did anyway.

“If you run too far they might get you!” I yell out. I’m not sure if Adele heard me or would care if she did, but I call out anyway just so she knows.

In the mix of the music, I can hear screams and growls, one of the screams being from Adele. If only she stayed with me, then she wouldn’t be screaming as much. I wonder when a cannibal is going to jump out at me and-

Immediately I kick a withery old cannibal man in the stomach as he was clawing at me, attempting to pull out my teeth. I caught sight of him before he got me, but the thought of having to endure this the whole time makes me sick to my stomach. The only thing that is keeping me going is the fact that getting through this will bring me one step closer to seeing Amanda…

I remember when me and Amanda went to Trinity of Terror theme park a year ago. We were fifteen years old and had only started dating a year before, sometime in February. One of the things we both enjoyed was Halloween and so, we decided that every year, in the middle of October, we would visit Trinity of Terror, the Halloween theme park that ONLY opened in October, as a date.

We’d try all of the themed food, most of them being pastries, laugh or scream when scare actors approached us, and marvel at the wonderfully shocking horrors of the haunted house scares attractions.

Amanda isn’t scared of a lot of things, but she’s disturbed by excessive gore. She won’t say anything about it until months after we’ve watched a gory horror movie, but I’ll see it in her eyes in her time of silence.

We were standing in line for “Merciless Mayhem”, a haunted house attraction themed after the 1990s movie franchise of the same name where the main character was the teenage daughter of Satan who liked to turn people’s organs inside out. She had no tragic backstory, no point to her malice, just…chaos and gore.

And I could SEE the fear in how wide her eyes were, she just wasn’t saying anything. Only standing next to me with petrified brown eyes.

I never spoke to her about it until that moment, when I said:

“You know you don’t have to come with me if you’re scared, right?”

Amanda blinked at me in shock before she cried out:

“I’m not scared! What makes you think that?”

Her voice was quivering when she said it, which didn’t do anything to convince me and so I said:

“It’s every single time you’re around gore. When we’re watching a horror movie and there’s a bloody scene, your eyes will get really big, like you were tortured yourself and you’ll get so unusually quiet after the movie. You sounded hesitant and your eyes look like you don’t want to go. Besides, you tell me months later that the gore bothered you. So why are you with me on line for this? You can go do something else while I do this. It’s fine.”

Amanda didn’t say anything for a moment. It had to have only been five minutes, but it felt like an eternity while I waited for her response, my heart racing as I wondered if I had worded my thoughts well, if I might have accidentally made her upset. She never got upset with me, yet I was still scared that one day, she would.

“I just thought it’d be nice if we did this together. I don’t want to let my fears get in the way of fun and-“

“It’s not fun if only one of us is enjoying it. I promise, I’m not going to be offended if you don’t do this house with me. It would literally be stupid of me to feel that way.” I interrupted.

I still don’t understand to this day why Amanda didn’t think that she didn’t have to join me before, but she said in a slightly nervous tone:

“I-alright.”

Before she left, though, I kissed her to let her know it wasn’t that big of a deal. A smile spread on her face, making her eyes glow a bit under the lights of the rides and the haunted houses.

Even if she doesn’t like the same things that I do, that won’t stop Halloween from being a beautiful night.

The memory of Amanda makes kicking and clawing at these cannibals less annoying. When I least expect it, bloody, half-flesh eaten, bug-ridden cannibals who are either elderly, middle-aged, or teenagers pop out, trying and failing to pull out my teeth. Me being a demon and dead makes this easier than if I was a human and alive, because my claws penetrate their skin and my tail and wings smack them away.

Of course, the cannibals are demons too and I’ve gotten quite a few scratches and bruises already, but they don’t have wings, horns and a tail like me. They also don’t have teeth, since Carrie removed them all. They’re fueled by rage but they’re more like toothless zombies than demons to me. Carrie must have been lying when she made that sign about demons failing to pass this Great Horror, because there is no way they would have lost to this. Come to think of it, I don’t think that anybody before me and Adele tried to escape Hell. But why would Celeste lie about that? That seems like a stupid thing to lie about and-

“STELLA! Come here, NOW!” Adele’s voice cries out.

The lighting in this maze still has not gotten any better, but I call out back to her that I’m following the sound of her voice as best as I can. She keeps calling out to me so that I know where to go.

I hope that Adele hasn’t gotten into any more trouble. It’s bad enough that it’s her fault we’re dead, I don’t want her doing anything else that’ll make things worse. There aren’t as many cannibals that I have to fight off, which means I must be getting close to the exit. That’s good. This is good. I have to keep running until I find Adele. Then we can get out of here and get closer to being free! It’ll only be for one day but it will still be something! I can’t believe I’m actually starting to get excited about this, that the possibility of leaving Hell is becoming a reality and why is Adele stroking that cannibal’s hair?

Because I’ve made it to Adele and I see that she is sitting on a wooden chair, stroking the long, green-black hair of a cannibal who is on their knees, their head on Adele’s lap.

“Adele…what is this? What are you doing with a cannibal?”

“Her name is Lauren and I met her over there!” Adele says, pointing to somewhere.

I turn towards where her finger is pointing and see cloth curtains hanging off of a bigger cloth fashioned to look like a tent. It hangs over a circular spot on the ground that has triangular shapes painted on them and on the cloth, there hangs strings of white LED lights.

The curtains look like something trapeze artists would dangle from, but there isn’t a trampoline for Lauren to land on. Not that she would need it, because she’s dead.

“I saw her performing and I knew that I just had to watch! She moved like a mesmerizing melody come to life and her bloodiness only added to her beauty. I told Lauren about how fantastic she looked and then, she got down from the curtains and told me more about herself! Well, she didn’t speak, because she doesn’t have any teeth, but she had paper and a pencil! We talked so much, Stella! She likes writing poetry and collecting toys, just like me! And also, she’s only ever eaten three people and that was because they were bullying her. She’s got such a gentle soul and…I think I’m in love.” Adele gushes.

Lauren turns her head a little bit to look at me and I see that she’s around the same age as me and Adele. Well, from what I can tell of her bloody, rotting face and clown makeup. Her white, blank eyes seem to glare at me through her round black glasses and then, she turns away from me.

I look back at Adele to make sure that she’s serious. Her face has scars, which means that she must have been fighting the other cannibals, but not nearly as much as me. She smiles like she’s starstruck, her brown eyes sparkle…just like when she was having a crush on Amanda, my girlfriend.

Every time I think that Adele couldn’t annoy me more, she goes and does something outrageously ill-considered and so, I have to laugh to stop myself from going insane with her choices.

“What? What’s so funny? I-“

“What’s so funny?! What’s so funny?! Ever since I started dating Amanda you wouldn’t shut up about how you were the “better” twin and how she “should have” been with you and-“

“That’s the past now. I’m over her. Lauren is the one I love.”

Oh, that’s cute. She thinks that she knows what love is.

“LOVE?! Adele, you literally just met her minutes ago and she’s a cannibal! The only reason we’re in Hell is because you killed Amanda out of some twisted sense of wanting to be with her! What would you know about love when all you’ve ever done was hurt me? I-“

“I never did anything to hurt you! You were just in the way of what could have been a beautiful relationship! You could have run but you decided to kill me! It’s not my fault that you’re always bitter and-“

“Bitter?! I’m not bitter, I’m just happier when you’re not around. Mom and Dad always excused you, treated you like you could do no wrong, like you were innocent, but you’re not. And I’m not going to pretend like you are.”

Adele’s eyes go wide like I hurt her feelings, like I’m in the wrong. I’m not. Our parents never told her off, but they’re not here to tell me to be quiet. I’ve said my piece and I feel slightly lighter than before, less anxious than I was.

Lauren gets up and storms off angrily, her two half-up pigtails swinging as she does so. Probably because of what I said about Adele. Honestly, I’m glad to see that cannibal go, but Adele stares at me like she wants to kill me a second time and she says:

“You could have just kept your mouth shut. Now look what you’ve did.”

She gets up from the chair and runs in Lauren’s direction before I can get a word in. Keep my mouth shut? That’s what I’ve been doing when I was alive. I’m not going to do that now just because her feelings got hurt. The truth is knife-sharp, but lies slowly strangle the soul until there’s nothing left at all.

Just ahead of me is the exit, the red EXIT sign glittering as if to welcome me, to guide me to safety. It probably hasn’t been that long, but it feels like an eternity went by since I walked into the Cannibal Circus and frankly, I’m sick of this god awful red lighting.

But Adele…what if Lauren takes her teeth? If I’m gone, then Lauren will certainly use that opportunity to steal Adele’s teeth? And what if Carrie comes and decides to give Adele actual torture instead of just cleaning? Carrie will likely come after me next, but she’ll have Adele first.

Adele could get lost too…wandering the Cannibal Circus…at the mercy of cannibals…she could lose her teeth…maybe become one of them…

Tears blister my eyes at the thought of Adele becoming a bleeding, toothless, zombie-like cannibal, aimlessly reaching out to have something that she can never grasp, the sickeningly sweet Carrie watching her, mocking her, twisting her mind into madness and so, unfortunately, I run away from the exit, in the direction Adele and Lauren went.

Adele better not put up with a fight, because I cannot with her right now.