Hot Tricks

Warning: this is sort of long, around about 3,500 words. It’s also sort of… descriptive in places and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone under the age of 14. It’s about demons, so blood is kinda a given.

Besides that, here you go! Please rip it apart I’m aware that it’s glaringly weak in places. This was the second thing I wrote after not writing for a period of about a year, so I’m still trying to remember how to, you know, write.

The title is a reference to a truly awful halloween joke.

It had started with a summer breeze and her girlfriend kissing the inside of her thigh. The wheat was itchy on her bare back and she could feel the pull of the pins in her brown hair where her mother had insisted she knot it at the back. Her girlfriend’s face was blurry, her hair two shades off the way it was in her memories, and Emmy was in love.

More accurately, maybe, it started with them meeting in a library. It started with her girlfriend’s laugh, with their feet kicking under the table. But the shadow people could no doubt be traced back to the flushed look of her girlfriend’s cheeks and the gloss on her lips when she asked our protagonist:

“What would you do if I died?”

And it was kinda stupid, because Emmy’s girlfriend was into that supernatural shit and wouldn’t stop talking about witches and demons and raising the dead. So Emmy said the only thing she thought was appropriate.

“I’d go straight to hell and get you back.”

Her girlfriend giggled, and Emmy could tell you to this day what the look in her eyes was, could describe perfectly to you the pressure of her girlfriend’s hand in hers.

“Are you suggesting I’d go to hell, Emily?”

“Yes.”

It started in that field in mid summer, and ended with her girlfriend getting shitfaced and crashing her car into a bus stop, landing herself with about a billion stitches and in the intensive care unit, comatose.

Rosalyn had always been way too hot to be dating Emily, everyone agreed it. She was beautiful, unstoppable; intelligent and confident but not cocky. So there was no way she was a lesbian. It was a mistake.

Obviously it wasn’t, but to a lot of people in the dumbfuck backwater town, it was. So when Rosalyn ended up an unresponsive vegetable, most people thought she probably deserved it for being a disgusting dyke.

It started with a declaration and a promise. It started with a girl in a shirt saying ‘will suck dick for the devil’. It started with stupid horror movies and a ouija board for christmas and a joking statement about bringing her back from the dead.

Emily wasn’t about to let it end with her in a hospital bed.

So she summoned Satan.

~~~

“Ok but can you do me a favour and get out?” Emmy asked, flicking her light on.

The shadow creature let out an inhuman scream, melting into the floor and sliding out the window and into the night. She folded her arms, taking in the carnage it left in her room; the muddy smears on the wall reading you’re ours and the corpse of the pig on her bed, and sighed.

This was getting ridiculous.

It had been three years since Rosalyn kissed the sweet world of the waking goodbye, and whilst she was rotting away in a hospital bed the world was going on. At first Emmy had completely forgotten her pledge, too consumed by grief to operate, and it was only a year later, after Emmy had graduated and moved out that she remembered her promise. So she’d bought about 10 books on summoning demons and given it a whirl. Rosa was still in a coma.

Only now she would cry at night when the shadows pressed their cool hands to her forehead, their mouthless faces screaming for her to give them her soul. And when the blood started dripping from her mirror as she went to brush her teeth at night she had begged the shadows to stop. The creature had replied from its space in the darkness cast by her shower curtain that she had made her decisions and it was now time to pay up.

Because Emmy hadn’t succeeded in summoning Satan - all she’d done was get her house haunted by some hellish creature that liked to flash images of Rosalyn getting beheaded on her tv screen and send her dreams of her own demise. Fucking shadow creatures.

A quick google or two confirmed that yes, her soul was hellbound and yes, the shadow creature was there to watch until it’s demonic master could be bothered to drag itself over and take it. At that point the deal for Rosalyn’s revival would no doubt be hashed out, and everyone would win.

Besides Emmy, who would be dead, but she tried not to think about it too hard.

So the shadow creature became a permanent part of her life and, after the initial moans coming from the attic and baths of blood, it became sort of tolerable. Every night it would press itself against her and beg for her soul, and then every morning she would catch it drifting over to the radio and looking at her with what she thought was a look of expectancy. She found that it liked Jazz stations best, and would physically shake with pleasure when she played them.

It was kinda cute, in a fucked up way. She’d go to work and see it slinking around under her desk, and when she went to make coffee she’d have to suppress a giggle at the sight of the shadow creature running its hands through the kettle sadly. It liked to shriek at people on the bus but no one ever seemed to notice it besides Emmy. She bought earplugs to block out it's hell cries and life went on.

By the time she was 23, her and the shadow creature were basically best friends, and it was on one of their weekly movie nights that she turned to ask him if he wanted popcorn (a running joke) and found a complete stranger sat next to her.

“Hi, sweetie, I see you got pretty attached to my pet back there.”

Later all Emmy would be able to describe about it was the way her popcorn bowl practically jumped out of her hands and spilled over her. In years to come she’d find herself at dinner parties and with friends, desperately trying to explain the feeling that hit her when the demon smirked and pressed his hands onto her thighs but only able to talk about the stickiness of the corn in her bra, and her brief thought that she would never get the kernels out of the carpet if anyone stood on them.

But right then it was all burning in her legs and a simultaneous and confusing numbing as the demon pushed her back onto the sofa. For all intents and purposes he looked like your average human male, but it was the eyes that gave him away. Because whilst he was stunning in a confusing and impossible to describe way, his eyes were completely black.

“So what’s up, Emmy? May I call you Emmy? I’m gonna call you Emmy.” He was pressing his forehead against hers, close enough that their lips nearly touched when he spoke, “It’s pretty important that we’re on first name basis, considering that I’m about to rip your soul out and flay you with it.”

Emmy said nothing. Instead, her eyes strayed to the television.

“I know you’re scared, Emmy. Don’t be a bitch about this - pay attention to me.”

“Where’s the shadow?” She asked quietly, “Is he okay?”

The demon grinned, “Probably? I dunno I just pay ‘em to guard. You do know they have no souls, right? It probably couldn’t tell you from a fucking dog, sweetheart.”

But Emmy knew that wasn’t true, because the shadow creature had stopped screaming at her at night when she had finally told it that she was scared when it did that. And the shadow creature would make a weird, strangled purring noise when an advert for a show Emmy liked came on, like it knew that she might be interested.

The demon scanned her face and grimaced. And then it abruptly grabbed her by the shoulders, lifted her up, and slammed her back down onto the sofa until her head rang.

“Pay attention to me, you bitch,” it sneered, “or I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you right now.”

“You’re pathetic,” she said finally, “I literally don’t care. I’ve spent FOUR YEARS with blood dripping from my ceiling and my food turning into maggots. The other week I went to let the water out of a bath and had some wet rag hair monster grab me and try to pull me under. My best friend is a demonic shadow that screams and mimics my family members to freak me out when it’s angry with me.”

The demon sat back, looked at her like she’d burnt him.

“Just take my soul or get the fuck out, you’re speaking like a badly written tv show bad guy, and it’s making me feel sick.”

She blinked and the demon was gone. She sighed and turned back to her film.

The shadow creature didn’t come back. The next day Emmy got a phone call from her mother telling her that Rosalyn had woken up, but she couldn’t remember a damn thing.

Fucking typical.

~~~

The doctors called it ‘retrograde amnesia’ or something, and told Emmy that she shouldn’t go in the room kicking and screaming and demanding that Rosalyn remember her, because it’d just upset her. Emmy hadn’t seen her in about a year, but was surprised to see she looked exactly the same as she did when they were 16 now that she had woken up. The lidded eyes and slow smile was back, even if her hair was now a natural ginger as opposed to a bright red, and the shirt she was wearing looked like it had little bears on it. Old Rosalyn would’ve hated it, but New Rosalyn seemed like she didn’t really care about anything besides staring at her tv.

“Hi, Rosa,” Emmy said, sitting down next to the bed, “I’m Emmy. I knew you back in school.”

“That’s nice,” Rosalyn said, and her voice sounded distant and sort of sad, “sorry but I don’t know who you are, obviously. Nice to meet you, though.”

“Sure, nice, yeah.” Emmy smiled, “It’s fine. Just thought I’d come and say hi, you know? We were pretty good friends and I’ve missed you.”

Rosalyn turned to look at her and Emmy was hit with the full weight of her sadness. Because Rosa was awake, and she’d spent years crying in her kitchen and bearing the weight of the shadow people and getting used to the idea of losing her life only for Rosa to wake up and have no idea who the fuck she was. Suddenly she was sitting right in front of her dressed like a ten year old looking like she might as well be dead with a vacant look in her eyes and no idea that she lost her virginity to a stranger in the back of his car when she was 14. No idea that she’d told Emmy that she loved her, that she used to enjoy sappy romantic films but was ashamed of it, that she secretly was sure she’d be dead by 25.

“What did I used to be like?” Rosalyn asked, “if you don’t mind me asking?”

Emmy forced herself to smile, her eyes flicking from Rosa’s mother and back to Rosalyn herself.

And then she lied.

Emmy cried in her car afterwards for what felt like forever. Her lungs burnt, her eyes ached, her knuckles turned white as she gripped the steering wheel and realised she’d made a huge mistake.

~~~

“Welcome home, princess,” the demon sang as she opened the front door, “I made dinner!”

“Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?” she asked, dropping her keys into the bowl in the kitchen and sliding onto the counter, “I saw that shit you pulled at the hospital today and just so you know, that wasn’t part of the deal.”

“Neither was you being such a cocky little bitch,” he had flour on his face, “but we make do with what we have, don’t we?”

“You could take my soul any time, you know that.”

He pouted, “I like my prey to want it.”

She hopped off the counter and left, crawling into the cool comfort of her bed covers and resuming her crying. The demon used the last of her hot water and fell asleep on her sofa watching M.A.S.H reruns. Emmy missed her shadow friend.

Her and Rosalyn started meeting up for coffee. Apparently Rosalyn was taking an extensive but quick crash course in culture, and in between getting to know her family again, her doctor decided it might be nice for her to spend time with an old friend. Emmy, specifically.

Emmy found it funny how everyone always referred to her as ‘an old friend’ or ‘a close friend’. It was no secret what they were, but Rosalyn’s mother would always smile right up to her watery blue eyes and say, “you were always such a dear close friend to our Rose, do you think you could help her, Emily?”

And Emmy always smiled and agreed, because she liked to torture herself. So they went out for coffee and Rosalyn would ramble about things that were pretty boring - one time she asked Emmy if she’d ever seen this great film her parents showed her called ‘star wars’ and Emmy had to hold back laughs and explain that yes, Rosa, she had. At night Emma would sink into her bath and let herself cry as the demon looked at itself in the mirror next to her and insulted her.

“You’re not making me want you, you know,” she said, scrubbing her scalp, “by being such a cock. And besides, I’ll probably never like you - you’re not my type.”

“Like this better?” the demon laughed and turned around, his face suddenly sultry and seductive, Rosa’s face shining out from a sea of red hair and full lips. Emmy had screamed and screamed until he’d turned back into his usual self and, laughing, he’d apologised. But they both knew he didn’t mean it. Later that night he pulled her covers back and slid into her bed as casually as if this wasn’t the first time he’d ever done it. She’d turned away from his smooth strokes and light chuckles and tried to fall asleep. Like a demon wasn’t in her bed. Like her best friend didn’t have amnesia. Like her life wasn’t a fucking mess.

He took to leaving pictures of Roselyn bound and bloody around the house. Sometimes she’d pick up the phone to find Rosa’s voice saying that she’d got her memories back and yes, she did need Emmy to get over there right now and talk to her. And then she’d start laughing between hacking, disgusting coughs, before screaming down the phone and cutting the call. The first time Emmy actually ran to house to find her fine and still completely clueless. When she got home the demon was nowhere to be found, but there was a post it note on the fridge that read, she’s never coming back, so just give in.

Emmy broke her phone after the fifth time. Slammed it right into the wall and didn’t bother to replace it. She told her mum to call her at work if she ever needed her, during their monthly Sunday dinner, and her mother had just smiled sadly, like she could see how insane Emmy was going right under her nose. Emmy was so close to losing it that she thought she might just give up and leave town.

“I’ll follow you if you leave,” the demon had whispered the first time she thought it, “I’m in your head, sweetheart. I own you.”

“Go home,” she said, startling the woman picking fruit from the isle next to her. She was in the supermarket, “I’m tired.”

~~~

It was when she came home to find the demon had taken on the form of a heavily pregnant and weeping woman that she finally caved. He’d sat there in front of her sobbing, dripping blood onto the carpet, the bump under his clothes grotesquely huge and disgusting. He had wept for two straight days before finally looking up at her and saying, his face smeared with blood, that he was going to fuck Emmy so hard that she’d die, and then he’d bathe in the blood of her wreck of her corpse.

“You know what screw you,” she screamed, “I'm yours, okay, I'm yours.”

The demon reverted to his original form and stretched out on the sofa, silent.

“Did you hear me, you demonic asshole? I said you can have me. Take me, right now, just kill me. For the love of god kill me.”

“Why do you want to die, Emmy?” He asked slowly, his eyes wide with faux innocence.

“Because living like this is probably more painful. You’ve ruined my life, you’ve actually destroyed my life and I hate you and everything about you and I hope that there is an afterlife so that when you kill me I can come to hell and fucking murder your undead, demonic ass. Who the fuck gets off to torturing people anyway?”

He shrugged, “not me. I was just messing around.”

“Well then you’re disgusting. You could’ve left any time, you could’ve taken my soul literally any moment of the day, but you just had to make me beg first, didn’t you?”

“I kind of-”

“Just shut up, please. Please be quiet. Please just kill me before I kill myself.”

The demon actually looked kind of sad, but Emmy wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t above digging for sympathy, although she wasn’t sure why he looked sad this time.

“I didn’t-”

“Fuck you.”

“Emmy listen-”

“No, fuck you.”

“Emmy.”

“Don’t call me Emmy, stop talking to me. Get out of my head.”

“Emmy I wasn’t trying to ruin your life; I was just messing around.”

She laughed, “Is that what they call messing around in hell? Did you seriously think that I was enjoying any of this? When I bought those books I sort of expected you to show up, for me to sign away my soul, and for that to be that. Maybe some ultimate fiddle showdown at the end or something, then BAM you take my soul.”

The demon had shifted over to the sofa next to her.

“Instead I get your freaky shadow henchman, who was actually awesome. Where is he, by the way? I would’ve given my soul to that dude literally any day of the week. He never talked, like you, he just chilled out and screamed a lot. I loved that guy. You’re just an asshole.”

“I kinda-”

“Call him right now, or something. Ghostly demon phones. Do it.”

“Look-”

“Call him!”

“Do you know how hard it is to materialise into the human world?” The demon snapped, his face filling with anger, “I can’t call your stupid fucking shadow friend because they don’t exist. I spent THREE YEARS trapped in shadow form mooching around your house, you fucking bitch, and then I show up for real and you’re freaking out about me being so mean. What did you expect? I’m a demon. I steal people’s souls. You summoned me.”

Emmy felt like she’d been punched in the chest.

“Nothing to say now that you’ve discovered it was me that sat watching Evil Dead with you every month for a year? Why always Evil Dead, Emmy? It’s so unrealistic that it made me weep. You’re not witty.”

“So you- wait, what?”

“Shadow creatures don’t exist, Emmy, you’re just a really shitty summoner. It took you three years to fully summon me, don’t quit your day job.”

“So the shadow dude… wasn’t nice?”

“Please, sweetheart, I’m lovely to people that like me. I showed up and you were like, bitchzilla.”

Emmy’s eyebrows furrowed, “you turned yourself into my friends and staged executions and put worms in my food. How was I meant to react?”

“I was pretty pissed off that I had to ride the bus with you every day for three years. Do you even know how to read? ‘Binding demon summoning spell’ it probably read, whatever cut rate book it was, ‘warning: WILL BIND A DEMON TO YOU.”

“Oh my god shut up, you're not even funny," she snapped, "and there's nothing wrong with public transport."

The demon slumped back, picking up his discarded cup of green tea cradling it in his hands. Emmy found herself sinking down further into the sofa, all of the anger having dissipated from her body. He pulled up a blanket from the floor and draped it over them, trying to stretch his legs out without having to put them over her thighs and failing miserably.

“So how do you unbind us?” she asked, trying to make her tone gentle. She wouldn't lie, the demon actually still terrified her, and she wasn't in the mood for another screaming session.

“I don’t,” he gave up and stuck his feet in her lap, “do you know what book you read it from? We don’t really get orders in hell, I just woke up one day under your bed and started kicking shit from there.”

“No I found it online.”

The demon groaned, rubbing his eyes, “you’re so stupid.”

“You’re so stupid,” she shot back, “I can’t believe how stupid you are.”

He didn’t bother replying, choosing instead to throw a pillow at her and close his eyes. She poked his shin and he kicked her gently in the stomach.

“So, do you own my soul?” Emmy asked eventually.

“Uh, maybe? Probably,” his eyes opened, “unless you did bind me to you in which case it’s kinda a genie deal. I do you some favours and then when your natural demise comes I get to own you all over the 7 circles of hell.”

“So why do you want to unbind us?”

He rolled his eyes, speaking with a tone that implied it was the most obvious and public knowledge in existence, “because in this deal, I have to do whatever you want until you die, which could be 50 or 60 years from now. Probably never with modern medicine, the fuckers.”

“Is that why you were trying to get me to kill myself?”

He snorted, spilling tea down his shirt, “yeah. Never thought you’d crack though, you’re way too hardcore. Who summons a demon to save their high school sweetheart? They say young love doesn’t last, Emmy.”

Emmy frowned, “whatever.”

The demon’s smile grew slightly as he tried to damp his shirt with the blanket.

“Do you want me to find the spell?” Emmy found herself asking just as the demon blurted, “Do you wanna watch Evil Dead II?”

Emmy smiled, “I heard it sucked.”

The demon grinned back.

“Same.”

~~~

A/N:

This can be summarised as follows:

Too much dialogue and sass followed by a weak and slightly confusing ending. I might as well explain that I got tired of them being mean to each other and decided they should just hang out and be friends. In the original ending it made a lot less sense than in this ending, but it’s still pretty ridiculous and badly written. I don’t mind though.

I might write a sequel some time. But Rosalyn doesn’t get her memories back, because why would I want anything to go well for my characters?

I wonder if I could professionally just write dialogue? Wait... scripts. Kinda.