Page 2 of Obsession

This room is boring. Repetitive. He makes a note to change it somehow. Maybe he will make the girl the hunter next, keeping her humanity intact as she is helpless to fight the urge to kill. What to do with the old creature, then? Perhaps he could make them fight each other. Two beasts vying for dominance.

Hm…

He shuts the door and continues his stroll down the hall, slowly making his way to his favorite room. This time, instead of lingering in the doorway, he takes a seat in one of the empty chairs in the audience.

In this room, is a talk show set placed on a stage, shrouded by red, theater curtains. There is a long couch for the guest, a chair where the host sits, and a greenscreen behind them both, which blaring lights are fixed on. The rest of the room is in complete darkness. Today’s guest is Olivia Dessen. She is wearing her finest pearls and a checkered, sleeveless dress.

The interviewer is something picked from the woman’s worst nightmares. A glance in Olivia’s head will tell any half-rate psychic that she is religious. Her greatest fear is, quite uncreatively, demons, so Aris made a grotesque, horned creature with fangs like tusks. Red-skinned, with glowing, scarlet eyes and an unruly smirk scaling half of its face, it is a mockery of humans.

Already, the thought of the girl is forgotten, as he faces something much more interesting. Aris smiles, leaning forward in his seat.

Olivia kicks against the floor violently enough that her heels fly halfway across the stage. “Don’t you hurt me!” she screams. “Don’t get any closer!”

“What’s the matter?” says the demon, voice like gravel. “I thought that you wanted to tell your story.”

On the walls of the set, red signs flash, requesting applause from the audience. For a moment, Olivia’s heavy breathing and Aris’ slow claps are the only sounds in the theater.

Olivia looks into the black space beyond the stage’s edge, going pale. She can’t see him, but she knows what it means to have an audience. Only one person ever watches her.

“No!” she yells, voice doubling in volume.

She wretches herself from the chair—tries to, at least. The moment her arms raise from the rests and her back arches from the fabric, hundreds of small hooks shoot out of the chair to embed themselves in her skin. They tug, and she screams in frustration and agony as she is forced back.

Even still, she fights. Blood flows down her arms, at first in rivulets and then so quickly that the color looks almost black. Part of Aris has to admire the imbecile. No matter how many times they do this, no matter how often she bleeds, she still fights.

A lot like her daughter, that way.

More hooks, these thicker and jagged, go for her ligaments, impaling the inside of her knees and arms. Two shoot into the cartilage of her ears, holding Olivia’s head in one spot.

Aris watches for a moment before snapping his fingers, and the red curtains suddenly close. When they open again, Olivia is in her original position, uninjured, without any hooks in her. Her shoes are back on, her makeup perfect, composed once more.

This time, Aris sits in the director’s chair with a grin, across from Olivia. The seat is just behind the camera, right in her line of sight, and, with a snap, a spotlight beams on him.

“Let’s take it from the top,” he says. “I missed the beginning.”

Olivia looks at Aris miserably. “Not again. Please.”

“That’s not your line,” he says. Aris motions to his creature to begin.

The smile taking half of its face grows larger. He did good work fashioning this one. “Today, we have a special interview with Mrs. Olivia Dessen!” it says. “Isn’t that exciting?”

The applause sign flashes again; this time, Aris doesn’t bother to clap.

“I don’t want to—I don’t want to!” Olivia screams, but, controlled by a force she cannot comprehend, the woman stands.

Her limbs twitch. At first, it’s just her arms bending awkwardly, unnaturally, but then she lets out a vicious howl as her shins move above her knees, cracking backward. Her ankles, twitching and breaking, come to rest by her collarbone. Unable to stand now, a preternatural force keeps her afloat, hovering inches above the ground where she continues to contort.

“Why?” she screams, miserable and terrified, in so much pain that she is sweating and choking on spittle. “Why are you doing this?”

Quite suddenly, his good humor vanishes. Aris scowls. “You know why.”

She shakes her head again and again, moaning the word no in every possible way it can be said. “I’m sorry!” she yells finally, like the words have been forced out of her. “I’m sorry!”

He sighs, crossing one leg over the other. “And now you are lying.”

By now, she is bent into a badly shaped pretzel, and Aris commissions the breaking of her bones somewhat idly. The position she is in is impossible, a contortionist’s dream. She should have passed out, perhaps died of shock by now, but Aris won’t let her.

“You’re a demon! A devil!” she screams, still writhing in the air. She has gotten to the point in the show where she’s recognized that pleading will get her nowhere.

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