Chapter Text
“Shawn, can you wait a moment?” Nothing made Shawn walk faster than a stupid underling calling his name. He rounded a corner, hurrying past a couple of meeting rooms and towards the stairs as the elevators were always under maintenance when someone wanted to go somewhere quickly. “Shawn, I just need to—!” The young woman yelled again. Shawn had forgotten what she called herself, but since she had chosen a female appearance, there was no need to remember.
The clicking of her heels on the floor grew louder as she caught up.
“Shawn!”
“Either talk while you walk or don’t bother me,” Shawn growled.
“Look, I have something—” she began breathlessly only to falter again.
Shawn rolled his eyes and walked through a group of dimwits from the new department for public proctology. They parted for him like the Red Sea. “When I get to my office, I’m going to go inside and close the door, so you’ve got one minute to get your thing out.”
“Someone died and I need you to test a new torture scenario with me!”
“Ugh, what are you, some hundred-year-old noob or something, do your own torture.” He glanced over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t accidentally talking to an ugly female. Nope, she was acceptably hot by human standards. Shawn rewarded her with a slow once-over before smirking, “dollface.” Still, there was no penis, so he did not have to take her seriously, even if she had actually made a good point. Which she really hadn’t. He shook his head. “Also, someone died? Not special news around here. Literally not a millisecond goes by without one of those dandruff farms on earth keeling over.” Shawn sped up once more, taking the stairs two steps at a time, just to make her huff and puff trying to keep up.
“No, I—” Now she had to run again. “This one’s special!”
“Aww, yes, I am sure this one’s special. They’re all so special, every one of them unique, like a urine-soaked snowflake.”
She had managed to catch up again. Impressive. “He was married to you!”
“Yeah, sure…” He was about to say he was married to me in a mocking voice, when his brain caught on to the meaning of the words. Shawn actually slowed down. “Wait, what?”
“Look!” She thrust a photo at him.
Shawn glanced at it, then at her disgustingly triumphant expression, then back down at the picture. It was him. Except it wasn’t because he would not be caught dead in a sweater vest.
“What in the name of Kelly Conway coining the term alternative facts –?!”
“He looks exactly like you!” Shawn glared at her. “I mean like your skinsuit!” she corrected herself quickly.
“And we have …?” What had she said?
“His husband, Raymond Jacob Holt, he just died and, guess what, he also almost made it to the Good Place, it was so close.” Now she was beaming, Shawn felt like cocooning her, just for the fun of it. But his mind was working, and he had the eerie sense that there was something to this. “Hilarious, right?” she asked, all sweet and hopeful.
“Yeah…” Shawn glared at the picture of the human who dared to look like him. He could not wait for this guy to die… “What exactly do you want from me?”
“I thought we could try something new with this human named Raymond Jacob Holt, seeing how the nerds in the skinsuit department clearly based your skinsuit on his husband. When he wakes up and sees you, he’s definitely going to think you’re him, his husband.”
Shawn snatched the file she was offering to him out of her hands and started leafing through it. It was a standard recently deceased file. Name, age, physical features, final score. Shawn quirked an eyebrow at the final score. This stupid human really had come close, had it not been for that gambling addiction and that time he’d told his husband to clam it, he might have actually gotten into the Good Place. In this day and age. Shawn couldn’t help being the tiniest bit impressed.
“And the husband is…?”
“Still alive on earth. His name is Kevin Cozner.”
“Hmmm…” Leaning against the stair-rail, Shawn thought this over. He had never had the opportunity to study the effect of being tortured by a loved one on a human. This could be something indeed. He smiled. “What was your name again?”
“Betsy,” Betsy said, positively glowing.
“Thank you for bringing this to my attention,” he said, “If this goes well, I’ll make sure you get the credit you deserve.” NOT, he thought, suppressing a grin. “I can’t wait to see how much more painful being twisted will be for our subject when his husband is the one doing the twisting. We might see a significant increase in agony, maybe up to sixty or even seventy percent,” Shawn mused.
“Actually,” the female piped back up – Shawn had already forgotten her name, was it Baby? Babe? Boobs? Something like that. Ugh, it didn’t matter.
“Yes,” he said.
“I was thinking, maybe we could try something else with this particular subject? Something different?”
“Be more specific. What are we talking about here? Twisting in a different direction? North to South? Top to bottom? Port to starboard?” It was difficult to picture the exact hand motions for that, but perhaps doable.
“Maybe no twisting at all?”
“No twisting?” Shawn frowned, cocking his head. He wished she would get to her damn point. Did she want needles or knives? Nostril wasps? The penis flattener? She’d better not suggest biting.
“You have this ongoing project with Michael, right?” Boobies asked. “The one where you use psychological torture instead of physical torture?”
“Yes, but it’s on thin ice.” Shawn hoped his glare conveyed how thin said ice was. Michael was on his second reboot and if – when – he failed that nonsense would be done once and for all and Shawn’s point would be proven.
“See, in the file it says our subject has a high tolerance for physical pain.”
Shawn shrugged. There was physical pain and then there was the testicle twister, which had been newly updated with an extra slow mode.
“According to his file, Raymond Jacob Holt experienced the highest levels of suffering not when he himself was insulted, threatened, discriminated against or physically injured but when such things happened to the people he cared about.”
“Get to the point,” Shawn said.
“I think the worst thing for him would be to be forced to watch his husband suffer and die over and over again,” Bitchy declared, “That’s the scenario I want to try.” She looked all proud of herself, too, like she’d just invented the cattle prod.
“Nope, too much effort,” Shawn said, then to the otherwise empty stairwell, “Next!” He turned to leave.
“You let Michael build a whole fake Good Place Neighborhood, just to torture four humans! My experiment is much smaller than that! And it has a higher probability of success!”
“Yeah, but Michael doesn’t need me to be there and hold his hand and do his entire experiment for him.” All he would have to do for Michael was retire him when he failed, and he was looking forward to that.
“You’re just scared,” she blurted out, her cheeks reddening before her mouth had even fully closed again.
“I’m scared,” Shawn repeated, incredulous. He took a slow, very deliberate step towards her.
“That you can’t do it. That you can’t fool the human. Rumor has it Michael’s humans figured it all out the moment you showed up and Michael had to reboot them all.”
“Michael is a moron.” Shawn flexed his fingers. He was itching to cocoon her, but first he wanted her to understand just how dumb she was.
“Prove it. Let’s just do one run. It won’t take long and we can measure the effectiveness of the torture strategy right away.”
Shawn narrowed his eyes at her, thinking it over. He could always cocoon her later, he figured, after he had proven her wrong, and if her experiment actually had decent results, he would take credit for the idea as well.
“Fine,” he said.
Scared of a human, yeah, right.