Archive of Our Own

“Hi! We noticed that you’ve been coming here a lot lately.”

Arella looks up from her book. The three people gathered around her chair have scrubbed pink faces and mall clothes, and are generally very average looking. A blonde girl, maybe nineteen or twenty, smiles warmly at her.

“I have…?” Arella says, unsure what the right answer is. They look like they might be volunteers from the Baptist soup kitchen, but Arella tends to keep her face down when she’s receiving charity, so she hasn’t really memorized anyone (she’d been hoping they hadn’t memorized her, either). When she pieces this together, she remembers the grotesque demons on her book cover. She quickly flips it onto her lap to cover it, but then she remembers the illustration of the hunched naked woman. There is no winning here.

“Yeah,” says the blonde girl (tall, with a ponytail pulled so tightly it looks painful). “Not a lot of people hang out in this section of the store. Occultism is still a little taboo. It’s refreshing to see regulars!”

Oh. A sympathizer, then. Arella relaxes somewhat, but her body is still tense. In high school, being surrounded rarely meant anything good. Her mouth is dry. “You’re interested in… these things?”

“Definitely,” the blonde girl says, smiling whitely. “Although the books here are baby stuff compared to the ones back at our apartment. This is all from secondary sources, you know. They call it witchcraft but it’s mostly new religions. We have the old stuff.”

This does pique Arella’s interest. She’s been searching for authenticity for a long time-- first by paging through books of Christian theology, which left her feeling empty, then through essays on comparative contemporary religion, which felt so dry and academic that they were completely disconnected from the spirituality of their subjects. Somehow, the contrary, the full rejection of gods described as good, was the most satisfying. Damn the genocidal prosperity god of the Midwest. It had left her in the dirt, hopping from foster home to foster home, so why not worship something that doesn’t lie and say it loves her? Why not find something that can be bargained with and understood, rather than something hypocritical that does whatever it wants and claims it’s only doing good? Knowing other people feel the same way is a great comfort, and knowing they’ve felt it for centuries is affirming.

At the same time, she’s not stupid enough to walk into a stranger’s apartment. “Can you bring them over some time?” she asks. “I’m curious now.”

“They’re kinda delicate. I don’t want them bouncing around in my backpack,” the blonde girl says, shrugging. “We do make typed copies, though. They don’t have the illuminations-- bringing the real thing to Kinko’s to photocopy would look freaky-- but they’re not bad.”

“Can you show me?” Arella asks, excited in spite of herself.

“We have a book club,” the girl says. “We meet in one of the gazebos in the park every week and talk about readings from the manuscripts. Do you want to come?”

The park. At least it’s outside. It should be easy to run if something goes awry. She can bring pepper spray. After a few seconds of thinking, she nods. “Sure.”

“I’ll bring you a Xerox of this week’s reading tomorrow,” the girl says. “I’m Laurie, by the way. These are Derek and Amy.” She gestures to her two companions-- an athletic-looking youth in a university sweatshirt and a short, curvy girl with red hair and a gentle face. They don’t say anything, but they smile at her.

“Nice to meet you,” Arella says, standing hesitantly and extending a hand. “I’m Arella.”

“What an interesting name!” Laurie chirps, shaking her hand enthusiastically. “I’m sure we’ll be great friends.”

---

The book club is comprised of about ten people, all around college-aged, all intimidatingly middle-class and normal. Laurie seems to be the ringleader. She always chooses the passages and prompts the discussions. Along with the main event, the club members socialize lightly and eat snacks (usually grocery store cupcakes and personal-sized bags of chips).

“You’re really annihilating those Cheetos,” Laurie comments. The discussion has just ended (the significance of different bodily fluids for ritual purposes).

Arella looks down at her mostly-empty bag and feels her face warming up. “I didn’t eat lunch today,” she says. “I was in a hurry.” To be honest, she’d made the strategic decision to skip. Since losing her last job, Arella has been rationing her money until she can find a new one.

“Yikes,” Laurie says. “You wanna go out for dinner with the gang after this? My treat.”

“It’s after midnight.”

“I know a couple clubs with buffets that are open ‘til four. There’s plenty of fun stuff going on at night if you pay attention.” Laurie winks. Is that an innuendo?

Arella’s stomach rumbles. “Sure.”

After most of the club members wave goodbye and return to their ordinary lives, Laurie and her silent companions pile into her beat-up station wagon, half-manhandling Arella in with them. She doesn’t mind. She’s thinking about the buffet.

The nightclub is loud and dim, with pulsating music and a strong odor of body spray. Arella is technically three years short of 21, but Laurie sweet-talks the bouncer, who begrudgingly lets them in. None of them dance, but Laurie points out unusual looking patrons (a tall, robust man with a thong sticking over the top of his low-hanging pants, a woman with unnaturally round breasts and a statement necklace that might be an actual taxidermied squirrel) and they giggle about them-- maybe it’s mean-spirited, but there’s a strong sense of companionship that comes with judging others together. It’s too loud to hear anything anyone is saying, but after twenty minutes or so, Laurie grabs Arella’s wrist and leads her to the back of the building, leaving her companions behind.

A heavy door is in front of them. If she’d just run into it, Arella would assume it was to the outside of the building, but from Laurie’s face she suspects it isn’t. Laurie pulls a ring of keys from her pocket, and goes through several locks. They follow a long, sloped passageway deeper and deeper, passing many grimy and nondescript doors. Finally, Laurie stops beside one, and pulls out the keyring again. The key is ordinary, and goes into the lock with some resistance. The door opens almost hesitantly, as though it isn’t sure it wants to let them in. When she shuts it behind her the music is almost silenced-- it’s soundproof. Laurie turns and smiles at Arella.

“Do people screw in here?” Arella asks suspiciously. She doesn’t swing that way.

Laurie laughs. “You’re funny. No, this is the book club’s bunker.”

“Bunker?” Arella looks over the room. It’s elegant compared to the rest of the nightclub, with beautifully embroidered velvet hanging from the wall, and shelves filled with dusty books with richly-colored covers. The bottoms of the shelves are lined with heavy chests.

“The club owner is an ally. He keeps some of the stuff we don’t want in our apartment for us. See?” she knocks the door. “Nice and heavy. Nothing getting in or out.”

Arella nods uneasily. What would try to get out?

“This is the real deal.” Laurie runs her finger along the spine of a book. “Some of it is stuff he actually said, when the old scholars contacted him.”

“Who?”

“The Master,” Laurie says. “The Big Man Outside. Scath.”

“Scath,” Arella says under her breath.

“That’s the point of the book club, you know,” Laurie says, pulling the book from the shelf. Her wrists bob from the weight of it. “We’re going to bring him inside.”

Arella swallows. This sounds serious. “What do you mean by that?”

“Most of the club members aren’t in on this.” Laurie opens the book and brings it up to Arella. “They’re not committed enough to know. Look at this.”

The illustration is gorgeous, with deep colors and a rich texture. It’s illuminated with gold leaf that glints in the dull light of the wall sconce. The text is handwritten, swirling and lovely. The picture is of a figure in a pale flame, stylized and flat. It’s a man, nude, with long hair draping over his broad shoulders, and wide, branching antlers like a stag’s. The expression on his face is deeply hateful.

He’s beautiful.

Arella draws in a breath, and, almost unconsciously, reaches out a finger to touch the thin vellum. As her finger brushes it, a shock shoots up it, and she stumbles back, clutching her hand.

Laurie laughs. “You’re a real virgin.”

“What does that mean?” Arella is not a virgin. She did plenty in high school, even if she hasn’t had any action since leaving… home, if she can call it that.

“I mean you’re innocent,” Laurie says, smiling. “Pure of heart. That’s a good thing. It’s inconvenient if you want to handle important manuscripts, though.” She pats Arella on the shoulder. “Was there anything you wanted to know?”

There are a lot of things she wants to know. This night has quickly become totally unnerving. A part of Arella is thrilled. There’s nothing more honest than the old stuff-- the ‘real deal,’ the words of a being on the outside.

“What do you mean by ‘bring him inside’?”

“We’ve talked about Scath, right?” Laurie looks thoughtful for a moment. “Of course we have. He’s one of the most powerful immortals out there, but he’s locked outside, so the book club is going to invite him in.”

“But he... he’s dangerous,” Arella says. “Isn’t he?”

“Only as dangerous as human feelings,” Laurie says. “Which is pretty dangerous, I guess. But that’s just being romantic!” She claps the book shut. “He was formed when a cult of mystics purged their negative emotions, so he’s as strong as those feelings. But everyone is hateful and angry and bitter, right?” She walks along one of the shelves and settles on a chest. “His feelings are just stronger. He’s like a human, but more. All that, but older and wiser and stronger, able to conquer whole dimensions. Imagine what we could learn from someone like that if we only had the guts to look at him. Ah! There!” She opens the chest and pulls out something dully metallic.

She lifts it to show Arella; it’s a torque of some kind, a tarnished neckband made of dozens of tiny interlocking figures. Arella leans to look more closely. The figures are strikingly realistic, with detailed, expressive faces and hands. Most of them appear to be human, but as she looks more closely, she can see strains of cervid throughout them: a hand is a cloven hoof here, a face is elongated there, a man-faced creature with a long, muscular neck and dulled antlers is entangled with a woman in…

It’s quite an odd necklace.

“Wanna touch it?” Laurie asks. “I promise this one won’t burn you.”

Arella, awestruck, nods. She reaches, carefully, fearfully, and touches the deer-man’s phallus.

---

Arella moves in. Laurie lives in a small apartment near the college campus, with several other book club members. Their life is mundane and routine, for the most part. Those with jobs pool their money together for bills and groceries. What’s left goes to Laurie, who uses it to pay for restoration materials and to keep in contact with sympathetic archaeologists and occultists. Arella hasn’t been great at holding down jobs lately, so she mostly sits around while everyone else attends classes or goes to work. Laurie doesn’t seem to mind. She gives her leftovers from her shift at the bakery and cheerfully asks about daytime TV.

Laurie combs Arella’s hair, after evening prayers (after quickly burning their shared nail clippings, each club member dipped their finger into the ash tray and tasted each other member combined). The rhythm is firm and soothing.

“You’re so pretty, Arella,” Laurie says. “Your hair is so dark. It’s like you could suffocate in it.”

Arella smiles a little shakily, though Laurie can’t see it. “Thanks.”

“And you want to know so badly.”

“I do.”

Laurie pets Arella’s hair, running her fingers through the thick curls down the back of her neck-- an almost erotic motion that makes Arella shiver. She hopes it’s not obvious.

“I think you might be my favorite member of the club. You understand things on a different level.”

“Do-- do I?”

“Pretty Arella,” Laurie says, a smile in her voice. “You’re just perfect.”

---

Inviting in Scath… The thought of it is terrifying and thrilling. Arella thinks of the man in the manuscript, alien and beautiful, the creature that understands every ugly aspect of humanity and accepts it, the dimension-conqueror.

The seven club members living in the two-bedroom apartment are all in on the plan. As the spring equinox approaches, everyone starts spending more time at home. Arella isn’t sure it’s wise for them all to cut classes and skip work, but this is more important anyway. They spend hours praying, reaching out across the dimensions to their Master, but nobody answers. It still feels more real than foster home prayer, because these are people Arella understands. They don’t simply follow, they search.

Laurie paces the apartment, slippers slapping on the linoleum. “They fucking can’t,” she mutters.

“What’s wrong?” Arella asks, putting down her empty rice bowl (they’ve been eating a lot of rice lately-- with fewer people working, it’s more economical).

“There’s a stupid birthday party scheduled on the 21st. They’ll be at the park until after sunset. I do not want a bunch of drunkies poking around while we’re trying to perform our ceremony.”

It definitely wouldn’t be good. The book club’s religious practices are nonstandard, and summoning a demon from another dimension might not look great to tipsy outsiders.

“The park closes at ten, right?” Arella asks. “And we just have to be there before midnight and we should be fine.”

“Maybe.” Laurie draws the word out. “It just want everything to be perfect, you know? It’s such a special night, for you especially.”

It is a special night. Laurie has chosen Arella to be their emissary. “A wedding is a pretty big occasion,” Arella admits. “But nothing in this world is totally perfect, right?”

“I know you’ll be a beautiful bride,” Laurie says. “I want everything around you to be beautiful, too. Losers throwing up in trash cans are not beautiful.”

“We’ll be far away from them anyway.” They’ve picked a location more than a mile away from the gazebos and grills, well off the hiking path and sheltered by thick, old trees. “It should be like they aren’t even there.”

Laurie sighs and walks up to Arella. She brushes a lock of hair out of her eyes and runs her hand down her cheek. “You’re so sweet. I’m almost sad to lose you.”

“I’ll come back with him,” Arella says. “You can be the head priestess, okay? I’ll vouch for you.”

Laurie smiles. “Okay. You’re the bride. I trust your judgment.”

And being trusted is the loveliest feeling.

---

On the day of the solstice, the other club members prepare Arella for her wedding. They bathe her thoroughly in a strange-smelling antiseptic hospital soap, then perfume her heavily with thick, pungent oils. They decorate her nails with pale pink polish from the drugstore. They decorate her body with red clay from the river that runs through the woods.

Finally, Laurie comes and takes a lock of Arella’s hair, then cuts it away with an embossed knife.

“For safe keeping,” she says.

---

When night falls, the drunken revelers are so far away that nobody can even smell the grilled meats or the discount beer. The clearing deep in the woods smells like bright spring and the waxing crescent moon shines, peeking shyly from behind the clouds. Everyone dons their ceremonial robes-- handsewn with painstaking precision to match ones from one of the dusty manuscripts. The gold thread alone cost two club members’ monthly earnings.

They gather in a circle around the altar, singing in low voices. Laurie takes Arella’s hand and leads her forward, and eases the robe from her body, leaving her bare in the moonlight, save for the deer-man torque (polished until it gleams). Gently, she helps her onto the cold altar, where she lies straight and steady as a corpse.

Uncertainty pricks at the inside of her chest. She’s in so deep. There’s no turning back, no escape, this is going to be the rest of her life… What if she stops believing? Oh, she hopes she never stops believing… What if it goes wrong? What if they can’t contact him? What will she be worth then?

“Scath, Scath,” chants the congregation.

Laurie gazes down at Arella with a deep tenderness. Arella looks up at her hesitantly, and Laurie smiles.

Then, in one motion, Laurie draws the embossed knife from her robe and cuts Arella’s throat.

---

Arella awakens in the dark, surrounded by a thick, sweet smell. She sits up for a second, but is so dizzy that she lies back down. She’s against a hard surface, but what’s touching her skin is soft and plush. It’s nice.

Her eyes adjust to the dark. The ceiling above her is moving in bizarre swirling patterns, speckled with what look like stars. The walls are completely covered with tapestries, but she can’t make out what’s going on on any of them-- it’s not that it’s too dark, it’s that she can’t seem to focus on them. Looking at them too long makes the space behind her eyes throb. There’s a bed in the absolute center of the room, bigger than any she’s seen. Is that an Alaskan King size? No, bed sizes are probably nonstandard here.

She feels steady enough to sit up. The oil on her skin has an unpleasant texture. She tries to piece together what’s just happened. It’s the solstice. Was the solstice. What time is it? She was prepared for the wedding, then went to the altar and lay across it. They sang and chanted and said all the sacred words, then Laurie…

Arella touches her throat. It’s smooth.

Laurie knew this would happen. She knew Arella wasn’t brave enough to go into this knowing, so she kept it a secret until the last minute. That was probably a good call. Arella thinks of the gentle expression in her eyes as she drew the knife.

Arella feels a distinct presence in the room with her. Suddenly feeling very vulnerable and self-conscious, she stands. She realizes she is still nude, which doesn’t help with the vulnerability thing. She slowly turns, surveying her surroundings: the heavy tapestries, a richly carpeted floor, and many hearths, burning steadily and swelteringly. It’s cluttered-- there’s too much furniture, upholstered with mismatching (obviously luxurious) materials and positioned randomly about the room, piled with strange-looking art and pieces of metalwork and pottery.

“Hello,” she says to the empty room, summoning her courage.

“Hello,” someone answers.

Arella whips around. Standing in front of her is a strikingly tall man, wide-shouldered with a broad, strong jaw. He looks at her thoughtfully. His eyes seem to have sparks in them-- flecks of gold that appear and disappear with the motion of the flame in the hearth. She stumbles back, nearly tripping over a silk-covered ottoman. He catches her wrist before she can fall. His hand is large, tan-gold, strong and warm. He pulls her forward and lets her gain her bearings.

“Who…” Arella starts. She’s still painfully aware of how naked she is, but he’s naked, too, and that’s at least some kind of equality. She tries not to look at his genitals, but in the process winds up looking at all the rest of his body. He seems perfectly formed, completely unlike any man Arella has seen before. No dimples, no scars, everything completely proportional. Even his body hair seems to have been arranged with an aesthetic in mind (though not really neatly enough to appear intentional). He looks human, but… more. “You’re Scath, aren’t you?”

He laughs-- a deep and rich sound, like molten iron. “Is that what your people call me? What an ugly word.”

Arella’s face warms up. She doesn’t tell him how she’s muttered it under her breath, the name sharp and tangy on her tongue. “It is,” she says.

“My name is Trigon. You are Arella, are you not? My followers sent you as my bride. I heard them calling out to me.”

“Yes.” And with that, she feels a sudden burst of confidence. “And by my coming, you’ll be brought to my dimension, right?”

He looks her up and down. “A clever woman. You will do very well.” He steps towards her. “When you prayed to me, you spoke of a great loneliness.”

Arella glances away, embarrassed again. “You heard that.”

“You have never been able to rely on anyone, have you? Passed between homes, never able to truly rest. Your gods abandoned you.”

“I don’t have any gods,” Arella says, looking at him again. He’s looking at her with gentle, concerned eyes, and her heart flutters. “Except for you, I suppose.”

“Your pride is great,” he says, reaching out and stroking her cheek with a big, warm hand. “You have the bearing of a queen.”

A queen… The bride of the king of a dimension. What a huge thing to be. “Thank you,” is all she can think to say.

“So hurt,” he says, running his thumb along her cheekbone. “You want power, do you not?”

Does she?

“In the homes you moved between, they scorned you,” he says. “They found you disgusting and pathetic. Then, when you left, those who claimed to want to help you only looked on you with pity, as though you were some sad creature rather than a person. When they gazed at you with eyes like that, hatred burned in your chest.”

Arella thinks of the Baptist soup kitchen. That sickening forced sweetness… Lies about universal love stirred into the chili alongside the mushy kidney beans. That humiliation, the weak and condescending attempts at deception. She remembers wondering, how stupid do they think I am? and staring at her cornbread, mouth too dry to eat.

Trigon’s hand moves to the back of her neck, stroking where her spine meets the base of her skull. “As my bride, you will tower above them. When they see you again, they will weep. It pleases you, does it not?”

There’s a thrill in her stomach. It does please her. Arella is suddenly aware of what a vindictive person she is. Revenge hadn’t even seemed like a possibility, but with it directly in front of her, she’s almost overwhelmed with excitement.

The vibration in the air becomes stronger, a buzz all over her body. It’s almost like crawling insects, but somehow pleasurable. Every part of her is buzzing along with it, a nervous and delightful energy, mildly caffeinated, heady and spicy-sweet.

Arella closes the gap between herself and Trigon, reaching up behind his impossibly high head and pulling him down to meet her lips. His taste is warm and fragrant.

“You will do very well,” he mutters into her mouth. “Magnificent.”

She curves into him, one hand tangled in his long, thick hair and the other clutching at his muscular back. Human, but more. She’d fucked in high school: experimentation between outcasts who didn’t like each other much, brief and messy connections with boys whose names she’s long-since forgotten. This is different, drug-like. Her whole body presses into his, as though she wishes to be absorbed into him.

To be absorbed…

The sheets of the bed are impossibly soft and slick, shining like water. Trigon and Arella tangle like snakes. Each touch burns, sweetly painful, and his skin is hot and salty, and his grip is like iron and hers like strangling kudzu.

Ah! In some deep ocean, a louse burrows into the mouth of a fish and steals its tongue, becoming it. It’s like that-- it’s a union, visceral and painful and beautiful. Arella’s breath is like the heat rising from a fire. She tangles her fists in the water sheets and an inhuman noise of pleasure escapes her lips.

“More,” she gasps. “You’re more, you’re more.”

When she blinks, she sees flashes of other worlds-- technicolor worlds, worlds with unfamiliar flavors, worlds that buzz with the room and dance before her eyes in the fraction of a second that they’re closed. The room is heady like alcohol, and pulses obscenely with their movement. Arella feels as though she’s possessed by a swarm of beings, a swarm of Trigons, moving her limbs and breathing for her, and she loves it. It’s more, it’s the true state of the world, and it’s completely overwhelming.

The dark plants scattered among the treasures are frozen in time, ungrowing and forever beautiful. Trigon’s skin burns against her lips. The many fires around them dance to silent, gyrating music, constantly reshaping their surroundings and casting different shadows over their bodies. The buzz that fills her ears is overlaid by breath and motion.

A crescendo.

They separate messily as the unheard music slows. Arella’s heart is still pounding with exertion. The sheets are miraculously cool against her skin.

Trigon reaches over and smooths a lock of curling hair from her face. She’s feeling somewhat dizzy. She looks into his gold-speckled eyes (more), and smiles weakly.

“That’s what it’s like for gods, then?” she asks.

Trigon simply chuckles and kisses her forehead.

As though drunk, she slips into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

---

Morning doesn’t come.

Perhaps it’s because the room doesn’t have windows. When Arella’s eyes open, the hearths are burning as strongly as they were before. She feels as though she’s slept for a long time, but nothing in the room seems to have changed. She sits up and slides off the bed. She notices a throbbing soreness between her legs. It seems that they might have been too enthusiastic. She’s… She spots a basin and a stack of clean cloths off to the side. Weird and old-fashioned, but convenient.

She cleans up and explores the room. She is uncertain if there’s a bathroom. Gods probably don’t need to… She hopes there’s an easy, non-disgusting solution.

Trigon doesn’t appear to be anywhere nearby, but there are no visible exits. That’s fine. He doesn’t need doors. He’ll let her out. She lifts a shining, elaborate helmet. It’s got extra slits for the eyes, and a pair of bull-like forward-facing horns. She considers trying it on, but decides against it. She doesn’t know when her husband will reemerge, and they’re still new enough to each other that doing something odd will probably make an impression on him.

There are so many beautiful things in the room, scattered wildly as though they’ve been discarded after seconds of handling. Many of the objects she finds are made of unexpected materials, like a gleaming sculpture of a strange animal that dissolves into a puddle on the sofa when she touches its head, then reforms when she pulls her hand back.

If she were a sophisticate, she could probably entertain herself for hours just with the things lying around, but she isn’t so she can’t. She finds herself becoming bored as the hours pass. After a long stretch of time, a horrible thought emerges in her head: what if she’s been abandoned here?

What if Trigon never comes back? She’s not hungry or thirsty, even though she spent the previous night (?) quite busy. What if she’s going to be alone here forever, unable to even starve to death? The thought of being abandoned so suddenly after a love that intense is devastating. She imagines a lonely forever, sitting in limbo like the plants and the ever-burning fires.

Arella is overwhelmed by it all. She’s sacrificed her own eternity for one night of pleasure-- that’s what they said in church, and the idea of them being right in any way (even if this context is probably different from what they imagined) irritates her intensely. Trigon is likely never coming to Earth, which means she hasn’t succeeded in that mission. Poor Laurie, never getting to meet him… Arella has wasted her friends’ time, then sent herself into a sweetly-scented, doorless purgatory.

Finally, she cries. She lies on her side and shudders, tears falling over the bridge of her nose and darkening the plush carpet. She’s cold, even though the room is stiflingly hot. Her muscles are sore and there’s an ache between her legs-- were they that rough? She can’t remember any physical details, she realizes, only bizarre flashing images. She’s so lonely, and she’s going to be lonely for the rest of her silent, indefinite life.

“Arella,”says a deep voice. “Calm yourself.”

Arella abruptly rolls over and sits up. Trigon is standing over her, as radiant as before. He’s wearing some kind of draping, elegant robe made of something light and shimmering. He kneels beside her and wipes her eye with the knuckle of his big bronze hand.

“You came back,” she says.

He smiles. “I always will. For as long as you are my bride, I will always come back for you.”

Arella finds herself smiling back, watery. She leans forward and wraps her arms around him, burying her face in the smooth, slick fabric. His chest is almost feverishly hot. He hugs her back, tightly. Again, she imagines being absorbed and becoming part of his body-- a delicious image.

“Then, I’ll always wait for you,” she says.

---

With no day or night, Arella can’t tell how much time passes. She eats, but she becomes hungry and thirsty far more slowly than she does on Earth. The food is strange, fruits with thick and creamy flesh and wine with a taste that clings to her throat. Trigon says he doesn’t need to eat, but he does sit with her, listening intently to everything she has to say and kissing her wine-stained lips.

The sex is amazing, of course. It’s a hallucinogen of the body: like copper wiring replaces her nerves, like new colors suddenly bursting into existence. Trigon is the ultimate being. He’s everything Laurie said he would be and more, and Arella is drunk on his perfection.

“What is it like, ruling a dimension?” she asks one evening (or morning, or midday). “Do you ever get overwhelmed?”

He laughs. “Of course not. For a god, ruling is a birthright and comes naturally.”

“I suppose so…” Arella wonders if ruling would come naturally to her. Being Trigon’s bride must come with some responsibilities, even if she’s been spending her time relaxing (though she must admit to some boredom) and eating fruit and having sex. Maybe this is what being a bonobo is like. “Isn’t there anything I could do to help you?”

“Your being here is all I need,” he says. “No matter how many planets I rule, none will give me what you can.”

She smiles and averts her eyes. For all the praise she’s received lately, she still can’t take a compliment. “I’m glad I can do that.”

He kisses her and she melts into him. She wonders if this heady feeling will last forever; maybe this is just what being in love feels like. It’s a loss of self, but the self she had before wasn’t that great anyway. She buries her hands in his long thick hair, her lungs burning from the lack of oxygen.

They tumble into bed. The odd texture of the sheets barely registers anymore, and they only feel smooth and cool against her hot skin. His large hand digs into her thigh as he positions himself between her legs.

Arella, taking a breath, turns her head slightly to the side, and her eyes fall on the bull helmet. Reflected in it, curving and twisted, are a woman and something. Arella recognizes her own distorted form, long-limbed and bare, grasping hungrily at what can only be described as a monster. The creature has ember-red skin, and its long hair falls wildly. There’s something distinctly animal about it, mouth slightly open revealing long, sharp teeth, jagged antlers branching outward. She realizes suddenly that the hand on her thigh has long, yellow claws that dig into the flesh hard enough for blood to bead around their tips.

Arella cries out in shock, and jerks backward, but the thing’s massive hand grasps her throat and pushes her back into the mattress. She can see its face. Its mouth is twisted into a grimace, and its four jaundiced eyes burn with malice.

“Tri-- Trigon,” Arella wheezes. “What happened to--”

It drives into her with a brutal force, and any words she had before are forgotten in her blind panic. Where is Trigon? What happened to him? What is this? The sheer confusion almost drowns out the pain; any arousal she’d felt before has completely vanished.

Though it pins her to the bed by her throat, it doesn’t try to choke her. The movement is frantic and violent, but it doesn’t seem particularly sadistic. Again, she’s reminded of an animal, with all reason drowned out by an overwhelming instinctive need to mate.

After a very long while (or perhaps a very short one; after all, time doesn’t make sense here) it finishes with a shudder and releases her. Even though Arella wants to say her main feeling is confusion, she’s shaking and nauseated. She scrambles off the bed, burning, to try to make some distance, but she hurts and she doesn’t know what’s going on and where is Trigon, and…

“It took a long time,” the thing says. “You wanted desperately to believe.” It stands, still naked, and walks to her. “I admire your determination, Arella.”

“Who are you?” Arella asks, recoiling against the back of a couch. “What are you?”

“How cruel.” It bends its knees (it’s monstrously tall) and pets her cheek. “Why would you talk that way to your own husband?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “No.”

“The air here is a potent drug,” it says. “It gives you strange dreams.”

“Is this a dream, then?”

It shakes its head. “No.”

It (Trigon) leans down and kisses the corner of her mouth. The sharp teeth that jut from beneath his lower lip brush her skin, hard and smooth.

Somehow, she feels quite awake.

---

The stars swirl above her as though she’s been spinning. She thinks of the stars on Earth: she’s only ever lived in cities, where they peek weak and scattered through the light-polluted skies. The dark and stars above her are endless.

The walls stretch too high for her to see their tops, fading seamlessly into the depths of above, the countless tapestries overlapping each other. Arella realizes that she can make out the images embroidered in them-- when did that happen?

The images on the walls are bright and almost beautiful, but their subjects are objectively hideous. Their jaws are huge and gaping with uneven teeth, and their bodies are twisted, seemingly made of mismatching parts. She sees eyes and nose and leering mouth on a creature’s stomach, but a blank and smooth face on the front of a horned head. Birdlike legs and a frill of feathers above exposed human genitals, a wide smile and a mocking gaze.

Arella realizes that she’s spent all this time under the eyes of these… demons, as she’s luxuriated in her own drunkenness and lewdness. They’re only pictures, but a bizarre, insane part of her says, “they’ve been watching this whole time, they knew the truth, they’ve been laughing at me!” They’ve seen her sleeping.

The air is stiflingly hot. She takes a pitcher from one of the tables and throws the water into one of the hearths. It lets out a violent burst of rotten-smelling steam, and she has to stumble backwards to keep her face from being scalded. She crashes into another table and sends a delicate glass sculpture of what looks like a winged, horned boar falling to the floor. The soft carpet keeps it from shattering.

Oh, how she wishes it would shatter.

She turns to the boar and grasps it so hard that its ridges dig into her fingers. She slams it into the table as hard as she can. A leg flies off and skids across the table, eventually falling to the floor with a gentle, muffled sound. She smashes it again, and again, the delicate parts breaking away and leaving only jagged ridges. Finally, it won’t break any more. She stands bare over the table, broken glass digging into her flesh, breathing heavily. She puts it down, almost carefully, and looks at her hands. They’re covered in tiny red cuts. The blood that oozes from them is warm.

She looks at one of the boar’s severed wings. The glass it’s made of is colorful and seems to glow in the firelight. She lifts it and holds it up to her eye, turning it as though she’s a jeweler. Where it’s broken from the body, it’s knife-sharp.

Arella can’t starve. She doesn’t even piss. But she bleeds. In this decay-scented, doorless purgatory, under the guarding eyes of hundreds of elegantly-embroidered abominations, Arella’s blood is as viscous and red as on Earth.

There is an escape. Arella thinks of her high school anatomy class-- the major blood vessels are here, there, running as roads along and beneath her. She lifts the jagged wing above her wrist.

---

“Stupid girl.” A large hand strokes her hair. “Stupid, stupid girl.”

Arella awakens in the huge bed, stretched like a corpse.

“You thought you could get away from me,” Trigon says. He runs a finger along her cheek, claw scratching lightly. “You were a sad sight on the floor like that.”

Arella lifts her arm (so heavy…) and looks at her wrist. There is no wound. “What happened?” she asks. “Why couldn’t I?”

“I will always come back for you,” Trigon says. “Did you not promise to wait?”

“I’m rescinding.” Arella stares up at the sky. She wonders how a room without a ceiling can be so suffocatingly tight. “I take back everything I’ve said up to this point.”

Trigon chuckles. “Is that so?”

“You aren’t my god. I will no longer wait for you.”

“Flighty woman.”

“Don’t consider me your bride any longer.”

“Marriage is not such a simple thing,” Trigon says. “You were a gift to me, and I do not return gifts.”

“In that case, I’m more property than a bride, aren’t I?” She doesn’t look at him. The stars continue to swirl-- no, the room does. She realizes dully that they are the ones moving.

“Perhaps.” Trigon absentmindedly wraps a lock of hair around his finger. “They have always meant similar things to me. Your hair is beautiful. So dark.”

“Don’t flatter me,” Arella says dryly.

“You could suffocate in it,” he says. He leans down and kisses her on the brow. “Survive for now, Arella.”

---

There are many books in the room, but none of them are legible. They seem to be written in a variety of different languages and alphabets, and none of them are anything like anything she’s seen or heard on Earth. They’re varied: spoils of war, probably. Some are heart-wrenchingly lovely, which comes as a shock to her. They’re illustrated with alien landscapes and what must be people, strange-formed but not menacing like the creatures on the tapestries. They farm and dance and embrace each other. What are beautiful things doing in a room like this? Other books are as awful as the tapestries, smelling of burning with text that makes her eyes hurt.

There’s ink, too, and pens. Arella finds them after digging through the debris for some time. Of course, she can’t be a hundred percent certain that that’s what they are, since they look quite odd (though they all have tapered tips, the pens are shaped strangely, curved or hooked as though to accommodate alien hands).

She dips a pen in an inkwell (shaped like a small face with puckered lips) and draws a strong green line across her hand. Satisfied that it works, she opens a book (not too beautiful, not too awful, so she’s defiling neither it nor herself). She turns to the first page and puts pen to paper.

Entry 1: Being held in doorless room elsewhere. I unwillingly remain married to Trigon. He fucks like a rabid puma. Cut my wrist with pig, but did not die. He can heal me.

She looks around thoughtfully, and her eyes settle on an empty plate.

Fruit smelled like cheese.

She tucks the book safely into the drawer of one of the bedside tables (none beside the bed) and takes note of its location. She’s never been one for keeping diaries, but it’s boring here, and she has very little sense of time. Nobody will read this, but she wants it to exist; she wants to scream into the void that this bizarre thing is happening.

Was raped earlier. He said brides are property. Promised to come back to me.

She’s not sure if that’s the order of things; somehow, her memories vary between fuzzy and vague and painfully sharp. She can still feel the ghost of a clawed finger on her cheek, but she doesn’t know how long it’s been since it touched her.

Time is pouring; whether it’s water or honey, she doesn’t know, but Arella has a feeling in her gut that at some point they will hit the ground with a violent splatter or a gentle pooling. Her hair doesn’t turn lank, though it’s been unwashed for… how long?

Each hour looks and smells the same, and the smell is no longer sweet-- no, it is sweet, as rotting is sweet. She finds herself longing for the chaos and variety of Earth. She wants lonely agnosticism. That uncertainty was a luxury, because now she knows what a god is, and she doesn’t like it at all.

Arella looks in the direction of the drawer she’s tucked the book in, and wonders if she should write something else-- maybe something philosophical, about time and loneliness. No, that wouldn’t work. She’s no philosopher. She’s a simple thing, something that wants to be told what’s true.

Trigon’s hand is on her shoulder. It’s big and warm, and if she wanted to, maybe she could tell herself it loved her.

“Hello, dear husband,” she says flatly.

“Languishing does not suit you,” Trigon says. “You were enjoying your life earlier.”

“I hadn’t been paying attention earlier.”

“Does seeing my real face really make that much of a difference? I know humans might find it frightening, but you did not strike me as shallow.”

“I am shallow.” She thinks for a second. “Also, the tapestries don’t really lend to a romantic mood.”

He looks at the wall, then back at her. “You are a shallow girl.” He smiles. “You did not break when you looked at them.”

“Didn’t I?”

Trigon pets her head affectionately. “Sane as ever. I like this version of you better.”

“The version of me that’s suffering?” she asks.

His hand is so large that he can cup her whole face. “Yes. I would rather you suffer and know… Though I do it when it helps me, I do not enjoy lying.” He leans down to kiss her, and she steps backward to avoid him.

“I told you,” she says. “I’m no longer willing. You can’t have me anymore.”

“Do you think I care?” he asks, perfectly calm.

She falters. “Of course not. I just don’t care that you don’t care.”

This seems to do something. His brow lowers. “Impudence is unbecoming.”

“Don’t be coy with me,” Arella says, straightening her back. “I know what you are. Why would impudence bother a monster?”

Trigon’s face breaks out in a sardonic grin. “Why would you try to bait a monster?”

Why would she? Because not to bait, to simply yield, would… Arella smiles back. “I read that in the bad old days, they would set dogs against bears to see which would die first. I’ve heard it was a lot of fun for them.”

Without warning, he hits her face. Arella staggers back, cheek burning, and catches herself against a table. Her hand lands on a piece of the boar and she sucks in a pained breath through her teeth.

“This is no game,” he says, looking down at her. She can’t tell whether his glare is hot or cold, but it’s like a knife. “If you were to laugh, it would end poorly for you.”

“Ha,” Arella says mirthlessly. “Show me your ending.”

Trigon bears down on her like an animal. Struggling is pointless, but she does it less out of instinctive panic and more out of principle (she tells herself). Part of her is able to distance itself, focusing on the surrealness of the situation. This room isn’t quite real, with its endlessly high walls and the part-living demons that laugh down at her. This might not even be her actual body being brutalized and violated. Perhaps the actual Arella is dead in the woods, long-since rotted. This kind of figurative thinking is a shield for her.

“React,” Trigon says.

She laughs.

If Arella is dead, then this is necrophilia. If Arella is dead, then she must be cold inside, digested by her own burst stomach. If Arella is dead, then maybe she’s a fleshless soul or soulless flesh, and any fucking that might occur is as pointless as masturbation.

Does Trigon masturbate? It might do him good to work off some of that energy.

It’s over again, and again she’s not sure how much time has passed. Trigon releases her. She wants to lie prone until he leaves, but she’s realized at this point that she’s in a battle of the wills. She sits up and smiles.

“Was it good for you, too?” she asks.

“You do not want to die,” Trigon says. His expression is unpleasant. Perhaps she’s wounded his pride. “Why do you keep asking me to kill you?”

“If you killed me, you’d lose something,” Arella responds, shrugging her bitten shoulders. “I don’t know why, but you want to keep me.”

“Clever. Do not make me regret my choice.”

She blinks and he’s gone. Arella sighs and falls back against the carpet. She wonders absentmindedly if they ever clean it. It seems unsanitary. Blood on the carpet… It seems expensive, too.

---

“Do you still plan on coming to Earth?” Arella asks after another session of violent fucking. “That was the deal.”

“Do you still want me to?” he asks. He runs his hand down her torso, settling on her stomach.

“Do you care?”

“I intend to go to your dimension. This one has become dry.”

“Am I still a means of getting there?”

“Of course. Why else would I try so hard to keep you healthy?” He rubs her skin lightly with his thumb.

“Why else?” she repeats. She glances at her wrist. Bruised, but without a scar to suggest its history. “How long will it take?”

“It depends,” he says. “These things can take time.”

“Time.” She stares at the sky and wonders about the rotation of the room. Like a little planet, her warm prison. “Time is different here. Can’t you change it so it moves faster?”

“It depends on you. You have more power here than you think you do.”

She smiles sardonically. “If I had power, you would be dead.”

“You do not have it in you to kill.”

“Oh, I do…” She runs her finger along a shelf, stuffed with unreadable books. The dust gathers at her fingertip, fluffy and gray. “If I could, I would kill you horribly.”

He embraces her from behind. “Such a strong will… I am terribly fond of you, Arella.” She doesn’t respond. She simply stands there in his arms, dusty-fingered. He lets go and steps back. “Perhaps you will grow fond of me, too. You loved me before.”

“I hadn’t known what I was doing.” She was spiritually roofied.

He laughs softly. “What a harsh way to say you were moving by instinct, rather than overthinking. Why not let your emotions carry you?”

“That’s what you are, right? Emotions?” It’s hard to think of him like that. Trigon is so physical, with hot breath and sharp nails. She can’t imagine a mass of negative emotions shoving its dick in her. Why would it even have something like that?

“The story is far more complicated than that.”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Arella weaves between the crowded furniture and settles on the couch. “You’ve had your fun. Let me rest.”

“I would think you would appreciate having someone to speak to.”

“Someone else, maybe. Do you have other prisoners?”

“None like you,” he says, kissing the crown of her head.

---

Entry 6: Tit hurts. Found book with him in it. Threw it in the hearth. Smelled, but everything that can burn here smells. Pretty funny.

“Is it boring, being a god?” Arella asks. His arm is over her torso as he lies behind her in the bed. “I’d think things would get repetitive.”

“Of course,” he says into her hair. “Imagine living in a world of ants.”

“Imagine fucking ants,” Arella says.

He laughs. “Clever. Your companions made a good choice in you.”

She thinks of Laurie. Did she know what would happen? Did she know what Scath really was? She’d been so kind to her, but maybe it was all a ruse. Was Arella a fatted calf all along?

“Maybe.” Laurie in her place, blonde and cute and smart, trapped in a tiny bubble with nothing to do but wait for the next assault. Would she go insane? Maybe she’d like it; maybe she’d like serving her Master. Arella wishes it were Laurie here instead of her. She’s struck by a jolt of guilt, and quickly changes the subject. “What do you do when you’re not here?”

“Rule, of course.”

“Do they like you?” she doubts it.

“They respect me. They offer sacrifice and make pilgrimages to my palace.”

“Where is your palace?”

“All around us.”

“What?” This room is connected to something?

“Do not expect to see the rest of it,” Trigon says, as if reading her mind. “Without my powers, you will not be able to leave this room.”

Oh. Damn. While a part of her wants to get out just to escape the claustrophobia, another part is genuinely curious. What kind of world surrounds her? If there’s more to it than that expanse of spinning stars, she wants to see it.

“Disappointed?”

“Of course.”

“If you would rather explore than escape, perhaps I could make an exception.” He strokes her cheek from behind. Arella suppresses a shudder. These kinds of small, affectionate gestures are more disturbing than the violent ones. “Would you like a tour?”

She knows that even if she got out of the palace, she would be in a distant dimension with no way out. She doesn’t know anything about the people, and would be blatantly out of place. Trigon would be able to find her in a moment. But she’s bored.

“I would,” she says.

He smiles into her hair. “Soon, then.”

---

He dresses her in a rather beautiful gown, dark green and embroidered with golden foliage. She’s relieved-- she’d rather not walk naked around somewhere presumably large and cold. Trigon simply takes her hand. For a fraction of a second, she feels as though she’s being crushed; an invisible trash compactor is pressing on her from every side, and she’ll turn into a perfect fleshy little cube. Then, she’s as whole and person-shaped as ever, standing in a high-ceilinged hall.

There are no windows, but there are yet more tapestries of yet more demons, still staring down at her. However, the hall is so big that their gazes aren’t quite as suffocating. It’s far neater than the bedroom, and people (people!) are streaming through busily. They look very much like the people in her home town, with pallid skin and human faces, somewhat short and stout. Arella stands about half a head above most of the men. At Trigon’s appearance, they freeze.

“My Lord,” says a man in an embroidered bronze robe. He stoops into a bow. “What brings you here today?”

“My bride wanted a tour,” Trigon says. He puts his hand on her shoulder and pulls her close to him. Arella is not a short woman, but the top of her head doesn’t quite reach his armpit.

“How wonderful,” the man (a steward, maybe) says, eyes glued to the floor. “Was there anything she needed?”

“No. You may leave.”

The steward scampers away like a frightened rabbit.

Trigon leads Arella through the palace by the hand (an almost gentlemanly gesture). All throughout, the many servants keep a wide berth and avert their eyes. Trigon points out many rare and exotic treasures, spoils from conquered planets. Sculptures of strangely-shaped people, woven fabrics with bizarre textures. They’re beautiful. Arella can’t help but think of their original owners; what happened to them?

“How many planets do you take tributes from?” she asks.

He doesn’t answer for a moment. She wonders if he’s forgotten; she wonders if he holds so much wealth and suffering that it’s begun to blur together.

“Does it matter?” he finally asks.

“How many people died so you could have these things? Did you kill any of them yourself?”

“Do not forget. You are also a tribute.”

Arella looks at a piece of a mural, cut from its wall. The edges are harsh. It shows a pastoral scene of unrecognizable, many-legged animals, watched over by a spidery figure with a benevolent expression and what looks like a shepherd’s crook.

Arella is not harsh around the edges. She is a ring held in a velvet case, taken out to use occasionally, then placed comfortably back into the soft dark.

“Such a sad face. Come along.” He takes her hand again and leads her further through the winding passages. Despite the darkness, she has to admit that they’re beautiful, with the high ceilings and the archways, even if the tapestries mock her.

“Did you build this?” she asks. She corrects herself. “Was it all built for you?”

“Of course. There was a castle before, but I tore it down myself. I would not live in someone else’s dwelling.”

“Did it look a lot like this one?”

“No.”

Someone coughs between them, and she spins to face them. Halfway through the motion, Trigon grasps her shoulder hard enough for it to hurt, then turns slowly with her. Standing before them is a different servant, a rather stooped man, liveried in the same bronze robe.

“My Lord,” he says. “Your yearly tithe from the southeast has arrived. You need to inspect it.”

Trigon’s eyebrows lower in irritation. “It can wait.”

“The representatives won’t be able to leave until you’ve given them permission.”

“They can wait.”

“They’re crowding the great hall. The whole place smells southeastern now. It will only take a--” He cries out and stumbles back, clutching his wrist. His hand is shriveled, stiff and black and crumbling, and the acrid smell of burnt meat sticks to Arella’s nostrils. Trigon turns to walk away.

“Please,” the servant chokes out, doubling over as if to protect it, though there’s not much left to protect. “Don’t-- don’t leave me like this.”

“Be quiet. Come along, Arella.”

“It-- I don’t know how I’ll work like this. I--”

“Your work is not delicate,” Trigon says. “Be grateful that you are keeping the other one.” Again, he takes Arella’s hand and continues the tour. The servant whimpers. Arella looks over her shoulder at him as they walk away. He meets her eye, and she sees in it a plea for pity. She can’t help. She’s not able to… Arella is as trapped as he is, more trapped, she…

She stops looking at him and keeps walking, heart pounding in her throat. Nothing she can do, nothing she can do, so she has no reason to feel guilty.

“What do those doors lead to?” she asks.

“Bedchambers. Would you like to see?”

“I’d prefer not to. Are there doors inside of them?”

“Yes.”

“Then why doesn’t mine have any?”

“I would never leave my own bedroom so vulnerable,” Trigon says, almost looking offended.

It’s his, then. She never sees him sleep in it. Well, she has seen him lie still, sometimes, afterward. But to be honest, she doesn’t really like looking at him then. She’d rather not see or be seen in that kind of state.

“Why keep me in your own room?”

“You are precious to me,” he says, smiling slightly. What an ugly smile. “I prefer to keep my treasures safe.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

“The other women offered to me are amusements, but you are my bride.”

“What are the other women like?”

“Not at all like you. They beg.”

Arella suppresses a shudder and nods. She does not beg. No matter how afraid she might be, she is determined to keep her dignity.

“If you begged, I would be far less kind to you. I do not appreciate cowardice.”

“Then this is your kindness,” she says, not accusing him.

“Over there is the brewery. Would you like to see how the wine is made?”

“No.”

“You should drink less of it,” he says. “It is unbecoming.”

“I like the dizziness.”

“I prefer you clear-headed.” She recognizes this as an order.

Nothing horrible goes into the wine. It’s made of fruits Arella doesn’t recognize, but they’re fragrant and colorful. Seeing beautiful things in this place strikes her as so odd. The people’s bodies tense when they see their Master, and they avert their eyes from her, but there is nothing awful about them; the people are only people, frightened and tormented, but living and feeling. The most evil thing about the palace is its lord (though the creatures on the tapestries gaze at her drooling, like hungry dogs).

“Why does it take so long for me to get hungry?” she asks. “Why doesn’t my body work like it should?”

“It works,” he says. “The food here has nothing in it to waste. You bleed and breathe, do you not?”

“Yes…”

“If you stopped eating, you would die, but you have not stopped.”

“Would I really?”

“I would force you to eat,” Trigon says, as if reading her mind. “I would never let my bride harm herself.”

“That’s your territory,” she mutters. She has a bruise on her thigh that won’t fade.

“It is.”

The tour continues. The palace is a collection of riches stolen from countless countries and planets. The servants scamper back and forth like frightened rabbits, and the tapestries stare. Arella’s legs become tired. Her sedentary lifestyle hasn’t done her any favors in terms of stamina.

“You want to rest,” Trigon says. “You hurt.”

“...Yes.”

“There are seats in the armory.” Gentlemanly as ever, he leads her into the room, closing the heavy wooden door behind them.

There are several hard benches and stools among the rows of heavy swords and axes and the shelves of gauntlets and helmets. Arella sits gratefully on a bench, and him beside her. With his size, he looks rather awkward.

“I have been inconsiderate.” Trigon looks at her thoughtfully. “You are mortal, after all.”

She nods. She’d never gotten the power he’d promised her. She’d been punished harshly for her hubris.

After a moment, his hands start roaming over her. At this point, her primary thought is “annoying.” Save those things for the bedroom.

“Stop,” she says, though she knows it’s pointless. It’s something she has to say, just to be sure he knows.

“So stubborn,” he says into her neck. His large hand slips into the bodice of her gown. “I enjoy that about you.”

“Someone will see.”

“And? None of them matter.”

She stares at the ceiling as he starts undoing the ties. “They’re still people, so I’d prefer that they didn’t.” These things aren’t for anyone’s eyes.

He laughs softly, as though she’s said something funny.

Many-eyed helmets and intricately-molded axes leer at her bareness. Arella holds on to him to keep herself steady. Inanimate voyeurs… Her clutching hands tremble.

He whispers something. She can’t decipher it.

Motion like waves… not particularly violent. That sickens her. If this is going to happen, she wants it to hurt.

His touch draws a cry from her as though pulling a hair from her throat, and she burns with shame and resentment.

“Say it,” he says quietly.

“No.”

“Praise your god.”

“No.”

And yet still she sighs.

---

As she redresses, fumbling with the unfamiliar bits and pieces that come with gowns made by seamstresses in other dimensions, Arella notices the door is cracked slightly.

---

Entry 8: Near the armory, there was a thin-faced serving boy, and when he saw me his ears were red and his eyes looked like they might cry. I hate him.

---

“Outside of inspecting your presents and raping me, is there anything you do?” Arella asks. “Macrame? Cake decorating?”

“Snide little woman.” Trigon pats her cheek affectionately. “You are bored.”

“Of course.”

“Then look forward to my visits more.”

She could probably say anything rude and get away with it, since he won’t kill her. Even if he does change his mind and do it, she won’t be particularly upset. The void sounds nice compared to this. All the same, she doesn’t feel motivated to try to cut him. He’ll laugh her off. She’s funny, like an angry chattering squirrel he can fuck.

“Would you fuck a squirrel?” she asks.

He gives her an odd look, but doesn’t answer. He just sits beside her, seemingly deep in thought. He never reads any of the books. Maybe he’s illiterate. A mighty conqueror who never learned his ABC’s. That’s actually probably good, as it means he won’t be reading her diary any time soon. The silence is stifling, so she speaks again.

“Were you ever a child?”

“Yes.”

“What were your parents like?”

“My mother died, and I am my own sire,” Trigon says, as though that’s not bizarre.

Incestuous time travel, maybe. She decides not to ask. “You know about my childhood, right?”

“You prayed to me and told me everything. You were raised by many families, correct?”

“Yes. Foster system.”

“None of them wanted to keep you.”

Arella feels a pang in her chest. True, she didn’t like many of them much either. Fostering older children is supposed to be hard in the first place, and she was difficult even for a teenager. Between the drinking, the sex, and the truancy, she made herself pretty much impossible to love.

“No, they didn’t,” she says, eyes lowered. “But after I left, I got better.” She got unemployed and isolated and faithless and so easy to fool, but better in that she had nobody to tie her down.

“It must have been sad, being so unloved.”

“As if anyone loves you.”

“Gods do not need to be loved; all they need is respect.”

“I wanted what I thought you were to love me,” Arella says. “But I don’t respect you.”

Irritation again. “Watch your words.”

“You can tell what I’m feeling anyway, can’t you?” She’s almost certain of it; he’s been subtly suggesting he knows her mind as well as she does for a long time. “You know I think you’re just a stupid brute.”

“Clever. But your words matter, too. Show a little respect for your god.”

“You aren’t my god.”

“I am losing my patience, Arella. These games can not last forever.”

“I don’t believe it, and I won’t say it, either. You have no hold over me.”

Trigon reaches over and takes her throat, gently. “I could crush this. I own your life and death. Does that not make me your god?”

“I’m predisposed to low blood pressure. I could faint and bash my head against that statue, and my brain would be destroyed before you could heal it. Is blood pressure my god?”

He presses his claws into her skin, and she winces at the pain. “I decide what happens to your flesh. I choose what you eat, and I choose where you sleep. Am I not your god?”

“Were food stamps my god?” she asks, and the pressure increases. “Was government assisted housing my god?”

He removes one hand from her throat, though the other is large and strong enough that the pressure is still painful. His free hand glides down her neck, down her sternum, and rests on her belly. “I own this,” Trigon says. “Your womb and whatever comes out of it are mine.”

One hand harsh, one hand warm and gentle and owning. His breath steady, her breath, faltering. The firelight dances across her skin.

“Ah,” she says. “That was it.”

---

Entry 21: Haven’t had my period. Don’t know how long I’ve been here. If I got it I’d free-bleed. Gross. Inside, every time. I’ll catch something haha. I’ll catch gehennarhea. I’ll catch hellpes. I’ll catch a baby

Food stops tasting good. Everything is so much cardboard in her dry mouth. She drinks the wine eagerly, wastefully, until Trigon forces her to stop.

“Will it kill the baby?” she asks, almost madly. “If I get smashed, will it come out with two toes and no eyes?”

“Arella.”

“Maybe it’ll fall out. The whole thing, in a big gory mess on your bed.” She pats the bottom of her stomach. “‘Down will come baby, cradle and all.’”

“Arella.”

“I’ll drink quicksilver,” she says. “I’ll drink that liquid statue.”

“Arella, your womb is still empty,” Trigon says. “Nothing is growing there, so calm yourself.”

She stares at the spilled wine on the table, on her thighs, like blood. Everything looks like birth. “What if I’m barren? Will you find another bride to torment?”

“You will bear a child,” Trigon says. “I have had other brides, and they have failed me, but you are the finest that has been offered to me in a long time.”

“I’ll kill it.”

“You do not have the courage.”

Her chest burns and she stands shakily. “Don’t you fucking dare!” she says, grabbing the wine bottle and flinging it at him. It hits, but he doesn’t seem hurt by it. “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do! I am not an incubator for your…” Baby isn’t the right word. Demon works, but it doesn’t really carry the full weight. She doesn’t know what it is he wants to put in her. She just yells in frustration. Her face is hot and there are tears on her cheeks. This is wrong. This is so wrong. This is…

Trigon looks… disgusted, as if she’s something rotting in front of him. “Stop this childishness. As my bride, you should accept your fate with a little dignity.”

Arella laughs shakily. “And make this easy for you? I don’t believe in fate, husband.” She leans across the small table. “For as long as you keep me here, I am going to make your life hell.”

Without warning, he grasps her face, pressing his claws into her cheeks. “You forget who has the power here.”

She knows; it’s just that she doesn’t care. She gives him a joyless smile. “Break my neck.”

He shoves her back, sending her stumbling away from the table. He walks around it, slowly, like a stalking animal.

“Is that what you want?” he asks.

“Come on. Snap it. You’re strong.” She bares it invitingly. “You’re mad at me, right?”

This time, he does take her neck in one hand, and her head in the other. In an abrupt and forceful motion, he--

The world is bright white.

Every part of her is completely limp. She can not flex her fingers, but she can feel the weight of her whole body hanging below her, still and unresponsive. There’s a metallic smell in her nose. The hand holding her in the air by the jaw is the only thing she can feel-- large, hot as blood, squeezing.

She can no longer draw air into her lungs, so there are no words she can say, but with her iron-stained lips, she says,

“Thanks.”

Arella opens her eyes straight-spined and connected on the floor. She stares blankly up at Trigon, and he down at her.

“I shouldn’t have expected anything less,” she says.

---

Entry 26: It’s gotten a lot more interesting around here.

---

Kissed savagely, claws buried in her hair, gripping harder and harder until her scalp begins to bleed. Limbs pulled from their sockets and left dangling.

Splayed, flayed, she is artwork, she is artwork carved and painted, she wants to be a mural of pieces broken and rearranged, with each little death she becomes more alive.

---

She continues baiting him. Arella wants-- needs-- Trigon to hurt her, as severely as she can make him.

It’s very much like sex. There’s a slow teasing, a seduction, as she says whatever words she knows will bother him most. She presents herself like a gift, limbs ripe for breaking and skin scarless and begging to be torn. Trigon seems to enjoy it as much as sex, maybe more, and he often likes to combine the two. Even animals don’t fuck like this. This would kill anything actually alive, so it would be counterproductive to the survival of the species.

Arella bleeds like good girls do the first time-- maybe each time she’s torn apart and healed again, she’s regained a form of virginity. Each mark is healed as if rubbed out by an eraser, from gaping wounds to benign hickeys. She’s never awake when he fixes them, so she never sees them disappear. It’s as if they’ve never happened.

She knows they’ve happened. If this room is a dream, then she’s been sleeping long enough for it not to matter anymore. This dream is realer than whatever was happening before. The taste of exotic fruit and blood and Trigon is more vivid on her tongue than cheap beer or Christian chili. And the pain…

“And still, no begging…” Trigon says. “You really do enjoy being hurt. I should have realized this a long time ago.”

“It’s better than pretending that we love each other.” She’d rather be snapped in two than lied to any day. Night. Damn, she wishes she knew what time it was. Arella lounges sorely on the couch. He hasn’t healed today’s injuries yet, so line of claw-marks glares red down her bare thigh.

“Is this not love? It is passion, is it not?”

Definitely a breed of passion. A hot emotion, deeper than desolation… Hatred is so much kinder than loneliness. Arella doesn’t say anything back. She stares at the starscape and wonders if her mouth will ever stop feeling filthy. That business doesn’t have any chance of impregnating her, so it’s really a waste of time.

“Red suits you,” Trigon says boredly. He runs a hand down her thigh. Blood streaks behind it. “A beautiful color.”

“Narcissist,” she says.

He laughs and pats her before turning away. “This has been an excellent visit, but now I must return to my duties. I will see you at dinner.”

She doesn’t bother saying goodbye to him. He’s gone in a moment, leaving behind a smell like a burnt match. She stares blankly at the space where he was standing before resuming her languishing.

Without Trigon, her life is very boring. She never runs out of books, but they’re unreadable. There are hundreds of strange treasures left lying around the room, under the bed, and tucked into drawers, but she finds that none of them interest her.

“I am having a depressive episode,” she says to a vase.

The vase is unsympathetic. It gives her the silent treatment, sitting on its ledge with its dead flower as though she’s not even there.

Arella has never struggled with mental illness. All of her problems have been external-- at least, she’d really like to believe that. Poverty, bad foster homes and unemployment were all perfectly fine excuses to feel bad. This could be an excuse, too. Being held captive in a foreign dimension by an all-powerful sadist is a great reason to fall into despair.

This isn’t despair. This is boredom. She can expect, without fail, hours and hours of inactivity, punctuated by visits that usually end in some blend of copulation and extreme violence. Any attempt she makes to resist it is crushed immediately. The only thing she can really do is annoy him. She can be a horsefly that bites him until he squashes it, then unsquashes it, then fucks it stupid.

That’s a weird image.

The only time that doesn’t blur together is the time when she’s in agony: the time when they’re together.

A chill runs through her body when she realizes that Trigon is the most important thing in her life, and that she looks forward to his visits, because they’re the only reprieve from the tedium of her slowing thoughts. She wants to have him with her.

Nausea nudges at the bottom of her throat. The room is too hot, and she’s too cold, and her skin is slippery with sweat. She feels like her chest is being crushed. She wants Trigon. She needs Trigon. She needs him here, hurting her, degrading her, pushing her to the brink of death again and again for the stupidest reasons…

“My God, my God,” she gasps, drawing her knees to her chest as tears begin to fall from her wide-open eyes.

---

Entry 32: I am in love I am in love <3 <3 <3

“Kill me, kill me for real,” she says. “I don’t want to be here.”

Trigon sighs. “Arella, calm yourself. You look like a fool.”

“I don’t want this,” she says, shaking her head wildly. “I don’t want to go back to Earth. I don’t want to stay here. Please don’t heal me next time.”

He walks to one of the tables and pulls a small bottle out of a drawer. He pops the cork and presents it to her. “Drink.”

“You don’t want me getting drunk and scrambling my eggs, do you?” she asks. “Just kill me.”

“This is medicine,” he says. “You are acting diseased. It should relax you.”

“I like it. I like being sick. Kill me.”

“Come over here,” he says, and without waiting for her, he takes her jaw. Forcing it open, he pours the bottle into her mouth. She chokes and splutters, and a good deal winds up on her rather than in her, but soon the bottle is empty. In moments, she feels a sort of hazy calmness.

“I hate you,” Arella says drowsily.

Trigon kisses her forehead. She hates those tender gestures. “Come lie down,” he says. “You can rest.” He takes her hand and leads her to the bed. He lays her down and tucks her in like a child. “Think of peaceful things.”

“What does peace look like?” she asks. “Is it just stillness?”

“No philosophy.” He strokes her hair, combing it gently with his claws. The rhythmic tug reminds her of Laurie. She hates Laurie.

After spending so long in this room, she’s lost awareness of the smell of it, but for some reason it’s lingering in her nose again. It’s the smell of something sweet burning and of something sweet rotting.

“Beautiful,” Trigon says. “The more I break you, the lovelier you become. Do not let your mind shatter with your body. I like your spirit.”

“It already has,” she says, heavy-lidded and dry-mouthed. “There’s not much left of me that’s still whole.”

“No.”

---

He takes her on another tour. Though he doesn’t totally break her before, he doesn’t heal her for a long time, so the low square neckline of her luxurious red gown reveals a harsh bruise around her throat and a long, drying scab over her collarbone.

Like the first time, he leads her through the windowless castle with an uncharacteristic gentleness. She doesn’t ask questions. No matter how familiar she becomes with the monstrous tapestries, they still unnerve her to the point of mild nausea. She feels their eyes everywhere.

The people all avert their eyes and hurry past them. Arella wants desperately to speak to them. She hasn’t talked to a person besides Trigon in… She still doesn’t know how much time has passed since she came here. She’s not sure she wants to.

As they pass the kitchens, she sees a child, and is momentarily frozen by shock. She’s seen a few young servants, zit-faced teenage maids and scurrying nervous pages, but this is a child-child, a pudgy-faced toddler with short fingers, sitting on the floor aggressively squishing a piece of dough. It makes sense. People on Earth don’t suddenly emerge out of nowhere as adults or teenagers, and there’s not any reason to assume it’s different here. The toddler stops kneading and looks at her with wide, brown eyes.

“Don’t,” says someone. A woman hurries over to the doorframe and scoops up the child, who drops the dough in surprise. “I am so sorry, Master, you won’t see him again.” She bows, still clutching the child protectively to her chest, and turns quickly away.

Trigon, visibly irritated, looks at Arella. “Ugly little creature. They really should keep it properly hidden.”

Strange opinion for someone who apparently wants one quite badly. Arella doesn’t offer a comment. She does briefly consider goading Trigon into hurting her, but decides against it. That kind of exhibitionism doesn’t suit her. She’s long-since learned to ignore the humiliation of helplessness when there’s nobody else around to see her, but the idea of anyone actually witnessing her being snapped like a twig makes her a little sick. These wounds are for her alone, as the bride. Or, maybe she’s just the wife at this point. How long has it been?

“You,” Trigon says suddenly. A passing man-- Arella recognizes the steward from before-- freezes in his tracks and turns to face them. “I have heard nothing from the front on Sumshaa. I presume my army is making progress?”

The steward swallows. “There have been no reports since the last. The war-- the war council members know more details.”

“But your duty is to keep my affairs in order, is it not?”

“Yes…”

“Is my kingdom not one of my affairs?”

“It-- it is, Master.”

“Then why are you stuttering?”

Trigon’s eyes are locked on the steward, and the steward is staring at the ground submissively, only occasionally glancing up.

Arella is struck with a sudden, insane urge. There are other planets in this place, which means that there are ways to get to them. There are battlefronts that Trigon doesn’t visit (at least not frequently enough to stay up-to-date on their goings-on). A war-torn planet is better than this. She could…

Arella very slowly and quietly slips away as the man and the monster speak.

The castle is maze-like. The walls are windowless, and the tapestries glare at her. She can’t tell whether she’s getting closer or farther away from the exit. First, she keeps her head low, but her footsteps quicken. She turns, she turns, into a hall of people and a hall of dead statues, rooms on rooms on rooms, locking together, and Arella’s speed increases until she’s running, dainty slippers slapping against stone floors or muffled against carpets.

She hits a dead end and is forced to turn back. It’s so dark. The torches on the walls are weak and their warmth doesn’t stretch far. She’s soaked with cold sweat. Her lungs ache, but she keeps running. She thinks of an open daytime sky, blue as the one on Earth, buildings and smiling faces. Even the Baptist soup kitchen is better than this, because she can leave.

She nearly crashes into a middle-aged maid with her hair tucked neatly under a cap. The woman staggers backward, wide-eyed.

“I need to-- I need to get out of here,” Arella says. “Where’s the door? How do I leave? Please show me to the--”

“You’re the bride,” the woman says, face white with fear. “Where is the Master? You can’t do this.”

“Please show me the way out,” Arella says. She feels an odd thrill at another person speaking to her. Her heart beats painfully in her chest. “I need to leave.” She gestures to her throat. “He did this. He’s done much worse, he’s--”

“The Master does as he pleases, and that’s right.” The woman shakes her head hard. “You’re the bride.” She lunges forward and grasps Arella’s arm with a firm, cold hand. “I can’t let you leave.”

Arella, with unexpected strength, shakes the woman’s hand off and races away from her. Her foot snags on the hem of her dress and she topples, scraping her hands against the floor. Without a second thought, she forces herself to her feet and keeps running, pain shooting through her knees.

Guards servants, and diplomats alike pursue her, all shouting. People grab at her, crying out, pleading, and Arella shakes them away violently. Men, women, children, wizened old people, crying and begging her not to leave. Her loose sleeves stretch and fray. Her hair comes loose from its ties. And yet she is not torn apart.

“The bride, the bride!”

She sees the castle doors. They’re huge and cracked open. The swarm of people flows behind her, all calling out, and she flings herself against the doors. They slowly, resistantly give into her weight and she stumbles out into the light of an alien planet.

The sky is red and the ground is dusty and lifeless. The architecture is strangely angular, and her surroundings are anachronistic with vaguely gothic turrets beside space-age ships on stone landing stations. People jerk up and stare at her as she runs, before joining the pursuing crowd, crying out and reaching for her.

Behind her, the swarm pours out. Arella keeps running like a hunted animal, and along with the fear, she feels elation. Real soil is beneath her feet, and the foundries and guard towers and other small buildings that make up the surroundings of a castle stand independent around her.

“Don’t kill her!” someone calls. “Don’t harm the Master’s bride!”

The final gate stands before her. It’s closed tightly. This doesn’t deter her. Arella throws herself against it, scrabbling like a dog. Her fingers bleed.

A hand is on her shoulder. It’s big and warm, and if she wanted to, maybe she could tell herself it loved her.

“Trigon,” she whispers, voice pained.

“My bride,” he says. “Why do you waste your time?”

And his arms are around her, pulling her to his chest. Arella goes limp in his grip.

“This is a better use of my time than you are.” Arella looks blankly ahead at the unyielding gate.

“Obstinate little mortal,” he says. Still grasping her, he turns to the crowd. “You all saw my bride flee, but you did nothing to stop her.”

They don’t protest, even though they clearly did try to stop her.

“You, guard, come here,” he says. A soldier, shaking, steps forward. Trigon flings Arella to the side, leaving her on the ground. He makes no effort to restrain her. He knows that she won’t run again. He takes the soldier by the throat. “You made a vow to serve me, did you not?”

“I did…” the soldier says, still.

“And yet.” Trigon squeezes his throat. The soldier remains still, eyes shut in acceptance of his fate, but soon, his instincts give in. He struggles, gasps for breath, clutches at the iron-strong red hand. He tries to sputter out a pathetic last word, but there is no air in his lungs, and in a moment he is limp. Trigon throws the body into the crowd, and they part around it as though it’s diseased. “Woman,” Trigon says. He makes a casual gesture, and a young servant girl steps forward. Trigon grasps her, too, and chokes her quickly without second thought. He does this several times, to seemingly random members of the swarm, each time throwing the body to them like a bride throws a bouquet. Then, he turns to the limp Arella. “Were you watching?” he asks.

“I was,” she says quietly.

“Then you know what happens next.” Trigon takes her, and with his claws swiftly cuts the front of her dress, exposing her many wounds. He looks at his people. “My bride chooses regularly to defy me. Do not worry for her. I love her for it.”

Arella doesn’t even register the humiliation. Trigon takes her throat, like all the others, but doesn’t squeeze. Instead, he presses his claws into an artery on her neck, and she begins to bleed profusely. The crowd watches raptly as blood soaks into the hair clinging to her shoulders, trickles down her torso…

She falls asleep in her husband’s arms.

---

Entry 38: Slept for so long.

“You fucked me while I was knocked out, didn’t you?” Arella asks.

“I would never. I like when you speak to me.”

“Huh.” Arella wonders how long the blood crusted on her thighs has been there. She didn’t even feel it. She rolls over in the bed so she doesn’t have to face him. She isn’t sore. When she looks down, her body is unmarred apart from the blood staining her skin and dried in her hair.

“Filthy,” Trigon says casually.

“I know.”

“How long has it been since you have properly washed?”

“I don’t know. I don’t exactly have a calendar.” It’s not like she’s been marinating in her own dirt. Despite the room having a lingering smell of decay, the water in the basin is always fresh and clean, and soap and cloths are always available. She may not be immersing herself in anything, but she’s not disgusting. The soap doesn’t seem to be good for her hair, though. It’s felt brittle lately.

“I can call an attendant to bathe you.”

Arella doesn’t answer that. Speaking to the maid earlier didn’t endear the staff to her. It seems that everyone here is set on keeping her captive. It’s a horrible feeling.

“You should be grateful. I will even instruct her to talk to you. Have you not missed female companionship?”

“Sure.” Arella doesn’t want to talk to anyone. She’s feeling thoroughly defeated right now. She just wants to lie in her melancholy for a little bit.

“She can come soon,” Trigon says. “I will pick one of my own favorites. She can console you.” That’s a weird feeling. Is that sympathy? Does he feel bad? “I do not like when you wallow.”

“How kind.” Still, this is a genuine offer of comfort. Arella does her very best not to be grateful for this tiny scrap of kindness, but this is so strange. He wants her to talk to another person, because he knows it will make her feel better.

“Would you rather lie in your filth?”

“No…”

“I will send her to you in a day.”

Arella jolts. “A day?” she asks. “How am I supposed to know if a day’s passed?” She genuinely wants to know. To be aware of time seems like an impossible luxury.

“You do not need to know. Just wait.”

Fuck, he’s annoying.

That’s such an odd thing to think about a demon who murders random staff to prove a point. Arella wonders if this means she’s no longer afraid of him. She doesn’t know. She’s aware that he can kill her if he wants to, but he won’t. He does whatever he wants to her whenever he wants, regardless of how much it hurts her, because he can undo it so easily. He wants to put some kind of nightmarish demon baby in her-- that. That’s where she’s still afraid of him. Arella could almost resign herself to an eternity of boring torture, a repeated cycle of violent sex and sex-like violence, but the idea of some piece of Trigon growing in her, feeding on her, tearing its way out of her… That’s too much to bear. It’s too disgusting. She does not want Trigon to be inside her like that. She doesn’t want him to be part of her.

“Look forward to it,” Trigon says. “It means I trust you.”

“Why trust me?”

“You have already proven that you can not escape. Why should I worry?”

Annoying. Her stomach hurts.

---

Entry 39: He sang something as I lay with my eyes closed. An unpleasant song. Did he think it was beautiful?

---

She wakes up on a divan in another lushly-furnished room. There’s no sign of Trigon anywhere. There aren’t even tapestries on the walls, though they’re painted elaborately in a subtle geometric pattern. Arella sits up, and realizes that she’s dressed in a filmy white robe. Despite its thinness, it’s pleasantly warm.

“Oh!” someone says. From behind a curtain, a girl in a neat gray dress emerges. Her brown hair is scraped back severely, but her shaggy eyebrows and the dark freckles on her face and hands make her look a little wild. “Hello, Lady. How did you sleep?”

The honest answer would be “restlessly,” but it feels like that would be a rude thing to say to a random stranger.

“Pretty well,” Arella says. “Who are you?”

“The Master called on me to wait on you today,” the girl says, nodding her head in a light bow at the thought of him. “My name is Matilda.”

“...Nice to meet you. I’m Arella.”

“I know.” Matilda smiles. “I’ve drawn a bath. The Master says you smell like a dead horse.”

Rude. Arella still stands. “Thank you. Is it…?”

“Behind the curtain. Come along, please, Lady.” Matilda nods her head in its direction.

Arella follows her. The bath behind the curtain is rather elaborate. It’s free-standing, with no pipes to be seen. Maybe they fill it with buckets. It has brass feet, and they look disturbingly human. Does it count as claw-footed? Toenail-footed? It’s not pure white, but decorated with swirling patterns like a teapot. It’s another oddity: something that doesn’t really appear demonic but is still foreign enough to be unsettling.

“Would you like help undressing and getting in?” Matilda asks, tilting her head innocently.

“No.”

“I have to come with you, Lady. He isn’t here to take care of you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Matilda glances to the side, looking a little ashamed. “You’ve tried to harm yourself to escape before. You’re clever. You could find a way to drown yourself.”

“I don’t need to be babysat,” Arella says. “Especially by…” This girl can’t be much older than she is, if older at all. Being condescended to by a peer is much worse than by some housewife at the grocery store or a middle-aged reverend. “You. I don’t need you staring at me when I’m naked.”

“I’ve seen it all, Lady,” Matilda says. “I was here for his last two brides. The second one survived her pregnancy, so I helped her have it. Here.” With her scarred, stubby-nailed hands, she grips the robe at Arella’s shoulders. Arella decides that if this is how she’s getting her hair washed, she might as well.

“How many brides has he had?” Arella asks. “And what happened to the… baby?”

“Three since I’ve been alive, then you. She dashed it against the wall when I stepped from the room, then slit her own throat with the knife I used to cut the cord,” Matilda says. “I was lucky that the Master was fond of me.”

Arella shudders involuntarily. No matter how horrible the prospect of being pregnant with Trigon’s offspring is, the idea of killing a newborn is sickening.

“Come along,” Matilda says. “Get in.” She tries to take Arella’s hand and guide her into the tub like an old lady, but Arella shakes her off and gets in herself. The tub is deep, and she easily sinks up to her shoulders when she stretches out. The water is hot, but not scalding, and smells slightly floral.

“He likes you?” Arella asks. The idea of him showing favoritism is strange. From what she’s seen, he actively dislikes his servants.

“Oh, yes. Before you came, I went to his chamber seven times. Most servants only go once or twice. There are a lot of us, after all.”

Arella is struck with the vision of Matilda in her position, bare and bleeding with her freckled limbs bent at bizarre angles. She finds herself staring. “Most of them?”

“It’s hard for any one person to keep him entertained for long. When they come in expecting it and resigned, he gets bored. When they start weeping right away, he gets annoyed and kills them before they can even try to appease him. Lean back. Get your hair wet.”

“He doesn’t like when they beg,” Arella says, complying. “Right?”

“He doesn’t appreciate cowardice.” Matilda begins massaging Arella’s scalp. “The unbreakable ones are the ones he’s fondest of.”

Arella tries to imagine this apparently mild girl spitting fire. She can’t.

“Smiling bothers him, but he couldn’t bring himself to kill someone who wasn’t afraid of him. Your hair is lovely.”

“You’re not afraid of him?”

“Of course I am. I know what he could do to me if I made him really angry. But I don’t want to make it fun for him.” Her massaging becomes firmer, and slightly painful for a second, but her hands relax again. “There’s nothing I can do to stop him from making this world hideous. But there’s nothing he can do to stop me from smiling at him. It’s not enough to drive him to distraction, but it definitely annoys him a little. He liked me in bed, so he kept me around, but I know I bothered him. I liked being an unswattable fly. Dunk your hair again.”

Arella dips her head back into the water, and it fills her ears. When she bobs back up, she notices disinterestedly that it’s slightly pink. “Has he called you since I came?”

“No. Thank you.”

---

Arella doesn’t see Matilda again after that. She thinks about her, the steward with the burnt hand, and the mother protectively drawing her child against her chest. She thinks about the panicked maid grasping at her, the crowd of people begging her not to leave.

She thinks of “thank you.”

The people of this world are terrified. They live in a reality governed by a capricious god who will strike them down seemingly at random. Arella keeps him distracted for hours at a time, and those are hours that he doesn’t spend tormenting them. Her suffering provides them with short bursts of relief. She exists out of sight, where none of them have to see her being repeatedly humiliated and ripped apart. While that happens to her, they can finally breathe.

She doesn’t want to be some kind of sacrificial lamb. Arella chose to be Trigon’s bride, even if she didn’t understand the connotations, but she’s not some kind of Jesus. She’d rather her suffering not benefit anybody. It gives her a weird hope; if she somehow escapes, then it won’t hurt anyone.

She doesn’t want it to be wrong not to want to suffer. If it becomes wrong to reject her own pain, then she’s resigning herself. At the same time, she’s developed an almost possessive feeling about it: it’s her pain, hers to ask for and hers to hate. The hordes of people who have become invested in it aren’t supposed to matter. Can’t she have a solitary struggle? Can’t she at least be free in one way?

Trigon wraps a lock of her hair around his finger and brings it to his lips.

---

Entry 48: Had a dream. I was degloving. He kissed my bones.

---

Arella wakes up feverish. She vaguely wonders how it happened; it’s not like she’s around people to catch anything from. She doesn’t really care. She’s sore in an unfamiliar way. Her whole body protests when she moves, and when she sits up she becomes dizzy.

“Poor girl,” Trigon says, and there’s an oddly genuine note in his voice. “It has been too much for you.” He pulls the blanket tightly around her shoulders. “I do forget sometimes how weak you are.”

Arella tries to think of a scathing remark, but she can’t. Instead, she swallows painfully and says, “I appreciate that, I suppose.”

“If you were anyone else, I would send you out and let the maids nurse you,” he says. “But you will not leave this room.”

“Husband, god, warden.”

“I care for you. They might do an imperfect job.” He turns and walks to one of the many nightstands scattered throughout the room-- a different one than the one with the sleeping potion. He pulls out another bottle and brings it to her. “Drink this.”

“Why do you have so many drugs?”

“I accumulate rare treasures. The herb in this doesn’t grow on this planet.” He pulls out the cork. A burst of spicy-smelling vapor swirls up from the lip of the bottle. Rather than pouring it down her throat, he gives it to her. It’s hot in her hands. She considers throwing it on him. Maybe it will burn him. Instead, she drinks it. It tastes like a sweet curry.

“Now sleep,” Trigon says. “You might not be fully healed when you awaken, but the fever should break.”

She wonders if she should thank him. “Is there anything I should do when I wake up?”

“I can take care of that.”

“Why do you care? You let your other things get covered in dust.”

“Those are useless.”

---

Entry 55: He really does kiss like he wants to bite my face off.

---

Entry 64: Broke my fingers one by one. Such delicate work. I didn’t know he was capable of it, with those big hands of his.

---

Entry 71: He wanted me to sing, and I looked like an idiot. He thought it was funny. amazing grace how sweet the sound

---

Entry 79: Trying new sex positions today. One of them we couldn’t get without popping a couple joints, but I’m fine now. Apparently the girls on Sumshaa have much more flexible sockets.

---

“Take me on another tour,” she says, staring lazily at her broken arm. If she touches it just right, it twinges deliciously. Light self-torture is masturbatory. “I’m getting antsy.”

“Not after that humiliation earlier. Get used to this room.”

“Which of us was humiliated?” Ah. That’s the spot.

“Which of us stood naked in front of a crowd and had her throat pierced?”

“I’m not sure. One of us did watch his entire staff fail to catch one madwoman.”

Trigon’s face flickers with irritation, but he doesn’t do anything. Maybe he thinks it would be excessive after crunching her up like that earlier. That wouldn’t make much sense, though. “Excess” doesn’t seem to be a word in his vocabulary.

“Do you like it when I tease you?” she asks.

“I would prefer that you stay alive, so I will not do anything to get in the way of that.”

“Such restraint. Why not heal me more? Regenerate all my cells so I’m fresh as a flower.”

Trigon’s brow lowers. “You are becoming awfully comfortable here.”

“This is my home now, isn’t it? Being disemboweled is part of the routine.”

“I would never cut so close. It would be dangerous.”

Arella stifles a laugh. He can be so sweet.

---

Entry 82: Could I kill him? He’s more. Could I take a fine piece of silk and wrap it around his throat, tighter tighter until it cut

---

Oh, sleep, sleep. She knows that when he lies next to her his eyes are open. She knows she wouldn’t be able to kill him, but she entertains the fantasy constantly. She thinks of his limbs sticking out at painful angles, his heart exposed and beating. The version of her that lived in the human world wouldn’t have dwelt on disgusting images like this. She wasn’t gory inside-- maybe she didn’t even have blood.

Arella has so much blood now, and she gets to look at it whenever she wants, just by saying the right thing.

---

Entry 115: I know what’s happening.

---

Back in the good old days when people were witches, quickening was the sign that things had just gotten serious. Arella feels a little spasm in her abdomen. She freezes in the middle of pulling tassels off a rug, fingers suddenly gone stiff. She stares at them, empty-headed, then brings a hand to her stomach. Another twitch.

Something is in there.

She very slowly puts her hand back down. She seems to have solidified inside. Her blood seems to have gone still and her muscles turned to stone. Everything is heavy and resistant to movement.

“You can’t,” she says very quietly. Her voice sounds like it’s coming from somewhere else. “You can’t.”

She can’t bring herself to stand. Her legs won’t let her. She can’t bring herself to go back to her mindless shredding. She can only kneel in the dim hot room, staring blankly, with one thought in her head:

What now?

After a minute of stillness, the dread kicks in. Her body begins to shake uncontrollably. She clenches her numb fingers to try to quiet them, but her fist trembles just as hard. A wave of nausea washes over her. What now? What now?

She hunches over, shuddering. Her forehead presses against the plush carpet. Her eyes are dry.

Trigon emerges.

“You have noticed as well,” he says. There’s an upward note in his voice. Elation. “I felt it moving in you.”

“...Kill it,” Arella mutters, teeth chattering. “I’ll kill it. I’ll dash it against the wall.”

“No,” Trigon says, kneeling and gently rubbing her back. “You are a weak woman, Arella. You will pity it too much.”

“Will it-- will it be pitiful?” she forces out.

“All infants are.”

“Before it’s born. I’ll do anything to get rid of it. I’ll poison it.”

“Try.” Trigon kisses the back of her neck. “You will not be able to. Even if your heart is weak, your body is strong. My seed has a powerful will to live.”

“I’m a broodmare. How many more do you want to put in me?”

“One is enough.”

“I hate you. I hate your spawn.” She laughs, and she’s not sure whether the tremors are from the laughter or the despair. “I’m not even a person anymore.”

“You are a tabernacle. You are carrying your world’s future.”

“This thing is going to be amazing,” Arella says, mouth stretched out in a painful smile. “It’s going to be the worst parts of both of us. It’s going to be a monster. Will it kill me when it comes out?”

“A child needs its mother.” Trigon strokes her hair. “You will love it.”

The laughter wracks her. It pours out of her like sobs, like vomit, uncontrollable and painful. “I’ll love it,” she repeats after him, tears streaming down her face past the corners of her stretched mouth. “And it will destroy me. It’s just like you.”

She uncurls, shaking, and turns to face Trigon. She tilts up and drags him down to her, fingers clutching the back of his neck so tightly that they hurt, and kisses him passionately. She is devouring him. She is drawing him in, blending with him to create something foul enough to end the world.

To be absorbed…

He embraces her as their bodies enmesh, holding her tighter, tighter, tighter, and her back bends, and it bends, and

---

POLICE INVESTIGATE POSSIBLE CULT-RELATED KILLING

In the early hours of the morning on Thursday, seven students from Baptisia University were found dead in Trillium Park. Their bodies appear to have been mutilated after death, and they were wearing similar clothes that suggest an organized meeting. An eighth member of the group, who declines to give her name, was found alive among them with burn marks on her abdomen. She is currently hospitalized and will be questioned when in a stable mental state. No weapons were found on the scene and the perpetrator or perpetrators are unknown, but cult activity is suspected.

---

Arella lies on the table, back propped up. It’s been days and this world still doesn’t feel real.

The doctor gestures to the fuzzy gray screen. “It’s a girl!”