11. 11

11

Beau

B eau was full of regret.

As he stared at the empty space Kassel had occupied, all he wanted to do was take it back. He wished he’d never opened his mouth. Maybe they could have had longer. Who knows when Kassel would have been called back to Hell? He’d said he didn’t need to.

“Kassel?” he whispered into the empty night, voice on the verge of breaking. “Are you still there?”

Only silence answered, reverberating in the cavern of his hollowed-out chest and the emptiness of his home.

It wasn’t fair to Kassel. He couldn’t keep him. He couldn’t be selfish.

He knew all this, but…

“I didn’t mean it,” he croaked. “I don’t want you to go.”

No reply.

“I already miss you.”

A few tears streaked down his cheeks, but he tried not to lose it. It was for the best. Kassel had a life, and Beau couldn’t tie them together forever, no matter how much he yearned for their threads to be woven.

There was something about him that not even a demon summoning could fix. He’d known that all his life. There was a broken, cold jaggedness around his tender heart that didn’t let anyone get close or stay, unable to withstand it. No matter how desperately Beau tried to reach past it, dragging himself through the shards, it was futile in the end.

He was left bloody and cut open, destined to be alone.

“But I don’t want to be alone,” he whispered.

He buried his face in his hands and sobbed, his heartbreak his only company.

He didn’t sleep. He spent Christmas Day not even registering anything, trying to convince himself to be happy with what he had received in his lucid seconds. To bask in the beautiful memories and be satisfied, even though they felt more like torture than solace.

He opened the gift Kassel had brought with him when he came back and found a misshapen black candle. He lit it and the scent of fire and ash filled the air around him. Kassel’s scent. He let it burn and inhaled as deeply as he could, comforted by it but at the same time filled with despair, because what happened when the candle burned to the end? What would he have then?

Time passed in a blur. He couldn’t tell when the sky turned from dark to light and back again. He simply sat in front of his tree, staring at the once joyous lights in mourning. The days began to trickle by at a sluggish pace. Beau grew dehydrated and exhausted from crying so much. He called in sick to work. He hardly ate.

The person who said it was better to have loved and lost was a complete liar.

They couldn’t have felt this sort of pain and preferred it.

Beau wished he could go back to the naivety of before, where he didn’t know what he was missing out on. When the love and affection he’d so craved hadn’t carved scars into him that would never heal.

After another day of lying listlessly on the couch staring at the knitted hat by the door, Beau decided to shuffle into his bedroom. He was ready to pull the blankets over his head and sleep the day away when a shaft of sunlight peeked through the winter clouds. It settled on the small chair in the corner, where Beau had placed the purple duck Kassel had won him.

A lance of pain speared straight through his chest, messy on impact and making him stumble in place.

The only reason he had wanted it was because it reminded him of Kassel. The color, the expressionless face. He didn’t know how a demon and a duck could give off the same don’t-give-a-damn vibes, but Beau was certain they were kindred spirits. And now it was a shadow, a ghost haunting him.

He approached it with cautious steps, reaching a shaking hand out to its head. “This is all I have left of you.”

His lips wobbled and his throat got tighter.

“I didn’t get to give you anything back. Not properly. You left your hat here as well. I don’t know if you even liked it. I thought you did, when you warned that guy off at the fair… I wish I had asked you. I wish I asked you so many things…”

For the first time in his life he grew angry, his grief manifesting in a rage that had him screaming. He knocked the toy aside and pushed his dresser, upending everything on top. He ripped his blankets from his bed and threw his pillows uselessly before collapsing in the mess, crying yet again.

He stared down at the floor, watching his tears fall, drop by drop, forming a wet stain that grew outward. It spread to the edge of a book that had fallen face down.

Beau immediately recognized the spine.

The summoning book.

He caught his breath, hands scrambling for it and slipping on the surface before he could claw it to him. He flipped to Kassel’s page with fumbling fingers and began to futilely recite the words between tear drops on the paper until his voice was hoarse.

He ignored the writing that mocked him from the bottom of the page.

After summoning, this or any other demon cannot be summoned more than once a century.

He read the summons over and over until he just couldn’t anymore, letting the book fall to his lap.

“Please bring him back. I just want to talk to him. I made a mistake. I didn’t want him to go,” Beau cried out, tipping his head back, rivers streaking down his temples. “Please. I’ll do anything. Please…”

No one answered him.

He pushed the useless summoning book aside in a fit of despair.

“It’s not fair,” Beau yelled. “You hear me?! It’s not fair. The book was supposed to fulfill my summons, but it didn’t. I feel lonelier now than I did before. At least I didn’t know then what it could be. It’s cruel. You’re cruel. You gave me five days and then ripped it away. It’s not fair…”

Beau gave up begging. He fell to his side, curling up to try and hold himself together. He spotted the duck discarded on the floor and pulled it over, letting his face drop into its fur to absorb his tears.

He let himself go limp, letting the sadness take him under and drown him.

Thud.

He twitched, head moving toward the sound before he uncovered his face to the cold room. More muffled sounds and shuffling had him slowly sitting up, one hand still clutching the duck as comfort. There was a hint of ash and brimstone in the air.

Was it just his imagination?

He swallowed, forcing saliva past his tight throat as his sobs eased off into hiccupping jumps of his chest that he couldn’t control. He got up off the floor and moved toward the sounds, opening his door and…

“You stepped on my tail!”

“Well move it out of the way, I’m trying to see.”

“You’re hogging all the good stuff.”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

Beau rushed down the hallway and peeked his head around the corner, heart in his throat. He spotted two nearly nude, feline figures with tails swaying slowly in the air rummaging through his drawers and belongings. They were identical, with onyx skin, flowing white hair, and tiny horns all over their bodies.

Demons. They couldn’t be mistaken. The smell of ash and smoke in the air hadn’t just been his wishful thinking!

His mind reminded him of the short description he’d read inside the book, but he couldn't remember the names.

He sniffled, wiping his wet cheeks with the backs of his hand as something like hope began to rise in his chest.

“H-hello?” he called softly, hiccupping on the word.

The figures tilted their heads forty-five degrees in unison. A blood-red eye from each face regarded him with disinterest, but the aura surrounding them felt distinctly dangerous.

He took a small step forward regardless of self-preservation, biting his lip. “Are you here… hic … because of the summons?”

A tail flicked, the only movement for a suspended second before the two bodies slipped away from the cabinet. They made no noise at all on the carpet, hips swaying and movements a study in grace.

Beau tried to keep one eye on both of them, but it was impossible to keep track. They were faster than he could keep up with, and he’d hardly found one before the other slipped away from the corner of his vision again.

“Summoning demons is risky, you know,” a purring voice said from behind him.

He screamed in fright, spinning around to find a smirking face with small, sharp teeth on display, the incisors just that tiny bit longer than the rest.

The other twin giggled in delight, crowing, “Scaredy cat! Scaredy cat!”

Beau looked down at his feet in embarrassment, chest still jumping involuntarily despite his fright. “I just wanted to get a message to Kassel.”

“I don’t know why everyone is so obsessed with Mr. Hell…” the one in front of him said sulkily.

“… we never voted for him,” the other finished.

“He’s handsome,” Beau said, finding his voice to defend him earnestly. “And lovely.”

He was suddenly grasped by the arm, nails digging through his sweater. He gasped as he was dragged to his sofa and sandwiched between the demon twins.

One snapped their fingers and a burning image of a ginormous demon with alabaster skin that glowed and four horns and wings, was suddenly floating in front of him.

The unknown demon looked… mean. Certainly not purple enough. He only had two eyes.

“Well?” the twins asked in unison.

“Oh… um… he seems very… demonic… and um… very scary…” Beau hazarded to be polite.

“And dreamy!”

“And strong!”

“And murderous!”

They chorused one after the other in giggling glee, Beau’s head bouncing back and forth like a tennis ball as he followed their conversation.

“And the Hell streets say he’s packing double downstairs,” the twin on the right said finally, zooming in on his crotch as if to judge the reliability of those accounts.

Beau blushed, fidgeting awkwardly. “Double as in… big?”

Two feline smirks appeared. “Double as in double. ”

“Oh…” Beau breathed, eyes bugging out of his head.

“He’s sooooo Daddy,” they sighed lovingly in unison.

Beau shook his head. “I don’t think I could handle all that.”

“And you never will!” they growled, the image disappearing in a puff of smoke as they rounded on him with the fires of Hell in their eyes. He found himself pressed back into the sofa. “He’s ours!”

Beau nodded frantically. “I don’t want him! I promise! He’s not the demon I like. All I want is to talk to Kassel!”

They eased off in a snap, smiles replacing sneers like they had never been there at all. They giggled in unison, one smoothing down his sweater and adjusting the wrinkles in the fabric, while the other petted his hair gently. “We might be able to help you with that.”

Beau gasped, heart lurching. “You can?”

“This human has nicer hair than the other one,” the one petting his head said.

Beau was startled by the compliment and the physical touches. It wasn’t anything like the rush when Kassel touched him, but he still craved the affection, especially after the dark vacuum he’d been living in. “T-thank you.”

“Your soul hurts my eyes to look at though.”

“Oh…”

“Do you want to do some evil deeds together to tarnish your soul?” they asked. “It’s fun. We promise.”

“Maybe not now? I’m a little tired,” Beau said, not wanting to refuse the invitation outright. He was being invited out for the first time. “But later? After I speak to Kassel?”

“I’m Azoth, by the way,” the one on the left introduced himself suddenly.

“And I’m Tarik.”

“I’m Beau,” he said, trying to follow the conversation, which seemed to fly around like a paper plane in a storm.

“We know,” they drawled, bored eye rolls following.

They got back up off the sofa like they couldn’t stay still for that long and began picking over his room some more like a pair of magpies. Beau sprang to his feet and followed them, uncaring about what they were touching, too invested in the offer they’d made.

“Can you really help me?”

“We can,” they said.

Azoth grasped a snow globe in his palm, glass end first, fingers and nails curling all the way around to the base. He brought it to his face upside down, looking at the insides. Tarik was pilfering the star from the top of his tree, tail batting at the ornaments below. A few clattered to the floor.

“You can take whatever you want, I just need to talk to him,” Beau said, impatience making him shift on his feet.

“Relaaax,” Azoth drawled, throwing the globe aside carelessly.

It smashed in the background.

“You don’t have to do any more of that gross leaking,” Tarik said, cheering when he snatched the star. He placed it on the end of his tail to hold.

“Crying?” Beau asked.

The twins shuddered. “Yeah, that.”

“I miss him,” Beau whispered, patting his puffy, red face and blotting self-consciously under his running nose.

The twins exchanged a look Beau couldn’t decipher, before they turned on him, approaching slowly. “How much, squishy? How much do you miss Mr. Hell?” Tarik asked.

“More than anything in the world,” he admitted truthfully, his whole heart on his soaked sleeve.

“You care for him?”

Beau blushed. “Y-yes.”

“Love him?”

“Yes,” Beau whispered, almost inaudibly.

“Would you die for him?” Azoth pressed.

Beau startled at the question, then startled at himself as “Yes” came out of his mouth without hesitation.

“Iiiinteresting,” Azoth said, elongating the vowel and giving his twin another glance that was loaded with meaning.

They began circling him like two cats winding through his ankles. Beau could only stand there, heart too hopeful and open.

“You see, ever since Oren turned up everything has been rules, rules, rules,” Tarik said.

“It’s soooo boring,” Azoth complained.

“Oren was the one who wrote the summoning book, right?” Beau asked.

“He’s also the one giving a presentation to your mopey eggplant downstairs.”

“He’s not a—Wait… Kassel is moping?” Beau asked, lower lip shaking.

“If dragging his ass around Hell, sighing your name and frowning and not doing his job so others have to pick up the slack when he already had an all-expenses-paid vacation topside is moping, then yes,” Azoth muttered.

“He’s sad?”

“Sure,” Tarik said, examining his nails. “Whatever that is. He’s that.”

“Oh…” Beau’s voice wobbled.

“Don’t leak!” the twins screeched.

“But I don’t want him to be sad! That’s not why I wanted him to go back,” Beau wailed, covering his watering eyes. “This has gone all wrong!”

“How do we make it stop?” Azoth hissed to his twin.

“Listen, squishy. The solution is very simple.”

Beau sniffled. “How? It’s not simple. The book says he can’t be summoned for another century, and he lives and works in Hell. He told me time moves differently, so I might never see him because I’ll die and then go to Heaven because I don’t have an evil soul and I know you offered to do evil stuff together, but I tried that and it never worked out because I feel bad and—”

“All you have to do…” Azoth cut him off with a finger over his mouth.

“… is trust us,” Tarik finished, sliding a hand over his shoulder and tickling at his turtleneck.

Beau gulped in a deep breath, swiping his fresh tears away. He looked between them on either side of him. “And I can see Kassel again?”

“Pinkie promise,” they sang, holding them up.

Beau weighed his options.

This wasn’t a summoning, that was clear. Beau didn’t know why these demons were here, or what their agenda was, but they were offering him everything he wanted on a silver platter.

He knew that making a deal with something not much better than the devil, maybe even worse, was cautioned against, but he was done with being cautious. Done with being sad and lonely and miserable. He wanted to grasp something for himself, consequences be damned.

Kassel had become the world he wanted to escape to.

Any price was worth it.

He held out his pinkie. “Deal.”

They giggled in glee, sharp teeth flashing and red eyes glowing. The smell of ash and brimstone grew heavier in the air, the room darkening.

“Just hold still, squishy,” they whispered gently as they closed in on him. “This won’t hurt a bit.”