Nothing But The Truth

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Henry had fallen asleep. Joey didn't blame him. The last two hours had been draining, to say the least. Henry had let Joey calm down, then they held a short conversation before Henry again restated that he wanted to sleep. He suggested going back to Allison and Tom's safehouse, but Joey countered with a readily-available chair just down the hall.

Henry ended up taking the chair while Joey paced around the other rooms in the set. Yes, it was a set. They were players in a show, so everywhere they went was a constructed set.

At least, it made sense to Joey's brain to think of it that way.

So sue him, he was a theater guy and it helped him make sense of things to think of them like some kind of play. A twisted... nightmarish... deadly play.

A tragedy dialed up to eleven.

Eat your heart out, Shakespeare.

Joey stared through the ceiling, "Heheh, I'm going insane."

He kept walking around the ink-sodden halls, flipping the switches that no longer did anything. Up and down, flip-flip, a satisfying click for each direction.

He might have fiddled with them a bit longer than what could be considered sane. Then again, was he not going insane?

Moving on, Joey's shoes clanked over the grate in the big pipe room. This room had never made sense to him. After all, how does busting down a bunch of pipes open a door?

There was no ink spewing out of the pipes, but it dripped through the grated floor and pooled in the bottom of the glass containers. Joey picked up a glass shard and jammed it into his palm.

Nope, still couldn't be hurt. The shard ground into sand like his skin was concrete.

He tossed the shard and ended up spinning the defunct valve around, seeing how fast he could get it going and how long it would keep spinning. As he watched the wheel spin, he sighed to himself, "This is so childish." His arms spread to the room, "Lookit what you've done, Demon, you've made me so bored you've reduced me to a mere child!" he inhaled through his teeth, "Spinning wheels and flipping levers, playing with the set instead of playing the part."

"Are you not entertained?"

The valve stopped spinning as Joey whirled around to the exit door where the Demon now stood. It had its arms crossed and a hip cocked. "You've never really taken the time to appreciate my playground, and now that you see it, you are not entertained? Because I can say I am certainly entertained by your little... fiddlings. Henry never did anything like this, after all."

Maybe because you were actively trying to kill him, Joey thought.

The Demon sighed and meandered along the wall, lifting its gloved hand and licking something red off of it.

Joey instantly got a bad feeling. His eyes flicked to the door. Had the Demon done something to Henry?

"Oh, this?" the Demon held up its definitely-bloody hand, "I got a bit parched. Wanted something to drink."

It was then the light hit the Demon's teeth, revealing red drops and rivulets on them. Joey's pulse rose and he inched for the door.

"Go ahead, I won't stop you," said the Demon, "Not much you can do, anyway."

Joey bolted. His feet slipped on what he really hoped was ink as he rounded the corner and shot for the throne room. "Henry?" he called, desperately hoping that maybe his friend was still alive.

He spotted the corpse before he was all the way in the room.

Henry's body was still in the chair in relatively the same position Joey had last seen him, with his legs over one side and head bent over the other armrest, but the horrendous amount of blood dripping from his head made Joey hesitate.

He really didn't want to end up retching again, but he also didn't want to leave his friend there. So, doing his best to keep his stomach in place, Joey climbed the cog steps, avoiding the blood as he went until he reached the chair.

It must have been a miracle he didn't throw up right then and there.

The Demon had skinned the top half of Henry's face. Everything above his mouth to his hairline was scraped clean down to the bone. Blood spilled freely down the skull, matting in his hair before dripping to the reel player below.

'Wanted something to drink'? The Demon went to this gruesome an extent just for a drink of blood?

Those dang tears welled up again, though they were more of anger than sadness. Joey knelt by the body, laying a hand on the chest while his other hand balled in a fist and punched the ground as he swore and cursed the Demon.

"Can't curse what's already damned," it mused, casting its cold shadow across Joey's back. Joey didn't look up at it.

"Come now, Drew, look at it this way," it bent down and wiped some fresh blood off the corpse, "Now you won't have to waste time trying to climb all the way back up to the top. Yes, while that might be a plot for later-" it slurped up the blood in its hand, "-now I can just send you right back to the start. Ain't that much easier?"

Joey swore at it. It responded by snatching up Henry's body and biting it in half through the abdomen. The two parts of what remained fell to the ground, spilling viscera and entrails and a lot more blood than Joey thought possible.

His stomach failed. He doubled over and puked on the spot.

The Demon laughed at him, "Weak stomach, ain't cha? I like that. Might play with that." It picked up the upper half of the corpse by the head and looked at it, then turned it to Joey, "Let's go back to places, shall we?"

A vantablack blanket washed out every shape and color and curled around Joey until he could neither move nor see. Eventually, a light appeared and Joey heard himself speak.

"Alright, we're here. Let's see what we can find."

Joey's vision cleared. The entry hall met his eyes. Henry stood to his left.

Joey exhaled sharply.

The script had been revised.

They were back at the beginning.

And they had no choice but to play along.