“Mortis, shush!” I reprimand, slapping away his hand. His hand retreats, but I know it’s going to come creeping back up my thigh in just a moment.
Mortis is the neediest out of the bunch, though you wouldn’t know it unless he wanted you to. It’s because he has severe Mommy issues. She was a crack addict when pregnant with him, and when he was born, she ignored his existence almost completely. Up until she overdosed, and he got put in the system at a young age.
The other four have similar childhoods. All with fucked up parents that abused them in one way or another. Baine was abused sexually—his father had a penchant for oral sex. He’s never said it, but I think that’s why he starves himself. He has a weird relationship with putting anything in his mouth, even if it’s food. He’s the only one out of the bunch that won’t go down on me, and I’ve never pushed him to.
Considering Cronus is mute, I’ve never heard his story from him. I know he’s capable of speaking—he just refuses to. I looked into him once before and saw that his mother locked him in a closet when he was young and refused to let him out for months. He went silent after screaming for his mother until he lost his voice and hasn’t spoken since.
Jackal and Timothy grew up in the foster care system since as long as they could remember. Moving from house to house—one abuser to the next. They’ve told me stories about their experiences in some of the foster homes, and they nearly brought me to tears.
We’ve all been deprived of love and find plenty of it in each other.
My dollhouse has been settled into its new resting spot in Houston, Texas, and the fair will open soon. Mortis has been feeling me up all fucking day, trying to fuck me when I’m trying to focus. I have the feeling he’s going to call the rest of my henchmen in soon to try and relax me. They know when they gang up on me, all their cocks surrounding me—I can’t resist.
I don’t need that distraction right now. What I need is to focus.
There’s been times I’ve come to a city and haven’t been able to sense evil at all in the guests who arrive. I know they’re out there, but something kept them away from me. Kept them from walking into their deserved fate.
Those days are the worst. It’s a day wasted, no walking evil to be rid of. Still tainting this Earth with their rot. I always plead to our creator, why did you let them get away? Why let scum continue to live and breathe another day?
It feels like parasites are crawling beneath my skin when those days come to pass. Which is why I’ve made it my mission to make sure the evil comes to me. I can’t risk letting the demons slip away. If I do, they’ll continue to taint this world with their filth.
I think back to the latest demon I killed, how his girlfriend was hanging on him when they walked through my house. Her roses would’ve wilted and crumbled from the tar he surely would’ve spread on her petals.
Just like Mommy’s did when Daddy tainted her with his sins.
I need to prevent that. This world deserves to be pure. Mommy deserved to stay pure, too. And even though she’ll never get to experience it, her flowers wilted so I could be born into this world and create a new world—one without evil.
During the day, the houses are shut down and the dressed-up monsters walk the fairgrounds. They scare the little kids, chase after the adults and send them running towards whatever money-sucking machine they reach first. Whether it’s an ATM or a credit card terminal that grants them access to greasy food and endless tickets.
I like to explore during the day, sniffing out the immoral ones in the crowd. On a good day, I get overwhelmed by the amount of black souls walking this Earth. I can’t kill them all, but I try my best to lure them towards my dollhouse.
Usually I just approach them, doing my job and scaring them. They laugh and smile, while I shudder from my need to execute them. I adorn an innocent face and tell them to come play with me in my dollhouse. I make promises of how fun it’ll be, a wicked smile on my face. That, I don’t have to fake.
Most times, it works like a charm.
Then when night falls, I eagerly wait within the walls. Annie’s Playhouse only allows up to ten people to come through at a time, that way my house doesn’t become overcrowded. It grants me all the time I need to watch each guest closely, following them for a bit while I decide if their souls are tainted or not before moving onto the next.
I don’t know all the sins that dirty a soul. The obvious rape or murdering someone for nothing else than one’s own gain or pleasure will taint a soul. But I don’t believe all of the demons have committed such heinous crimes. Some are smarter, keeping their darkness deep within. Some might peruse the dark web, jacking off to child porn or reading cookbooks on how to grill human meat. Some of them take their pleasures in other species, fucking animals and recording it. The ones that don’t fuck them usually kill them. Innocent animals succumbed to torture because there’s a sickness residing in humans.
Or maybe they don’t do any of those things, but just simply desire to. Afterall, every crime begins with an innocent thought—a simple desire that’s nothing more than a kink or a what if. Until those desires evolve and become actions.
There are surely a million different reasons, and I don’t care to figure them all out. They all smell the same. Rotten and evil. Just like the pure tend to have sweet or nature scents. The flowers are my favorite—they’re the purest.
I’ve noticed the decrepit souls as far back as I can remember. Mommy and Daddy were members of the Saintly Baptist Church. Daddy loved to bring in people to worship his word, citing that he’s God’s disciple and his word carries power.
People believed him. Thousands of people believed him. He became their God. At night, when Mommy would go to sleep, I’d wake up to the sounds of screams. I’d sneak out of the room, tiptoe down the hall and see several naked people in the room with Daddy, pleasuring him. From what I saw, he never returned the favors—at least not really. He’d let men and women pleasure him with their mouths and then ride him while he just took the pleasure like a greedy fucking sloth.
When I had asked him why he lets all of these people do those things to him, he had said that the fluids in his body were God’s nectar, and the only way to truly bless people with God is by them draining the fluids from him, in whatever form they chose.
I wasn’t so sure that was true, but I didn’t argue. I knew even then it was pointless.
Daddy smelled like rotten eggs. So did a lot of the people in our Church, draining him of his nectar. But I didn’t understand that I was shown these things for a purpose—to eradicate these demons. At the time, I was too worried about Mommy and her increasingly depleting body. She turned into nothing but skin and bones, an empty shell of a woman who had little left in her but her aching soul.
Mommy smelled like black roses. Daddy tainted her, and her petals started to wilt and decay.
I lost her when I didn’t have to. If she would’ve removed us from that evil Church with an even worse dictator, we could’ve had a happy life. I suppose her death wasn’t all in vain—it gave me my purpose in life. If I can just extinguish all the evil, then I can finally live in a pure world with my flower garden of people.
Huffing, I stand up and glare down at Mortis. He’s been needy today. I don’t like needy.
“What is wrong with you today?” I hiss, putting my hands on my hips.
“You’re on edge,” he says, his voice monotone. Mortis never speaks with much inflection in his voice. “I want to calm you down.”
I sneer. “The only thing that’s going to calm me down is catching another demon. You should know that by now.”
He just stares at me, his face blank and lifeless.
Growling, I whip around and storm out of the house. No one has arrived yet for the haunted houses, which I’m thankful for. I don’t like interacting with the others. They’re terrible actors, dirty up my house, and then leave their messes for me to clean up later.
During the Halloween season, I live in the house. I don’t like to leave, should an opportunity arise for a cleansing and I need to act quickly. My henchmen will leave with the rest of the crew at the end of the day, and then sneak back in after the fair closes.
Once I’ve cast my judgement and my henchmen separate the demon from whoever they came with, I’ll pressure point them until they’re unconscious, tie them up, and keep duct tape over their mouths. Whatever screams and noise they make once they wake up blends in with the screams of terror from the guests. I make sure they’re unconscious when the staff are shutting down the place, but once everyone is gone, they are moved back into my playroom.
Normal people—the ones who occupy this world without contributing much to it—they wouldn’t understand. Whether they’re pure or not, murder is wrong in their eyes, even if it’s justified. It doesn’t matter that I do this for them.
They’re just weak.
Stepping out of my house, I inhale deeply. Greasy food, mud, and fabricated scents waft towards me, filling my senses first. It takes me a minute to adjust to the distracting odors and differentiate the smell of people’s souls apart from their perfumes and the surrounding aromas.
I wander the fairgrounds; the crunch of brittle grass blades a soothing sound beneath my thin white slippers. My feet itch from the little pinpricks from the grass, but I don’t mind. I steal a pack of cotton candy when the vendor isn’t looking and trounce off with my treat. I happily pluck sweet, sugary fluffs from the cone and plop them in my mouth as I observe the guests.
Already I’m picking up on the stench. With so many people packing the grounds, it takes me awhile to pinpoint the exact source. Moving towards the stench, I continue to observe while I continuously inhale, much like a K9 with paraphernalia.
The smell is definitely rotten. I wriggle my nose, stopping mid-step to sniff out the direction. Someone knocks into my shoulder, jolting me forward and knocking my cotton candy out of my hand. I watch the cloud of sugar roll across the filthy ground, picking up mud and grass.
I frown, deep sadness swirling in the pit of my stomach.
The girl turns, her eyes wide. “I’m so sorry,” she rushes out. She’s got pretty white-blonde hair and brown eyes with beautiful porcelain skin.
She’d be real fun to cut up.
I glare at her and step into her space. She freezes, flinching away from me when I put my nose to her neck and inhale deeply.
“Dude, what the fuck?” she bursts, snapping out of her stupor and stumbling away. “Did you just fucking smell me?” she asks incredulously, staring at me like I’m a creep. My dark brown hair is piled into high pigtails, sloppy red lips and my face painted to look like a doll’s glass face is cracking must look creepy.
My eyes nearly roll when I pick up her sweet aroma. She smells like daisies.
“You smell good,” I answer, smiling so she’s not mad at me anymore. I’m not mad at her anymore, and she’s the one that ruined my cotton candy.
Her friend, who was standing behind her, walks up beside my little daisy. She’s also staring at me like I’m a freak.
I don’t like that. I just was trying to make sure she wasn’t rotten.
“Do you not understand personal space?” her friend snaps. Her orange hair is frizzing, and too many freckles cover her face. I sniff her, too. She smells like poppies. I like her smell, and if I didn’t want to preserve the good people in this world, I’d try to bottle her smell. Maybe soaking her flesh for a little while to see if that’ll collect the scent.
“You’re at a haunted fair. Get used to the creepiness,” I retort. When they just stare at me, seemingly at a loss for words, I give them a wide toothy smile and continue walking. They’ll probably stay away from the dollhouse now, but that’s okay. My dollhouse is meant to trap the bad people in the world.
I prance off, getting sucked into the crowd. I feel their lingering, nasty glares and it hurts my feelings. I freeze again, mid-step, remembering my cotton candy is stuck in the mud. Tears spring to my eyes and I frown deeply. I really liked that cotton candy. It was a pretty pink color, just like my pretty pink knife and pretty pink dollhouse.
I’m not happy. I’m not happy at all.
Stomping through the crowd, I no longer care to be polite. The daisy and poppy girls ruined my whole day. They really, really hurt my feelings. Anger begins to curdle in my stomach, replacing the hurt with rage.
“This is why you don’t have friends, Sibel. You’re a freak and everyone can see it. God has seen the illness in your brain and made sure everyone else can see it, too.”
Fuck what God thinks. I had said it then, too, and Daddy forced my hand on a hot stove for it. The scar from that isn’t physical, but I feel it in my sick brain.
The potent fury rises, building in my chest and climbing to my throat. My hand trembles with the need to curl a knife in my fist and plunge it deep into someone’s throat. I long to hear the gurgling as they choke on their blood. Their dull eyes, wide with fear. I can almost see their lives flashing in their dilated irises.
I ache for it.
Curling my fist tight to abate the shaking, I focus on the smell.
My fiery eyes search the crowd, the rotten odor growing stronger as I plunge through people. One girl pushes me after I shove past her. I stumble, righting myself just before my face plants into the ground.
I’m so angry, and it’s starting to make people notice me. I don’t want Management to catch wind of the angry doll pushing people around. It’s just… I just wanted this to be a good day!
Huffing and storming off before I do something silly like kill someone in cold blood, I rush back towards my dollhouse. My anger is overwhelming me, and I can no longer concentrate.
Killing someone without a good reason would be a sin. Most people don’t have the guts to do what I do, serve this world the way I do. But to kill an innocent person? I don’t even want to consider it.
I storm back into the house. Dusk is approaching, which means staff will start trickling in my dollhouse, preparing for when the doors open. I need to hide. I turn towards the small door hidden in the corner of the room, hidden behind a life-sized doll. With the house being cast in darkness and flickering lights, no one has noticed it thus far. I make sure to cut out the doors in the walls in precise locations, as to not draw the eye.
Quickly climbing in, I shut the door gently behind me. It’s eerie inside the walls, but I’ve grown accustomed to them. Haunted houses aren’t built like normal housing. They’re not meant to sustain life, and long ago, I discovered that they create large gaps in between the walls when building them. They do this on purpose so they can hide the wiring and mechanisms but make it accessible if something breaks. In all my time here, I’ve only had one electrician come in my space to fix a power outage in one of the rooms.
When I pick a new haunted house, I puncture holes in the walls to access my own tunnel system, and then carefully place peepholes in every room and hallway for when it’s time to cast my judgement. In the end, this is where I end up spending the majority of my time during operating hours.
I don’t mind the seclusion. It gives me time to myself, to relax and focus on all the ways I’m going to fuck my henchmen in the demon’s blood that dare enter my house.
I slide my pretty knife out of my white nightgown, just to bring me some type of peace in the midst of the raging storm in my head. My dresses are gaudy and frilly, but I love dressing up in them. Plenty of doll costumes are provided to the staff, all I need to do is take what I want and leave the rest for them to pick through.
Wooden beams cut through my pathway. There are dim LED strips that line the bottom of the walls, lighting the path for any electricians who need to walk through here. It provides the perfect amount of lighting without being bright enough to cast any of my shadows through the cracks in the walls.
In every nook and cranny in the tunnels, spiders spin their webs. I wouldn’t dare swipe them down. I love spiders. I love what they stand for. Predators—no matter who or what you are. They’re viewed as dangerous and something to be feared.
I’d want to be a spider. I’d love for my house to symbolize them one year so I can dress up as a spider queen and sink my teeth into a sinner’s throat. My anger abates as I fantasize, and the juncture between my thighs grows slick.
I quietly make way through the hallways, climbing up the stairs they put inside the walls. The haunted house will be opening within the hour. Already I can hear other employees showing up, most already adorned in their full costumes, giggling about all the things they’re going to do to scare people.
In the walls, I hear all kinds of conversations I’m not supposed to be privy to. Most of the time, I don’t bother listening. I’m not concerned with other’s trivial drama and concerns. Who fucked whose boyfriend. But one of the girl’s conversations catches my attention as I’m passing one of the bedrooms.
I pause, and creep closer towards the wall.
“He’s coming to visit me tonight, but I really don’t know if I want him to,” the girl says. It takes a moment to register that she’s crying. Seeking out the small hole to peer into the room, I put my eye to the hole and look around.
The girls are in the bathroom, ignoring the mannequin in the shower that’s being electrocuted by the running water. They haven’t turned on the noise effect yet, otherwise the mannequin would be screaming its head off and overpowering their conversation.
The girl crying is Jennifer. A tall blonde that has always been super sweet. She’s dressed in her costume. White painted body, with black rimmed eyes and a shredded dress. She looks demonic, but she smells like roses.
Jennifer is speaking to another coworker of ours, Sarah. Sarah smells like grass to me. Not appealing, but not evil either. She’s one of the drama starters in my house. She’s always tossing her mousey brown hair over her shoulder and rolling her eyes at people.
And I guarantee the minute Jennifer is done complaining to her, she’s going to run off and repeat every single word she heard.
She’s a bitch, but not evil.
“Why?” Sarah asks, resting a pale hand on Jennifer’s shoulder. Sarah’s also dressed up like a little doll, though her face is painted to look pretty. She’s supposed to fool guests into thinking she’s harmless until she opens her mouth and reveals razor-sharp teeth.
Her costume is a metaphor for her personality, I’ve noticed.
“Last night,” Jennifer starts, looking a tad nervous. “I got really drunk. And I don’t remember much, but I think Gary had sex with me when I asked him not to.”
Sarah gasps, her eyes widening and hand flying over her mouth in shock. I curl my lip, disgusted with what I just heard.
“He, like, raped you?” Sarah breathes behind her hand.
Another tear tracks down Jennifer’s face. She bites her bottom lip and nods her head.
“Yeah,” she chokes out. “I think so. I only remember bits and pieces, but he definitely had sex with me and I…” she trails over, a sob wracking her throat and cutting off her sentence. I step closer, molding myself to the wall as if that’s going to offer her any comfort.
Sarah places a comforting hand on Jennifer’s arm. “It’s okay, Jenny, you can tell me,” she assures.
Jennifer sniffles, wiping snot from her nose. Her costume paint comes off with it. “I r-remember telling him to stop. Like, several times. I think I tried even pushing him away because I didn’t feel good. I remember him pinning my arms down and telling me to shut up when I kept asking him to stop. And he wouldn’t!” she ends her sentence on a wail, dropping her face into her hands. Sarah wraps herself around Jennifer, holding her close as Jennifer continues to sob into her hands.
I take a step back, my breath short as black thoughts swirl in my head. Jennifer was raped by her boyfriend. Only someone evil could do something like that.
My thoughts spiral into a deep abyss. She said he was coming here tonight. Her rapist boyfriend will be in my house. And I…
I will cleanse this world again tonight. And set Jennifer free.
