Satan's Affair

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.

r /> 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.