“We’re going to have to kill you”. Tom leapt to his feet, this time neither of the men moved to restrain him.
“What?! No! I’ll do what you want me to do, just tell me what it is! I’ll do anything!”
“No. What my colleague means is, for you to do what we need; we’ll need to kill you”.
Tom went bug eyed briefly then made to run to the door. The blonde man cracked him on the head with the butt of the gun as he tried to get past and he collapsed back down onto the sofa, still shouting incoherently. The taller man walked back from the window and sighed.
“Look, this is going to take rather long time to explain, especially if you keep making all this noise”. He made a complicated symbol in the air; it appeared as if his fingers passed through each other several times. Suddenly the room was quiet, and Tom was mouthing soundlessly. He clutched at his throat, though he could still breathe words refused to form.
“Right then”, the two men sat down again across from Tom, the gun no longer pointed at him. It didn’t matter though; any thought of trying to escape had been pushed from his mind as he continued to mouth futilely.
“You’re going to find what we’re about to tell you hard to believe. Frankly, it doesn’t matter to us one bit whether you believe us or not. You’ll see the truth of it soon enough, and then you’ll have no choice but to do as we ask. As of now, your life is ours; do not think you have any choice in this matter. Serve us well, do as we request and we offer the one thing that has any meaning to you anymore: redemption”.
The man clicked his fingers and Tom found his voice working again.
“Why do I need redemption?”
The man looked surprised. “Because we’re going to kill you. I’m sure I mentioned that”.
The other man sighed and leaned forward. “Look. You are a bad person. You’ve done bad things, and so you’re going to go to hell. Luckily for you, we need something done, so we’re giving you the option to stop it from being a one way trip”.
Jack stared at them then leapt up again, shouting.
“You’re insane! Let me go! I… umph…”
His voice had been taken away again, this time along with his motor functions. His arms fell to his side and he was stuck rigid. Only his eyes still moved, roving around his skull in a panic.
“Like we said, your belief isn’t strictly necessary. For you the end is coming and it’s coming soon. When you see the truth of what we say and realise the only way you’re getting out of it is by following our orders well… You’ll follow them. Now listen”.
Several minutes and some hasty exposition later, and Jack was still unable to move. The men had explained what they needed, and explained who they were. They hadn’t told him why they had picked him, but that seemed like a minor point with his death at the hands of two madmen looming. If Jack could move he would have frowned. What they were telling him was rubbish, no doubt about it. The ravings of two people who’d delved too far into their own insane belief system. …But… They’d clicked their fingers and he’d been unable to talk. He’d spent the last few minutes trying his hardest to move any of his muscles the smallest bit to no avail.
They stopped talking and looked expectantly at Jack.
“So you understand? Roll your eyes clockwise for yes, anti-clockwise for no”.
Jacks eyes rolled around his head predominantly in an anti-clockwise direction until the shorter man punched him hard in the stomach.
“Silly question, of course you don’t understand. But did you hear? I think that should be all that’s important at the moment, the finer details we can probably update you on”.
Jack rolled his eyes clockwise. The punch had hurt.
“Right. Good. Well I guess that’s that then. I’d say any last words, but I don’t want you yelling again so it looks like they’re going to have been “Let me go”. Fairly fitting”. The blonde man stood back, apparently satisfied and the black haired one stepped forward. In his hand was a syringe filled with a dark purple viscous liquid. In response to the question in Jacks eyes that he was unable to vocalise he shrugged.
“It’s ichor. It’s poisonous and it will kill you”. Jack gave one last attempt to move, tensing every muscle in his body simultaneously and trying to heave himself upwards. This translated to a very slight tremor throughout his body. The younger man grinned.
“I felt that one. I was beginning to have my doubts but maybe you’re right. Well, I guess he’s the best of a bad lot anyway”.
The needle was at his arm now, and as it was pushed into his vein and its contents deposited into his blood he felt it course up his arm. It was at once the most agonising and fantastic feeling of his life; he felt he could do anything whilst knowing this was his swan song, he was walking through fire and though it burnt the burning was purifying him even whilst destroying him. His eyes rolled back into his head and with a final spasm his life left his body. The two men looked down at him.
“Think he’ll manage it?” The blonde man asked, glancing up briefly at his companion who shrugged.
“We’re sending him into the furnace. We’re sending him up into an environment expressly designed to break down people like him. He’s extraordinary, no doubt about that, but he’s only human”.
There was a long contemplative silence.
“Well… Mostly human”.
The blonde man smiled.
“Good job we’re going to cheat then”.
Jack was walking out of the bar with his new employer. None of the other patrons had appeared to notice his fit of screaming and no one had asked them to pay. The man turned to him “I’ve explained what you will do. If you do it well, you will be rewarded. If you fail…” The man shrugged. “Well you’ll be mine, and I can be very inventive”.
Jack swallowed then nodded. They turned left, onto a smaller street, then right into a deserted alleyway.
“So how does this work? Are you going to take my soul out or something?”
The man turned to face him and smiled, revealing teeth that looked far too sharp.
“Something like that” he said, reaching forward and tearing out Jack’s throat.
He fell backwards and then when he should have hit the floor he kept on falling. Darkness swirled in front of his eyes, darkness somehow far deeper than mere absence of light. Through the corners of his eyes he kept thinking he could see other people falling with him but they vanished as he tried to look closer. He fell for years, centuries, millennia, against an unchanging backdrop of darkness. Then with no warning he crashed into something, not with the bone crushing speed he should have but hard enough to knock the wind out of him. He rolled over coughing and found himself face down on a sandy floor.
The devil straightened up and took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket. He methodically wiped the blood from his clawed hand then dropped the sodden piece of material into the nearest bin. Leaving the mutilated body lying where it had fallen, he walked quickly around the corner into a dead end alley, walking until he should have hit the wall at the end where he vanished, leaving a nothing but a slight smell of sulphur.