Helluva Time

He woke up and nearly coughed his lungs out. His throat burned with an odd cinnamon taste. Every breath he took brought more of that contaminated air into his system. He surveyed his surroundings, but it was too dark to see anything. As far as he could feel with his hand, the ground was jagged concrete, like that of an old sidewalk. 

“Get me out!”

“Get me out,” his voice echoed back.

He hastily pulled his shirt collar over his nose in a vain attempt to cut out the bad air. Tears welled up in his eyes against his will. Wait a minute!

“Nobody uses tear gas on Quincy Reynolds, you son of a bitch!”

Then came the snap of someone’s fingers, instantly purging the air of its impurities. For the next ten minutes, Quincy continued to cry and cough. All the while, at least as far as Quincy could tell, a pair of heels clapped against the concrete ground, with each clap followed by a slapping and suction noise, like a couple of bare feet walking about. That didn’t explain the metallic clapping, though.

“You’ve got something to say to me,” wheezed Quincy. “Say it to my face!”

The pair of noises stopped. Quincy’s heavy breathing, the only sound he could now hear, echoed faintly. “You think standing still is gonna scare me?” He asked in vain. “I’m one of the most notorious slashers of all time! You think I didn’t ambush my victims in the dark?” The lack of a response was infuriating. “You’re scared of me! You’re….” The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. 

A hand grabbed his mouth before he realized someone was standing before him. He gagged at the taste of rotten flesh but was too weak to fight back. The fingers felt too slim to belong to a man, at least according to Quincy, so he deduced his captor to be a woman. The hand moved his face from side to side before releasing its grip.

Never one to waste an opportunity, Quincy grabbed his captor’s leg and dug his teeth into leather-covered flesh. Despite the inedible material causing him to gag, he kept at it. There was no blood or any fluid, for that matter, and it was like biting into a rotten apple.

An ice-cold chain wrapped around his neck like a noose, choking him just enough to let go of the leg. Despite the ice burn, he instinctively grabbed the metal noose, but his hands were scorched. “Do you have any idea who I am,” he wheezed.

“Quincy Reynolds,” said the raspy, androgynous voice of his captor. “Whose soul lay trapped in the body of a plastic doll. A body count to rival any self-proclaimed slasher.”

“If you’re a fan, you should’ve just said so,” Quincy choked out. “Want to know a favorite kill of mine?”

“I have little interest in the artistry of your work.” 

The chain around Quincy’s neck vanished. He landed on his feet but had no energy to keep standing, so he fell flat on his face.

“Before you died, you transferred your soul into the body of a little girl’s doll. You remained in this doll for years.”

“Not on purpose,” moaned Quincy. “How the fuck was I supposed to know my nephew was a-”

The foot of his captor slammed into his back. The toes and ball of their right foot were easy to discern, but behind them, a sharp metal stake dug into his flesh. He screamed. Did this nutcase have metal stakes sticking through their heels? 

“Don’t change the subject,” his captor demanded.

“What the Hell are-GAH!” The stake was now poking one of his ribs. “Alright-al-JESUS CHRIST!”

The captor had removed their foot from his back, with no care in how much pulling the stake out would hurt. “Continue.”

“It sucked,” Quincy said through his teeth. “I got periods. FUCKING PERIODS! Do you know how much those suck?!”

“No.”

“Getting shot by the cops was a smoother time.” A blinding light from an unknown source above covered his immediate vicinity. “FUCKING SLUT!” Just behind the cone of golden light was his captor, watching him.

“Forgive me, the dark was no longer suitable for us,” said his captor, who Quincy was now convinced was a woman of some kind. She had a slim body and the unmistakable breasts of a female. Her outfit was bizarre, though. Bits of leather only covered parts of her body. And she did, in fact, have metal stakes in her heels. A leather hood covered her face, which he was grateful for.

Wrapped around her arms was a scarf of her rotted flesh, giving her a sense of elegance that opposed the rest of her appearance. Her steps were deliberate, with no sensual movements to catch Quincy’s eye. Her homemade heels might’ve played a part in that, though.

“We will have plenty of time to explore every facet of your experience. From your first death all the way to your most recent one.”

“Give me one more chance!”

“Your deal with the witch does not carry over to me.” His captor stepped into the light, illuminating her studious face. Two needles stood before her eyes, nearly blocking her irises, each end piercing the skin around them. “Death has given me your soul to do with as I please.

He couldn’t help but close his eyes and look away. “I liked you better when I couldn’t see you.”

“Then our sentiments are shared.”

“Bite me!”

“I don’t like you.”

“That makes two of us,” Quincy said as he got back on his feet.

“When allowed to explore the limitless potential of the flesh, sentient beings flock to what makes them comfortable. Be grateful you have value to me.”

“Just send me to Hell already!” Fire and Brimstone sounded much more accommodating than listening to this BDSM broad prattle on bullshit philosophy. But her captor smiled. Another cold chain wrapped around his neck and forced him off the ground.

“Shall we begin?”