Ascent
or, the Risen and Fallen on the Seventh Floor
by Kirryn Lia Todd
Mephisto was the strangest guest I’d ever had in my life. And despite the insanity, I’d had quite a few. Social workers and some doctors had come in to my apartment over the years, but they hardly counted as guests. (Wender, despite the obligations of being a landlord, had never set foot in the place.) Vincent had been in, when he fixed various electrical appliances for me, and Nutmeg would sometimes glide in for a cup of tea…probably away from the portrait of the redhead, I think. There was my family, too, of course, when they visited, which wasn’t often.
Mephisto perched himself on the arm of my ratty old single-seater sofa, which had seen its share of ups and downs in its time: mysterious stains, not-so-mysterious stains (coffee, mostly — did I mentioned that caffeine and I had a dependent relationship going on?), and a few holes from accidental cigarette burns. It had probably been a bright crimson shade when it had first been upholstered, but was now a rather dull, faded kind of chestnut red. It seemed to suck some kind of radiance out from Mephisto, because when he sat upon it (or half upon it as the case may have been), it looked positively decent. It had been bought second-hand; it probably hadn’t looked anything approaching decent in my lifetime, at least.
“Do you need to sleep?” I asked Mephisto, somewhat hesitantly. I had crept into the bathroom and changed into my pajamas in there; devil or not, he was still male — or at least presented himself as male — and I’m not exactly happy with changing my clothes in male company. Especially if they oozed sensuality, which he certainly did.
“I never sleep,” he replied, watching me crawl beneath my sheets. I felt his gaze drape over me like a bolt of silk, even with my back turned. If I was sane, I would have blushed yet again, but since I wasn’t, I merely felt slightly irritated. I never liked being watched, it turned all my fingers into thumbs and upped the twitching by about 300%.
“Good,” I said. “I don’t have another mattress. So, I guess…well, yeah. But…”
“Yes?”
“What will you do all night? Sit there?”
“Perhaps I could watch television,” he answered, gesturing to the idiot box, leaning against the wall with a short plank of wood atop it — a spare shelf from my bookshelf. It wasn’t doing anything just sitting packed out of the in the laundry, so I hauled it out and put it and the television to good use. A bottle of origami stars, two plush animals, a tin of Cadbury’s drinking chocolate, two angel-shaped terra cotta candle holders, a random can of deodorant, and a small stack of books balanced upon it.
“It’s not plugged in,” I replied, apologetically. “I never watch TV.”
Again, Mephisto’s gaze turned into something akin to a laser beam. I fought against the urge to duck beneath my bedclothes, and only just won by the skin of my teeth.
“You really are the most extraordinary girl,” he murmured, almost below hearing. I had no earthly idea how to respond to that, so I simply squeaked “Good night!” and slammed my eyes closed, tightly. Chances were that he would probably be gone in the morning. Lots of things were that way, for me.