Ascent
or, the Risen and Fallen on the Seventh Floor
by Kirryn Lia Todd
I was suddenly in possession of my voice, and I was screaming, screaming myself into injury, almost — my throat was on fire but I didn’t stop, couldn’t, probably. I thrashed and kicked and moved, banishing the paralysation and getting hit with a (second?) rush of adrenaline, which entered my veins and made me feel sick. I didn’t stop screaming. I couldn’t see a thing. I wanted to vomit.
Someone’s arms were tightening around me. When I realised this, I struggled, and hard. Vision was returning to me slowly, splotches of light and darkness blurring in and out. I hit and pushed away, but the arms wouldn’t let go.
“No! Don’t! Don’t do it! I’m telling you to stop! Stop! STOP! No! NO!”
“Shut up.” Someone’s voice. “Calm down, listen to the music, listen to the music…”
The music?
My screaming died in my throat, and I could hear Killian’s guitar — although now faltering — and I gasped for breath. I opened my eyes wide, they swam with tears which fled down my face. I hadn’t realised that I had been clutching at…
Mephisto?
“Listen to the music, listen to the music,” he murmured in my ear, holding my head to his shoulder with his right hand while keeping his left arm tight around me, limiting my movement. “Listen to the music.”
“I can’t hear it,” I said, the words rushing out as a heavy sob. I noticed I was trembling like a leaf in a storm. “I can’t hear any of it!”
“Yes, you can,” his velvet voice wrapped around me tighter than his arm. “Listen.”
“It’s stopping,” I wailed in response.
“If you’re aware it’s stopping, then you are aware of hearing it at some point,” he replied in turn. “Something you can’t hear can’t stop.”
I burst into tears. This seemed like the only sensible course of action, for the present moment. It also seemed a suitable bridge from the state of raging half-asleep terrified lunatic to still-groggy just-woken-up nightmare-ee. Eventually the tears would stop, and a lot sooner than a case of the screaming out-of-controls would. I knew this from experience.
I pulled away from Mephisto and wiped my face with the sleeve of my pajama top — fairly inelegant, but I didn’t trust my knees not to buckle if I got up and moved across the apartment to find my tissues. I looked at the devil, who gazed back at me, calmly.
“You’re still here,” I said.
“I am,” he replied.
“I guess you weren’t a hallucination, then. Or if you are, you’re an extremely long lasting one. I’m sorry about your suit.” The shoulder of his fine suit had been cried on rather heartily. Very poetic, but raw silk and water did not go together very well. Mephisto glanced at it, then waved his left hand over the stain. It disappeared.
“Nothing to worry about,” he said. “A particularly nasty dream?”
The details of the dream itself were fading, even if the memory of the intense fear were not. “Didn’t you give it to me?”
He clicked his tongue and shook his head, mock-disappointed. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. We start with the stereotyping very early on in our relationship, I see. I am saddened.”
“You’re a demon.” I pointed out the obvious.
“Yes,” he replied, and raised a finely upswept brow at me while keeping his smile perfectly mischievous. “I incite many things, but bad dreams are not one of them.”
“Many things like what?”
“Drinking, smoking, dancing to rock and roll music, certain kinds of intimidation, pop culture, and also spending large amounts of money that you either don’t have, or isn’t yours.” I giggled, and he smiled, that curiously smug serpentine smile. “Nightmares belong to humans. I have my place, I rarely step out of it.”
“Why are you here, with me?” I asked. “I do smoke…sometimes I drink–”
“Martinis?”
“Never had a martini in my life,” I answered, honestly. He looked a little disappointed. “Okay, I dance. I don’t know if I’m intimidating. I don’t know much about pop culture ’cause I don’t have a TV.”
“It’s right over there.”
“I told you last night. It’s not plugged in, I never watch it. Hm, what else did you say you ruled over?”
“Spending large amounts of money that isn’t yours, or you currently don’t have.”
“Oh, that,” I said, with a nod. “Yeah…I kind of do that a lot. Well, not all the time, but sometimes. When the mood comes and goes, and it does that a lot. The amount of times I’ve been charged overdrawn fees by my stupid bank would bore you to death, I’m telling you. So I guess…four out of six…ain’t bad?”
“It’s only a bit over sixty-four per cent,” he answered, with the same mock-sigh as before. “I certain have been lax where you are concerned, haven’t I?”
“Are you here to corrupt me?” I pulled myself into a cross-legged position, looking at him curiously where he was seated on the edge of my bed. He didn’t look like he’d slept at all. He was as immaculately put together as he had been last night, when I first saw him. Seeing him closer was quite a trip — he was terribly, terribly beautiful. It seems ridiculous and perhaps kind of dumb to say that Mephisto, a demon, looked beautiful, but he certainly was. I could have been happy just staring at his face for some hours on end. But, of course, that could have just been me, as well.
“I’m here to–”
There was a knock on my door, it startled me back into fear. My heart began pounding ninety to the dozen yet again, and my flight instinct pushed in on me from all sides. Flight to where, though? I wasn’t like I could hide under the bed.
“Aren’t you going to answer the door?” Mephisto asked. He looked amused.
“How am I going to explain you?” I hissed.
“Oh, is that the problem? You needn’t worry about that. Whoever’s on the other side won’t see me.”
“Won’t…see you?” I blinked.
He nodded. “So go ahead, there’s no chance of anyone thinking anything…inappropriate.” His smile was inappropriate. I was flabbergasted, and still spooked, but I crept to the door and opened it a crack.
“Hello…?”
“Elouise, love, are you all right?” It was Vincent, from 7E, looking a touch worried.
“Oh!” I opened it wider. This was no enemy.
Vincent was a nice man, nicer than you’d usually find here at the hotel. He reminded me a lot of Nutmeg, although he wasn’t as well-spoken as her, nor quite as well-groomed, and he didn’t possess her savage beauty. (There again, I’d never seen anyone in the world who was beautiful in the way Nutmeg was. Well, I hadn’t before Mephisto appeared in my apartment, anyway.) He was usually quiet, and kept to himself, but he was very kind. Much like the other people on my floor, he had sort of adopted me. That kind of thing always puzzled me; I’d been here at the hotel for longer than anyone else on the seventh floor, yet I found myself constantly being taken under the wings of the other residents. True, they were usually always older than me, but still. Nutmeg said it was because there was something fragile and frail about me, something unpredictable. I didn’t see it, personally.
Vincent looked out for me. I think it was because he missed his daughters, and I looked young enough to be his daughter. He was still nursing the various wounds that came from a messy divorce; he hadn’t been granted custody of his three girls. That had been the worst injury anyone could have inflicted on him, and I think his ex-wife knew that all too well. That didn’t explain why he was here at the hotel, though. One day I had asked him, on a day I was feeling particularly okay and could ask questions like that. He had smiled at me, very sadly.
“The word divorce, Elouise,” he said to me, “Comes from a Latin root meaning ‘to rip a man’s testicles out via his wallet’.”
I didn’t ask any more questions after that, not with the sadness and the regret that was rippling through Vincent. It wasn’t just monetary, I knew that. So I’d simply poured him another glass of his bad Canadian whiskey, and raised my own glass to a better world. He laughed, then, and agreed.
“I’m…am I all right?” I repeated Vincent’s question back to him stupidly. I wasn’t sure what would have made him think otherwise. He looked even more worried, now.
“I apologise if I’m nosing around, but I heard you screaming. I just thought I should check up on you, just in case…”
“Oh!” Realisation takes its sweet time with me, sometimes. Especially if there’s a devil sitting on my bed, watching me with a grin I can feel, even if I can’t see it. “Oh, that! I had a nightmare. I couldn’t…when I woke up I wasn’t sure if…but I’m okay now. It’s gone.”
“Oh,” Vincent’s worry smoothed itself into a smile. “That’s good to know, then. You can never be too careful, you know…”
“…not around here,” I finished. That made him laugh, and he waved over his shoulder as he returned to his apartment and I closed the door. I leaned my back against it, exhaling, and looked at Mephisto, whose face was still painted with sardonic amusement.
“He couldn’t see you.” Again, pointing out the obvious.
“Not even my shadow,” Mephisto replied.
“Why not?”
Mephisto stretched out his long legs, and looked thoughtful. “People tend to only see me when they’re certain they will see me. Many, many evangelical preachers see me, and quite often…”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Perhaps that’s for the best,” he replied. Was it just me, or did he seem strangely sorrowful for a handful of moments? The emotion flickered over his face like a candle flame in a draft, and then was gone so quickly I wasn’t even sure that I had seen or felt it. Did demons get sad, the way humans did? I was fairly sure I had gone to a Christian primary school for a nominal amount of time when I was younger, but most of the memories I have of my life before twelve or thirteen years old are so murky and indistinct I hardly even know if they’re my memories…or if they’re memories at all. Maybe I made them up, or read about them somewhere, or something like that.
Mephisto rose from my bed and looked at me, curiously. I blinked under his gaze.
“What?”
“Before, when you were having that nightmare. I was shaking you until your teeth rattled, but you wouldn’t wake up…until I commanded you to listen to the music.” I blushed. I had no idea why, but I blushed. Mephisto, of course, didn’t miss that, and his more mischievous smile returned to his face. “I see…this was the music you were speaking of, the prior evening?”
“Killian,” I mumbled. I stared at the floor, I still didn’t have the faintest idea why my face was aflame all of a sudden. “It’s a person called Killian playing that guitar. Killian Lanois.”
“You know him?” I didn’t even have to look up to know what kind of smile was on the demon’s lips, but I couldn’t rise to the taunt — his question had brought my problem back into the forefront of my mind. I frowned, shaking my head.
“Yes. No. I don’t…Nutmeg says that I do, but I…”
Mephisto tilted his head and raised an eyebrow in question, a weirdly human gesture. I shrugged helplessly.
“I don’t remember. I woke up and I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember? You don’t remember what?
“The last twelve months. I mean, I know they happened.” I pointed to the little calendar held precariously to my fridge with a couple of magnets that were losing their stick. “See? That calendar. It’s November. The last I remember it being was about late October. Last year.”
Mephisto seemed to take a moment to fully digest that. I didn’t blame him, really.
“You could have always accidentally moved the calendar forward…” he hedged, eventually. I shook my head again, impatiently.
“Tell me the date, then!”
He looked at me expressionlessly for a heartbeat, then sighed. “It’s the seventh of November. 20–.”
“You see?”
“And yet…you know time has passed.”
“Yes! I did things, I know I did. Some things have changed, and I know why they’ve changed, but I can’t remember…and anyway! The rent’s all paid! Wender’s a jackass about the rent, he would have thrown me out if I didn’t pay the rent! So last year happened, I just, I can’t remember…it was like I wasn’t here! Like I was asleep! I’m crazy, but I’m not crazy about this, and–”
“Hush, hush hush,” Mephisto soothed, putting his hands on my shoulders reassuringly. “I believe you, Elouise.”
Well, that tore it.
Sometimes words are like aloe vera lotion, I think — you smooth them on and they take away the stinging feeling of…anything, really. Other people’s words, your own, life’s grazing circumstances, words that are unsaid but felt. Sometimes words can be like a hit of opiates straight into your bloodstream. My point was that, I hadn’t known words like that for the longest time. Not words directed towards me, anyway. Words like “I believe you”, well, when you’re crazy, they’re worth more than a handful of gold. I just stared at Mephisto wildly. I suppose a normal girl would have started crying at the surge of emotion that was pulling me under in that instance, but firstly, we all know where I am on the normal scale, and secondly, even before everything had twisted and turned into something else, I had never been the type to cry when I was happy.
But it wasn’t even that I was happy. I was…complicated. It had been a long time since anyone believed anything I’d said or claimed if it had differed even slightly from the norm. The fact that a demon (who I secretly still harboured my doubts about being a real person…demon…thing…and not a very complicated hallucination) was the first person in years to do so just made the entire situation even crazier. But it was wonderful, at the same time. Too wonderful for words.
And that, I realised, was the kind of thinking that probably sent me mad in the first place. (Good or bad, rise and fall? Who really knew the truth…)
“Lost time, hm,” Mephisto was saying. He didn’t take his eyes away from mine, as if he was trying to peer past my eyes and into my mind, to try and untangle what it was, exactly, that caused the last twelve months to happen, but not happen at the same time. I suppose it should have been unnerving, but perhaps my brain was just too hopelessly tangled for even a demon to get through. I didn’t feel there was any danger. Admittedly, I was still reeling from his words earlier.
“Very strange,” Mephisto murmured, a small line appearing between his eyebrows. “Very strange, indeed.”
“But you believe me?” I asked, hoping that the desperation didn’t show in my voice.
“Oh, yes, without a doubt,” the demon answered with a little wave of his hand, as if this was perfectly obvious and should be taken as fact. “The big question is, why exactly have the last twelve months, did you say? Why have they escaped you.”
“I don’t know,” I said, quietly.
“I don’t expect you to know,” Mephisto chuckled. “But, I suppose now I have an answer to your previous question.”
“My previous question?”
“Yes. Why I’m here. And I am here,” the demon said, firmly, “To find out what happened to you over the last year.”