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Your head felt completely blank for several seconds. Alastor watched you all the while, his attentive eyes unblinking, observing you.

"Wait, I- uh, what?" you stuttered, looking again from Alastor to the city to the trees. More cars were on the road now, you could see them crossing through an intersection nearby, but none of them turned your way. You and Alastor were still standing in the center of the road, where the dirt part of it came to meet the cement. "I'm in... hell?"

"Why, yes. Is that not something you believed in? The heaven and hell controversy? I've heard sooo many ignorant people tell me about how they used to think the afterlife was a lie because there's no scientific evidence to prove it." Alastor slid a grey tongue across his upper row of fangs. "And they ended up here. But you know better than that, don't you?" He said the last question like a statement, like he knew what you would say before you even answered.

You cleared your throat and felt the fog in your head begin to fade. The more you blinked, the faster the dazed feeling washed away. "Yes, I believe hell exists, but-"

"Great! Why don't I show you around?" Alastor sang before wrapping one thin arm around your waist. He kept the other tucked behind his back. That weird, mysterious formal air hung about him like a pungent stench.

Before you could utter a word of protest, Alastor began to walk down the street, pulling you along with him.

The city lights illuminated the path before you as the two of you walked down the sidewalk. Alastor pointed at a few buildings, a club, a bar, another club. Your eyes were drawn to almost everything you saw. One sign above the second club Alastor pointed at—the one he said was great if you planned on taking drugs until you fell into a coma—had a neon pink sign above it with a skull logo and everything. Although you loved a good party, the thought of entering that building made you sick to the stomach. You were sure it was full of more... creatures.

"And over there-" Alastor pointed one thin finger at a tall, slightly tilted to the side building. It had a large stone awning over the massive doors at the center, and somehow, it looked different from all of the other places, but you couldn't pinpoint why. "-is the Happy Hotel. It was made to rehabilitate demons, if you can believe that," he said. You looked at him, just for a second, but in that moment you saw the way his face changed. His eyes seemed to gloss over, and his smile darkened in what you thought was a threatening way as he stared at the Happy Hotel. You felt the arm that was wrapped around your hips tighten.

"Why would demons need to be rehabilitated?" you asked, just because you felt like it was the question he wanted to hear.

Sure enough, your words seemed to snap him out of his odd state and the light in his eyes renewed. "Well, that's a long story." Alastor slid his arm out from under yours and replaced it behind his back. "Hell has been burdened with the problem of overpopulation. Too many people just waste their lives being bad people, I guess," he commented with a low laugh that shivered from deep within his chest and seemed to vibrate the air around you. "Aaaanyway, the beautiful glowing Gods up in heaven decided that it would be a fantastic idea to host yearly exterminations to help lower our dreaded population issue."

He paused, so you began to ask for details, only to be cut off. "Extermi-"

"During each extermination, a set of angels are sent down from heaven to kill off a certain percentage of us, so the population can remain at a stable level. The last one, well, wasn't so fantastic... so Lucifer's daughter, the beloved princess of hell, set up a rehabilitation center so demons could be changed for the better, thus providing heaven with a valid reason to stop the exterminations," he explained. "I do see quite a bit of potential in the place. And that's why I'm helping Charlie."

Charlie must be the princess' name. You wondered how Alastor was helping her with the hotel, but you didn't spend too much time thinking about it. Instead, you smiled nervously, glancing from the hotel to Alastor, who was still grinning.

"I mean, it's a good idea."

"Yes, yes, of course, but what you may not understand yet is that the demons here in hell don't want to be changed for the better. They love the drug-induced lives they live, and when the exterminations come around, all they need to do is hide. Not a problem for them. They don't care about the well being of the community, because they are all selfish." You noticed how Alastor referred to the collective society of demons as "they" instead of "we". Did he not consider himself a demon, or did he just think he was, maybe, at a higher status than the rest of them? You guessed the latter, considering the way he held himself, the way he talked, and also the way he made himself involved in the project the princess of hell was building like he was some important piece of the puzzle and all that.

You looked back at the hotel and blurted out, "Can I meet her?"

His smile glimmered. "The princess?"

"Yeah."

"Well of course, my love," he drawled out before grabbing your wrist and yanking you along with him as he started toward the building, causing you to stumble. You recovered quickly and followed him into the Happy Hotel.

The two of you stepped into the hotel side by side and were greeted by a vast, lobby-like room that was drowning in red. Everything—from the couches, bar counter and stools, to the walls and floors—was covered with the alarming color. You supposed that it made sense, considering that it was hell, and everyone knew that bad things (like hell) were associated with the color red, but at the same time, it felt like too much. The dim lights were easy on your retinas, but they were aching to look at something that wasn't red. And wasn't this supposed to be the happy hotel? Didn't seem like it.

Your eyes were relieved when you saw the pale, blonde girl look up at you. Her and another girl with grey skin and stark white hair were sitting on a couch close by the door. The blonde girl's eyes lit up as she stared you, seemingly paralyzed in shock.

"Hi," you said with a hopefully kind smile. The blonde girl then seemed to jerk to life as she shot up from her seat. Her face remained stony, and you wondered if it was your humane appearance that bothered her. Then you second guessed that thought because she too looked normal, other than the yellow hue in her eyes.

Alastor, who no longer had his firm grip on your wrist, walked between you and the pale girl. "Charlie, this-" he motioned in your direction. "-is (Y/N). I came across her in the road and decided to give her a tour. She's new." He then turned toward you and continued, "(Y/N), this here is Charlie, the elegant princess of this place we call hell, and also the founder of the spectacular corporation you see around you."

You looked around. It didn't seem very spectacular.

"Oh, can it, you fucking creep," the grey-skinned girl mumbled, almost inaudibly. She was still sitting, with her arms crossed tightly over her chest and a pouty look smeared over her face. You noticed how pretty she was, but that almost half of her face was completely covered with a thick layer of bangs that hung down from her head. A fleeting second of eye contact occurred between the two of you before she rolled her eyes dramatically and sank down further into her seat.

Charlie cleared her throat daintily, and when you looked back at her, you noticed that she had taken a couple of steps forward, passing Alastor. She held out one of her pale hands before you. She was dressed in a red tuxedo, with a white shirt underneath and black suspenders on top. A small black bow was strapped around her neck. You also noticed that she wore small heels that added maybe an inch and a half to her height. "Hi! It's great to meet you, (Y/N). Are you planning on becoming a patient here?" she asked, grinning.

Just as you took her hand, your smile widening at the sight of hers, Alastor cut in. "No. She will not be a patient," he said.

The grey-skinned girl huffed. "Let the girl speak for herself."

Alastor only widened his smile. Charlie took a step back, so she was standing near the couch again. You hugged your stomach tightly, beginning to feel sick. You didn't want to be a patient. That sounded like shit—no, worse than shit. A patient of a place in hell? Wouldn't that be like living in an insane asylum or something? Charlie seemed nice enough, so you guessed that she probably didn't treat her patients like they were all messed up. Or maybe she did, because they were all messed up.

You stared at your shoes, thinking. Thinking about the way Alastor seemed to speak for you, the way he kept putting his hands on you while he was leading you through the city. The way Charlie seemed to be so full of life and how opposite the other girl's personality was. How they all gave you an uncanny feeling deep inside of your chest. Especially Alastor.

They were all... demons.

You only realized that all three of them were staring at you when Alastor tapped your shoulder lightly, snapping you out of your daze. You stepped away from Alastor's touch and blinked a few times.

"Uh, what?" you asked meekly, confused.

The grey-skinned girl rolled her eyes again. "Are you a patient, or not." The coldness in her voice was more noticeable than the fact that she had white hair.

"No. I mean, I don't have a reason to be a patient," you said, finally finding your voice. "I just got here. I don't need to be... rehabilitated."

"Did he tell you what we do?" the same girl asked, nodding toward Alastor.

You nodded, wondering what her name was. Something about her made you curious. Charlie must have seen the gears turning in your head. "This is my... girlfriend, Vaggie," she said, gesturing toward the grey-skinned girl. "She's been helping me through this whole project, both emotionally and business-wise."

You felt your heart jump, sensing the opportunity before Charlie even stopped talking. "Is he helping you?"

The look Alastor shot in your direction at that moment made you want to shrink back and disappear. The steady rhythm that your heart had been beating at escalated, fear shooting through your muscles. Instead of physically melting into the ground, you forced yourself to stand straighter.

"Yes," Charlie said at the same time that Vaggie said, "No."

Your eyebrows rose. Alastor's gaze remained trained on you.

Vaggie and Charlie then shared a look. It appeared as if they were speaking telepathically to each other. After Vaggie rolled her eyes, again, and Charlie gave her a reasoning look that said it's-the-right-thing-to-do, Vaggie stood. You pressed your lips tightly together as Vaggie walked over to you, keeping her gloved arms crossed over the place where the grey belt of her pretty white dress looped around her slim waist. As she got closer, you saw that her nose was long and sort of hooked at the end. You observed that the hair over her face wasn't covering her second eye, but a cross over the place where it should be. The one sclera she had was a yellowish pink.

"Let's talk," she said dully before turning away, toward the french doors that Alastor and you had entered only moments ago. "Follow me."

Before you walked through the doors, back into the smoggy outdoors of hell, you turned around one last time, catching Alastor's gaze. His smile had thinned, and weather it was just the distance or not, his irises seemed smaller than before.

"Bye bye, my love," he sang before the door slammed shut behind you.

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