Cupidity

You ever have one of those days, where everything is going as expected? Your alarm doesn’t wake you up, you drop your mascara brush half a dozen times retouching the leftovers from last night. You’re late for work, your clothes haven’t been washed in two shifts or so. Your bra is pretty but one of the straps on your heels is starting to give way. Your boss is mad but he won’t fire you because he loves you. Your customers are already drunk but that’s how it always goes.

And you’re halfway done dealing with them…

And then a demon kidnaps you?

Now, Willow had never been kidnapped by a demon before. But admittedly she had lived through more than a few such unexpected days…

Mom left. Someone stole the car. An attempted rapist bit the bullet. And the cat ran away to China. China! Of all places…

Wandering about in this ‘horde house’ was not so very different from wandering around in her empty old apartment. Coping with the aftermath of one of Life’s bitch slaps. Wondering if Mom was going to be okay. How long it would take to afford a new car. If the cat had remembered to pack a lunch for the plane because airport food is expensive…

Actually, who was she kidding?

This was far more interesting.

It actually qualified for top ten most fascinating days of her life.

This… house… well it was more like a cavern. A mammoth cave glimmering and shimmering intrigue of the supernatural. Like exploring an interactive museum but magical. Taking a field trip to another universe, a true vacation from reality. Space exploration micro-sized and world domination conceptualized. It was a totem to the ancients, a memorial to humanity.

Everywhere she looked there were mountains upon mountains of gold. She was treading on a path paved silver and garnished with precious jewels glittering with a seeming light of their own. There were paintings and statues. Fancy clothes and fine jewelry. Entire supermarkets and a weather pattern of cash floating lazily about on its own whims through the maze.

Enormous.

Stretching endless.

An entire world of its own.

Stealing her breath away with each step and every shiver.

And she jumped clear out of her heels when Sable appeared behind her with a poorly timed, “Boo.”

What is this place?

“Like I said, it’s my horde house. It’s another dimension. It’s not on earth but in earth. Amazing, isn’t it?”

Right… is this the original Mona Lisa? Willow gestured to the painting and cocked her eyebrow.

“Yep. Snagged that one off the art thief who stole it from-“

Willow punched Mona Lisa right in her smug ugly face.

“Ah! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! Oh my Satan, Lucifer falling!” Sable was catching the painting from its tumble off the hook and trying to smooth out the mutilated tatters of its old-ass peelings, “In hell’s name! Why…”

You came to get me out, right?

“You can’t just barge in and start vandalizing my collection!”

I didn’t barge in, you put me here! Besides, it’s not like you paid for any of it.

“Oh you little…! When I, if you! Satan help me, I’m going to burn you a thousand times over in a vat of boiling acid, you little runt!” Sable seemed to be puffing up like a big offended balloon, “What the fuck is your problem?! Why would you… how could you… this is horrifying! I’m going to stretch you on the rack and cut you till there’s nothing but the bone! And then I’m gonna-”

-No you won’t. You’re not going to do any of that- Willow found that if she focused on Sable and zoned in on each word of her thought process… he was incapable of ignoring her.

Which. Was. Awesome.

-Holy shit I can communicate! And I don’t have to write or type or make gestures or remember my ASL from high school or anything like that! I can just think. And it will be conversation. And he can’t make me stop thinking without killing me. And he can’t kill me until he’s finished whatever he wants with me! So… Sable… you might have unwittingly created a monster.

Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of a babbling mute! Aren’t you excited? This is great! Fantastic, even! I’m sorry I shot you but I mean in my defense you were sort of attacking me and all in all it’s not very nice to meddle about in people’s thinking without them knowing or wanting. But I never dreamed in all my wildest fantasies that maybe one day, someday, anyhow, another person could understand me without the use of a whiteboard!-

The lava flow of cognitions interrupted his rage with a wave of ceaseless irritation. Pounding through his thick skull and glazing his eyes over with a vague sort unamused reconsideration. His lips quirked to the side with an impatient scowl and his nose wrinkled in distaste.

Willow just continued prodding cheekily at his heartbreak: If you were going to kill me, you would have done so already. And if you were going to torture me, you wouldn’t have let me go about freely in your whore house.

“Horde house!”

It’s not even a house!

“You’re not even a person!”

Well at least I have my own body.

Sable just glared at her and dropped the painting in disgust.

Sauntering around the weaves and curves of his ever abounding collection. Ignoring her. Blocking her out. Stretching the time span of decades. Centuries. Eons. Millennia. It was timeless and Willow could hardly blink for fear of discovering that there was in fact no door and no way out. Leaving her stuck with Sable in here for eternity. Communication or no communication.

That would be detrimentally inconvenient…

Some kind of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey: Demon Style’ or some shit.

Yuck. Not a good time.

At least in his somber mourning of the Mona Lisa’s demise, he looked somewhat less reptilian and somewhat more childish. Kind of like a big goofy toddler wearing his daddy’s glasses and pouting over the vegetables he didn’t want to eat. The fire in those black eyes had dimmed a bit, rising and falling steadily through the ignitions and extinguishes of a candle flame.

Rather than nauseous or nervous or you know, fearful for her soul…

Willow just sort of felt bad about punching his painting. Like dropping her mother’s favorite vase or smashing a sibling’s Lego tower, it didn’t sit quite right in the back of her mind amongst the anger and the shock of her kidnapping.

But she did want to get out of here.

And he was looking to need some encouragement…

It was right about then. In the revelations. That Willow recognized the fact that Sable was naked.

Well that was an exaggeration.

He was wearing boxers and the white undershirt he’d slipped under the serpent flannel from earlier. And he had tuned out Willow’s ceaseless brain clatter in favor of the intense scrutiny of a librarian.

Narrowing his eyebrows here, running a finger over bookshelves there. Bringing forth and then pushing back a plethora of different treasures. From solid gold toolboxes to ornately silvered bookshelves lined by equally ornate pages. He was nibbling his lip contemplatively over a reasonably attractive pout.

What… are… you… looking… for… Willow tilted her head beneath his gaze and beamed: the treasures are pretty but your new pet has to go potty.

“Mhm.” Sable flinched back from her touch on his arm. Actually singed. Burnt hair and broiled flesh tinging the atmosphere with the stink of gore. Matching the tattered remains of his t-shirt with the cauterized remnants of a bicep. He looked more peeved than pained, “I’m looking for a way to remedy that precise scenario, little miss talkative.”

It’s not every day a woman meets a man who can totally and completely understand her, Willow winked. Swirled flirtatiously away and danced absentmindedly through the treasure. Trying on a necklace here, throwing on a bracelet there. She bubbled and floated throughout the space on wings of her own. Stretching her arms wide for the bottomless sky and raking her fingers through rivers of coins the smoothness of a waterfall.

She felt very much like a pretty princess.

Although if Sable were the dragon, she couldn’t count on some white knight in shining armor riding in to save her ass.

Nobody actually cared about Willow. She had no friends. No decent acquaintances. No allies or regulars whose memories weren’t fogged by the detriment of booze. People in Myrefall disappear on a regular basis anyway, and when she stopped paying rent her landlord would just clean up the place and start fresh with a new resident. Her mom had departed when she was sixteen. And the cat had apparently gone to China.

So that left Willow, Sable, and whatever reason he had for hording her in the first place…