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You pick her because she’s got the look. Round face. Straight, dark hair. Petite, but not strikingly so, just enough to be non-intimidating. Twenty one at the oldest. Sexy, but not actually memorable. A secretary Barbie-doll. Understated eye-candy.
Her clothes won’t do, though. You slip in and you can feel it. Her pink sweater is cheap, with sequins. Her jeans are fraying at the knees. Her shoes pinch your toes, and worse, they’re faux-leather. Embarrassing.
It will take more than this to buy a soul.
After buying all her Christmas presents, her bank account has a cool two hundred dollars in it. You know off the top of your head, because you’re her, now. Not even worth draining. You hop on the bus instead. Where you’re going, you can tell them to put it on the King’s tab.
-
It’s so charming, how with enough money humans can manage to make the forty first floor feel cozy. Dark curtains hide the windows. The whole shop is scented slightly with cigar smoke - clearly an intentional perfume, as this particular brand, (you sniff again just to make sure), this particular brand hasn’t actually been popular among the rich and famous since 1995. You like it, though. It’s just a little floral. It smells better through your current nose than the last girl’s.
Obsequious flunkies usher you into the back. They don’t pick their bodies to look like this. Someone else picks them. The man is slender and a solid 5’10 - just short enough to make any man feel like a man, without being noticeable. His hair has a softening cowlick - the buzzword is “approachable.” The woman is, hilariously, exactly your height. She’s blonde, but dirty-blonde, with a tasteful curl. Hair just to her shoulders, and very slightly buck teeth - not chosen to be fuckable like you. Meant to be adorable. Comforting. Her tits are still high and round, though, ready to be pinched if a client wishes.
The woman gets you naked. She doesn’t look scandalized by the casual way you strip for her, everything off for a better fit. She touches your breasts with businesslike fingers, whips a measuring tape along your collarbone and then just above your pussy lips (you aren’t even shaved). You let the host wake up a little. Feel your body being touched. Feel you being looked at. The fear and violation that thrills through your body leaves a flush, delicate heat on the skin, cheek to chest. The woman dutifully ignores it.
You put the girl you're in way, way under. She's a liability.
They do you up in charcoal gray. A pencil skirt just slightly out of fashion, and jacket to match. Don’t want to be too cutting edge. The skirt hugs your hips slightly more than is strictly professional, but a man won’t notice that. He’ll only notice how it makes him feel .
You leave your panties on the floor of the shop. A secret weapon.
The elevator down makes your ears pop, and you learn you have a weak stomach - that’s a minus. You press a hand to your abdomen… oh, the involuntary reactions are already yours. This body is so open to you. You like the texture of your belly. Soft, with a tiny overhang even though you’re slender. Nice to feel. Goes well with your curves.
This time on the bus, you’re out of place. You’re going to have to walk six blocks once you get off, because the bus doesn’t actually stop where you’re going. People are assumed not to need it.
Your kitten heels thunk on the carpeted metal floor. It reverberates a little.
-
A light snow has begun to fall. You lean, casually, against the wall. Two buildings over is your target. You don’t want to be spotted before he comes. You don’t bother putting your back to a wall. He will always, somehow, find a way to arrive behind you.
And indeed he does. You are alerted to his presence with a little cough from behind you. An old-man-saying-excuse-me-in-the-library type of sound. Unassuming. You don’t turn, it shows a weakness of character.
“What’s a nice young lady like you doing in a place like this?” asks the King.
His eyes go up your body. Down again. A single nod. There are little seltzer bubbles beneath your skin as you fall into step behind him, just at his shoulder. Little notebook in hand. A PA like any other. You’ve done well.
He doesn’t even glance at the reception desk when they walk into the building. Just right to the elevator.
The man they’re meeting is, in the King’s words, no one special. Another fraudster, in too deep. It only requires his personal attention because the man was brought in by one of the King’s brokers, a human on a string. But this is the first time you’ve been the King’s personal attention. This man is special to you .
Gary Watts. Mid level hedge fund trader. Embezzled an embarrassingly small three million from his company, and is now feeling the hot breath of the feds on his heels. Wife and kids at home, but the real deciding factor is that he would be too embarrassed to admit to his dad that he’s going to jail. That’s what’ll make him do it.
But oh, he’ll squirm the whole time.
-
It’s a show of power, how the King always introduces himself as Crowley. No lies, no obfuscations. There is no one who can touch him, and so no reason to hide.
Watts calls him Mr. Crowley with a sneer in his voice. Then as he realizes that the King is really here to help, he calls him Mr. Crowley with an unctuous conspiratoriality. As though he and the King are each about to take a cut of the same pie. You contemplate ripping his eyes out as you push your chest forward, thrusting your tits into his consciousness.
You watch the back of Watts’ balding head in the mirror behind him. A single bead of sweat drips down. You uncross your legs, spread them open a little. Make sure he can see the eggwhite-wet glint between your legs. You wish you’d had time to shave your pussy before you got here. Give him the bona fide porno experience. You clench on air, and he flinches. He can definitely see. You don’t smile.
The King was right. It’s easy peasy, most of the way. This guy isn’t special, he just has something he wants and has no idea what he’s paying to get it.
There’s only one moment when he wavers.
You’re already halfway to making your move, across the desk and draped across his lap, when he freezes.
“So you’re saying… forever.”
“Yes.” The King’s annoyance doesn’t show, because he’s a professional. He’s giving just enough guile to be believable, but more than enough friendliness that Watts knows the King is still on his side.
“ Forever forever.”
This isn’t how Watts is supposed to be thinking.
“Do you really want to go to jail instead?”
You wriggle on his lap, turning. Straddling him. You need to get the blood away from his head. Your pussy plays good cop, throbbing hot against his slacks. Your body reminds him how good ten years can be as the King reminds him what he has to be afraid of.
“I give you six months, tops, before someone a lot less nice than me is here in your office.”
You can feel Watts’ bulge growing against you, and you hear a little gasp in his voice as he says:
“Alright, fine.”
“What was that?” says the King.
“Yes. I said yes, I agree. The deal is on.”
“Lovely,” says the King, and you surge forward, almost on instinct, pressing your lips to Watts’.
You never get tired of this. There’s nothing like it. The burning of a contract in your belly. Pressing into a human soul, touching it, feeling it thrum and shiver. It almost makes you black out.
The only thing better is the way the King winks at you in that little mirror.
"Merry Christmas," he says, as you swallow Watts' tongue.
-
The King’s hand on your shoulder makes you jump as you both walk down the sidewalk.
“Good work,” he says. You feel a flush creeping up your collarbone. “Come meet me downstairs. Bring me… bring me Alexandre.”
You stop in your tracks. There are no footsteps behind you. You whip around, and the King is gone.
Well. Your weak stomach is an asset now. It clenches and twists as you vomit yourself onto the pavement, and drop down into the earth below.
-
Alexandre . Alexandre is one of the prettyboys the King keeps on ice. His favorites. When Felicity hears your request, her vessel pales. You’re moving up in the world.
The bath Felicity runs is perfumed, and only lukewarm. She waves a hand to four of her boys, and they file out. You learn they went to the freezer when they come back with a wrapped bundle, suspiciously six feet long.
It’s canvas, bound with straps. Cold, not icy, it’s been in the freezer but kept dry. The metal buckles bite your hands as you undo them, though, and the leather creaks as the belts unwind. Two of Felicity’s boys take opposite corners of the canvas and begin to reveal what’s inside.
Alexandre is beautiful. You see, now. Even with the hard blue ice crystals dotting his skin, he’s striking. Skin tanned gold. Big liquid dark eyes under a soft looking tumble of brown curls. A regal, slightly hooked nose above small, plush lips. Rangy muscle in the limbs and an effortlessly lithe torso. You get it.
Felicity’s boys dump him into the bath, and you dump yourself into him. You can’t let this one rot, even for a moment. Even during defrost. This is one of the King’s favorites.
It hurts. Obviously it hurts. There are little ice crystals shooting through your cells, rupturing each wall into delicate lace, and it’s all coming back online anyway. Of course it hurts. That isn’t the hard part. You’re a demon. Everything hurts.
What’s hard is that you have to keep still. Not a twitch. Not a muscle. No gasps, no spasms, no microsaccades. You have to let yourself melt, and you can’t wreck this body by letting those little microscopic knives of ice tear through it.
Except. Except, oh no. No no. This body is already damaged. The nerves. The brain. Wait-
Oh. That isn’t freeze damage at all. As it defrosts, your skull begins to slosh. Just a little. Alexandre’s brain has been liquefied. Sulfuric acid, precisely applied, has destroyed his hippocampus and his frontal lobe. Wiping them out utterly. There are none of the usual impressions you can get from a corpse. You can’t feel what it’s like to be him. No half-thoughts, no snatches of memory. No vague outline of a soul. Alexandre has been emptied out, obliterated. No demon could find out anything from him now.
As your body warms, paradoxically, you begin to shiver. The ice crystals no longer pose a danger, now that you have gone from “frozen” to “end stage hypothermia.” Lavender and Jasmine drifts around you in a cloud, covering over your natural brimstone, and you grab for the faucet with a violently shaking hand. A yank starts scalding water pouring into the tub. You’re looking to get to ninety eight point six before Hell freezes over.
-
It’s interesting, puppeting each nerve. You’re used to using the brain as a control center, at least mostly, but it’s almost entirely out of commission. In theory, you can feel the softness of the robe against your skin, but processing the signal using your own atrophied mind takes so much effort it’s mostly not worth it. Besides, you’re too busy making sure you can sway your hips as you walk down the corridor. The level of math involved in compensating for gravity is… fascinating. You’re sure you must look like a marionette.
Juliet and Growley sit at attention, one on each side of the door to Crowley’s private rooms. You’ve never been here. Most demons haven’t. This isn’t the throne room. It’s easier, somehow, to look at them, now that you’re processing the images manually. Seeing everything as it comes in instead of relying on your mind to do it for you. You can see their edges clearer. It makes you less sick.
You think you sway your hips as you walk inside, but perhaps it’s more of a stumble. You put out a hand to stabilize yourself and you catch… you catch a christmas tree. With tinsel and baubles and lights, the whole nine yards. Funny.
Your stomach cramps. You gave yourself an enema of hundred and thirty degree water before you set out down these hallways. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but you want to be loose and hot. To feel good. This is your big break.
It’s not like Hell, not at all. You process still images of the room and it’s… cozy. Open plan living room. A flash of pastel-tiled kitchen. A plush couch with a glass table. Some kind of hanging art piece with big spinny bits in lieu of a chandelier.
The King is there.
He’s in an armchair, and it isn’t his throne, but it might as well be. It’s tall, a little imposing. Bigger than the other chairs. More central, with a view of the room. Hard to sneak up on.
You try to sit on the chair opposite, but “sit on” becomes “collapse into.” You. You blush, somehow, wrecked blood vessels still dilating even as you are plucking the symphony of neurons yourself. It’s an instinct that comes from you and not your body.
“At a rgi t aw alld o bay,” says the King. And you need to. To process. To bring your ears online.
I think you did well today. Is what he said. Your blush deepens. You want to say- wait. You haven’t tried using this body to speak yet. Haven’t even opened its mouth, really. Swing up, swing down, you give a jerky nod.
The King’s voice is still garbled, but you're pretty sure the next thing he says is we need to talk about your work , except you only have a maybe eighty percent confidence in the word work. You feel sweat drip down your chest from the walk. Somewhere far away, steam hisses. The infernal machinery of Hell chugs on. A distant background sound of screams so faint that the human ear naturally tunes them out. Are both your eyes pointing in the same direction? There’s pain on your skin somewhere, or maybe itching? The King is speaking, but you aren't listening, your senses pressing in with a cacophony of data and you can't sort through what matters.
But you can feel his hand on your arm. You can assist as he tugs at you, moves you, pulls your strings until you’re straddling his lap. And when he says show me what you showed Mr. Watts, you understand that. You can do that.
You let the robe slip off your shoulders, naked above him. Displaying yourself. His hands are on your hips, and you want.
You hook a finger under his tie and oh you can feel all the warp threads go past as you tug it off. Each button on his shirt is an ocean of smooth plastic.
You think about blacking out, and drop your head onto his shoulder. Each hair of his beard scrapes against your ear, and you want that again. You had occasionally wondered why the King was so attached to one body but you can feel it under your hands, the softness and the thrum of power beneath, the thick hair across his chest and the dark glare of his eyes. You could lick the sweat from his fat rolls. You want to.
Your cock is leaking against him. You’re not hard on purpose, just hard.
He’s hard too. Thick against you through his slacks, and you want him inside. There’s no contract here, no hunger you can sate with the fire of a deal, just an empty pit in you.
You tug at his fly, at his boxers. Pull his dick out. Let it in.
You understand, now. Why he wipes his fucktoys. This is power. And this is experience. It’s something other than what you’ve known before. It’s you he’s fucking, not Alexandre, every raw, frayed nerve. You're real. You can’t not clench down on him as the humiliation and terror sets in. To have him in your body, taking you, fucking you, to feel him. His hands tighten on your hips as yours clutch at his shirt.
Getting something you want. The role reversal takes your breath away.
Merry Christmas.
