Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
ELLISON
When I open my eyes, I see Landon in the chair next to my bed. He lowers his book and smiles at me. “How are you feeling?”
“Acceptable for having my torso cut open and stitched back together,” I say.
“Well… I think that’s good? I’m not quite sure but I’ll say yeah,” he replies as he scoots his chair over. I find myself oddly disappointed that the chair next to him is empty, but why do I even care about that?
I close my eyes, and when I open them again, the chair is filled, but it’s not Asmodeus who sits in it, it’s August.
“You’re stuck here for the night,” Landon says.
“You bled all over Deus and August. They looked like they just got done chopping up a couple of people and then rolling in it. Oh, you’ll like this story.
Before Valerie brought clean clothes for them, August went to get something out of the vending machine where a woman saw him, so I made sure to loudly go, ‘Did you murder our neighbor again?’ August found it less funny than I did. ”
“I’m sure. Was anyone else hurt?”
“Nope. None of us even saw anyone else… who attacked you?” Landon asks.
“I don’t know,” I mutter. “Everything happened so quickly… Where’s Asmodeus?”
“Off in the woods looking for the person who hurt you.”
My eyes widen. “Alone?”
“Of course he’s alone. First, I went with him and was dragged all around as he scrutinized the whole area, and then when we were here, he tried leaving again and I even depantsed him to get him to stay. So then he waited until I couldn’t cause a scene and off he went.”
“Well, tell him to come back. It’s nonsense to be out there alone.”
Landon raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me. You want me to knock some sense into him? HA. Hilarious. August, you hear this man? Clearly, he’s on the best of drugs if he thinks I can talk Deus into shit.”
“Hmm…”
“Even the idea of seeing your tattoos wasn’t enough to get him to stay,” August tells me.
“Here, let’s see if he’ll talk to you,” Landon says. “Because he sure won’t answer when I call.”
He uses my phone, but there’s no answer from the irritating demon worshiper. For all we know, he’s out there having suffered the same fate I did, but without anyone to help him.
I lift my gown, though I can’t see much of my chest from the way it’s wrapped up. There’s not much to see, but everything feels okay.
I close my eyes and Landon seems to assume I’m taking a nap, which is fine. Instead, I envision the place where we spent the past two days camping. The spot where I sat in the chair and watched Asmodeus pester Landon until he put his book away.
The illusion manifests perfectly in the spot I’d sat.
And with my eyes closed, I can almost pretend it’s me out there; it really feels no different.
When I’m inside an illusion, I have no sensitivity to things like heat or cold but I can move freely, and if I put my all into it, I can interact with things.
I turn and look around but I don’t have to look far to find the barrel of a gun pointed at me.
“Saint Beelzebub, you scared me,” Asmodeus grumbles from behind the gun. “I was this close to blowing a hole in your illusion.”
“What the hell are you doing out here?” I ask as he puts his gun away.
“I am figuring out who hurt you, obviously. You must be alive and well if you’re here pestering me?”
“I’m fine,” I say, watching him drop to his hands and knees. It’s an extremely odd… and slightly provocative position. Like… who puts their chest to the ground like that when investigating a scene?
I hastily force myself to look away. “Get back to the hospital.”
“Nah, I’m figuring stuff out. I didn’t know you could do this. You never told us you could place illusions this far away. I assumed you had to see the location where the illusion started. You’re a man of many secrets and many tricks, aren’t you?”
I stare at the man who was born in a literal demon cult and raise an eyebrow. “Why yes, Mr. I Was Born in a Demonic Cult Where They Buried Me in a Coffin, I’m the one with all the secrets.”
“Ha! Illusion Ellison is hilarious.”
“I’m the same person,” I grumble.
“Nah, this one has the jokes. I’ll call him Joker.”
I ignore Asmodeus’s ridiculousness and just breathe a sigh of relief when he suddenly stands up.
“You once claimed your illusions were restricted by distance.”
“I did,” I say.
“Why?” he asks.
“Because when I was tested for them, they were. I learned how to control them from farther distances as I got older… if I admit that, they will retest me.”
“Why would the King of Rules not want to be retested?”
My mind flashes back to my father. “Family reasons.”
“Like?”
“Just… I don’t want attention on myself, alright? So let’s not share it, got it?”
“Sure, sure,” he says. “I’m fully against the testing. Would you like me to dispose of the test altogether?”
“What? No… just…” I sigh.
“Why did you wander away from the group?” he asks.
“I heard something.”
“Nope. If I heard something strange, I would definitely wander away from the group, but everyone else in the group would have alerted the rest of us, including you. Hmm. Fishy. Joker Ellison, you’re being a bit sketch.”
I gape at him in disbelief. “I really didn’t think I wandered that far away from the rest of you, did I? Didn’t you all wander off to look at some deer? I’m not saying we need to pretend none of this ever happened. I’m saying that it would be best if you weren’t out there alone.”
“Well, now I’m not. You’re out here with me.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“If you’re bored, see if Landon will depants you. He depantsed me quite well.”
“I’m already not wearing pants.”
Asmodeus stills for a moment before looking at me. “How interesting.”
“What the fuck is interesting about that? You think they redress people in the OR? There’s like a fashionista in there to finish us up once the doctor is done?”
“I had begun to assume the suit was like a life force. That without it… you would wither away and die a horrible death, and that the person who sliced into you was really trying to see you without a suit on.”
I stare at the man who obviously knows nothing and is trying to get me riled up for absolutely no reason at all. “You…” I grit my teeth, unsure of how to even convey the words I want to say without simply snapping at him.
“Me?”
“Yes… you.”
“Me…”
“Are…”
“Ooh, this is going to be good. Anyone who uses this many pregnant pauses sure knows exactly what they want to say and how to make it hit hard,” he says with a whistle. “What about the person who attacked you?”
“I… I turned around and they were just… there. I jerked back but the pain was immediate. I threw my illusions out almost instantly and then they were gone.”
“How tall were they?”
I try to think back on the person in black. “I guess… nothing out of the ordinary, you know? Not extremely tall or very short or I think I’d have noticed. It happened so damn fast.”
“Hmm…”
He starts to wander off, so I hurry after him before noticing someone entering the hospital room. “The nurse is here. Just… don’t do anything foolish. Better yet, head for the hospital.”
“I hear ya,” he says as I open my eyes. I can still sense the illusion and I’m still aware that I’m following Asmodeus, but my focus is more on the nurse. Especially in my groggy state, it’s hard to follow multiple things at once.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
“I’m good.”
“Fantastic. What level is your pain?”
“Not too bad.”
“That’s not a level,” she says as she points to the chart on the wall.
“A… four.”
“Good, good! And we want to keep it that way, so don’t be afraid to let me know if it begins going up.”
“Okay,” I say as she checks things and informs me they’ll be moving me to my room for the night shortly, but my attention is shifting to Asmodeus who is now climbing a tree.
“Get down from that tree,” I snap. “Your ass crack is hanging out.”
“What tree?” Landon asks.
It takes me a second to realize that the drugs I’m on are fucking with my concentration because I just told the nurse to get out of the tree with her ass crack on display.
I freeze while she stares at me. Landon lets out a squealing noise as he claps a hand over August’s face, like he’s the one laughing up a storm.
Deciding I’ll just fake a coma, I close my eyes.
“Nooo! Ellison, don’t go. I want to know more about this ass crack on a tree. Was it the tree itself that had an ass crack?” Landon asks.
“Are you…” the nurse starts, sounding concerned. I think she believes I’m seeing things or talking incoherently, but nope… no, I am just the fool who forgot to switch over to my illusion before opening my mouth.
“I’m fine, thank you. I was just… using my power and the pain meds… messed with me a bit,” I explain.
Landon basically skids his chair toward me.
It doesn’t even have wheels but he sure makes it fly.
“Excuse me, let me get this straight. You are… using your illusion… somewhere… and are dealing with whose ass crack exactly?” He waggles his eyebrows as the nurse seems to conclude that I’m fine and leaves.
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
“So like… you could be out there doing the nasty and in here pretending to talk to us.”
“That your mind went there identifies the type of person you are,” I decide on, hoping that’ll shame him into shutting up. I should have remembered the kind of person I’m dealing with because he gives no shits.
“So… where is your dirty little illusion, then?” Landon teases.
“Don’t make me hurt myself dealing with you. Better yet, I’m sleeping. Don’t bother me.”
“But are you sleeping or are you actually at some strip club while you leave us here to sob and fret by your bedside?”
“You can go home,” I remind him.
“We are your friends, Ellison, doing friendly things like harassing you and caring for you. You want to hold Zacia? Will that make you feel better?” He sets her in the crook of my arm and then, because I’m apparently not holding her well enough, he forces my arm around her.
She must look cold, since he pulls the blankets off me to swaddle her like she’s the patient and not me.
Her purrs fill the room, giving me no choice but to submit to this extremely chilly position.
I close my eyes and decide I’ll take it out on Asmodeus.
“You made me make a fool of myself,” I inform him.
“Ellison the Fool? There’s no way, but please… tell me how I accomplished it.”
“Because your ass crack is on display and I accidentally announced it to the nurse instead of you.”
Asmodeus is laughing so hard he nearly falls out of the tree. “I wasn’t aware you were enjoying my ass crack so much you wanted to share it with strangers. Would you like me to fix it?”
“Yes, please.”
He pulls his pants down a bit more so there’s even more on display while he continues his climb down from the tree.
“I hope you get a splinter in your ass.”
“Is that what you’re calling it these days? And are you offering to put it there?”
A growl escapes me as I consider what it’d be like to kick him in that ass he’s showing off. “Can you come to the hospital now? What have you found out here? All you’ve done is put yourself at risk for absolutely no reason at all.”
He beams at me. “There’s definitely a reason. And the reason is to figure out who attacked you.”
“What if they’re waiting right outside my hospital room as we speak? What if they’re strangling me while we talk?”
“Landon and August would never let that happen.”
“Landon’s reading a good book. He hasn’t even noticed that someone’s entered the room.”
Asmodeus hesitates, well aware that what I’ve just said really isn’t that farfetched. “You are sadly right…”
“Of course I’m right. I’m always right. I’m—”
Suddenly, pain tears through my head and I begin to fall. Five illusions burst out and I find my mind tumbling full force into another as I grab my head and drop to my knees. “Fuck.” I wave the illusions away, unsure what just happened to push me to another illusion.
Asmodeus spins quickly and rushes to me. “What’s wrong?”
“I think the drugs are making my head hazy. I have to stop, so please come back. I don’t like you out here with no one to watch you.”
I pull the illusion back to myself as I realize I’m grabbing my head in the hospital room and August is standing over me.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” Landon says from where he’s buried in a book.
August pauses before going, “I’m talking to the patient, hon.”
“Huh? What? Did something happen?” he asks.
I’ve discovered that jerking my arms up to grab my head hurts my wounded chest, and I grit my teeth. “I’m fine. I think I pushed myself a bit too much when I’m still fuzzy.”
“Okay. Maybe don’t use your illusions right now and just call Deus with a phone like a normal person?” Landon suggests.
“He doesn’t answer.”
“I guess. I’m going to send him middle-finger emojis until he arrives… ooh la la. Now he’s sending me eggplant emojis. August… I think Deus is trying to show me his penis.”
“Tell him that if he gets his ass out of those woods where it’s not safe, you will glance at it. That’s all you’re allowed. A glance… a peek,” August says… for some reason.
“I don’t wanna.”
“If it gets your friend back here safely—”
“Fine. Just a peek. I’ll take a picture so you can see it too so it’s less awkward. We’ll be penis peeker partners.”
I’m in a dream. That’s all this is… no… a nightmare. Yes. A nightmare.