by Deanna Foster
‘Pathe to Death’ stared at Trix on the grey piece of wood. Drawings of skulls, and other warning symbols, surrounded the words. She wouldn’t walk down the path, which was a narrow trail that carved through tall trees, their bare branches clacking together in the chilled winter wind. With twilight approaching, the sign, plus the narrow path that twisted into unknown darkness, should deter people. If she was human, she certainly wouldn’t walk this way.
“What are you doing?” Trix winced at her cousin’s familiar voice behind her. She gripped the hammer in her red hand, her claws digging into the wood, and slowly turned around. Trix shared many features with her older cousin, Celeste. They both had the bright red skin of demons born into the nobility of the realm. But while Trix kept her black hair short, allowing her finger-length horns to poke through, Celeste’s blond hair was piled high on her head. And everything Celeste wore somehow looked stylish. Now, she wore something similar to Trix; a casual top and trousers. Yet it looked elegant on Celeste, and frumpy on Trix.
“Nothing,” Trix snapped. She stood before the sign, hoping Celeste wouldn’t see it, and spun the hammer to make it disappear. But Celeste was taller than Trix, and could easily read over her head.
“Trix…” Celeste sighed. “Are you trying to warn humans to stay away from this path?”
“Maybe,” Trix shrugged. “Is it so wrong if I am? They wander down there, when it looks scary as fuck, and enter the demon realm where our dear aunt, Amara, Queen of Souls, eats their souls. And you know who cleans up that mess?”
“We all know it’s you, Trix.”
“Yea, it’s me. Because my dad was her least favourite brother. So, while you do her nails and hair, I clean up the bodies. Do you have any idea how much is inside a human? When Amara eats their soul, everything explodes. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve had to climb a ladder, and clean blood and brains off that damn crystal chandelier? And her throne is like this far off the ground,” she said, squeezing her thumb and finger together to show a narrow gap. “Which is probably just so she can make me get on my belly and clean out the gunk that gets underneath.”
“Trix, demons don’t say ‘belly.’”
Trix frowned. “I do. And you would too if you were on clean-up duty. For a hundred years, Celeste! Last week it was one hundred and one years of me cleaning up her human messes. I thought, ‘Okay, a hundred years is done, surely she’ll relocate me,’ but no, I’m still cleaning up entrails. So yea, I’m trying to deter humans from coming here. She only needs to eat their souls once a decade to survive. She’s just greedy.”
“Maybe you could try showing initiative, or asking for more responsibility.”
“No, I want the opposite of more work.”
“Well, you could always kill her and take her crown, be the new Queen of Souls.”
Trix snorted. “Are you listening, I want less responsibility. I’m at the Lake of Fire with a pack of hellhounds, and then I get a text saying, ‘Clean-up time.’ I’m at a club, and I get a summons text. And that would be fine, if it wasn’t just to clean up dead bodies. We may be demons, but a hundred years of gross factor is enough.”
Celeste shifted her weight. “The sign isn’t going to work.”
“What are you talking about, of course it will! The path was just scary before, now it’s labelled! Now people know to avoid the path to death.”
“Nope, it will just make humans want to go down it more.”
Trix’s eyes bulged in disbelief. “What?! That’s not possible. It says, ‘This way leads to death.’ Why would more people go?”
“Humans are idiots, especially males. They haven’t lived their life in fear.” She sniffed the air and her black eyes sparkled. “Oh, I can prove it! A human male is approaching.” Celeste spun, and shifted into a human female form. Attractive, in a pair of leggings and a snug winter jacket, Celeste would be able to charm or manipulate many human males.
“No!” Trix seethed.
“Help!” Celeste called in a high, dainty voice. She dropped to the ground. “Get me that rock, we’ll put it by my foot,” she whispered. Trix rolled her eyes.
“No, I’m not helping with this!”
“Oh please, someone!” she called again. She reached over for the rock, but Trix tried to grab it from her.
“Hey, are you okay?” A male voice asked from around the corner. Trix let go of the rock and spun into her human disguise. She stepped away from the rock as the man came into view.
“Oh, thank god!” Celeste said, and Trix did everything she could not to roll her eyes again.
“Hey, what happened?” the man, young, tall, and strong, knelt down to Celeste’s side.
“I tripped over this rock, and hurt my ankle.”
“I’ll help you up,” he said, and lowered down to gently guide Celeste to her feet. On wobbly legs, Celeste placed her hand on his chest with exaggerated affection.
“Thank you so much! My friend isn’t very strong,” she added, nodding to Trix, who crossed her arms and frowned. But his eyes quickly moved past Trix to the sign she had nailed to the tree.
“Path to Death?” he asked, moving away from Celeste to get a better look at the sign. He looked at the two demons. “What do you think is down there?”
Trix’s eyebrows shot up. “Um, death? Because the sign says death?”
“Maybe we should check it out,” he said, making Trix’s jaw drop.
“What?” she asked. Behind the man, Trix watched Celeste smirk.
“Yea, we should check it out, see what they’re hiding.”
“But,” Trix started, “but it says ‘Pathe to Death!’ Why would we deliberately follow a sign that says that?”
The man snorted. “It wouldn’t obviously be death. Besides, look at it. It looks like it was made by a child.”
“That’s a little harsh,” Trix said.
“They didn’t even spell ‘path’ right.”
“Maybe they’re not up on all the human words,” she mumbled.
“And the drawings look like something a kid would do.”
“But you can still see it’s a skull!”
“Maybe, if I squint.”
“You know–”
“Hey, we’re not going to go down some creepy path,” Celeste interrupted, “but you’re free to.”
“You sure?” he asked them.
“I should get some ice on my ankle. But have fun.”
“Okay, cool. Later, ladies!”
“Wait!” Trix cried as he started down the path. “You’re seriously going down a path that says death is at the end?”
“Only one way to find out,” he said, winked, and started down the path. Trix ground her jaw with frustration. She took a step towards him, opened her mouth to scream, but Celeste’s hand clamped over her mouth.
“Let him go,” her cousin whispered.
“He’s going to die!”
“He doesn’t think that’s possible.”
“I’m going to have to clean him up!”
Celeste sighed. “Yea. And I’m going to have to redye Amara’s hair. You know how many times I’ve tried to get her to go black? She insists on blond, but blood stains dyed blond.”
“Fucking selfish, greedy…fucking idiot,” Trix mumbled, the fight leaving her. Her shoulders slumped in defeat.
“Come on,” Celeste said, nudging her. “Get your sign, too, unless you want to clean up even more bodies.”
Trix ripped it off the tree. They started their walk back to the demon realm. “What about a hole?” Trix asked. “What if I dig a giant hole between the human path and the one that leads to our realm? They wouldn’t cross then, would they?”
“Oh Trix, they most certainly would.”
An hour later, back in their demon forms, Trix and Celeste entered the invisible portal to the demon realm at the end of the path. It took them directly to the doors outside the queen’s throne room, which was no accident. Amara wanted humans arriving before her throne room. Curious and excited, they would open the doors only to find the Queen of Soul ready to suck out theirs.
“Hey, when you’re done clean-up, let’s go to Luna’s for a drink,” Celeste offered. Trix nodded as her cousin walked away. The doors to the throne room were slightly ajar, which was Amara’s way of letting Trix know it was time to clean. She spun her hand, pulling her cleaning bucket from her invisible pocket of supplies, and walked inside.
It was worse than usual. Trix didn’t think that was possible. Maybe the soul had held on tighter, maybe Amara had toyed with him first, but the room was completely splattered with everything that made up a human. Crimson blood, white bone shards, grey brain matter, brown…
“Fuck,” Trix breathed.
“Problem?” Trix tensed. In the mess of the room, she hadn’t seen Amara.
“You’re still here,” Trix said, closing the door behind her. Amara stood by the balcony doors, away from most of the mess, her blond hair stained, her red skin glowing with the recent soul. She cut a cruel look at Trix.
“I thought we could have a chat while you’re working.”
“Oh, goodie,” Trix mumbled. As usual, she started with the bigger pieces. She was practiced at walking on the slick blood that covered the floor. If she washed the floors first, she had learned that she would only have to do it again while carrying chunks of still leaking human meat.
“This human mentioned something interesting,” Amara said.
With her back to the queen, Trix rolled her eyes, and didn’t rise to the bait. She collected a handful of bone shards, no bigger than a marble each, and looked for her bucket, which was across the room. She just dropped them in the queen’s empty chalice that rested on the low table in the centre of the room, planning to come back for them. Something landed on her shoulder, and she looked up to see blood dripping off the chandelier she would have to climb a ladder to clean. She picked up what was left of an arm and a few ribs, and made to carry them to her bucket, but the queen was suddenly in the centre of the room before her.
“The human said something about a sign,” Amara said. Trix could smell the sweetness of the soul on Amara’s breath.
“Good for him, being able to read.” Trix said. The queen narrowed her eyes.
“Trix, if I find that you are trying to stop humans from coming here, I’ll–”
“You’ll what?” Trix cut her off. “Give me an even shittier job, just because you hate my dad? How regal and mature of you.”
“Mature?” Amara gave a mirthless laugh. “You want to talk about being mature? You’re a lazy, uninspired malcontent! You’ve never once demonstrated a shred of interest in the royal family, power, our world–”
“Hey, I love our world! I just don’t love you.”
“Well, too bad, because without me, you lose all your royal protection. And that’s why you stay, and clean up my messes, because you know you’d fare far worse in the world without a connection to the royal family.”
The words bit through Trix’s skin. She hated that her aunt was right, and hated even more that she couldn’t refute it.
Amara smirked. She picked up the chalice that held a few bones. Trix braced herself for the contents to be thrown at her. But the queen must not have known it was now a bone receptacle, because she raised it to her lips. “How does the truth taste, Trix?” She took a drink.
Trix bit back a laugh, expecting the queen to spit out the contents. As much as Amara loved the taste of souls, she hated the taste of the human bodies. But she didn’t gag and spit it out. Her eyes suddenly widened. She dropped the cup.
“Your majesty?” Trix asked, concern rippling through her. The queen took a step away from Trix. Her foot slipped on a puddle of blood and she fell backwards, cracking her head on the marble floor.
“Amara?” Trix dropped to her hands and knees by her aunt, who was clawing at her throat. “You’re choking?” Trix asked. “Oh shit, of course you are!” Trix reached for Amara to help, but the queen pointed frantically at the servant cords hanging by the throne.
“I’ll get someone!” Trix cried. Working faster than she ever had, Trix quickly pushed away from her aunt and slipped along the layer of blood to reach the cords. She reached for the servant cord. The servants would know what to do. They would rush in and fix this, letting Trix slip out and away from the problem. Trix grabbed the cord and yanked as hard as she could. Her eyes darted to the door, waiting for the servants to come rushing in. They didn’t.
The chandelier released from the ceiling and crashed to the floor. Trix instinctively covered her face as shards of crystal exploded in every direction. Silence smothered the room. Trix looked out from her arms to see the chandelier had landed on top of the queen, crushing her skull and leaving her dead. Trix looked at the cord, and followed it to the crashed crystal.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” she cried. “I could have lowered that to clean it, but you made me climb up a ladder every time?!”
Priorities, Trix, priorities, her mind screamed at her. Right, the queen is dead. “Oh, fuck,” Trix said, as the doors burst open. Guards and servants, royalty and advisors, rushed the space, alerted by the sound of the crash. Their jaws hung slack. Their black eyes looked from the dead queen, crushed by the chandelier, to the cord that swayed back and forth next to Trix.
Trix swallowed thickly. “Um, ah, you see –”
“You killed the queen,” one of the senior advisors said.
“No, no, I didn’t–”
“You know what that means,” he said, standing tall. All eyes turned to him. Trix’s knees trembled.
“No, please, I can’t…”
“You’re our new queen,” he finished.
Trix winced. It was true. Demon law stated that whoever killed the kings and queens, became them. Which meant that instead of getting less responsibility, she now had more than anyone else.
“Fuck,” Trix breathed. “Just…fuck.”
***
Queen Trix looked out over her kingdom from the throne room balcony. A month had passed since she accidentally killed her aunt, and took the throne. Being queen wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be. At least she didn’t have to clean up any more bodies. And after her first soul, she did dig a hole to stop other humans from wandering into the demon realm to be eaten.
From her viewpoint, she could see that path on the edge of the realm. She looked at the hole approvingly. She was about to turn away when a faint movement caught her eye. Two humans stood on the edge, a long ladder in their hands. They lowered it to cover the hole. And started climbing over it.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” the queen cried.
