I have to work to get myself through the doorway. It's an ordeal to stand; it takes effort to follow the sliver of light coming from behind the mirror door without tripping over the bodies of my doppelgangers or otherwise falling over. I have to put in the elbow grease to get to that point. The shattered glass from the mirrors sliced apart by the chainsaw bite into my feet.

The room beyond the door is bright and lavish. It's decorated in reds and golds. Tall red marble columns with throbbing veins of gold that reach up to the vaulted ceiling. There is a painting that looks like a window to a Boschian Hell on the far side of the room, next to a painting of a clown with a grimacing smile that stretches up toward its ears and eyes. Upon a second look, I realize that neither of these frames hold paintings. Both of them are windows. Both of them show me what is happening on the other side of the wall. It's Hell. I can tell. It's hell.

The columns line a room that is more like a long hall. At one end is a set of large double doors with built-in chains. At the other is a throne made of that same red and gold marble, constructed with chains, bones, and spots of literal fire. The seat is as big as a card table.

Seated atop the throne is the biggest, most casually imposing woman I have ever seen-- and that's including the head nurse at the hospital my mother works at, who terrifies me. This woman is at least nine and a half feet tall, with bright white skin and gold horns that curl like a ram's and slick back like a pompadour hairstyle. The top of her dress is cut like a halter top the queen of England would wear if she were cool, and the skirt is thin, with a slit up its side, stopping just above her hip. It clings to every curve on her body; her legs are crossed one over the other, bare in the slit of the dress.

In one hand, she holds a staff topped with a human skull. In the other, she holds thick black chains with menacingly-large links. I follow them to their end and find Doug, in that partial-demon form from last night. He is shackled and kneeling like he's praying before bedtime. His head is bowed.

I stumble into the room, bracing myself against the glass door, the wall, and whatever columns I can get my shaking hands on. There are more important things than looking cool, which I probably couldn't do anyway because of the blood leaking through the Angela Baker outfit I'm still stuck in. I want my own clothes back. I want my blood to get back into my body. I don't want to think about the implications of Doug being chained up like that. The possibilities are endless. I think I get what's going on, though. It's not a sex thing, I don't think. Rather, I'm leaning toward the thought that this woman, the woman on the throne, who holds his chains, is keeping him hostage. This is the reason he was acting so off earlier-- or, at least, part of it.

The woman on the throne smiles. Her teeth are dark and sharp. "Mikey. Darling. Welcome home."

"Excuse me? This doesn't look like Florida to me," I reply. I'm filled with instant regret. Apparently, I'm incapable of doing anything with any sense of decorum. No wonder anger has become my go-to emotion over the past few weeks. No wonder it's so easy for people to manipulate me to that reaction, for me to manipulate myself in the same direction.

She laughs, though. I guess what I said didn't harm her perception of me. With a shake of her head, she corrects, "No, my sweet pea. I mean to Hell."

"Oh. Is that where we are?" This looks nothing like the glimpse of Hell I got earlier, in the portal Mikey 2 was taken through. This is more ornate, more polished, more refined. There is significantly less torture happening in here, and less screaming. I guess there is that odd window on the other side of the room. I should have known. I should have put two and two together.

She smiles. There's something about the way she calls me dear and darling and sweet pea and every other pet name that makes my blood simultaneously run cold and boil. Her smile is full of burnt sugar and sickly-sweet cordial when she bares those sharp teeth and replies, "It is. It always has been. And now you are here, with us, where you belong. Are you ready to free your father and take his place?"

My reaction is one of pure confusion. My mind shuts down for a second. I can't process what that means. It's an endless trail of question marks. That's all that remains there, in the folds of my brain. It runs through every wrinkle and I am left in the middle of it, my brain rebooting like its little fan is overheating. "What?"

"Did he not tell you?" She feigns concern. It quickly melts into a wicked smile.

Doug very specifically isn't looking at me. His eyes are on the ground. Is it shame or triumph that makes me ignore my presence? Maybe it's both.

I look away from my father in disgust. If he can't look me in the eye while he betrays me, then I have no obligation to look at him. I think I'm starting to understand what's happening here. "So it was all a lie, then? I'm not here to get a glamour or whatever so I can go back to living a normal life? Which is all I wanted? Doug brought me here to trade myself for him?" I shut my mouth before I can wonder out loud even more and dig my hole even deeper. I'm already drowning in enough dirt as it is.

"What's happening here?" I whisper, looking at Doug. His eyes are still on the ground. "Please. Come on. Tell me the truth. Did you really just bring me here to trade my soul for yours?"

"You got us." Jeb pipes up. He leans against the side of Lady Istremid's throne.

Doug bows his head in shame. At least he has the good sense to seem like he feels some sort of remorse. Jeb doesn't. Especially when his grin grows wider and he continues, "There was no test. You didn't have to be tested, and nothing had to be calibrated. We just did that for a spot of fun."

"Are you joking?" The wounds on my chest throb as I yell. "So what was the point of all this? Why the fuck am I here?"

"Simple-- we're torturing you."

And it all clicks into place. Fighting Mikey 2 and the weird emotions in the aftermath were just another form of torture. The on-stage animatronic malfunctions weren't errors or mishaps. They were supposed to happen. The slashers being me, the distorted nature of my reflection, the ever-present scent of my least favorite foods-- it was all for the express purpose of driving me up the wall, of forcing me into situations of both psychological and physical torture. All the questions, the wondering, the panic, the fear-- all of it wasn't to test me, but to provide some sick, twisted sort of entertainment.

But what if it goes deeper than that? Was Doug in on this? Was estranging me from Roux a part of the plan?

I look at Doug. "Is all of this true?"

He doesn't answer. I can't tell if he's faking shame, if he's manipulating me or not, or if there is something else happening behind his eyes, but he nods and my heart sinks to the floor.

"I can't believe this," I breathe, trying to get the air to go into my lungs when it won't. When did breathing get so hard? When did my stomach turn on me, sabotage my diaphragm, and threaten to revolt? It's hard to get air to go into my lungs. "Was all of this a lie? Were you manipulating me the whole time?"

Jeb grins, then looks back up at the woman on the throne. She's just as gigantic as ever, looming over all three of us, and I can't help but shiver as Jeb looks at her in glee, admiration, and a little bit of lust.

"Permission to project, my lady?" Jeb asks, a little too excited at the prospect. When she nods, he scuttles across the floor, grabs me by the shoulder, and presses a finger into one of the smaller chainsaw wounds there. I scream. I squirm in pure agony, whimpering and trying to get away. That doesn't stop him. He hooks me by that wound and drags me across the room to where Doug is. Then he throws me to the ground.

I land on my ass and slide backwards. I end up next to Doug on the red-and-gold marble. I don't want to sit by him, but I'm too shocked not to and too wounded to move away from him. I try to position myself so that I'm not capable of seeing him. It doesn't work. I look pointedly away from him, but he's still in my peripheral vision. Jeb produces light from his hands and projects it in front of him. There's almost a mist in the air that forms some sort of screen.

Jeb looks horrific. His body turns into a mix between a Moviola and a man. More accurately, he looks like an old-fashioned film projector, the kind you would see at the back of a 1950s science fiction horror double-feature. His head thins and compresses, turning inky black at the neck. Melting film drips onto the collar of his shirt and seeps into the fabric of his pants. Underneath, his skin seems to be an ever-moving mass of film depicting souls screaming in agony and that same inky, red-black goo. Somehow, he is bothered by none of this. Somehow, he seems more free than he did just a few minutes ago.

I try to look away. I don't want to see this. I don't want to see him turn into something horrific, something straight out of hell. I watch with a morbid curiosity as he turns into this thing that is simultaneously him and not him.

Projected in the air, I see snippets of our journey from home to here. I see it from a third-person point of view outside of myself. I see Doug looking at a message on his phone in the back seat of the car before suggesting that we go to that stupid clown motel. I see him shuddering involuntarily as he suggests that we stop at the Headless Horseman Diner. I see him adjusting the GPS so that we end up on that road in the first place. Every step of the way, every time there has been something that went wrong and sideways, it was Doug. It was always Doug. At the orders of Jeb and someone named Lady Courtney Istremid, he ruined everything. (I would assume that Lady Istremid is the woman on the throne. That means that she knew I was going to end up here, that I was always going to end up here.)

And then I see the beginning. Roux and I are at the park, walking up to the concessions stand during the intermission of the double feature. The line wraps around the porta-potties. Someone comes out of one, someone nondescript and entirely forgettable. He stumbles into me, shoving a hand into my shoulder in the process, and I fell over into the mud. At the time, I had no idea who he was.

And it was Doug.

I didn't realize it then, but I realize it now. He planted something on my shoulder blade when he pushed me over. I can't believe I didn't notice. Right now, in this little chamber of hell, I reach under the collar of my shirt and touch my scapula. I can tell that there's something there. It's burned into my skin.It turns my stomach to even think about it. I want to scream. The thought that something had been done to my body, without my knowledge... It's enough to make me want to puke.

"I-- How could you? What the hell is your problem?" I look at him with squinting eyes and disgust on my lips. It spills out of me in rancid waves.

"Hell is his problem!" Jeb laughs in his mid-1950s broadcasting voice. It comes from somewhere in his throat cavity, through a gap in the film and muck. It's obscured and muffled by those two same things.

"Shut up, Jeb. I don't want to hear it from you. I want to hear it from him." I look at Doug again. He still isn't looking at me. The disgust leaches into my voice once again. "Did you do that? Were you really manipulating us this entire time? No, not us. Roux saw through you the entire time. They saw through your bullshit from the beginning. Were you manipulating me the whole time? Am I even your daughter?"

"You are!" He sounds wounded, like he's the one being hurt by all this. "And I did! You think that I'm not ashamed? You think I'm proud of this?"

"You'd better be! Dammit!" I stand up, keeping all the groans and pain inside of me, like that's going to help anything. "What the fuck? Fuck you. You're a cowardly little bitch and you should have just told me you were in trouble instead of fabricating this entire situation. You didn't have to turn me into-- into this!" I gesture toward my body and my horns, trying to accurately convey the horror I've been feeling off and on throughout my time with Doug.

"Well. Let's get this transition of ownership over with, kids!" Jeb claps, holding his hands like a grandfather reaching for a baby. In the time I had been looking at Doug and not at him, he had turned back into the human version of himself, albeit with a bunch of black ink on his neck that he was wiping away with a handkerchief and some chopped-up film where his pocket square should have been. "No! What? Are you joking? I'm not going to get chained up and stay here with this demon woman. And I'm betting that she's, what, Ozun's wife? That it's all connected? What the fuck? Why do you even need me? What's my purpose in all this? Fuck!"

"Your purpose is... more than you would ever be able to comprehend." Lady Istremid, lounging and gesticulating on her throne, smiles down at me.

"How are you even on the level of a lord?" I wonder, even though it really doesn't matter. I'll do anything to buy myself more time to think of what to do next. "You weren't born in Hell-- unless Doug was lying to me when he told me the story of how you ended up here, too. It doesn't make sense in terms of, like, demonology or whatever. I'm no King James or anything, don't get me wrong, but it just doesn't make any sense. At all."

"It doesn't have to make sense to you," she says, rolling her eyes, "just to me and those beneath me. Know that those above me, those who were born here, those who would have me dead if I ever misstepped... They condone who and what I am. They allow me to call myself what I do. They allow me to make my own small rules, to write my own contracts. They don't care nearly as much as you think they do."

She adjusts herself on the throne and leans in. Now uncomfortably close to me, she lowers her voice and says, "That's why we're here, after all. You know, I used to be a lawyer, back in the eighties. Your father was so enamored by my breasts-- like most men are-- that he didn't care to read the fine print. You would think that a demon who thrives on manipulation would have done so, but no. Just like all men, he didn't think before objectifying me. He just signed. All that was on his mind was sex. All that's on any man's mind is sex."

"I don't mean to interrupt, but that's patently false." I definitely interrupt her. I want to know the truth, sure, but I don't want to sit through her own personal circlejerk while she says things I know to be untrue.

"What, that I tricked your father and his boss into signing away their reigning places in Hell? Because I definitely did that."

"No, that all men are sex-obsessed."

"Oh, let's not get pedantic, honeybun."

"No, I'm serious."

I can't put it into words, but I think that what she's saying is wrong. It's not right, at the very least. I know that, in all honesty, to say that all men are sex-obsessed and to insinuate that they can not control themselves buys into a certain type of biological essentialism. It's wrong to stereotype men like that. It's wrong to think that they can't control themselves, because they can. They just need to learn to do so. To act like they can't is honestly just as bad as saying that little girls need to cover their shoulders so old men don't sexualize them. That's not right. That's not just. They're two sides of the same coin. It's antifeminist to act like men can't control themselves. Because they can. Objectively, they can. I know that. I can't put it into words, though. If I could, I know they wouldn't come out of me correctly.

"And I don't care." She laughs, and it comes out dry and cocky. "I'm Courtney Berry, I'm Lady Courtney Istremid, the greatest lawyer that ever lived. I'm living proof that the future is female. I'm working my way through Hell. You think I give a shit? Absolutely not. I just want my liberation. Is that too much to ask?"

Before I can go off on some long-winded rant about how everything she believes in is bullshit (and how saying that the 'future is female' rubs me the wrong way because of the cisnormative implications of it and the rise of white, girlboss feminism), she waves a hand to make me shut my mouth. I roll my eyes and don't speak. It's probably for the best.

"Jeb!" She cups her hands around her mouth to call him over despite the fact that he's right next to her. "Come here."

He scuttles a little too quickly to obey her, moving like a jester and a crab at the same time. He does a quick bow before approaching her fully. "Yes, my lady?"

"It's time. Begin the transfer of chains." She looks at me down the slope of her aquiline nose, with raised eyebrows and eyes that lack compassion. "Unless you object?"

There is a plan forming in the back of my mind. It isn't clear yet, though. All I know is that I have to get out of here, humanskin be damned. I can only hope that I can get this done without difficulty or getting caught. With all of that storm brewing inside of me, I sigh, feigning defeat. "No, ma'am."

"Hurry up then, Jeb."

He nods and starts rattling the chains that he holds, preparing to put them on me like this is some colonial court.

"Wait!" I hold out a hand to stop him, then look up at Lord Istremid. At that moment, I know exactly how I'm going to escape. It'll be easy. If I can get out of here, I can just walk out. Who's going to stop me? They have to at least pretend that this place is an actual amusement park. They can't stop me. "Can I have a bit of time with my father, please? I want to say goodbye to him."

She considers it for a moment. Lady Istremid rests her staff under her chin, then looks up at the ceiling. She looks like the opposite of a saint: just as divine, with an equal but opposite amount of holiness. I don't admire her. My reverence is the kind that comes from fear and anger.

"I suppose so," Lady Istremid says, after her prolonged moment of thought. "I'll allow it. Go on, then. Jeb, let them out."

"Yes, my lord!' He goes over to the door I came in through and throws it open. Instead of opening back up into the mirror murder maze, it opens up into the park. This isn't a part that I instantly recognize. It seems to be a museum of some kind. There is a window, though, and I can tell by looking through it that the door opens up into the Bible Experience exhibit. I can see the jarring differences between all these deep reds and the blue light of Earth's sky.

She looks me in the eye. A chill runs down my spine as she warns in a weird dreamy tone, "Once you return, the switch will occur. And the fun I will have with you... The blood I will spill... Be quick." The lady, on her mighty girlboss throne, licks her lips and leans back against the padded marble and bone. "Have fun. I'll see you soon."

She snaps her fingers and Doug's chains turn invisible. I'm not sure how she does it or how it happens, or if they have been like that the whole time and I just couldn't see them, but they seem to be gone now. And so am I. I bow my head and exit the throne room.