“The corridors of Hell burn brightly with the flames of our past…”

“I’m sorry, sir, but there’s been no developments as far as Miss Summers’ whereabouts are concerned. I can assure you that we’re doing everything in our power to locate her, and that as soon as we turn up any fresh leads we’ll be contacting her family with the details. Please, we understand how painful this must be, but can you refrain from calling us unless you have new information. We really are very busy at London Metropolitan Police and our workload doesn’t permit us to…”
   It was the same every time Richard phoned them: no developments, please don’t call again. But their cold words never stopped him from ringing the number he’d been given six months ago, every weekend, without fail.
   Six months: had it really been such a short amount of time? It seemed like an eternity had passed since his girlfriend,    Shantell Summers, had gone missing.
   She’d left no note. No possessions had been taken. There’d been no sign of a struggle; nothing to suspect foul play had been involved. She’d simply vanished without a trace. Gone. But not forgotten.
   Richard had been mortified. His little princess - his pet name for her - had disappeared on the eve of their anniversary, the night that he’d secretly planned to propose. She would’ve said yes, there would’ve been tears of joy, lovemaking, and then a call to her parents to tell them the happy news. But she’d not arrived at his place as planned. Vanished.
   Her parents had been devastated too, as would any caring family at the loss of a loving daughter.
   After a sleepless night on all accounts, the police had been called. The family and Richard had been on the receiving end of a gruelling series of long, probing interviews. He’d thought the police had suspected him in her disappearance. He’d not blamed them, he’d wanted them to be thorough, to cross all the T’s and dot all the I’s, ensuring that every avenue of investigation had been trod. And re-trod. And trod again.
   Still nothing. No one had heard from her, no one had seen her leave home; no one could offer anything to help them.
So six months went by with little or no rest for either Richard or Shantell’s parents.
   He’d stayed in close contact with them and them with he, both wanting to keep each other’s spirits high, keep the fires burning for her. She’d be back. She’d just run off for a while.
   Maybe, Richard asked himself when late night’s spent thinking of her turned into early mornings, Shantell had ran off because of him – she’d sensed he was about to propose and had fled, not wishing to break his heart with a refusal. But her parents had said otherwise: she’d loved him more than life, and would never have done anything to hurt him. She’d have cried with joy at his proposal, as would they.
   He wasn’t to blame, as they told him again that very evening as he cried at the thought of her.
   They met every weekend. It brought them together, made them feel like something was being done, that Shantell wasn’t a ghost left to drift away like a lost dream. She wasn’t going to die like that.
   Excusing himself from their dinner table, tears in his eyes, he retired to her bedroom. The room had been kept as a shrine to her, remaining exactly the same as it had on the night of her disappearance. Nothing had or would be touched until she returned. Only the police and Richard had been granted access to this sanctum. Her dressers were the same way they’d been left: the contents - black clothes for a gothic girl - bursting from the drawers. Her posters, her music, her strange jewellery, and her makeup – all had been untouched by the fingers of any but Richard and the authorities.
   Richard often came here. He’d cry into her oversized black sweaters, the scent of her body washing over his nostrils, the dark musk she’d drown herself in stinging his nose with memories of past happiness.
   Sometimes, when he was alone in the house (her parents trusted him so much that they’d given him a key. He was always welcome there and they knew his grief as they knew theirs), he’d listen to her music and re-read her diary with the hope of spotting some clue that would push him to her, a valuable insight into her private world that would shed light on her disappearance. But none ever came; only tears as he read of her undying love for him and for her treasured family.
   Tonight Richard lay on her bed snuggled up to her pillow, sobbing heavily as he listened to the tunes she’d loved so much. Loves so much: she’d be back. He had to remain positive or all was lost. One fine day, not so far in the future, Shantell would come walking back into his life, her smile broad, her lips eager, and he’d not ask her a word of where she’d been. He’d simply take her in his arms and never let her go again, ever, not until the day he died.
   Wistful thoughts of the first time they’d made love crossed his mind. It had been here, on this very bed. Her parents had gone away for the weekend and their absence had been dutifully taken advantage of. After a long night of teasing and smiling at a table in the city’s most expensive restaurant, they’d made their way back to her room and had kissed. After an age of exotic foreplay, with Shantell pleasuring him with an expertise he’d never imagined her capable of, they’d finally joined.
   It had been the best sex of his life. At first, she’d been kind, warm, soft and tender. Then, after an hour of gentle sex, she’d become an animal, her body grinding against him, urging him on in growls of passion and with the raking of her claws down his chest.
   He’d been surprised to say the least. Sure, she was a gothic chick and they were reputed to be amongst the kinkiest types of girls, but he’d never suspected such of Shantell. She’d been a girl who craved cuddles, hugged up to him during scary movies, and cried during the weepies – even their foreplay, their ‘sex with the clothes on’ that teenagers often engaged in had seemed mild, tempered.
   But not that night, or indeed any of the following times when they’d had sex.
   He imagined her as he lay on the bed: her full chest heaving as she flung her bobbed raven hair back and thrust against him. The way she’d smile down at him with her pale, elfin features creased in bliss and dripping in sweat, her green eyes locked to his.
   He closed his eyes and gently placed his hand against his crotch, listening carefully for any sound that her parents might be approaching, the way a teenager does when finding himself aroused in the solitude of his bedroom.
   “Take me like this…” he remembered her saying, the memory coming to him in a flash of regret. She’d bent before him and had offered herself in a way he’d never have suspected her of enjoying. He’d refused. He couldn’t do that to her – it wasn’t right.
   She’d rolled from him, groaning. “Grow up, Richard. It’s just sex, it’s supposed to be fun. To be exciting…dangerous.”
   “Not like that. I love you.” He’d whispered, embarrassingly pulling the covers over himself.
   “Yeah, and I love you, babe. But maybe we need a little spice once in a while, a little bit of pain.”
He’d screwed his face up. “Where are you getting this from, Shantell? You weren’t like this in the past. What’s wrong, don’t I excite you anymore, don’t you want me?”
   She’d slipped back to him, her mouth softly kissing his. “Of course I love you. I’ve loved you since we were twelve, Rich, and I’m gonna love you forever. Forget it. I was just teasing…”
   She’d kissed him again, and slowly, tenderly, they’d made love until the sun had risen.
   His eyes creased: why was he remembering that occasion? Why not all the other times they’d found each other? That incident had been forgotten. He’d done some things to her after that which he’d not have done if she hadn’t pressed him, but she’d never gone that far again. The handcuffs had been fun, the blindfold too, but never had that, anal sex, been brought up again. She’d been happy with him, right? There’d been no one else, had there?
   The thought didn’t bare thinking about.
Richard opened his eyes.
   The first thing he saw was a small box. It was sitting on the bookshelf above his head, an edge balanced on the lip of the heaving shelf. He sat up and took it from its place.
   He’d never seen it before.
   Turning it in his hands, he saw that its faces were covered in an intriguing pattern fashioned from polished copper or bronze. It was heavy, and he shook it to see if it contained any objects – it didn’t rattle, but instead clicked as his fingers shook it.
   Bringing it closer to his face, he stared at the designs and played one of them under his forefinger. Again the box clicked, but this time a section on one of the sides turned under his finger, buzzing into life as he watched.
   A tune sounded from within. It was a music box, and maybe, Richard reasoned, a puzzle box or logic toy. He smiled – where had she gotten it from, he’d not bought it for her and he’d never seen her play with it before? Strange.
   He sat on the bed and played with the box for the next few hours. Only when Shantell’s father had gently knocked on the bedroom door did his fingers leave its designs.
   “Hey, Rich. Feeling any better?” He knew it was a wasted question: how could any of them feel any better with their love missing?
   Richard smiled, nodded slowly, and held up the box. “What’s this?”
   Shantell’s father screwed up his face as he took a closer look at the box. He nodded, “Ah, that. We found it on the floor in her room the night she…well…we thought it was something you’d given her, a present maybe.”
   Richard shook his head, “I’ve never seen it before, never saw Shantell with it either.” He shrugged, “Thing is, it’s strangely addictive, a puzzle box of some kind I’m guessing.”
   Shantell’s father nodded, “She was into that weird stuff, eh?” He laughed, remembering his only child’s ways, “Guess it was a secret. We all have ‘em, eh?”
   Richard bowed his head, “Yeah, I guess…”
   “Look,” Shantell’s father said, “We’re going out to a friend’s house for the evening. You’re more than welcome to come with us, no problems. Or, if you’d rather, you can stay here for as long as you like. It’s fine by us; you know you’re always welcome to stay over. We like you being around. ‘Reminds us of Shantell.” He smiled a grim expression, one weighty with pain. “She’ll come back for you, Rich. She’d never go anywhere without you, son. She loved you to death.”
   “Thanks. I loved her too. God, I miss her…”
The man nodded, “We all do. She’ll be back, when she’s ready. Just you wait and see.”
   Though tired of waiting for Shantell to return, his heart dim, and his passion for anything but her face now lost, Richard smiled and replied, “I know. I know. We’ll see her soon, I feel it in my blood,” and then, “Thanks, thank you for the offer. But if it’s all the same, I think I’ll stick about here for a while, maybe read some of her stuff again, you know, for memory’s sake.”
   The father sighed, “I know just what you mean, son. Get some rest. We’ll be back later, but stay for as long as you need, okay, no rush.”
   They shook hands and the man left, closing the door quietly as he went.
   They were great people, Richard thought as he heard their car pull away down the road. He and their daughter had been boyfriend and girlfriend since they were twelve, eight years now, and they treated him like they’d been married for twice as long.
   ‘Misery loves company’, he thought, and immediately scolded himself for his cold scorn. They were missing her and needed him by their side as much as he needed their reassurance and understanding. They were a team, and when Shantell returned they’d all throw a huge party, at which he’d propose to her. She’d agree, and they’d have the grandest of weddings and spend their honeymoon in a lost, sunny place by a crashing ocean. Then would come kids, a family, and all the usual stuff of sane relationships. Their love would last forever.
   The thoughts saw him cry again, and he slumped to the floor besides the bed, slipping onto his side and clutching her pillow tightly as he wept.

What was that? A thin slip of paper had been stuffed under the bottom of one of her dressers, the heavy one made from old oak. An edge peered out, oh so slightly, oh so secretively, hardly enough for anyone to notice, even at this extreme angle.
   He tugged the paper and found that it would not budge. With great effort, he managed to lift the dresser and, with a careful foot, nudged the paper out from under its hiding place.
   It was not one, but several secrets that slipped from under the heavy wood. A brown envelope sealed with a wax stamp also slid out from its hiding place.
He bent and picked them up.
   The paper had been folded many times, and when he opened it, he found that it wasn’t a single piece, but a handful. The items had been rammed away, hidden from view, purposefully stored in a secret hiding place only luck had seen him finding.
   Thinking it might be a lead to Shantell - the police had said that any scrap of information could prove invaluable, and these were literally scraps – Richard sat on the bed and opened the papers out fully, dusting off the layer of grime that rested on the crumpled pages and setting the envelope down besides him.
   Though minutely scrawled, the papers were written in Shantell’s hand.
   He hurriedly began to read what was written there.
   It seemed to be pages from her diary, pieces of writing she’d torn out and hidden.
   As he read the first piece of paper, he began to realise just why she’d hidden the pages from anyone else’s eyes. It was filth.
   Either Shantell had the most vivid of imaginations he’d ever come across, or she was leading a secret life of violent sex and domination. He hoped it was not the case – he couldn’t bring himself to imagine that the stuff she’d written about here, the strip clubs, the lesbianism and group sex were anything but fantasy. But as he read on, the descriptions became more vivid, wilder, beyond the imaginings of the girl he thought he knew. Was this the same girl who’d cried on his shoulder at the end of a sad film? The same Shantell that kissed his eyes and held his hand on summer’s days? Not this girl, not this whore with her bondage and pain, the sodomy and the degradation. Please, no, let it be fantasy!
   The diary pages were all similar and it took a toll on Richard’s resolve to finish them. As he completed the gruelling task of reading the last paragraphs, he came upon a mention of something that seemed out of place amongst the perversions he’d read about: the box. The same box that sat besides him on the bed was mentioned; it had properties, she’d written, hidden secrets that would offer satiation to her darkest fantasies.
   ‘…Carl sold me the box for eight hundred quid and ‘the best fuck of his life’ (his words, not mine). Who cares what I let him do to me, I’ve done a lot worse and the box was all I wanted. He told me that it’d bring me pleasures so intense, I’ll never be the same again – heaven was in the box’s riddle, and if I solved it I could experience bliss in my body like I’ve only ever imagined. I can orgasm like a lightning storm, breathe passions indescribable; I can finally become! I will solve it….’
   Richard screwed his eyes tighter and read on.
   ‘So, this is it. I’m gonna start work on the box right now. Carl said that if I climaxed at the precise moment of solving this thing, the gates would open. I’m not sure if he was just getting off at the thought of me fingering myself, but I’m gonna give it a go. Besides, my parents are out for a while, and I’ve got a fire raging between my legs Richard won’t be able to put out tonight. I know he’s gonna propose to me and I’ll say yeah, ‘cos I love him, always have, but the flames in my body need to be quenched before I take our relationship any further. If he found out what his ‘little princess’ was really like, the cum-guzzling whore I am, then he’d never look me in the eyes again. I gotta rid this outta me. But god, I want it more than I want him right now, and the box is the only way I can see us being together the way he wants us to be. So, here goes nothing. Give me Heaven or give me Hell, I’m ready and waiting. Come get me!’

Richard let the papers fall to the floor.
   He sat in stunned silence for a long while with his breath coming slow and shallow, and then he took the envelope and opened it.
   The photographs within were twice as vivid as any words she’d written: sex, in the sickest of ways was displayed in graphic colour before his watering eyes. How could she let men, and women, do such things to her? Such defilement? It was vile!
   He could never give these pictures to the police; the truth of her hidden life would destroy her family. He’d have to destroy them.
   As he went to the dustbin, his lighter being drawn from his trousers, the box called to him.
   Without touching it, the box’s tune rang out again. It drifted to his ears and snagged his mind with its lament. Dropping the secrets he’d found, Richard stopped, and took the box in his hands.
   Shantell’s last words spoke of attempting to solve the box. Perhaps she’d hidden something within? Maybe if he too solved the puzzle, its secrets would show him where she’d run. He’d follow her and make her see sense, assure her that whatever she’d done, whatever the box had shown her, he could forgive her. They were soul mates, destined to be together, and he’d take her back with him from wherever she was hiding.
   The box felt warm and electric in his hands. He could feel a pulse of pleasure running across its faces as he gently manipulated them, turning his digits over the faint ridges that were hidden there. It was beautiful, intense, and addictive.
   An hour passed, then another, and still the box had not been solved. Sprawling to the floor, he passed his eyes to the photographs that lay at his feet.
   The face of his little princess as she snarled to the camera, a man in her mouth with another two upon her, made his passion rise. He remembered her words about climaxing whilst solving the box. He shook his head – he couldn’t. But he’d do anything to find her. He had to do as she’d done: perhaps that was the key.
   Taking himself in his hand, he began to masturbate.
   After a while, Richard’s mind was filled with Shantell. He imagined himself as one of the men he’d seen in the photographs, holding her pigtailed hair as he drove into her from behind, the skirt of the school uniform she’d worn hutched up over her smooth buttocks. Bent over and with the box in one hand, he grasped and clenched its edges, awkwardly touching the sides and poking his fingertips into its faces with the beats of his wrist.
   With a powerful grunt, he came.
And Hell came with him.

The box clicked and changed, a face lifting, turning, and sinking back down to form a new shape: an eight sided configuration.
   A loud chime rang out from nowhere. Richard dropped the box and fell back, struggling to pull his trousers back in place as white light smashed out from cracks that were now spreading about the room.
   The wall facing him parted before his eyes to bathe him in pallid, cold light that stank of a tomb.
   Richard found he could not move for fear as the light before him shimmered with shadows at the approach of bodies.
   What bodies they were…

Six months earlier

Shantell Summers sat naked in her room, her body rising and shivering as she played her fingers through the dark bush between her legs. She eased first the tips, then sank her fingers knuckle deep into her wetness, forcing herself against them the way she liked, the way she had to feel at least three times a day since she’d been old enough to appreciate the pleasures of her own flesh.
   She had no idea why she felt this way, why she must experience this bliss every day, but she wanted to find out. For inside, she knew she was addicted, knew that this lust had to be quenched or she’d loose herself to it, and loose the love of her family, and of Richard. Dear, sweet, innocent Richard.
   She loved him, but, and she hated herself for saying this, he was lousy in bed. She found herself finishing herself off every time they’d fuck: no, make love. Richard never fucked her, never screwed her the way she secretly craved he would do. For once, just once, she’d love for him to snatch her hair and fuck her like the animal she was, grunting foulness into her ear as she came under his fists. God, that’d make their relationship perfect. She’d have his love, his respect, the feel of his hand in hers and the warmth of his loving words. But she’d also feel him pummel her the way she’d let so many other guys fuck her.
   Just the thought of it… she was close to coming, but what about the box? How close was that to completion?
   It’d been Carl that had sold her the box - well, cash and a fuck, but who was counting when it came to cock? She’d lost tally years ago… When she’d first heard of it, Shantell had thought that the only pleasures one could find from a box were the type buried between the thighs of some young raven-haired beauty like herself. Carl had assured her she was wrong.
   So she’d done some research.
   It seemed that this box had been popping up all over the place. Across the years, the results of her Internet searches informed her, boxes like the one Carl was offering her had brought many a mystery to those who wanted to solve them; and not everyone could do such a thing. One guy, a bloke in New York, said he had three of the things and had been working on them for over seven years with no result. Another lady in Japan said her puzzle hadn’t opened in the three years she and her husband had tried, the solution eluding them.
   Shantell had researched further. Le Merchant’s box, it was called. Supposedly, the thing was built hundreds of years ago by some French guy called Phillip Le Merchant for some occult fanatic who believed in demons and magick. Both of them died in weird circumstances.
   Shantell believed in magick. She knew there had to be a supernatural force at work in the universe, one that held life together and played its part in all existence. She even believed in demons, in angels. Shantell didn’t find the stories that the box, when opened led to a realm of Heaven or Hell, hard to believe. She knew in her soul that it was true, that the line between such divinities would be so thin in this supernatural world that pleasure and pain would become as one - a blissful state trapped in decadent experiences. She wanted to know such pleasures, see such sights.
   She had to have the box.
   So she’d fucked that wanker Carl and paid him his lousy money. So what; it was gonna be her last night of passion, then she was gonna live happily ever after with Richard and forget all about her past ways – if the experience proved all it’d been talked up to be.
   If not, and the tales were hot air for opium addicts and stoners, then she’d still say yes to his proposal, and go back to sucking cocks for kicks as soon as the marriage vows had been said. It was her way – she didn’t like it, but it was in her blood. She needed to put that fire out, or fall head first into its raging depths.
   Again she stabbed her fingers into herself, again the box danced in her hand. The tune began, a haunting melody that made her fist pound harder against her wetness at the thought of being lost to bliss.
   As she climaxed, the walls to the beyond slid open, and the figures came forth from Hell.
   Shantell had slumped back with a face as white as death. They were horrific!
   The first, a man, came from the white light that bleached all life from the room. His head was littered with pins that glinted with blood. His dark gown was slashed as badly as his skin, with folds of flesh hanging open to reveal muscle as red as wine.
   With her heart now pounding, she rose to her feet as the second shape became clear. A thing, man or woman she could not tell, strode towards her. Its face was a massacre. Wires held gums back in twisted shape, the teeth of a raw mouth clacking together as it watched her from black dents where eyes should have rested.
   She took a step back as the last figure came forth.
   This shape was a creature whose face had been wrapped in a stern mask which was fastened tight to its face with razor wire - a rusty thing, with the flesh beneath having no blood remaining to flow from the wire’s cuts. Its long fingers were a set of gleaming, blood clotted razors. They played in the air of the room, seeking fresh flesh to experience.
   Shantell had seen many a thing in her secret life, but this was by far the worst. The best. She could not isolate which. After bowing low, she opened herself wide for all those gathered to see and smeared wetness over her breasts. “Taste me. I’m yours. Just show me the sights others dream of seeing. Bathe me in experience, drown me in lust and passions forbidden. I’m here for your touch, be that what it may.”
   The leader, the man with pins rammed deep into his skull, had waved a hand as the razor-fingered demon moved to carve.
   “Wait. This one shows promise. We can work with this, mould its flesh to our own.” He moved to Shantell, who wiped the remains of her wetness over his lips. He tasted: desire, strong and willing.
   “You would freely come with us, taste our pleasures? Is this so, girl?”
   Shantell groaned ecstatically, “Give it all. I want it. Now.”
   He smiled grimly. “So be it. But know this, there is no return for you. Once you have tasted these pleasures your mind will be washed clean of this world, save for a few, blissful reminders.”
   Shantell looked suddenly doubtful: no return? Ever? What of her plans for Richard? “Sir, I have doubts…”
   He shook his pin-studded head, “We do not. Take her. Scream if you will, it will do nothing to deaden the bliss of this act.”
   Shantell did not scream.
   She strolled freely, shrugging off the hands of the chatterer and the blades of the other demon, and marched after their leader, naked and bold.

In Hell, the corridors were cool against her soft skin. She felt exquisite goosebumps fire her flesh alive as she padded down the winding alleys. The screams of the damned rang through her ears, but she did not flinch, never once tried to run – she knew this was better than death, and, in strange ways, far better than any life.
   “I thought Hell was hot.” she asked the leader.
   He’d ignored her, instead watching her with black, soulless eyes. She smiled: such beautiful eyes. She’d like to have some just like that one day. One day soon.
   For days they seemed to walk those passages. The labyrinth of Hell wound this way and fell that. Often, others of the creature’s kind would bow at the nail-headed man’s approach – he was obviously their lord. She was in good company – the experience she was destined to behold was bound to be a lasting one, the best Hell could deliver.
   “What are you?” she asked.
   “We are Cenobites; Explorers in ecstasy and agony. We deliver the kiss of liberation to those who would know the forbidden. You are one such explorer, though your heart beats a different song to those we have heard in many a decade of pain. You are chosen. You will become.”
   The nail-headed one walked her to a dark archway, through which he guided her.
   They stepped out onto long walkways whose edges fell into deep mazes of dark.
   Ahead of them, suspended in a sky of rolling black clouds hung a massive double-ended diamond. The designs adorning its edges reminded Shantell of the box she’d so willingly solved. She gasped and felt the air in her lungs fail her.
   “Come, kneel before the throne of your new god…Leviathan!”
   Black beams of power found her skin. They burned. They ripped her resolve to shreds and crushed her head with the worst of her life’s memories. ‘A gang of toned men took her every hole until… Women laughed at her tears as they lapped at the… A guy found pleasure in… A man forced his fist time and again into… A troop of army guys beat down and found pleasure in her… It went on…on…on…
   After a dark age…
   Shantell was crying on the floor – the tears were those of a mind lost, abandoned by reason, transformed by pain. “Yes…more…dark god, give me more suffering…!”
   “Come then, taste the bliss of the box once more. Become!”
The nail-headed Cenobite’s hands had pulled her to her feet, and after urging her to the walkway’s edge, nodded to the shadows there. She turned…
   A huge puzzle box rose behind her. In a wash of cold air, it opened its doors like a mouth to welcome her.
   “Now, let the box unravel your secrets. The pain will be exorbitant. Enjoy.”
With a smile, Shantell stepped inside the box.
   As its doors shut, she saw the nail-headed Cenobite grin; this would be the true test of her willingness to the blessed way of pain. She prayed to the god before her that she would surpass his expectations.

   Six months later

Richard lost control of his bladder as the shadows lifted and the group of figures walked into his world.
   The cold crawled over his skin once more as the first stepped into the light.
   A nail-encrusted head nodded his way, a cold, inhuman smile marking the creature’s pale flesh as he came. The next was a scarred beast of a shape whose face had been melted away by cuts. Only his teeth remained unchanged – they snapped as it too stepped close to the prone and convulsing boy. Then came a third. This creature’s face was shrouded in a mask of cold steel. Its hands were clawed with long blades that clinked as it hissed with a steam engine’s whisper. The final figure was a female. Her skin had been carved into exotic patterns, as if Hell’s tattoo artist had plied his trade in dark patterns over her flesh. She waved a sickeningly pierced tongue at his face with seductive menace, and smoothed her fingers over dead, exposed breasts, the nipples there also punctured with steel.
   “Ah, a boy. What sights we have to show you.” the nail demon cried.
   “Please…wait…”
   “Always with delays. Not this time. Not ever.”
   “I’m trying to find someone. My love, my soul mate. She used the box and I think she may have gotten lost.”
   “Possible. So what of it? Why should this concern us? If she is lost, then she is in Hell, and her suffering is assured.”
   Richard spoke fast. “If you help me find her, I’ll do whatever you want. Anything, anything you ask and I’ll do it. I just want to see her again. Please!”
   “A rich suffering indeed, the loss of a loved one. A fine song you shall sing.”
   The creature stared about him. He grinned. “So be it. See your beloved again, you shall…” He nodded to Richard who lay trembling on his knees. “Call her, she may yet hear you…”
   “Shantell!” he shouted louder than he’d ever done before. “Shantell!! It’s me, Richard! Come to me, Shantell, I love you!! Please, come back to me!!!”
   “Richard. You remembered me. How sweet.”
   The female creature stepped closer. She slid into the light that shone from the beyond.
   Shantell’s face was clear to the one who’d kissed its every inch; one who’d wiped tears of joy and sorrow from its now bleached tones. She smiled, and waved her studded tongue his way.
   “I still remember you, Richard. What fun we had, what a stumbling amateur I was back then. A great many things have changed since I last knew your flesh…”
   Richard stumbled against the bed. He did not go far.
   “Here I am, Richard, just as promised. Now you’ll come with us.”
   “But…I…love you, Shantell…”
   Shantell smiled, her dead black eyes fixing him as she moved to close her mouth over his. She came away with the meat of his tongue flapping in her teeth. She swallowed.
   “A fine way to renew our relationship, Richard. I anticipate many long nights, many exciting times ahead of us. Come, let’s go, and pave the path of our new relationship in the blood of your innards.”
   Richard cried. It was all he could do.
   With the salt of Richard’s tears sinking to the floor, the procession left for Hell.
   As they went, Shantell smiled at the secrets she’d left hidden under her dresser and the place they now took on the floor of her old bedroom – her parents would soon find them and know a suffering of their own…and if they too solved the box…well, perhaps this would not be her last family reunion.