chapter 6

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It had been over a week since you first arrived at the hotel, and you just say you are certainly enjoying your stay. Your day out with Angel a week ago was eventful and entertaining, a night filled with drinks and dancing and shopping and fun. Angel helped you pick out some new outfits and you gave him advice on some new blouses that would suit his figure. You had a little fun, you guess, though your pride would never let you admit it.

You hadn't really heard from Alastor since his strange behavior just before you and Angel left the hotel for your day out, aside from seeing glances of him around the hotel when you would stroll the hallways and read a book out of boredom — you liked to stay active while you did things. You haven't danced since you were back at your estate, and you're getting antsy.

The issue is, there's not a ballroom here or any kind of open space. Everything has furniture or is littered with hotel residents, whether it be Niffty or Husk wandering around with a drink in his hand or Charlie rushing to prepare for something with Vaggie stone-faced by her side. You loved an audience of many when you performed, but not an audience of few. You must admit, it made you quite uncomfortable. Plus, the floors here were very uneven.

You decided today that you would try to find a studio somewhere in town, but you had no idea where. You know you needed to visit the south sometime simply just to check in, but it's far to early for that just yet. You needed to dance, and you needed to dance now — or you may lose your mind.

And by lose your mind, I mean thinking irrevocably and ceaselessly about the Radio Demon Alastor.

Not in a good way either (though there were occasions). You would be reading a Brontë or Fitzgerald or Woolf classic and find your mind wander to the dual-haired Demon, pondering plans to motivate him to relinquish his hold on your soul. Whatever you came up with, it had to be big. He wouldn't just give up something he had so easily.

The other half of the time, you thought about how much you truly disliked him simply for just having your soul. You found yourself trying to blame him for even your death, wondering if you would've have became rich and famous on your own without his sudden interference in your life. Your animosity for him grew, but along with that, something else...

You remember how to happened very fuzzily. You were lying on the floor of the run-down, abandoned studio a few blocks from your home in a small town in southeastern Kentucky having a mental breakdown. You remember never crying so hard and long in your life.

Your family was average income, but because of debt and gas money and all the other things the government took from one's paycheck, there wasn't a whole lot left to fund your dream of become a big-time ballet dancer. You had merely fallen out of a jump and rolled your ankle, and that's what started the waterworks.

You were sensitive all the way from childhood to young adulthood, when Alastor found you. He somehow omnisciently knew that all you desired in the world was to become successful for yourself and to make your family and hometown proud, and he mentioned those things with a tempting tone. He offered you a deal: promise him your soul for all eternity, even in Hell, and he would give you what you desired in your Earthly life.

And it worked. Almost immediately in fact. It was merely months before you were signing contracts and performing in front of hundreds, then thousands, then more. You were recognized by foreign countries — France, Russia, and more — for your talent, and offered jobs in those countries at various famous studios.

You were the prima ballerina of your time, the ultimate, all-rounded dancer, known for being able to do all styles of dance. A lot of people, particularly other dancers, were envious of you and would say things about your heritage, that because you were from the American south with no "real" training (i.e., literally doing dance since you came out of the fucking womb with expensive lessons and even more expensive teachers in expensive places), that you weren't as talented as the rest of the world said.

But it simply was not true. You were that talented. And you were even before you made the deal, you knew that much. All the Radio Demon did was use his skills is mass forms of communication to manipulate others into getting your name out there.

You lived a life little girls could only dream of — you had suitors, you were admired by women and girls of all ages. Young dancers had posters of you in their room. You were talked about in dance universities and colleges, even had two new dance movements you invented in ballet and contemporary dance named after you. You had all the money in the world, and you gave most of it to your parents. You owed it to them.

But it was short-lived. You may have had a good life for that time being and did some good things, but you made a deal with a Demon, and not just any Demon, an Overlord of Hell. It corrupted you. Changed you. And unbeknownst to spectators, behind the scenes, you were demanding, haughty, and entitled. You feared no one, and everyone feared you. It was exactly how you wanted things.

You sighed and left your room, walking the halls of the fifth floor, searching for any sign of Angel. He came up to this floor often when he was bored because of the fashion magazines in the common room up here. You wonder why he didn't just take them downstairs, but then again, maybe Niffty would accidentally see them as trash and throw them away.

You hummed quietly to yourself, thinking of ways you could ask Angel for assistance in finding a dance studio to let out all your pent up frustration and anger at. Sure he would know. He mentioned something about pole dancing, but you're still not entirely certain if he was joking or not.

It was then when you bumped into someone.

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