It wasn’t Dad. Not really. I was sure that this was all inside my head.

That didn’t mean I didn’t want to try and stop it, stop them from doing what happened next.

Red flooded my eyelids.

“Peek-a-boo!” Hellen’s voice called merrily. “Open your eyes, Jemma Bliss!”

As if compelled, my eyelids peeled back. I blinked away tears from the brilliant crimson light flooding the room, and it slowly came into focus.

I choked on a gasp, my hand fluttering to my mouth.

There, in the corner of a space much smaller, and also somehow much bigger than I’d imagined, was a man. He was curled up, emaciated, and clad in the raggiest of rags. His skin was filthy and grey and almost transparent over his bones. Bald patches shone on either side of his head.

“Dad?” My voice was a scratchy whisper. No. This could not be real. It was just my imagination. Just the nightmare they’d planted …

The pitiful man looked up at my voice, his eyes bloodshot and vacant. But when he saw me, something sparked to life in them. I scrambled towards him, eyes streaming, blurring the awful reality in front of me.

This wasn’t my nightmare. It was his.

“No!” he snarled, his fingers clawing at the bald spots as he gaped in horror at me. “Not my daughter! Don’t touch my daughter!”

“Dad, it’s okay, it’s⁠—”

I froze just short of touching him when he cracked his skull into the rock behind him. And again. Again. Until blood was everywhere. On the rock, on his face, dripping down his body, thick and maroon.

“Unlike my brother, I did my research,” Hellen remarked lightly. I turned, peering frantically around, but there was no one there. No one except the broken shell of my father. Or of his soul, anyway. “Imagine my delight when I discovered that I had the means to torture you already in my possession!”

The stone door ground open, and I spun to find Hellen strutting in, her tail twitching, her teeth bared in a smug leer. “Did you know that for the last eighteen years, this has been your father’s existence?”

She giggled delightedly. I retched.

“No! That’s not possible,” I gasped. “My father wouldn’t have ended up … here!”

The emaciated man started blubbering behind me.

“Oh, but it is, and he did! You see, that’s the beauty of soul-reaping. Your father sold his soul to my father for one single, elusive piece of evidence that would put a crook behind bars for life. In a moment of delicious irony, his own life was also ended because of that one piece of evidence … and” —she snapped her fingers— “voila, he popped into existence in Hell, with so much fodder for torture fresh in his brain.”