Chapter 6: No Time to Wallow in the Mire
Ashley immediately and enthusiastically returned to her work of watching the surface, inspecting them for demonic activity... a very particular kind of demonic activity.
As she twirled her view around the globe like a bored student, nothing was jumping out at her. She chose to investigate some large cities. Surely, there was some sin to be found there...
Ashley focused her lens on a woman standing near a lamp post, waving her arm over her head, out towards cars in the street. A yellow taxi pulled up and she stepped inside.
In that short amount of time, Ashley saw as the strap on her camisole fell past her shoulder as she lowered her arm... and how the back of her shirt was low enough to see the little plastic buckle of her bra. Weren't those out of style? She remembered seeing them being burned in public displays... it didn't seem like that long ago.
She nearly slapped herself. Why was she looking at some random human's body? Yes, the woman had a lovely back and a generous bust, but that was not important. She should be watching for demon activity... like Skyler popping out of a changing room naked pretending she decided not to buy anything. That sounded like the sort of silliness she would do.
Ashley kept scanning the surface, looking for demonic presence. She didn't spot much, though there were a lot of women dressed for the summer, with short shorts and bare legs... bare feet... freckles on bare shoulders...
She spun her view of the globe upside-down. The southern hemisphere was experiencing winter, wasn't it? If Skyler had her druthers, she'd appear on the surface in an area with some snow... it certainly was odd how half the world had different weather. This was either evidence of a designer or evidence against it.
Maybe the designer wanted to make sure there was always some copious nude flesh on at least half of the beaches of the world. Maybe she should stop looking at Australia, which didn't have much snow, but did have lots of people on the beach... lots of black bikinis and surfers... and a few humans discretely engaged in sexual activity hiding in the tall grass.
Ashley quickly moved her lens away from them. There was no longer the sudden red-faced retreat... but the understanding of how embarrassing it was to be caught like that. She'd leave them to their fun, feeling an ache in her body and her heart.
She spun the globe back around, scanning through more metropolises and trying to find something devilish on the surface.
She found one! A mighty dark stain on the world and good behavior, tainting all it touched. Could it be? Ashley immediately suited up and appeared at the epicenter of the dark cloud, opening a portal and jumping through.
She appeared, appropriately enough, in the main sanctuary of a church. She wasn't sure what day of the week it was. It was always the same in the elysium, so it hardly mattered. It certainly wasn't Sunday, as all the pews were empty. There was a priest cowering on the floor, one arm outstretched with a crucifix in his hand. He was unharmed, but for how long?
Before him was a demon. Horns, tail, cloven feet... the lot. Her clothes were tattered, her hair matted, her teeth sharp like a shark, a few other features that made her look less than human...
It wasn't Skyler. It was some other condemned soul, someone who evidently had felt like exacting revenge on the surface dweller responsible for spreading that good word.
The demon looked at Ashley with a hideous smile. "Aahh... finally here to save your man, are you?" She snarled with an unnaturally deep timbre. "Well--"
The demon didn't get any further. Rather than grab her sword, Ashley opened up a hole to the pit below her hooves. With no wings to hold her aloft, she tumbled down back into the pit, the hole sealing quickly behind her.
The church was silent again. The priest didn't yet come back to his feet. "Thank you!" He sputtered. "But... this thing didn't stop her!" He shook the crucifix in his hand, like a disappointing maraca with nothing inside. "It's broken!"
"Give me a second, please." Ashley talked to him like she was putting him on hold.
In the pit, the recently escaped and recovered demon thrashed and stomped her hoof on the stone. She felt herself in a spotlight in the dark, smoky pit. She turned towards the light.
Ashley was looking through a portal, just barely wide enough to get her head through, her fingers resting on the edge. "Hey, he didn't summon you with a pentagram of salt or whatever, did he?"
"I ain't a narc!" Said the demon.
"Look, I could have dropped you a thousand feet in the air and broken all your bones. I gave you a reasonably gentle drop." Ashley responded testily. "Now, if he was responsible for you being brought up here, I'm going to kick him in the buttocks."
The demon sighed. "No, I was targeting him for working for the man upstairs. You know how it is."
"How are you getting up here, anyway?" Ashley asked.
"I'm not telling you." She sneered. "What are you going to do? Send me someplace really bad and torture me?!"
That, at least, sounded like something Skyler might say. Ashley closed the portal before anyone else tried to use it as an emergency exit.
"Hey, are you listening?" The priest yelled, trying to get Ashley's attention. "I want a refund on this thing! Or at least send me an updated manual. I'm not going to be damned because you didn't tell us you updated the sacraments!"
"Be quiet!" Ashley shouted. "If you think you can hold any secrets from us, you are sorely mistaken! We see it all, and we don't approve, so you need to knock it off if you intend on continuing to lead the flock."
Ashley dropped into a portal in the floor like she was jumping down a water slide, leaving behind the terrified priest. He wasn't sure what transgression she was referring to. Maybe it was his toupee... to thine own self be true, and so forth. It's not like everyone couldn't tell it was a toupee... his gray temples stuck out the sides. Or could it be... those scandalous periodicals he had in his desk...
But he couldn't help it! Mad Magazine was just so damn funny!
--
Ashley kept looking at the surface from the sky for unapproved demon activity. She had checked the plateau where she'd left Skyler again, but she wasn't there. Not that Skyler could get back up to that plateau if she had left it. For whatever reason, she had wandered off, looking for trouble. How she could choose danger over boredom and stability, she would never understand.
Thus, Ashley could either search the pit for Skyler, like dipping a drinking glass into the ocean to find one particular fish... or she could wait for Skyler to do whatever it was she was doing to escape this realm and appear on the surface.
She spun her view of the world like a rascally student spinning the classroom globe, trying to spot anything amiss. She didn't even trouble herself with trying to solve problems long-distance. If she saw a real catastrophe going on, of course she would intervene...
But she'd REALLY feel so much better if she found Skyler first.
And not just because she had a near constant erection, as if it was another limb reaching towards the earth to touch all of its beauty... but mostly Skyler.
After many hours of exhaustive monitoring, checking essentially every city in the world... she started looking at less populated areas. Maybe she'd emerged in a pasture somewhere and was cornered by an angry bull who thought she was red and also that they were both in a Warner Brothers cartoon. Maybe she hadn't made it out yet...
Ashley eventually saw a thin plume of activity, tangled up with clouds of smoke and noise and other sin. She'd almost not been able to pull the foul demon essence out from the activity.
An outdoor rock concert.
Not a specifically 'occult' act that might lead towards Skyler's sensibilities, but not a religious one, either. Just some musicians who loved electric guitars. If the way the speakers were operating was intentional, they seemed to also love enormous sound distortion. They popped like gunfire at the loud guitar notes, or even loud singing. It did not seem like an improvement on listening to the record at home, or the old reliable radio.
She looked at the event closer. Hundreds of humans jumping and swaying to the music, clouds of smoke and dust rising into the air from drugs and the current headliner's pyrotechnics. She could not tell the source of the demonic energy.
She closed her lens and stood from her reclined position. If it's not Skyler, she would just toss them back into the pit. If it was...
Ashley appeared in an inconspicuous area within the concert grounds. She had her new longer skirt to keep her knees and other stuff hidden. She might still stand out as by far the cleanest person here. The grass of this arena had long been stomped into mud, caking everyone's legs in flecks of dirt.
She held her hands against her ears. Rock music could be nice, but this made her appreciate what a quiet workplace she really had. It also made her appreciate the rock bands were actually halfway decent live. Sure, she should probably disapprove of Blue Oyster Cult for their occult themes, but they made good music. And John Fogerty was almost certainly a believer, but he didn't make any of that awful "Christian rock."
With her hands over her ears, she had no choice but to experience another sense. Sure, the crowd was sweaty and dirty. Ashley was mostly accustomed to that. But the stench of marijuana was everywhere, mixed with patchouli. It all had that powerful, brain-invading strength of a scratch-and-sniff sticker affixed to the inside of her nose. She had to resist the urge to wave the stink away with her invisible wings.
