i flex dean's finger - oh hell, isn't it fair now to say it's mine? - my finger, and back to the wall mike goes, sore flesh pinned like a bug.

"Of course I am. Or perhaps...you don't know where the demons of my world come from."

smiling, i yank the chain free of the wall, letting it trail behind me as i approach him. "Did you imagine we're born in a vat of little black ooze? Fashioned from the soil? Or are we made?"

my eyes flood black and cold. "What's left when a soul is left in hell to fester, stripped and flayed and tortured until all its humanity is burned away?"