Snippet #2196843

“Hello, Ma’am."

Juliette scowled, giving the man before her the full pleasure of her Trinity-shattering glare. She struggled to keep her head upright rather that rolling over her shoulder and dropping to her chest. Her body felt like jelly; les démons might as well have taken a spoon, dug it into her flesh and eaten her. She doubted that would hurt more than these dreadful millions of knives shredding her insides and bursting against her skin. Her body was too small to contain all the pain.

“I hear you’ve had an eventful day. Mind telling me about it?” the detective asked calmly, holding himself with so much ease in the torture chamber. She wanted to scratch his eyes out and rip his vocal cords from his throat with her teeth. She hated him; hated him as she did everyone else in this terrible Hell-hole of a world. The dark haired man before her lit a cigarette in his mouth and held one out to her. Juliette's eyes sparked, bursting with barely controlled fury as she fought to keep herself from decapitating him. She'd have failed, anyway. Was this man mocking her? If he truly was from Class Three, you'd think- No, she didn't think that. It did not matter whether they belonged to the same district or otherwise. Other was other and the fittest survived. At that moment, he was the fitter of the two - and she despised him for it.

Juliette lifted her full lips into a grin. "In case you haven't noticed," she began, wiggling her numb fingers. The metal cuffs that attached her to the chair dug forcefully into her wrists, an angry red welt bursting from beneath the cold metal. "My hands are tied, figuratively and literally speaking. Unless you're willing to place it in my mouth and help me suck on it?" she mocked, fighting the growl that begged to be set free. This detective was not worth an ounce of her anger. Juliette breathed in the comforting scent of tobacco - her one and only trusted companion. Well, that and every other drug and alcohol in the world. Those were the only things you could trust. They'd stood by her through the weight of the sickening, heavy bodies, and the days and nights of agony and humiliation.

"mon cher détective," my dearest detective, she purred. "The sharing of one's day is generally a pastime reserved for those who are friends or family, is it not? I'm afraid - last time I checked - we were neither friends nor family."

"Answer his questions," the speaker-voice warned. Juliette exaggerated the rolling of her eyes as she stared pointedly at the camera.

"Patience is a virtue, enfant," she said, quite certain that the woman on the other side did not speak French and would not know Juliette had just called her a child. Pulling her green eyes back down to the detective before her, she wiggled about, as if making herself comfortable. "Now all we need is dirt, the dying, disease, filth, drugs and prostitutes to make it feel like home. Ah, wait - I believe we have the last." Juliette tugged at her expression, forming a lazy smirk as she batted her thick eyelashes at the man before her. "I don't suppose you'd be swayed by what I can give you?"

"This is your last warni-"

"Such impatience," Juliette tsked. Turning her attention back to the man before her, analysing every inch of him before staring into his eyes. She did not recognise him but that was no surprise - so many people died each day in Class Three that she no longer kept track of who existed. "The police chased me, I ended up in Class two. I was shot - thrice? - and fell off my hoverboard. Then, I ended up in this lovely hotel," she said simply, gesturing around the room with a tilt of her head. "The creepy doctor patched me up-" Juliette looked down at her unmarred body. "I think. Maybe he implanted a bomb in me. So, I ended up here. I was electrocuted about a dozen names - same old, same old. What about you, detective? How was your day? Good, I hope?"

Juliette had leaned forward against the cuffs that held her in place, but now she leaned back and gave the detective a slow smile. "What's a handsome man like you dealing with les démons? Unless you have a secret love for sadism?" Juliette turned her head, so she looked through the glass wall and into the world outside, even though she couldn't actually see through the tinted glass. Still, it was unnerving when she looked the woman who'd been talking through the speakers right in the eyes. "Lucky for you, I happen to appreciate sadomasochism."

"Good," the voice said firmly before the woman clicked her magical button and sent Hell through Juliette's body. Juliette laughed, tilting her head back against the metal chair.

"You can break me down if it makes you feel right," she began singing. Despite the slight manic tone to it, she had a heartbreaking, breathtaking voice. "And hate me now if it keeps you alright. You can break me down if it takes all your might 'cause I'm so much more than meets the eye." Juliette's voice was rather breathless, yet feminine and honey-sweet. If she'd not been strapped to a chair with a grin on her face that said she knew something you didn't, one might've thought she was a singer on a stage. But she wasn't - she looked to be a broken doll pieced together to form an abstract piece of art. Perhaps that was what living in Class Three did to you; what being raped as a helpless child did; what being electrocuted a dozen times did. It made you mad and yet, more real that anyone or anything else in existence. It made the world crystal clear and perhaps too much so, until all you could see were the solidified demons that lived in the light, shadows and dark.

"Any more questions?" she asked abruptly, tilting her head to the side in an eerie, doll-like way. She watched the detective with her keen eyes of emerald green.