Satan's Affair

Sibel kills sinners from inside a travelling haunted house

A man writhes beneath Sibel as she plunges her pink-handled knife into his chest, singing Freddy Krueger's nursery rhyme between stabs.

Sibel kills sinners from inside a travelling haunted house

A man writhes beneath Sibel as she plunges her pink-handled knife into his chest, singing Freddy Krueger's nursery rhyme between stabs. She pops out his eyeball. When he escapes, she lets him run—her windows are painted shut, her exits guarded by five costumed men she calls henchmen. The hulking Cronus catches him in the kitchen. She finishes the kill in her bedroom, stabbing until euphoria shudders through her body. Afterward, Mortis disposes of the corpse; Timothy mops the blood and tends to Sibel intimately. This has been her ritual for five years at Satan's Affair, a travelling Halloween fair. During operating hours she hides within the haunted house walls, watching guests through peepholes, judging each by scent—flowers for the pure, rotten eggs for the damned.

A cult leader punishes his daughter for refusing his orders

Sibel grew up inside her father Leonard's compound—a hundred acres housing the Saintly Baptist Church, where he convinced thousands he was God's sole disciple. At dinner with his eighteen children, young Sibel refuses his order to deliver new girls for his nightly ritual, where followers drain what he calls God's nectar from his body. Leonard slams his fist on the table, then drives a fork through her hand. He claims Jesus endured worse. Sibel doesn't cry. She eats mashed potatoes left-handed while her siblings watch like zombies. Her defiance costs her mother, who vanishes for eight agonizing days. When Mommy finally returns, she wears a turtleneck that slips just enough to reveal handprint bruises so dark they're nearly black. Leonard punished the wrong person, and Sibel knows it.

A pink knife passes between hands that will never touch again

Her mother sits on the twin bed and pulls a beautiful pink knife from the nightstand—hand-carved, ornate, the prettiest thing Sibel has ever seen. She tells her daughter that she's the only one with enough fire to stop Leonard, squeezing Sibel's thigh to make sure she understands. Sibel wraps her mother in a desperate hug, sensing that letting go now means losing her forever. That night, Sibel clutches the knife and watches her mother's still form until morning, never blinking, never looking away. The alarm blares. Mommy doesn't stir. She had taken Ricin before entering the room—she never intended to see dawn. Sibel spent the entire night staring at her mother's corpse without realizing she was already gone. Eventually, she uses the knife exactly as instructed.