Free Hellbound Hearts by Marie O'Regan, Paul Kane

the puzzle and it echoed deep in the core of him. The final tile had shivered into crimson, and with shaking hands, he formed them into their pattern, his heartbeat and the bell and the Boyar’s confession rolling into one hum of excitement in his head.
    It was complete. The puzzle was finished. The red lines burst into life, glowing as if made from some insane phosphorus. Arkady rose to his feet, and as the wall in front of them cracked and dissolved, the Boyar finally stopped speaking, his mouth dropping open in awe and wonder. Arkady did not look at him. He was no longer important. The pieces clicked, twisting sideways, each a tiny box of its own, and hooks flew out from each one, embedding in Arkady’s soft skin. They dug into his flesh, warm blood trickling as they pulled and tore at him, tearing him exquisitely, releasing his true self so long trapped inside. It felt wonderful.
    Arkady stared at the doorway that had been the wall, aware that beside him the Boyar had started to scream and jibber and shake. His fear felt good. Hooks found his mouth, and as they ripped it wider over his teeth and jaw, he watched the two figures emerge. Behind them, the darkness hummed with pain and confusion and he felt it tingle in his every cell.
    â€œHave you found your tongue, Arkady, the Confessor?” The being was scarred on every inch of its damaged flesh, its strange clothing sewn through its skin, never to be removed. When it spoke, a scent of vanilla and putridness hung in the air. Arkady sucked it in, relishing it. His eyes widened as thick, black tongues erupted from his torn mouth as if tasting the creature’s breath, rippling as they did so like the snakes of the Medusa’s hair. More hooks embedded in the back of Arkady’s skull, leaving his mouth wide open forever, home for the swirling mass of meat that filled it.
    The Confessor
. He rolled the words round in his mutilated mouth, letting all his tongues taste them. It felt right. It felt good.
    â€œYou are Cenobite. One of us.”
    If Arkady’s jaw had not been stretched apart beyond limits, his torn bottom lip pulled over it, it would have dropped at the beauty of the second speaker. Its voice was a soft whisper, and every inch of it appeared tattooed, jeweled pins driven into its skin and skull at regular intersections on the network of grids.
    â€œWe have been waiting for you.”
    Arkady’s hellbound heart split with joy, and stepping forward, he happily left his humanity behind. He was going home.
    The Boyar had crumpled to the ground, and the fat man’s head shook as he cried and sobbed and begged for mercy.
    The door in the wall was closing, and reaching down with his own bloody hand, Arkady pulled the lord forward, the weighty frame as light as a feather. The gloom embraced him and he thought he saw a flash of Ivan’s smile somewhere in the shadows of the endless night. No matter. He would hear the Boyar’s confession first, and if it didn’t come easily, then he would force it. He had all of eternity to introduce the man to the possibilities of pain and pleasure.
    And he would enjoy it.

Hellbound Hollywood
    Mick Garris
    So it had come to this.
    I stood in the relentless suburban London gloom, a Hitchcockian black umbrella protecting me from the gritty drizzle that had already overtaken my socks within my shoes. The location van would meet me in an hour or so, but I had always preferred to arrive on my own beforehand, so that I could scope out the place before the others dove in.
    London was once my town. Back in the early nineties, when the British film industry had struggled under virtual collapse, as the world turned a cold shoulder to all that the Brits had to offer on the big screen, as cinemas contracted and toppled across the United Kingdom, I, new and brash and filled with an artistic reach unbound by practicality or even social graces, had crafted a little something called
Double Deception
.
    I