Content warnings: confinement, torture

Tribute

The cell was dark and stunk of waste and rot. A bare light bulb buzzed overhead, guttering. The walls felt close, but the dying light couldn’t reach them.

The traitor sat on a metal chair, ankles bound to the legs, wrists behind the back. His joints screamed.

His mind screamed louder.

They had thrown him in here… how long ago? Years? Yesterday? He couldn’t mark time. There were no visitors, no guards. No windows. No door.

They had thrown him in here, and walled it up. The memory tormented him:

The mason’s grin, the glint of his labor union ring, the scrape scrape of the mortar, the thunk of another brick.

The flash of the photographer’s camera in the last instant before the traitor’s aperture to the world closed for good.

The muffled cheers of the revolutionaries on the other side of the wall, celebrating the end of his regime.

The traitor fumed. He had worked hard for his power, and in his country, hard work was celebrated, not punished. How could they call this justice when they, not he, now enjoyed the fruits of his labor?

But it didn’t matter. They had thrown him in here, and walled it up, and left him to rot.

With an electric snap, the guttering bulb turned crimson, the scent of ozone filled the air, and the traitor’s blood curdled.

The Devil stepped out of the dark.

To the eye, he was impossibly beautiful, but to the soul, he was a shrieking abomination, a tumult of seduction and sadism.

His voice sundered time.

“Your tribute is due.”

The traitor begged, insisted the tribute had already been paid. For this, the Devil took his hands. Black blood welled from the severed stumps, dripping upward into the dark.

“I made you the richest man in history. Your tribute is due.”

The traitor cursed, accused the Devil of changing the deal. For this, the Devil took his eyes. In his blindness, a thousand-fold assault of limbic terror swelled.

“I gave you all the power you ever wanted. Your tribute is due.”

The traitor debased himself, offered acts for which his regime had sentenced thousands to death. For this, the Devil took his tongue, the infliction of that pain more erotic than anything the traitor could offer.

“I allowed you every sinful pleasure. Your tribute is due.”

The traitor sobbed, pitiful in his bondage. He had condemned so many enemies to the slow death of a doorless cell. How could all that conquest have come to this?

The Devil laid his hands upon the traitor’s head. His touch was gentle, but the traitor’s soul felt the profane violation of the abomination forcing itself into his every cell, his every atom, overwhelming his remaining senses with a shrill and seething chorus.

At last, the traitor nodded his acquiescence, if only to silence that awesome pandemonium.

For this, the Devil took his hope, leaving an unbroken void of despair stretching from Creation to Eternity.

“They have forgotten you,” the Devil said. “They have built a soft, kind world in your absence. For now, they are almost happy.”

The truth gripped the traitor’s heart like a vise. It didn’t matter how many opponents he overpowered, how many dissidents he disappeared into their own doorless cells: the mighty regime he’d traded his soul for had, in the end, accomplished nothing.

With a parting whisper, The Devil slipped back into the impenetrable dark.

“I will return tomorrow. Your tribute is due.”

Afterword

I’m not saying the traitor in Tribute is supposed to be any specific person, but the feelings of rage and betrayal that animate this story are very much of our present moment, and they have many, many echoes throughout history.

Sadly, the concept of an authoritarian regime is not new. It felt cathartic to imagine a consequential end to one.

This piece originated in the Yearlong in Speculative Fiction course I took from Nisi Shawl at Hugo House over 2024-25. It premiered as a spoken-word performance for Two Hour Transport in the early summer of 2025.