It was not a good time to be in Hell.
Some would argue that there had never been a good time to be in Hell, but those that were born and raised and lived the lion’s share of their existence there knew that there had certainly been better times than others, and this was very much not one of them. Words like recession, downturns, and even depression were being thrown around by devils and demons alike on every infernal network, website, and print publication across the Nine Layers, with each day bringing more grim news to the Denizens of Hell that the economy was, indeed, going to Heaven in a hand-basket. Metaphorically, that was - if reports coming from the other side of the divine divide were anything to go by, the citizens of Hell’s angelic counterparts were gripped in turmoil of their own, albeit for different reasons.
In Heaven, so it was said, not enough people were getting in. Souls in Purgatory were taking longer and longer to work their way out of it, and the slow trickle of those who were making it to the Pearly Gates were finding that they could stroll right through without a wait, and the angels were running their wings ragged on Earth trying to stop an increasingly obstinate human population from tossing themselves headfirst into damnation en masse.
This should, in theory, have been a boon for Hell. But, there were certain rules that governed reality - all realities - and one of those was this; all things in moderation.
Hell had the opposite problem of Heaven - there were too many getting in. Oldheads that had been around since the Antediluvian times were saying that they hadn’t seen the shores of the Meres of Cocytus so packed with souls since the flood, so many in number that the ferrymen were working grueling amounts of overtime just to haul a fraction of them over the River Styx. This was to say nothing of street-level demons, who were having to do the same just to keep up with their torture quotas in increasingly over-crowded pits. The crisis was so bad that, apparently, the judges of the damned were reassigning souls that would have gone to the Second Layer for crimes of lust and sexual misconduct to other Layers, just to give the lust devils there room to breathe and time to work. Given that the average lust devil’s legs couldn’t be closed with a trash compactor, and they, more than any other stripe of devil or demon, truly enjoyed their lines of work, the fact that even they were growing exhausted meant that the crisis gripping the Underworld was reaching unprecedented levels.
Even on Earth, while angels struggled to encourage and foster virtue in humans, demons and devils found that they didn’t even have to try and convince most humans to sin. In fact, sin had grown so abundant and profuse that most devils that worked on the mortal plane were tucking their pointed tails between their legs and scampering back down to Hell because of the growing dearth of meaningful employment on the mortal coil.
Worse still, words like unionization and collective bargaining were being discussed in hushed whispers from the top Layer to the Bottom. The crowned lords of Hell had made it abundantly clear that any and all attempts at doing anything of the sort would result in a culling of devils, demons, and all Hellish creatures of every shape and size unseen since the War in Heaven itself, but, behind closed doors, they knew even that would be a difficult task when the warrior horde under the employ of the Horseman of War - Hell’s resident strikebreakers, when the need arose - were speaking of striking themselves.
Things were, simply, succinctly, and perhaps crudely put, fucked.
Stolitz was well aware of this. As a demon princeling of august lineage, he was privy to much of the chatter that went around the circles of Hell’s nobility, and none of what he had heard over the past handful of years did much to instill confidence that things would turn around in the foreseeable future. Rumors abound that the big man himself, the King of the Damned, Master of Lies, and Lord of the Powers of the Air, was considering serious… personnel changes, even among the top-most bureaucrats and positions of lordly power in the Nine Layers, which had previously been considered untouchable. Of course, he had recently put out a statement that there would most certainly not be any cullings of Hell’s aristocratic class, and that any and all demons belonging to peerage of any real repute would be spared the supposed shake ups being discussed… but, when one of the demon’s titles was literally the Master of Lies, well - a demon or devil with any sense could read between the lines of what he was really saying.
None of this made Stolitz’s work any easier. Just like everyone else in his employ, he was spending long hours in the office, working double-time to ensure that his subordinates were meeting their quotas, whether it be tempting humans, torturing the damned, or striking bargains to collect souls so that, if cullings did come, they’d at least have the numbers to justify their office's and, by proxy, their own continued existence. Just over the past week, he’d had to step in more than once to get his talons dirty in the torture pits to do some poking, prodding, and emotional abuse just to keep things moving at pace, none of which he was particularly good at.
But, for as much as he’d come to resent being locked in his work office for most of his waking hours, he found that, if nothing else, it offered him a reprieve from being somewhere even less desirable - home.
Every day, it was the same awful routine; one of his small fleet of chauffeurs would transport him through the crowded streets of Pandemonium, choked with increasingly destitute and panicked demons and devils, and out to the periphery of Hell’s largest city, where his estate lay in one of the most premier and exclusive neighborhoods there was to be found in the entirety of all Nine Layers. Though his sprawling, regal estate, with it’s obsidian spires and neatly manicured gardens (and indoor swimming pool), would have been the envy of any lesser demon or street-level demon, to Stolitz, it might as well have been his own personal torture pit.
Stolitz stood before the towering front door of black iron, emblazoned with the sigil of his family. It was a work of art unto itself so masterfully crafted that, despite it’s terrifying facade, would inspire both dread and awe in any mortal who gazed upon it. There had been a time when Stolitz had found it a welcome sight - something of a symbol that represented relief and refuge from his daily burdens of work and the constant politicking of Hell’s elite, and one he almost felt lighter as he walked through after a long day in the office. Now, however, he stood there, as he did every day, contemplating whether or not he really wanted to enter. He could, after all, retreat back to his office, if he really wanted to. There was still work to be done, if he did, and, if he wished, he could sleep there, too. None of his subordinates would be foolish or brazen enough to question it. It wouldn’t be comfortable, either, since there wasn’t anything to lay down on save for the tiled floor, but he often wondered if it could really be any less comfortable than his own bed. It would certainly be more welcoming - that much he was certain of.
He wished that the sanctity he’d once found in the pubs and bars and other watering holes of Pandemonium was still available to him. However, the last time he’d decided to have a drink or two to take the edge off things, two drinks had turned to three, then three into four, and four multiplied into an unknown amount of following rounds that resulted with an unflattering picture of him sprawled out in some random alleyway in Pandemonium, gracelessly passed out in a heap of overstuffed garbage bags, being blasted across every tabloid outlet that operated in Hell.
If there had been anything worse than coming home after work, it had been having to drag himself home to hide away from a jeering public, only to suffer more indignity from his own family.
Stolitz knew his options for refuge were precious few and increasingly limited. If he chose to over-indulge in drink - which, the more he thought about it, the more appealing it sounded - he could do so in the relative privacy and tenuous safety of a home that was only his in name only.
With a sigh of resignation, Stolitz placed a scaled hand on the door’s bronze handle and pushed. As he stepped through the threshold, the long, black talons of his feet clicking against the floor of emerald marble floor, he felt as though his the weight of his own body tripled. He did not walk through the spacious foyer, observed only by the stone eyes of various statues depicting demons and angels alike, so much as he trudged through it, feeling as if he were wading through a mire of tepid muck and viscous slime that only grew thicker and more stifling the closer he drew to the kitchen.
As he sauntered in, he was mildly surprised and greatly relieved to find it empty. Though it was, he thought, somewhat sad that he found comfort in this emptiness, it was comfort all the same. The tension in the air around him eased as he perused the wine rack for something to, as he would always say, take the edge off things. An unfamiliar bottle caught his eye. Sliding it from the rack, he held it gingerly in his clawed hands, looking over the rather simple black label plastered across the front, which only bore the name Despina Vineyards.
He didn’t recall ever buying anything from that particular vineyard. Nothing else was open, or, perhaps more accurately, nothing else needed to be finished, so, with a talon, he cut through the foil wrap and removed the cork with the effortless skill of a veteran sommelier. Or a seasoned wino.
Stolitz poured himself a generous libation. And then a little more. He inspected the contents, which sat heavy in the glass, so dark that it appeared almost black. An inquisitive sniff revealed a rich nose. Fruit forward. Bloodberry heavy followed by an almost sinammon snap, with notes of despair, tears of the innocent, volcanic ash, baking spices, and… oh, was that apple, of all things?
Another sniff.
Yes - it was apple. Just a note. The vaguest whisper, the most tantalizing tease, like the rumor of the endmost tip of a narrow claw running through the neatly combed gray feather atop his head and ghosting along his scalp.
It was quite nice. Not that it mattered - he would have drank it even if it tasted like run off from the plague pits, just to get something in his system. He dipped his beak back into the glass and sniffed again, curious to see if he could suss out any more notes that might have been hiding from him when the whine of the refrigerator door caught his attention. Stolitz whipped around, nearly ripping the wine glass out of his hands in the process when he failed to remove his beak from the interior before turning around. His spike in anxiety dimmed and his stilled breath released in a sigh as he saw the fridge was open, and the figure standing in the sterile electric glow of the light that spilled from it was not the one he’d anticipated.
“Oh.” Stolitz gave a small, uneasy chuckle, one that was underlaid with the soft and gentle hooting of an owl. He ran a hand through his feathers and put on a weary smile. “It’s - it’s just you.”
Astoria’s eyes - wide, golden, and luminescent, just like her father’s looked to peripherals while her body remained still, almost as if she expected him to be addressing someone else. She was dressed in her usual outfit - thin, black denim jeans that hugged her legs a little too much and an utterly classless hooded sweatshirt with some tacky graphic on the front bearing the name and logo of some band that Stolitz had never heard of and never wanted to hear. They were peasant rags, so far as Stolitz was concerned, barely fit for a hellhound to be caught in, let alone a member of Hell’s peerage, but, well… he’d fought and won the battle to keep her hair-feathers a respectable shade of gray rather than some unseemly, stomach-turning neon green or purple, so he figured it would be wise to be judicious in his future conflicts with his daughter’s fashion sensibilities.
With a claw, she pulled on the tab of the can she held in her hands, releasing the pressure inside with a fizzy hiss.
“Uh… hey, dad.”
“Hello, princess,” Stolitz replied, both his tone and his body language easing as his discomfort began to ebb. “Oh, it’s good to see you, darling.”
“You, uh… you alright there, dad?” asked Astoria, keeping the can hovering right by the end of her beak, hesitant to take a sip.
Stolitz gave another small laugh as he allowed himself to lean against the nearby bank of black oak cabinets. “Oh, yes, yes. I’m fine, Stori. Just -” He shrugged his thin, bony shoulders and took a sip of the wine he’d been swirling in the glass. “It was a long day at work, you know? Had to get my feathers dirty in the pits today. Nasty stuff. I’m pretty sure I’ll be hearing the wailing of the damned souls in my sleep tonight, so, I’m, um - I’m a little tense, is all.” He raised his glass. “Nothing a little vino can’t fix, you know?”
Astoria’s golden, glowing eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You thought I was mum, didn’t you?”
“What?” Stolitz gave a dismissive huff. He shifted where he stood. “No,” he lied. “Oh, no, no, no. Don’t be ridiculous, princess. Why would I be afraid of your mother?”
“I… never said you were afraid of her,” Astoria replied flatly.
Both of the demon’s talons closed around the bowl of his glass. “Well, it… it sounded a bit as if you were implying it.” he said, keenly and painfully aware of the uncertainty in his own voice.
Astoria shook her head as she took a long, pensive sip of the sparkling water in the can. “I didn’t think I did.”
Stolitz pressed his beak shut tight with a doubtful hum. “Mm. Not to be disagreeable, but I think you did.”
“I think you’re projecting,” Astoria mumbled, turning her back to her father as she shut the fridge.
“What was that?” Stolitz asked.
Astoria turned around, and her eyes fixed on something behind Stolitz. “I said, hi, mum.”
For the second time in less than five minutes, Stolitz nearly spilled wine over the front of his vest. Before he could even turn around, his wife appeared in his peripheral vision. For as tall as he was, she was almost just as tall, and equally thin and rakish in her build, with pitch black hair-feathers and deep, gunmetal gray fur along her extremities that stood in stark contrast to her white dress. Without a word, she approached the kitchen island, where Stolitz had left the open wine bottle.
“Oh!” Another peal of pitchy, nervous titters escaped Stolitz’s beak. “Oh. I, uh - I didn’t hear you come in.”
Agratta picked up the bottle of wine. She read the label. She turned her red-eyed gaze to her husband, her expression dreadfully inscrutable.
“I bought this today,” she said tonelessly. “For myself.”
Stolitz swallowed - not wine, but his own apprehension, and the sound was loud enough that it could be heard by the souls buried in the deepest pits of the Ninth and deepest layer. A rickety smile cracked across his beak. More nervous tittering. More awkward shifting.
“W-well, ah - um,” Stolitz tugged at the collar of his shirt with a claw, which now a felt as if it was choking him. “Dreadfully sorry about that, my love. I, um -” He made a choking noise in his throat as he raised his glass. “I only poured myself a glass, dearest, just one. The rest - well, I thought that… that maybe we c-”
His words were silenced by a sharp exhale as he found the bottle shoved against his chest. Had his reflexes been any slower, it would have dropped to the ground and, while it wouldn’t have shattered, it would have been a grievous waste of perfectly good wine.
“Take it.”
That’s what Stolitz thought Agratta said, at least. By the time he had processed it, she was already stalking off, her lowered tailfeathers dragging along the ground behind her. Stolitz clutched the bottle to his chest and watched her go. It was all he could do.
Stolitz looked to his daughter. She was, as she always seemed to be, nonplussed, sipping on her drink with no discernible emotion on her face. He held up the bottle in his free hand with a lop-sided grin.
“More for me.”
Astoria flashed her father a thumbs up and excused herself. Stolitz, again, was alone in an empty kitchen that, somehow, felt more empty than before.
Bottle in one hand, glass in the other, Stolitz took his own leave. He sauntered through the manor, the cavernous hallways oppressively dark and the stagnant silence only disturbed by his own footsteps, passing by the audient and judgemental eyes of his extended family, immortalized in sneering portraits that lined the walls. By the time he reached his private office, the weight that had briefly disappeared had reasserted itself with a fury. He felt it, tangibly, weighing on his shoulders with a force that lowered him into a stoop. With a shoulder, he pushed the door open and dragged himself inside, pausing only to kick the door shut behind him. He didn’t even bother turning on the lights. Instead, he navigated the dark by memory alone until he reached his desk, set the bottle and glass down, and turned on a lamp that washed the room in a syrupy orange light.
Slowly, mournfully, even, he began to fill the empty glass once more, watching intently as the black liquid pooled in the broad bowl of the glass.
“Honestly, Stolitz…”
Stolitz went still. The wine continued to pour until his wits returned to him, just in time to avoid the glass running over.
“Haven’t you had enough?”
The demon princeling, luminous eyes wide and incredulous, turned to the source of the dark, deep, and dour voice. It wasn’t a voice that should have been in his house, let alone his office, without his knowledge. It wouldn’t even be one he would expect to hear in his house, as it was unmistakably the voice of -
“Father?”
This is a novella-length serial project that I’m aiming to be a weekly release, specifically for the new regular Thursday theme of Thorny Thursday - a project spearheaded by
and . Since once compared me to Stephen King, I resolved to live up to such a compliment by completely leaning into the most off-the-wall, high concept nonsense that comes to mind. The end result is an urban fantasy dark romantic comedy. About demons. And one other thing that I am not at liberty to disclose now.And yes - the inspirations for the two lead characters is quite transparent. If you happen to know what inspired them, just know that I liked the idea of them too much to not put my own spin on them. Also, I should probably clear up that, obviously, this take on Hell is one with extreme creative and artistic liberties taken in it’s depiction.
As always, I hope you enjoy.
Great compliment and thanks for the shout-out, I enjoyed the story, enjoyed the cliffhanger.
This is awesome!