It has been a few weeks, but I’m back with another short story challenge. I rushed this one out, but I’m gearing back up to start writing my next work so it was good to blow the cobwebs out.
This week, the theme is breakdown. I chose to go literal with the breakdown of ‘hell’ given contradictory rules. Please enjoy.
Expectations
Toddhunter
“Name?”
“Tom.”
“Sex?”
Tom hesitated, not quite understanding the relevance of the question. “Umm male? Why is that important-” Realization crashed home like a runaway train entering an orphanage for kittens.
The small but suitably efficient demon winced. “You are going to have a long eternity down here. Ok, I have you down as male. Do you have any allergies?”
Again tom hesitated, this time considering his answer a lot more carefully. “Yes… I’m allergic to … lack of torture.”
“Lack of torture?” The demon squawked in what might have been an attempted imitation of laughter. “Boy I haven’t heard that one since this morning.” Despite the sarcasm, it still noted the allergy down on the parchment scroll in front of it in a careful fire based script.
Tom was surprised. “You wrote that down? I didn’t think that would really work.”
“Oh sorry, of course it won’t work. In fact as soon as we are done this whole parchment will be destroyed rendering it all a complete and excruciating waste of my time.”
“But why?”
“Because this is hell and that is the way things are done here.”
With that, the demon waved a clawed hand to a door of fire which slowly materialised behind the pair. When it was around halfway visible, the process stopped and the door stood there incomplete and flickering away.
“Yeah sorry about that,” the demon sighed, “we have been meaning to get that fixed but it is taking forever. You’ll have to sort of take a run and a jump at it…and try not to touch the sides.”Tom quickly discovered that hell wasn’t a very nice place to be. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t a land filled with fire and brimstone and an endless array of imaginative torture devices and beasts from…well local beasts. He had expected to be faced with brutal efficiency as his wildest fears were brought to life one after the other in a relentless assault of suffering. Instead, it was something much worse, which was a disorganised and broken down rabble of a place. Despite the alternative, he had to admit to himself that it was a little disappointing.
As Tom emerged with singed clothes he began to understand the full extent of the problem. The landscape around him was cliché enough. He could see rocky outcrops, lava and desolate poisoned forests stretching out before him. But beyond that, he couldn’t see many other people at all. There were no flying beasts with six backs and a thousand teeth. He wasn’t greeted by a steel rod wielding muscular demon wearing a loin cloth that might as well be painted on. All he could see was a small white rabbit quietly eating the remains of some slightly spoiled lettuce.
This left Tom at a bit of a loose end. When he had been faced with the prospect of entering hell he had immediately started preparing himself for the pain that would follow. He hadn’t even considered that he would be faced with the dilemma of working out exactly what he was supposed to do.
“Umm hello?” He announced out to the strange world. It didn’t reply and nobody appeared so he tried it again with a little more volume. The rabbit did consider him carefully for a few seconds, but decided that the lettuce was a lot more interesting.
Time passed. The only thing that Tom had to break up the boredom, was watching the rabbit continue to devour the spoiled lettuce. For some reason, the lettuce never seemed to be completely eaten and must have kept regenerating.
Fascinated, Tom tried to remove the lettuce but this only resulted in more lettuce appearing. Kicking the rabbit worked a treat, but it only limped back to its original position and kept feasting. Idly, Tom considered kicking it harder, but that seemed to be a bit of a dick move on his first day. So instead he left it behind and began to explore the surroundings.
The nearest landmark was a twisting river of fire so he made out directly for it. Progress was slow, given there were no roads or paths that he could follow as he picked his way through the sharp rocks. After quite some time, he realised that the river wasn’t getting any closer to him despite his steady progress. Guessing correctly, he surmised that it was one of those ironic trial things that he would never reach and stopped trying. As soon as he did so, he found himself on the river banks. The flowing fire was interesting for a few minutes, but it too seemed to serve no real purpose.
“Wait!” A voice screamed out behind him. Tom turned to see a rotund blue demon puffing its way towards him. “Just a second, I’m supposed to be torturing you. Just wait there.”
Tom waited as running didn’t seem a viable method of escape. Besides he could see that the blue demon had powerful wings tucked away on its rippled back. Despite the futility of escape, the cruel looking axe it brandished did give parts of his body other ideas about trying.
Luckily the same effect as Tom had experienced with the river seemed to be in place. No matter how hard the demon tried to close the distance, he seemed to be getting no closer to its intended target. Finally it stopped and slumped down on the ground as it breathed hard.
“Damn,” it muttered. “Any chance you can come over here towards me?”
“Towards you?” Tom looked at it strangely. “So you can torture me?”
“Yeah, that would be great.” The demon waved the axe around half-heartedly.
Tom looked at it strangely. “Umm, No? Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know,” the blue faced blue demon admitted. “Something to do I suppose? Maybe you could even overpower me and turn the tables? It might be a bit of fun and adventure for you to try.”
Tom shrugged. The puffed demon wasn’t all that big really and he decided it would actually be something to do to pass the time. So he walked over to where the demon sat to try to take the axe. Of course having decided on what he wanted to do, he couldn’t achieve it and instead found the demon moving further away from him.
He sighed in frustration. “How are we supposed to do this? Does anything work in this crazy place?”
The demon shook its multi-horned head. “I’m afraid not. Some of the rules…well they sounded good, but the … the ‘it’ kept adding more and more and now they contradict each other and well… it used to be fun. I could have had all your limbs off by now, each one strung up on the ceiling and being devoured by…oh I don’t know, those little green triangle bugs you sometimes see under plants.”
“Well, can we leave or get out of here? Is there a town or city or something we can get to?”
“Yes,” the demon nodded, “but umm, you can’t get there now that you know about it, so not really worth trying.”
“Oh.” Tom was starting to understand this place now. One thing still bugged him though. “What was with the rabbit? It seemed it was pretty happy eating an endless supply of lettuce. Wouldn’t that be like its heaven?”
“Oh no. Rabbits hate lettuce.”
Tom wasn’t convinced. “You sure? It seems to me that rabbits are pretty keen on the stuff. You might want to get that checked.”
“Ok, we will,” lied the demon, now feeling a little embarrassed. “Well, I’ll report it to my supervisor, but I haven’t seen him in around a thousand years. Even before that he seemed to get sick an awful lot. Somebody will probably fix that at some stage.”
The two unlikely members of the conversation just stared at each other awkwardly now, clearly having run out of things to say. Tom finally broke the silence.
“Before you mentioned ‘it’. Were you talking about the Devil-”
The world shifted around him as a series of purple lightning flashes crashed down around him.
“WHO DARES USE ME NAME IN VAIN?” Echoed out a commanding voice. A giant horned being loomed over the small man, enormous horns and fiery eyes beating down oppressively from above.
Tom, feeling quite put out by events so far was in no mood. “Hi,” he waved, “my name is Tom. Are you the Devil-”
Again the strange world shifting sensation hit and the lightning crashed out again, still impressive despite the repeat performance.
“WHO DARES USE ME NAME IN VAIN?” Again echoed out a commanding voice, this time with even more force and anger.
Tom couldn’t help but smile at the absurdity. “Tom, my name is Tom and you are the De-”
Before he could finish, the Devil stretched out a clawed hand. “Wait, wait, wait. Not again please, it really isn’t easy to do all that every time. Just give me a few minutes at least.”
“A few minutes? … Wait, why are you asking me to help you out?”
“Because it hurts, ok? Have you ever produced purple lightning? It isn’t something that just comes out naturally you know.”
Tom shook his head slowly. Hell really wasn’t what he expected at all. “But are you not in charge of this operation?” Tom waved his hands around him. “Don’t you make all the rules?”
“Technically.” The Devil sat down on the rocky slopes now, whilst trying to scratch itself in three different places at once. “It is all pretty complicated,” it sighed whilst looking at Tom with a raised eyebrow. Clearly it wanted to vent.
Tom sighed himself and sat down beside the prince of darkness. He knew he would regret it, but he decided to play along. “Why is it complicated?”
“Well, a few years ago things were getting a bit tame around here. Have you ever been cubed by piano wire? Terrible, terrible thing. But some of the people here had that done to them every hour on the hour for a hundred years. Even with the amazing pain it was getting a bit old you know?”
Tom nodded. He assumed it would be like getting into a very hot bath, or talking to a teacher about the problems of their job. Sooner or later you just go numb to the pain.
“We needed to mix things up. So I made some rules to make sure that things were even stricter on the irony and suffering. But now? Every time I try to do something bad, it actually turns into something good. When I try to fix it, it just gets worse.”
“Like the rabbit?”
“Yeah, I don’t even know what is going on with that. I’m afraid to touch it now, or we’ll have rabbits everywhere or something. Here I am, supposed to be the Devil and-”
The Devil had just enough time to roll its eyes before the scene shifted and the lightning came forth once more.
“WHO DARES-”
“It’s ok,” Tom interrupted, “you don’t have-”
“USE ME NAME IN VAIN?” The Devil slumped down again. A tired look stretched across the humongous face.
“So,” Tom thought deeply, “what are we supposed to do then? Can’t you just try to make things good? Then things would end up bad…”
“Which would be good, so it would end up worse…which would be good, which isn’t what hell is supposed to be about.” The Devil closed his eyes tightly after spitting that last line out. It had a headache.
Tom shrugged. “So I guess this really is hell in a sense then? What about heaven, is that any good?”
“Terrible.” The Devil admitted. “Fucking rabbits everywhere.”