by Mark Cain
Well, they would have anyway, if this weren’t Hell, where nightmares are pretty much the steady diet of the eternally damned. Besides, the lurid radiance I’m talking about was emanating from the Throat of Hell, that great yawning chasm that stretches from the Mouth of Hell at Gates Level all the way down to Satan’s office suite in the Ninth Circle. Still, the scary shadows weren’t as obvious, because the Infernal Realm was now cooking on high instead of a slow boil. A new day, or what passes for day around here, had begun.
I took in Hell’s version of dawn from the steps leading to my office. To be accurate, it was not really an office, but more of a beat-up trailer that wouldn’t have been allowed its rectangle of concrete in any self-respecting trailer park back on Earth. Still, it was command central for the Underworld’s Superintendent of Plant Maintenance (me) and my trusty sidekick, Orson, as we endured our never-ending punishment of being lousy handymen.
Hey, it’s a lot worse than it sounds. Have you ever been bad at something? I mean really, really bad, stinko, like someone with two left feet and an inner ear infection trying to execute a pirouette during the climax of Swan Lake? Not pretty. So doing something you really suck at, not to mention hate, for all eternity is an excruciating, if highly specialized, form of Hell for me and Orson.
Speaking of Orson, he had beaten me into the office that day, something almost unheard of, since he was famous during his lifetime for being late and I was obsessive about being early. I knew he had preceded me because the door was already slightly open, so for once I didn’t have to fight the stupid doorknob to get into my own office.
That the great Orson Welles got to work before me was noteworthy. I’m an early riser, as evidenced by my getting to watch Hell’s version of sunrise every morning. Orson, on the other hand, didn’t give a damn about punctuality, but there he was, early for work, sitting on his work stool, waiting for me, his Blimpie’s mug in hand.
“Morning, Steve.”
“What are you doing here so early?” I asked, closing the door behind me.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said.
For some reason, this struck me as funny, and I chuckled. “Good grief, Orson. This is Hell. Nobody can sleep.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but last night was worse than usual.” Probably true, judging from his eyes, which were especially bloodshot this morning, with dark bags under them, as if he’d stayed up the night, drinking and smoking while he pondered the mysteries of the universe. “I keep thinking about my Hell movie.”
“That again,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You know there’s no way, correct that, there’s no way in Hell that Satan’s going to let you make a promotional video about Hell.”
My assistant’s face reddened. “He might. It would help get him some more demons. You know he always needs more demons.”
Orson had a point there. While a few demons, like incubi and succubi, were native-born, most were converted humans. They actually volunteered to be repulsive devil-wannabes. “Okay, that’s probably true. But it’s not going to happen.”
“And why not?” he snapped.
Okay, we’d started the morning off on the wrong foot. Now it was time to calm things down. “Look, Orson. I know you’d make a great movie, but you’d, well, you’d enjoy making it, right?”
“Well, of course I’d enjoy making it, and … oh … well. Right. We’re in Hell.” Orson’s face assumed a mournful expression, like I’d just killed his dog or something.
I smiled sympathetically. “Yeah, and we don’t get to enjoy anything down here.”
The smell of burnt java filled the room, so I stepped away from my disgruntled assistant and his hanged-dog expression. From my desk, a rusted and dented All-Steel model that could have been constructed from a World War II depth charge, I grabbed my “I’m not With Stupid. I AM Stupid,” mug and headed to our antediluvian Mr. Coffee. I took my first sip of the day, straining loose grounds with my teeth. “Shit,” I mumbled, singeing my tongue.
“Nothing like a good cup a’ joe, eh?” Orson said, a little twinkle coming back in his eye. Only one of them, though. The other was hanging onto its depression.
“Yes, but unfortunately, this isn’t one,” I grumbled, using thumb and forefinger to pick a ground off my still-burning tongue. “I haven’t had a decent cup of coffee since the grande Sumatra I got at Starbucks the day I died.”
Orson set his cup on the edge of my desk and stretched expansively. Of course, since my friend’s ectoplasmic frame was a reasonable facsimile of his mortal one toward the end of his life, said frame was pushing four hundred pounds. Almost by definition, Orson was expansive, and so, gargantuan as he was, he had a hard time doing anything in less than expansive fashion. “Starbucks was around when I died in 1985, but I never got around to trying it.”
“Just as well,” I said, wincing as I took another sip. “I still remember, which makes our morning coffee ritual just a little enhancement to my eternal torment.”
“Lucky you,” Orson said, grabbing his own mug and taking a swallow of the hot, black liquid. “Still, even Folgers was better than this. Speaking of coffee, are you and Flo still on for this morning? … I guess so, judging by the way you’re blushing.”
“She has a way of doing that to me,” I replied with a rueful grin.
“Nervous?”
“A bit.” Florence Nightingale (yes, that Florence Nightingale - is there another one?) and I had only recently gotten past an early rough patch in our relationship. Rough patch: that’s a euphemism for Satan and his underlings humiliating us by filming me and Flo in the sack and then turning the footage into the most popular porn movie the Underworld had ever seen. And by Underworld, I mean all of it. Apparently, everyone in Hell had seen “Flo Does The Super.” Many devils and demons even owned it on Blu-ray, complete with 3-D and Smellovision®. Pretty humiliating, though that’s par for the course down here.
Anyway, Flo had been particularly upset by the movie. After some months, though, she had adjusted to the situation. Only a few days ago, after the successful conclusion of the HVAC Affair - hmmm, doesn’t have the same panache as “The Thomas Crown Affair,” but there you go - she had confessed the surety of her love. (That’s exactly how she’d said it: “surety.” I’d never even used that word in a sentence, but then I hadn’t been born in the Nineteenth Century, as she had, back when the language had a lot more elegance to it than what I’d lived and died with in the second half of the Twentieth Century.) We had agreed to take it slow. Well, she had wanted to take it slow, and I’d reluctantly acquiesced. Me, I would have been perfectly happy to get back in the sack with her immediately, but then I’m a guy. We are simple creatures, driven mainly by lust and bacon.
Having coffee at the hospital today was our way of restarting the relationship. I was a bit nervous, but mostly excited. Now if only nothing important came up that the Plant Department had to handle. As Hell’s only maintenance team, Orson and I were expected to fix everything that broke down here. That was a boatload. After all, no one really expects Hell to function flawlessly. If it did, it would be Hea … the other place.
Well, we didn’t fix everything, as evidenced by the four-foot high piles of unresolved work orders filling one corner of our office. There was no way we could take care of everything that broke. If it were even possible to do so, this wouldn’t be a particularly good form of eternal punishment, now would it? Still, we did our best to fix the important stuff.
I looked around our trailer. The office could use a little repair itself. All of the wallpaper, a drab gray pattern that added nothing to the décor except that it was something else to maintain, was sagging like a dowager’s chin. One piece, damp from a leak in the roof that we’d never been able to find, had finally pulled away completely from the wall. The top half of it was now touching the floor. Without thought, I lifted the stapler off my desk and, with a rapid series of clicks, tacked the sheet back to the wall. No more than a second after I finished, while admiring my own handiwork, th
e staples began to pop out of the drywall. One of them hit me in the right eye.
“Shit,” I cursed, without much enthusiasm - after all, I’d only had half a cup of coffee and didn’t really feel awake yet - and reached to one of the two spools of duct tape hanging from each side of my tool belt. With a quick pull, I dispensed about eighteen inches of the stuff, what I judged the width of the wallpaper to be, made a clean tear, and taped the top of the paper to where it met the ceiling.
“I’m surprised you didn’t reach for the duct tape first,” Orson commented.
“Me too,” I said, once again admiring my handiwork, and once again being struck in the same eye by a tardy but nonetheless rebellious staple. The wallpaper stayed put, though. Duct tape, the one tool of the handyman trade with which I had any competence, had never failed me. It was also gray, so it didn’t look particularly bad against the wallpaper, though the paper in the middle of the wall still sagged like that chin I mentioned earlier.
Splat! A long, skinny package, about the size of a salami, emerged from the pneumatic tube above my wire inbox. That’s how we got most of our work orders, but this obviously wasn’t one of them. Curious, I picked up the package. It was addressed to both of us.
“What the hell?” Orson said, when I showed him the return address. It said Sintas Uniform and Apparel. “You don’t think it’s two of those HOTI gimme caps they were trying to get us to wear last year, do you?”
HOTI was the acronym for Beelzebub’s operation down here: Hell’s Office of the Interior. Plant Maintenance was a department within the HOTI division. The hats hadn’t worked out very well. They made us look too dignified, so we’d had to return them.
“One way to find out,” I said, opening the parcel. Inside were two long, narrow maroon-rimmed ovals, with yellow centers that matched the color of our coveralls. There was also a set of simple instructions: “Peel off the paper and affix fabric to the location indicated by the diagram.”
Orson slapped his hand to his forehead. “Great, just great.”
I shrugged. “We knew this would happen sooner or later, so let’s just get it over with. Turn around. I’ll do you, then you can do me.”
“Fine.” My friend put his back to me, displaying the maroon HOTI insignia on the back of his coveralls. I peeled off the wax paper from the back of the fabric and affixed the oval to the narrow space between the O and the T, doing my best to stick it on straight. Then I turned and let Orson do the same for me.
Our divisional acronym now read, “HOOTI,” except that one of the “O”s was extra skinny to fit in the limited space available to it. This was a pretty cheap solution, but actually better than getting a whole new, properly-spaced logo that we would have had to sew on ourselves. After we took the old ones off, of course. Since I’m a terrible seamstress, a skinny peel-and-stick letter was okay by me.
Still, this was a regrettable if completely predictable eventuality. The old acronym had never accounted for the “of” in “Hell’s Office of the Interior.” This new one did.
Orson was staring over his shoulder, examining the logo in the cracked and yellowed shard of mirror we had in our office. “HOOTI. Just marvelous.”
“Actually, it says ‘ITOOH.’ Mirror, you know.”
“Very funny,” he grumbled. “Dora will have a field day with this.”
I nodded. “It was the first thing I thought of too.” Dora, who ran the Parts Department, was fond of calling us Hotties. “Now she’ll call us Hooties, I guess.”
He frowned. “Knowing Dora, she’ll probably call us a big pair of Hooters.”
“Ooh!” I said, grimacing. I went over to the Mr. Coffee and topped off my mug then sat back at my desk. “Hadn’t thought of that.”
Splat!
“Now what?” Orson groused.
“Work order?” I said, not looking up from my coffee.
“No. Wrong color.”
I glanced at my inbox. Our work orders were printed on paper stock that was the color of bile, but this packet had blue and white sheets stapled together. With suspicion, I picked it up and got popped in the left eye this time by the staple holding the packet together. All the papers tumbled to the floor.
On my hand and knees, I gathered the pages from off the linoleum and put them in order then took a gander at what I had and scowled. “Crap!”
“What is it?” Orson asked, putting down his coffee cup.
“I HEARD that!” boomed a voice from the office PA system.
Fuck! Beezy was paying attention. I got off the floor and pressed down the talk button of the intercom that sat on a corner of my desk. “Come on! A performance evaluation?”
“Union rules,” said Beelzebub, the great Lord of the Flies and, not insignificantly, my boss down here.
I had been on the last bargaining team for the union, so I knew the current contract by heart. There had been no such provision in it. “I don’t remember the SEIU agreeing to personnel evaluations.”
That’s Satan’s Employees’ Infernal Union. Don’t confuse it with the Earth-bound union having the same acronym. Just a coincidence, like the APA standing for both the American Psychological Association and the American Poolplayers Association.
Beezy laughed in that endearing way of his. It sounded like a rock polisher working on a large chunk of concrete. “You don’t remember it because Management slipped it into the contract when you weren’t looking.”
Swell. That means they rewrote the contract without telling us. Nice.
“Besides,” Beelzebub continued, “it only applies to humans in positions that report directly to one of the princes of Hell.”
“Oh,” I said, somewhat mollified. “There can’t be too many of us in that situation.”
“You’re right about that. Demons supervise most of you.”
I thought about all the princes of Hell, and realized with some surprise that almost none of them had direct contact with humans. “That,” I said hesitantly, “that would narrow it down to just me and Bruce then, right?”
Bruce the Bedeviled was Satan’s personal assistant.
“Not Bruce,” Beezy said. “At least, not anymore. Remember he was promoted to demon recently.”
“Oh right, right.” I stared in bemusement at the speaker mounted on the wall. “Then, that means this portion of the contract only applies … to me?”
That piece of concrete got a little bit shinier. “Right you are! But if you’re going to report to me, you must be held accountable for your actions, Minion, even in Hell. Besides, it’s best practice. All the management consultants, and believe me, we have a lot of that type down here, agree.”
In life, I had been a professor of economics. Faculty members, probably more than anyone, hate having their performance evaluated, but in most cases, they only have to put up with it for their first seven years on the job. After getting tenure, I thought I was done with that forever … well, except for those stupid evaluations done on Scantron forms I had to let students fill out - number two pencil - for the occasional course. Seems I was wrong. My lips curled down into a fair imitation of a toddler’s pout. “It just doesn’t seem fair that I’m the only one in all of Hell that has to have a performance evaluation.”
Polish, polish. “Tough shit. Besides, Hell isn’t about fair play, and you know it. Now quit your whining and come down to my office this morning. Make sure you complete that self-evaluation before you get here.”
“Yessir,” I mumbled, as an ear-piercing screech came from the speaker. The PA system had lasted just long enough for Beelzebub to ruin my morning before failing.
It failed about twice a week.
Great. Though it could be worse, I suppose. At least he didn’t say immediately. This means I have time to have coffee with Flo then fill out the stupid personnel form as I ride down on the Escalator to the Eighth Circle.
“What’s the point of an evaluation?” Orson said, sharing my outrage as he stared at the forms crushed in my hand. “We’re in Hell. Everyt
hing we do sucks, not to mention being completely pointless. And even if you did a great job, Beezy would never admit it.”
I stroked my chin. “Don’t know about that.” My boss and I had been getting along pretty well, especially since I’d had success with some big projects recently. Also, despite his bluster and innate cruelty, Beelzebub was the most fair-minded of all Hell’s princes. Good thing I don’t report to Asmodeus. He’d rake my butt over the coals.
Asmodeus, the Lord of Lust, had a double axe to grind with/on me. Only the other day, Flo had very publicly snubbed him at a reception at which she’d been the honored guest. That had been partly my fault.
Not to mention that his own assistant has the hots for me. As I thought about the redheaded succubus, I began to blush. She was one sexy demon, the only woman in Hell other than Flo who I’d ever been attracted to.
But this was the worst time to think about Lilith, right before my date with Flo. Putting my coffee cup down on the desk, I stuffed the self-assessment form into my pocket, stepped before our mirror and tried to make my hair appear a little less unkempt.
“Orson, while I’m gone, would you take a pen and draw some narrow O’s on our letterhead?”
My friend flexed his right hand and frowned. “That sounds like a guaranteed hand cramp. Couldn’t we just order fresh stock?”
“Sorry. We’re over budget in the Supplies line.”
“Oh, okay,” he said with a sigh.
“Thanks.” Pivoting on my heel, I headed toward the exit.
“Good luck, Steve! With both Flo and Beelzebub!” Orson yelled, as the door closed behind me.