I used to think the new title didn’t make any sense. Department of Exits? No one exits Hell. Not since the Orpheus Incident, anyway, and we cracked down on security after that.
But then Alistair Black fell into Hell.
He didn’t look like anyone special when the angel dropped out of the clouds overhead and threw him into the Pit of Endless ... sorry, the waiting room. The thousands of damned who still had to be processed lifted their arms to the angel and cried out for salvation, but angels never save anyone. It went back up into the clouds, and the damned returned to milling about, looking for someplace to rest. The floor is too hot to sit on for long and we have only thirteen chairs in the waiting room, twelve of them with broken legs. The one good chair is there so people keep their sense of hope that things may get better for them. That makes it all so much worse when it never gets better. Welcome to Hell.
Alistair would have disappeared into the crowd, but my imp Malachi scampered over and dragged him to my desk, snapping at any of the other sinners who got too close. I should have known something was up then. Malachi has a knack for getting into trouble. It’s what imps were spawned to do, after all.
Alistair looked like the opposite of trouble, though. He was the sort of person who’d blend in with any crowd. Average build, average haircut, average face. He had no defining characteristics, nothing that made him stand out. He wore what he had on at his death: a suit and tie that made me think lawyer. We get a lot of lawyers in Hell, so I’m pretty good at spotting them. He even held a phone in his hand. He looked almost hollow in his perfect humanness.
But while Alistair didn’t look different than anyone else, he acted in a way I hadn’t seen a sinner behave since the German wars ended and all those Nazis showed up in the waiting room acting like they owned the place. Some of the demons took notes from that lot. As for Alistair, he just shook his head like he was irritated by being here. Like he was above Hell.
I knew before he said anything that he was going to deny all his sins. Everyone does. But you don’t catch the angel express to Hell unless you belong here. Unless deep down you know you should be here.
But the thing about Alistair Black was he was telling the truth, in his own way.
“There’s been a mistake,” he said as Malachi dragged him forward with a demented cackle. “Call another angel to take me out of here.”
I finished my lunch before answering him: a Big Mac I’d taken from the last sinner I’d processed, an investment banker who’d died at his desk of a heart attack while eating the hamburger and was still clutching it when the angel dropped him off. Free food from sinners was one of the perks of my job.
Most people start to sweat and shake when they stand before me, if not scream in terror or pass out. The investment banker actually had another heart attack. I took that as a compliment. I spend hours between shifts polishing my scales and sharpening my claws and arranging my spines. It’s nice to know the effort is appreciated.
But Alistair didn’t do any of those things. He didn’t even lose his colour like most sinners do when they avert their gaze from me and finally notice my desk. It’s made of damned souls who have been stripped of their flesh and fused together, still alive. It’s a real mood setter.
Alistair didn’t care. He just glanced at the desk and then looked around the waiting room like he was bored.
Granted, the place didn’t look as momentous as it had in the old days, when it was burning pits and rampaging skeletons and such. Now it’s all industrial carpeting and inspirational posters on the walls and music piped in from the malls in your realm. There are some human torments that even demons can’t improve upon. Although sometimes, on special occasions like Easter, we like to drag what’s left of John Lennon to the main office and have him sing “Imagine” over Hell’s PA.
I’ve learned not to complain about the changes. The last thing I complained about was the backlog of new admissions when all those Nazis showed up, and they sent me Baal as an assistant. His talent for looking into sinners’ souls to find their most hidden fears makes him well suited for the suffering side of our business, but not so good at processing. He’d get so excited when dealing with new arrivals he’d start torturing them on the spot instead of sending them off to their proper level. Which made it really hard to process the other damned in the waiting room, who tried to flee in terror when they saw what Baal was doing to the people around them. No one was happier than me when Baal disappeared one shift in an explosion of smoke and flames, the result of an ill-advised summoning by a mortal. Well, maybe the damned were happier. But that wasn’t going to last. Besides, one day Baal would be back. As long as he wasn’t assigned to my department again ...
As Alistair gazed around the waiting room, I realized I’d read his expression wrong. He didn’t look bored so much as he looked jaded. Like the sinners who sometimes hide out in the crowd here for centuries, trying to avoid getting processed. As if they’ve beaten the system. Like a few hundred years makes a difference. Everyone comes to my desk eventually, if only to put an end to the waiting.
But Alistair shouldn’t have been that used to Hell yet, considering he’d just arrived. Something wasn’t right.
I belched a bit of fire as I pondered the situation.
Alistair looked back at me and frowned. “Didn’t you hear me?” he said. “I don’t belong in Hell.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I said, which was true. My particular talent is to see where sinners belong in Hell. In fact, I’m the only demon with that particular talent. Most of the others were spawned for torment and suffering, but I was spawned for processing. So be it. Someone has to think about where in Hell you belong – we can’t just have you wandering around looking for the torment you like best. Hell isn’t a mall, although we do have several floors that are malls. And offices. We’re also working on an airport level, where the flights are cancelled for all eternity.
But looking at Alistair, I wasn’t sure where he belonged. He was so perfectly blank.
Malachi grabbed the phone out of Alistair’s hand and nibbled on it. Alistair gave him a look but didn’t say anything. Just as well for him. Sometimes Malachi was much more, well, impish. Like when he swapped sinners’ eyes with his own.
“There’s never been a processing error before,” I said, although I will admit that’s a hard thing to prove.
Alistair shrugged at me. “Possess me and look at my life. The evidence will speak for itself. You’ll see I haven’t done anything worthy of damnation.”
I leaned back in my chair, which caused several of the souls trapped in it to whimper a little as my spines sank into them. A suitable fate for all those Nazis. I studied Alistair some more and still saw nothing. But I knew there was more to him than met the eye. He shouldn’t have known about my power to possess sinners. He shouldn’t have known anything about the admissions process yet.
I shrugged back at Alistair, which made the chair scream. There was only one way to find out what was going on here.
I left my body and possessed Alistair. That’s when the problems started, and not just because I hate being in mortals. I immediately missed the comforting weight of my scales and talons, and the warm glow of the fire that burned in my stomach. And having only one heart – well, it doesn’t bear talking about. It’s almost as repugnant as having a soul. But the real problem was that Alistair was telling the truth. There were hardly any sins in him at all.
Before you start to panic and take a bath in holy water, don’t worry, demons can’t just possess whoever they want in your world. First, we have to be invited to your sordid realm through a summoning, like when Baal disappeared; and then you have to mess up the binding circles enough that we can manifest ourselves and grab you. So you’re safe. Unless, of course, you’ve done something wrong and find yourself in Hell, where we can possess you freely and at will. There. Feel better now?
Every demon possesses mortals differently, but here’s how it works with me. When I possess
you, I can relive your whole life if I want. But I’m drawn to those moments where you sinned. So as soon as I entered Alistair I went where his soul took me.
I was a young Alistair in a garage. The door was closed, the only light a bare bulb overhead. A puppy in a metal cage at my feet. A can of gasoline in my hands. I poured the gasoline through the bars of the cage, onto the dog, which whimpered and then began to bark and bite at its wet fur. I didn’t care. The people who owned the dog were in Mexico on holiday. The neighbour looking after the dog was shopping. No one would hear. I dropped the can and took out a lighter. I couldn’t help but smile as I introduced the puppy to its own Hell.
Now I was an older Alistair, a student in law school. So I’d been right about that part. I was standing over my professor, an old man who always wore a cardigan, and who was now tied to the table at the front of his classroom. I wore judge’s robes, and I held a large law book over my head. A tome, really. The professor’s mouth was stuffed full of pages from another book, so he couldn’t make a noise no matter how much he tried.
“The real question,” I said, “is this a crime of passion or premeditation?” And then I brought the law book down onto his head over and over.
And now I was Alistair in my late twenties. I sat in a church, alone in all the pews. Another tome on my lap, but the cover suggested it wasn’t the sort of thing you normally find in a holy place. Human skin. I smiled at the Jesus hanging on the wall. “I know how to beat you,” I said.
There were other moments, of course – no one has a clean soul, not even those who get into Heaven – but nothing more serious than those. And they weren’t necessarily enough to warrant eternal torment and suffering. Heaven is full of murderers, after all. And, strangely, there was nothing after Alistair’s twenties. Like he hadn’t sinned once after that day in the church, even though his earlier sins suggested he was on the fast track to being a sociopath and serial killer. He looked to be in his late thirties now, but no one went a decade without sinning. Not even the angels.
I settled back into my body and stared at Alistair. “What are you doing here?” I asked, and Malachi capered around him in a circle, crooning to himself as he swallowed the last bits of the phone.
“Like I said, there’s been a mistake,” Alistair said, ignoring Malachi. He looked at the clouds again, and this time he smiled. “Get me my ride out of here.”
I scratched my back with my tail while I considered the situation. More than eight trillion served and we hadn’t had a wrong admission yet. Still, just like the virgin birth, there’s a first time for everything.
I shrugged and waved down the next angel that threw a sinner into the crowd. It swooped in and hovered above us, blowing Malachi and the damned away with the wind from its wings. Alistair and I had to hang on to my desk to stay where we were. The angels were always showing off like that.
“What is it you desire of one of the host of God?” the angel asked, its voice like wind chimes full of hornets. See what I mean?
“I’d like you to do your job,” I said. “This one doesn’t belong here.”
The angel looked at Alistair and its eyes flashed gold. “He is a sinner. He belongs to Hell now.”
Alistair shook his head. “There’s no evidence to support that,” he said. Lawyers.
“List me his sins,” I said.
“The murder of dozens,” the angel said. “Rape. Bestiality. Incest. Blasphemy. Suicide. The chronicle is as long as the list of demons in Hell. And as sordid.”
“He hasn’t done many of those things,” I told the angel. “I see only one murder. And really, who doesn’t want to kill their professor?”
The angel shone with indignation. There’s no telling them they’ve done something wrong.
“You see?” Alistair said. “A mistake.”
“I have seen his sins through the eyes of God,” the angel said and now his own eyes turned black. “God does not make mistakes.”
I thought about pointing out if that were the case there’d be no need for Hell, but I just waved him off before all the damned stampeded over here to plead for his mercy and crushed us underfoot. “Never mind, I’ll take care of it myself,” I said. I could see I wasn’t going to get any help from him. Typical.
The angel disappeared into the clouds again with a single sweep of its wings, knocking Alistair and me and all the sinners to the ground. The trapped souls of my desk screamed after it. When we picked ourselves up again, Alistair frowned at me.
“You should have made him take me out of here,” he said.
“Take you where?” I asked.
Malachi scampered back out of the crowd and shook his fists at Alistair. We both ignored him.
“To Heaven,” Alistair said.
“Heaven?” I asked. “What makes you think you deserve to be in Heaven?”
“Well, I don’t deserve to be here,” he said. “And I’m dead, so where else am I going to go?”
You sinners have such limited imaginations sometimes.
“You know, I have a feeling something is not quite right about this,” I said.
Malachi screeched in agreement. Or maybe disagreement. Who knew with imps?
“You can’t hold me if I don’t belong here,” Alistair said. “That’s kidnapping.”
“So call the police,” I said. “We have lots of them in Hell.”
Alistair opened his mouth and then closed it again. He looked around, but it wasn’t a random look. It was almost as if he were searching for someone he knew. I wasn’t sure what to make of that but filed it away.
“Tell me about your death,” I said.
He stared at me for several seconds before answering. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, how did you die?” I was puzzled about that. The angel had said suicide, but I hadn’t seen it in his sins. A big one like that should have drawn me to it before the other transgressions I’d witnessed. But there was no sign of it in his soul.
“You heard the angel,” he said. “I killed myself.”
“But how?” I asked. Patiently, because I have all eternity.
Alistair frowned at me. “What difference does it make?”
“Tell me or I’ll let the imp loose on you,” I said, and Malachi bit off one of his own fingers in excitement. That’s all right. They usually grow back, although not always in the same places.
“You can’t do that,” Alistair said.
“You’re a sinner in Hell. I can do what I want.”
Alistair looked at Malachi chewing his finger for a moment and then shook his head. “I don’t remember,” he said.
“You don’t remember how you died?” Interesting. Generally, the only sinners who don’t remember their deaths are those who die in car accidents or bombings or something fast like that. I’d never before had a suicide who couldn’t remember the way they’d chosen to die. Most didn’t want to remember it – everyone regrets leaping off a bridge the second they’re airborne – but they did actually recall the details. I wondered if the angel had been mistaken, if Alistair’s death had been something other than a suicide. “You didn’t die that long ago,” I pointed out. Not unless the angels had a worse backlog than Hell.
Alistair folded his arms across his chest. “I want to talk to another demon,” he said.
I’ve learned when people make that particular demand the time for polite conversation, such as it is in Hell, is over. So I possessed Alistair again, only this time I didn’t look for his sins. I looked for his death.
I can go anywhere I want in your life. I can relive any moment, not only the sins. It’s just the sins that usually interest me. The rest of your existence – well, I’m sure it’s as dreadfully boring to you as it is to me. So I went straight to the end of Alistair’s life. And I found the suicide, even though it didn’t draw me at all, which was strange enough. Even stranger was my possession. Instead of being inside of Alistair, occupying his body and mind, I stood behind him. We were in the bathroom. Alistair stood looking
at himself in the mirror. I was insubstantial, like the ghosts we use to carry messages between the realms. Malachi was perched on one of my wings, inspecting his own spectral limbs with fascination.
This had never happened to me before. I wasn’t even aware it could happen. But, as you’ll find out, Hell is full of surprises. I thought for a moment that it was some sort of glitch, that I’d manifested in Alistair’s life before the possession had entirely finished. But when I tried to step in to him, I couldn’t. Something was blocking me. It’s like there was no room in there for me. I looked at Alistair closer, trying to figure out what was going on.
He was wearing the same suit and tie he was wearing in the waiting room. He was holding the same phone to his ear.
“I’m never coming in to work again,” he told whoever was on the other end. “I was thinking about one last shift, just so I could cut open your entrails and run them around the office like computer cables. But I think you’ll suffer more if I just let you keep living your pathetic life.” He hung up without listening for an answer.
Well. This was intriguing.
Malachi didn’t seem to think so, though. He jumped down from my shoulder and hopped off into one of the other rooms, gibbering away to himself. I kept watching Alistair, who didn’t seem aware of our presence.
“I loathe you so very, very much,” he told his reflection. “I’ve had fun, but I just can’t stand you anymore.” He picked up a kitchen knife from the counter and began to cut his face with it.
This wasn’t like any suicide I’d experienced before. Usually there was weeping and depression and pain and such. Sure, sometimes there was self-loathing, but I’d never seen it to this extent before. In fact, I realized as I watched Alistair cut himself, it went beyond self-loathing. He carved the skin off his face and sawed his nose off. He sliced off his ears. He hacked off pieces of his tongue. Soon we were standing in a pool of blood. I wish I’d been more substantial so I could have enjoyed its warmth.
Has The World Ended Yet? Page 26