Hell isn’t other people. It’s not the DMV, or being stuck in traffic, or traveling on an endless stinky subway. It used to be okay. Back when it was just us, and Hell was our little exclusive club. But then those downers had to go and start sending humans down here. Humans seem to think we demons exist to torture them, but it’s closer to the reverse. They get sent here to torture us. Everything we do is justified retaliation. So you wanna know what hell is really like? From what mortals tell me, a lot of it is like living in an American suburb.
I usually wake up at dawn. I hear dawn is nicer on other planes of existence, but here, it’s just a bright red orb slowly climbing into the sky and hanging there. Anyway, I wake up and shuffle around for a couple hours. Do the usual stuff like file my horns, and wash up. Gotta stay clean and presentable for the mortals. Hell is a society of laws and cleanliness and presentability are near the top. Luckily, I happen to look fairly human. Gives me a bit of a leg up.
After I’ve gotten ready for the day, I go out and walk to the crossroads and wait for Moloch with the Pulse. Every morning, just after the second bell, he shows up in the center of the crossroads with a burst of flame. He extends his hand and leads each of the people in my neighborhood into the pulse, where we travel as pure energy to our destination. Most demons like Moloch don’t get that sort of job. His sort are usually gaolers, but he never cared much for the laws and conventions the downers laid down. He says he’s run the pulse since before mortals showed up, and no matter what anyone says, he’s not about to change careers. His pulse is always a bit quieter, most mortals don’t get on, turns out being a literal monster kinda scares em off. His eyes shine like fire out of the otherwise vacant holes in his bull shaped head. His skin is dark red and is covered in patches of jet black fur. If he kept his head polished and his fur clean, he’d look a lot better, but after the first few centuries, he kind of gave up. Back then, even I jumped on the bandwagon and punished his transgressions, but times change. I started to feel bad for the guy and instead of eating him like usual, I invited him out for a drink after work.
As for me, I work in the service industry. I show up, put on a suit and attempt to make life livable for people who were never supposed to live here. I conjure food, dive into flame and do my best to create a habitable environment. Not because I want to, but because I have to. That’s what the law says. Failure results in being marked, and I’m not a big fan of that. Too many laws broken, too many social transgressions and in the blink of an eye, the downers put you on the menu. I’ve been eaten a few times. Not something most of us enjoy, but it’s not something we have a choice in. The fucking downers decided to give us the human flaw of hunger. So even though we don’t need to eat, the hunger gnaws away at us until we willingly turn against each other for the smallest transgression. Most of us usually reform after a few hours, but each moment we don’t exist is agony. And what do you know, as soon as our energies reform, we’re hungry again.
So after work, I usually go out drinking. Alcohol doesn’t do for us what it does for mortals, but it makes us feel less empty, even if only for a little bit. A few weeks ago, a downer showed up in my favorite bar. Bastards must love fucking with us, because this one had no issue alighting in the bar, and using his giant fucking wings to bogart all the barstools. I felt terrible for the bartender. Guy couldn’t even look up at the downer without hurting his eyes, but the laws say that eye contact is important, so he did his best. That was when me and Moloch took our leave.
After all that stuff, I usually go back home and prepare to repeat the same cycle all over again. Sometimes I wonder how God let all this happen, but I think we all know they didn’t. God died a long time ago, and what’s left of them doesn’t even know they are God. I wonder how those downers would feel if they knew that all the mortals they send down here to torment us, are just fragments and pieces of their beloved God. Hell, I wonder how Mortals would react to knowing the truth about themselves. If they ever found out, I can only hope that things would change for the better.