Page 7 of Hellfire & Bowties
“You know… like… if he’s single. Available.” He felt himself blush.
Zorun stared at him for a moment before he simply turned and stomped out of the room, leaving Oren in there all alone.
Well… clearly, he was going to have a hard time making friends here.
Oren tapped his fingers on his knees, looking around the room and cringing again at the state of it. It was the most disturbingly messy place he’d ever seen.
Looking at the door and tilting his head to try and hear if anyone was coming, he slowly got out of his chair and crouched. He picked up a binder and found it stuffed to the brim with names and assigned numbers, which, upon closer inspection, detailed the level of Hell each person was in, who their main torturer was, and their method of torture, as well as a brief description of their pain tolerance levels and most common reactions to an average torture session.
Oren put the binder down and reached for a different one, finding more information on the demons employed there and their skills. According to the spreadsheet he’d found, someone named Tana was looooong overdue for some vacation time. And according to a note stuck by her name, the fact was making her very cranky. No wonder.
He closed the binder and went to put it away before realizing there was no place for it but the tiny bit of floor he’d picked it up from. He put it back down and straightened up, trying to figure out his next move. He didn’t think being left alone in Hell was particularly fun, but also… how many other people had had the privilege of saying the same?
Plus, Oren was naturally nosy. It was a character flaw and a consequence of growing up sick, because his parents had never set any boundaries for him. He wasn’t really used to being told no, so he figured he’d just snoop a little bit, see what went on in Hell and then, hopefully, be out before he knew it. Once he was in Heaven, he’d have some pretty cool stories to tell. He was pretty sure none of the people up there had ever been where he was, so it was bound to earn him some friendship points.
He shuffled over to the door and peeked out, looking left and right to make sure nobody was around to see him. Seeing the hallways were empty, Oren stepped out, squaring his shoulders as he took the first step left.
He wasn’t a sinner, and he wasn’t a prisoner. He had every right to entertain himself while corporate figured out what to do with him. Oren repeated those lines in his head as he trudged down the hallway.
His curiosity would eat him alive if he had to just stay locked in one place.
As he followed the cavernous hallways, he spotted various oddities. Well… as odd as statues of monstrosities and weird sigils carved into molten rock could be in Hell. Gravestones were used like doorstops, and Oren found himself dizzy over the number of winding spiral staircases that sprang out of nowhere, with no signs or indicators of where they led.
Deciding to stay on the same level so there’d be less risk of getting lost, Oren eventually came across a small door in the wall, slightly ajar. He figured that was as good an invitation asanything. If they wanted to keep people out, they would have made sure it was locked.
Oren grabbed the rusty handle and pulled, the creak of the ancient hinges deafening in the hollow silence. He looked inside at what appeared to be a storage room. The light was busted, and so far windows didn’t seem to be a thing… or sunlight at all.
He pulled the door open completely, letting the pulsing light from the lava streams in the hallway illuminate the part of the room closest to the entrance. He snooped around and found piles of things, most of them made of rusty metal and thrown haphazardly around the room.
Oren stepped farther in and reached down to pick one of the items up. Now, some might wonder how a simple office clerk knew the name of the item he was holding, but Oren had spent a lot of time watching documentaries on everything under the sun, and what he had in his hands was most definitely a torture device. A thumbscrew, if the two rows of spikes and the butterfly screw were anything to go by.
Why a thumbscrew had been discarded on an electric chair along with a few chastity belts was beyond Oren. It wasn’t chronologically correct and didn’t really deal with the same body part, if that had been a deciding factor. He was baffled.
It was impossible to see deeper into the room, and he didn’t want to risk knocking things over, since everything was so precariously balanced. Putting the thumbscrew down where he’d found it, he backed out of the room and pushed the door closed.
He shuffled farther down the hallway, guided by muffled voices, soft cries, and loud scraping sounds of things moving over the floor. He walked to another door, grabbed for the handle, and pulled.
Also unlocked. Free to explore then.
He poked his head in, and at first glance, it seemed pretty tame. There weren’t any racks, no hellfire burning people alive. Instead, a group of sinners had been gathered in a square white room to sit in front of an old TV on a rolling metal cabinet.
But appearances could be deceiving, and one look at what was on the screen horrified Oren, sending a chill straight down to his bones.
An innocuous DVD symbol was happily bouncing around the screen. As Oren watched, it bouncedjustnext to the corner, and the whole torture chamber groaned in despair as it was flung off again, never to hit properly.
“This is monstrous!” Oren gasped.
Zorun suddenly appeared in a flurry of leathery wings from the back of the room. He folded his arms and grinned, all his jagged teeth on display, almost looking like he was blushing bashfully. “Thank you.”
Right. Hell, Oren thought.
“It has to hit eventually, doesn’t it?” one of the sinners said to the person next to him, grabbing him by his raggedy shirt. “Doesn’t it? If I just keep my eyes open… I just can’t blink. Never blink…”
“Bounce, bounce, bounce…” Another girl giggled to herself, rocking in time with her words.
“Ahh! I blinked! Did I miss it? Did it hit? DID IT HIT?!”
As some of the lesser demons broke up the scuffle that ensued, Zorun stepped out of the room, pulling Oren with him to avoid being caught up.
