Page 19 of Winners, Losers, and Champagne Kisses
And it turned out we did.
Damn. Melina put together enough footage that there was zero doubt unless you were just not wanting to believe the truth. You basically never wanted to piss off a maenad. Back in the day, they’d just rip you apart with their bare hands and yeah, sometimes there was some cannibalism involved if they got a little enthusiastic.
But maenads in the modern age had focused all of that. They were still agents of chaos who liked brawling and drinking, but they had other means of destroying people now. Melina was just the most effective at it.
Benji and Cas just sat there while the montage seemed to play forever until it was finally over.
“There you have it,” Benji said. “They could have gotten those dick faces out without killing anyone, destroying the prison, or releasing any prisoners. It was definitely a choice. We’ve got a few more truth bombs, but we’re not quite ready to release them yet. Like and follow for updates. Peace out!”
“That was amazing,” I said when the recording stopped. “I never even would have picked up on the portalling thing and that we could use it to change their opinions.”
“Some,” Cas said. “Some people don’t want their opinions changed. They just want to hurt others.”
“Michael and the other archangels could help. Lucifer was right about something. The archangels are the most famous of all angels. Everyone knows their names and some people have statues of them in their houses. No one knows who these other angels are, just that they are angels. We can use that,” Pax said.
“Fine, but if we’re using my social media again, all the angels are going to have to get real cool real quick about taking their shirts off,” Benji said.
Call it professional curiosity or me just being like that damned cat, but I wasdyingto know what Hell was like and have a sit down with Yahweh. I’d been to every realm except for the ones I knew could be hostile and I’d met the majority of living gods.
I couldn’t say they were all completely different from the legends about them, but they were definitely more complex. And people made shit up, too. My father definitely had some consent issues and Hera always blamed the wrong person, but sometimes, people would lie and say Zeus visited them and it was consensual to elevate their standing like they’d been blessed.
My family sired plenty of demigods with mortals, but sometimes, people would claim their children were demigods by one of us and we had nothing to do with it. I had my fair share of orgies, but I only made children when I wanted to and she wanted to. I had been with someone before I met Medusa and we had several children. Sometimes, people got pregnant after one of my orgies and they’d sometimes say it was mine, but it definitely wasn’t.
I always wondered about the gods without parent and sibling drama. I’d met most of them. Some of them were super well adjusted, considering. Others took it really hard when they learned about self actualization. I didn’t know which camp Yahweh was in, but if Lucifer was right and he came here to try to fix things, that was definitely a good sign.
Hell wasbracingwhen we first entered the realm. It was hotter and more humid than any place I’d ever been and my lungs started burning when I took my first breath. It stunk of Sulfur and the air was definitely toxic here. It wouldn’t kill me because I was a god. It would just be super uncomfortable, but it would have killed all my other mates. I guess angels were the only living thing except gods that could survive down here.
I could hear the sounds of people screaming and crying all over the place. As far as realms went, I’d leave this one a negative review on Yelp. It was probably the absolutelyworstafterlife realm I’d ever been to. A lot of the afterlife realms had an area where souls who felt like they needed to be punished would go, but most of it was psychological. It sounded like physical torture here and it was terrible.
“Unless you want to be screaming like those souls, we need to check in with the king of this realm.” Lucifer said.
“This is horrible,” Michael said. “Especially now that I know there are people here just because they felt guilty about something that’s not even a sin.”
“This way,” Hades said.
“Who is torturing all those souls if most demons aren’t related to Hell and this pantheon?”
Because they weren’t. Nearly every culture had their own concept of demons. They may have called them by a different name, but the modern translation was demon. Most of the more common types of demons were self actualized before Hell was ever in existence.
The ones that came after were usually associated with this realm instead of Hell, so as far as I knew, there weren’t any demons in Hell who were torturing souls. The only demons I knew of who worked for Satan were crossroads demons and they didn’t possess people or torture them. They just made deals.
“Ah, Satan is hurting for stimulating conversation here,” Lucifer said. “He doesn’t want to talk to the truly evil people. He’s going to want to do the big reveal about his kingdom and if I do it, I’m going to have the devil mad at me. He’s kind of a friend. He enjoys this like you enjoy making people guess who you are. Let him have this.”
I shrugged. I had to wonder. I couldn’t imagine anyone breaking into this place. If they had, they would have died instantly, but there seemed to be some truth in the levels of Hell. We finally got to the right one, and I was about to meet Satan.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Big guy with horns? Little guy with a goatee? Was the ‘red skin’ thing even true? I didn’t think he was a British guy who owned a night club, played the piano, and solved crime, but it would be cool if he was.
When I got into the room, Satan and Yahweh were sitting at a table playing chess. It was much more pleasant in here and that sounded like the punch line to something. Someone haddefinitelymet Satan before because he was a beast of a man with dusky red skin and curling horns.
Gods were a little different. At some point, we stopped aging, but where that point ended up was different for everyone. Some of us looked a little older and wiser than the rest of us. It was generally the one that was deemed king of gods for a particular pantheon because they were supposed to be the smartest. It didn’t always end up that way, but it wassupposedto.
You couldn’t believeanyof the stories and legends about the various gods unless you heard it straight from them, but I could make a general assessment about the god in front of me. He had kind eyes and a sadness about them. He didn’t seem particularly shocked to see Hades, Hephaestus, or me, but he wasn’t expecting two archangels.
“Lucifer? What are you doing here? Satan says you haven’t been back in ages.”
“We don’t have time for pleasantries. This is Michael, another archangel. You’d know that if you didn’t keep yourself so separate. Your angels didn’t just banish you. They’ve been killing each other in your domain and they set something awful in motion on Earth that innocent supernaturals are getting captured and tortured. There’s been some powerful people who have nearly put a stop to it, but now your wayward children are about to spill their civil war into another realm.”
“They don’t want to hear from me. I messed up with the system I put into place after I messed up with you and the other archangels. Theirfamiliesdied. And then I made another mistake by not immediately addressing it because I was trying to figure out a way to make it better. I don’t knowhowthey banished me, but they had every right to.”
