The Demon Asteviel
an excerpt

...I stretched luxuriously and studied my appearance in the mirror nearby. My skin had reverted to its normal bruise red hue, my fingernails had grown back into their almost claws. Two horns curled out of my forehead just below my hairline, and my eyes had returned to their normal appearance. The whites had turned a jaundiced yellow with small red arteries crawling across them. The irises were a blue/gray flecked with yellow and the pupils in the middle turned a dark red. I stretched a wing behind me and admired the black feathers, still intact through a combination of not being in Hell combined with sheer willpower of not letting the glossy black feathers deteriorate. I preened a little in that mirror, admiring my naked body, even gently preening the wings until each and every feather was in its proper place.

“You were always a vain one,” a voice said further down the hall.

I grinned at the barely visible outline of the demon who leaned insouciantly against a small gate in the hall, a ring of heavy iron keys dangling from one fist. “Hello, Stanyklai.”

He grimaced at the name. “You coming in or not?”

“Certainly.” I walked down the hallway. It was made of a reddish rock, but it was so gloomy in there it was as if the rock was black. Stanyklai was a young demon, in his late teens, and his wings had long since rotten away. Two scars, where the wings met his body, stood out in the middle of his back. He was a little shorter than I was and as handsome as they come, with black hair and a muscular frame. Nearly all the female demons had fallen in love with him at one point, and he had gone to Earth and taken his fair share of lovers. As I approached, he unlocked the delicate wrought-iron gate and ushered me inside.

I had stepped into Hell from what was essentially a side gate on the seventh floor. Hell is vast. A circular pit fourteen miles in diameter made of the same reddish rock and the same black gloom, with sharp stalagmites on the edges. There were nine visible levels in the pit. At each compass point of the pit were a set of grand staircases connecting each level. Demons led chain-gangs of souls here and there. In the lower levels gangs were forced to chip away at the rock each day, collecting chips of rock in buckets and carrying them down to pits where they were dumped. At the end of each day, the chips were collected and thrown back against the walls where they were absorbed, so the souls would go back day after day after day again, continually chipping away at the rock. If in the event one found something valuable-a piece of gold, a precious gem-they were immediately taken off the chain gang and whipped until blood poured from every orifice while their find was prized from their hands. They were then taken away somewhere, where none of the souls in hell knew.

I knew of course. All the demons did. They were taken away to the Rooms of Silence on the fifth level, where due to some curious trick of the light, everything was in black and white, and any sound that carried was strangely muffled. The victims were chained to the walls of each Room and left there, completely alone. The combination of gloom, the lack of other people and the lack of sound drove most people mad within hours. They would cry and scream and gibber, but they eventually went quiet. Every hour or so, a demon who was appointed to the task walked around with a heavy iron stick and banged on the heavy steel doors, causing a racket that woke any who slept and caused the ones who had not gone silent yet to break into fresh howls and wails. The level was obviously closed off to everyone else but demons and those who were condemned to it. A glamour was placed on the level to make it appear empty.

On the third level were the Gardens. These were kept especially for those who had severe allergies to anything were kept in real life to work with the plants and animals that supplied food to the denizens in Hell. These rooms had an artificial sun and air blowing through so the crops could grow. Anything and everything was grown and eaten. Livestock, fish and fowl were kept in separate rooms and were slaughtered on a regular basis by those who feared the sight and scent of blood. If any of the workers in the Gardens stopped to blow their nose, wipe their eyes or shield their face from the sight of blood, they were whipped, taken to either the lower levels of hell or the one above; or thrown into the Rooms of Silence depending on the nature of their offence.

The fourth level of hell was reserved especially for those who committed sexual crimes or lust in general. The walls of the level were glassed in rather than made of rock. [And they were being tortured in various and imaginative ways.]

On the level where I was were the dining rooms of the damned. On the one above me, number eight, were the kitchens, where those who were accused of gluttony labored, and woe to them if they sampled the food as it cooked. The scent of delicious food wafted down to me. It was baked chicken with lemon and orange tonight, with rice pilaf and a medley of carrots and peas. Level nine was used for the bedrooms of the souls. Like on level five, every two hours a demon walked by and banged on the doors to make an almost earth shattering racket.

But the middle of this pit was where Lucifer held his seat. A huge black basalt and obsidian castle-christened Pandemonium- rose nearly to the height of the ninth level. Every surface of the castle was sharp as a knife and the glassy obsidian glittered in the gloom.

I walked sedately down the steps, loving the almost sensual feel of the feathers making a soft shush-ing sound down the steps. Many of the demons and the damned patrolling the corridors of the levels stopped to stare at me in wonder, and my chest nearly burst with pride. The demons’ wings were in various states of decay. Some had no wings, like Stanyklai. Others had mere threads of muscle and sinew that fell from their back and with each shake of their shoulder, another little piece fell off. Others still had the skeleton of the wing intact but the feathers were missing or slowly rotting off. But none had a complete set as I did, except for one other demon, and that was Lucifer himself. It was easy to see I had not been in Hell for many years and the atmosphere had not yet gotten to them.

When I arrived at the bottom of the staircase, I shook my wings to clean them of the dust and watched the souls come in through the gate. A few hundred yards beyond, souls evaporated into red-hot chambers of a glowing rock from above, screaming with fear or rage. A legion of demons pulled them out of the chambers and onto a chain-gang of twenty five at a time. The chain gang moved forward slowly. Some of the damned cried, some raged against God, others prayed fervently to him, but most were silent, their heads bowed as they clanked forward.

On the opposite side, other souls in chains were being led back to other, ice blue chambers and roughly shoved in. With grateful cries of delight, they vanished back Homeward. For you see, Hell is temporary for most. Each and every soul who committed terrible acts in their former lifetimes are sent here to be cleansed of their sins before being sent back into God’s service. For those who keep committing terrible acts no matter what lifetime they choose, they are made into a demon and forced to shepherd after the condemned forevermore.

Such enough, as I watched, one of the souls who stepped out of the chamber, a female, writhed and twisted in pain. She howled as her skin bubbled and changed color and she transformed. Her fingernails lengthened. Her eyes changed color, her skin darkened. Within a few seconds it was over, and the demon who stood there was quickly led away by another. But such incidents are few and far between. It is only one in ten billion who become transformed. As she was led away, the wingless demon cast a jealous eye at the wings on my back.

I shrugged and walked up the gentle incline leading to the mouth of Pandemonium. I had an audience with Lucifer in his private rooms.