11 F.A. & F.O.

Lily

There was a desk in Hell.

An honest-to-shit desk, halfway along the half wall of black rock that guided souls from the gate to the tunnels. Made of the same stone as the rest of the wall and looking as if it had just grown into shape, it bulged outward in a crescent, disrupting the otherwise smooth arc of the wall. A cushy, human-sized gaming chair waited behind it, along with a laptop, a neat arrangement of office supplies, and a small weapons rack built into the nearby wall, which, other than the baseball bat, sat empty.

Lily had almost dropped her coffee in shock. “How did you…?”

“We didn’t,” Moura said. “We just came in yesterday and there it was. One of the other shifts said that it just appeared. One second it wasn’t there, the next it was. Scared the shit out of some of the trainees. They figured that based on the size and proximity to where you usually set up, it had to be for you.”

“Which shift?”

“Ahriman’s.”

“Oh. They’re sweeties,” Lily murmured absently, running her fingers over the supple leather of the chair.

Her chair.

She couldn’t believe it. Though, she had become a regular at the gate, hadn’t she?

For the last couple months, Lily spent a few days a week down in Hell, sitting behind her makeshift desk and dealing with souls. The rest of her time remained her own. She still played online games, not only with the demons, but with a wide variety of other people too. No matter what other games she joined or tried, Invaders remained a favorite, and not just for the social chaos of it. FruitBat had become a faceless, nameless friend, one who chuckled at her sarcasm and made her laugh with silly dad jokes.

Though he had to fucking know what that voice did to people. Especially when he rumbled things like that’s my girl and nerd wife or laughed softly. Nerd wife, oddly, got her every time. Maybe the “wife” bit was what did it, but it also could have been the fond tone. She couldn’t decide which.

One slow day, she asked Krun if he knew who the voice belonged to, but he’d just shrugged and told her that it could be any one of a few billion demons.

“Deep voices aren’t exactly uncommon down here.” He’d smiled, tapping his own chest. She hadn’t elaborated further. After meeting all the shifts at the gate, and wandering briefly through Residential Level 3, where Seven Deadly was located, she knew that deep voices were common and could confirm that they were pretty much universally hot. But they weren’t quite like that one.

When she wasn’t working or relaxing at home, she made a point to continue exploring. She visited the Summerland, eating fruit on the bank of a creek while a band of witches gave a concert under the trees. There was a popular Irish pub in the Hall that had live music each night and served amazing stew.

One day, to her absolute delight, she found the Universal Library—which was a whole realm unto itself—and accidentally spent three days there before leaving with a small stack of borrowed books.

She and Persephone had struck up a coffeehouse friendship and chatted amicably whenever they saw each other. Persephone introduced her to a few nymphs, and would have introduced her to Freyja, but the Norse goddess had been deep in conversation with a bearded man. Lily had caught pieces of their conversation as she’d waited for her coffee…something about negotiations and increasing training, the tension on both their faces at odds with the general atmosphere of the Afterlife. She’d been tempted to ask Persephone if she knew about who they were negotiating with and what they were training for, but she didn’t want to admit to eavesdropping. Especially if the conversation was between two deities.

In all her explorations, there remained one arch that she avoided. She’d tried once, making it as far as the middle of the Hall before she’d been unable to make her feet move any farther. She’d watched as people came and went through the Heaven arch. They’d seemed friendly and kind, greeting each other with smiles and nods. They’d smiled at her as they headed toward the main Hall. One had even asked her if she needed directions. Good people. People who truly loved others. People who were the opposite of the environment she’d grown up in. She’d always known that Christians like them existed, but they had been so few and far between in her life that she considered them the exception and not the rule.

She’d stood there for ten minutes. Unable to move. Her mind a sickening whirl of guilt and shame.

Furious with herself, and cursing her own weakness, she’d spun on her heel and gone straight to Hell, where her makeshift desk sat waiting. She pointed out one logical fallacy after another, imploring, sassing, threatening, listening, one soul at a time, until Krun brought her some muffins that his wife had made and asked if she wanted to sit with him in the breakroom for a bit. She’d barely talked, and he hadn’t asked her to, but he’d told her about his daughter and their pet hellhound while she ate and listened until her chest didn’t feel so hollow anymore.

That was one of the reasons she kept coming back—the demons. They always cared.

And, admittedly, she loved getting to mouth off on a regular basis. The opportunity for a brilliant one-liner was a matter of when not if .

“I’ll let you settle in,” Moura said, startling her back to the present. A shrill voice cut through the air by the gate.

“Looks like we have a problem child at admissions,” Moura said, frowning towards the lines of desks before walking away.

“Hey, does this have Zagan’s sign?” Lily called after her.

Moura turned, walking backwards for a few steps. “Even better, take a look.”

Not wanting to waste time walking all the way around the end of the half wall, and realizing the desk was too wide to comfortably lean over, Lily climbed over the top of it.

There, in bold letters carved directly into the stone, in a perfect match to Zagan’s writing:

Hellp Desk

Then below that, smaller:

F.A. it is an opportunity to get the help you wanted and needed in your mortal life. As you will discover on Level Two, healing can be uncomfortable, but it is only a punishment if you choose to think of it as such.”

Lucifer hadn’t looked at the soul file, but perhaps as the ruler of Hell his power allowed him to see souls’ assignments unassisted. The soul’s jaw flexed, mistrust in every line of his body, but eventually he walked stiffly towards the tunnels, leaving them in thoughtful silence.

Lily studied Lucifer, mulling over everything she’d been told in her mortal life and everything she’d learned in death. If she hadn’t seen Hell in action, she never would have believed it. In every interaction with a soul, no matter how lost, or rude, or cruel, the demons approached from a place of empathy, but did not allow that empathy to temper the justice they were there to mete out. She’d watched a man shove at Crocell, only to accept his embrace when Crocell had calmly explained that he would not face his healing journey alone. How many souls had she dealt with, like the first woman, who had absolutely deserved their Judgments, but clearly just needed help that they didn’t have in their lives? Very few souls were marked irredeemable, and those that were were cruel beyond measure.

“How did humans get Hell so wrong?” she asked softly.

Lucifer turned back to her, and his smile went rueful, his wings rustling as they shifted, glinting in the warm light. He spread his arms and angled his head. “Did they? With few exceptions, such as yourself, souls that come to Hell are sent here. Souls are given the opportunity and support to grow and change, but as I suspect you know, healing can be an arduous process. When they grow enough to earn their reincarnation, they return to the mortal world with no true memories, but their souls remember.”

His tone darkened. “They remember not being a guest of Hell, but an inmate of it, and that is not a pleasant thing to be. Mortals, wonderful creatures that they are, or can be, naturally spun these deep memories and impressions into stories. Stories that then became foundations for beliefs, beliefs that became foundations for entire cultures and civilizations. Were they entirely factual? No. But the best stories have nuggets of truth, yes? Thus”—he angled his head—“the not entirely unjustified vilification of Hell.”

She smiled sadly. “I spent a lifetime being terrified of this place. The mortal stories of Hell might have started out as cautionary, but now they’re mostly a method of control through fear. I never would have come down here if I hadn’t been motivated by spite, but I have been thankful every day that I did. You and the demons don’t deserve to be thought of as equal opportunity monsters because you’ve had to do terrible things in the name of justice. I’m sorry that there’s not a way to set the record straight.”

Lucifer’s eyes grew even more serious, glow intensifying as they surveyed each other. The quiet stretched between them, the only noise the dull murmur of conversation and footsteps. “It has been a very long time since I have met a soul like you,” he said finally.

Aiming for respectfully blasé, she shrugged and grinned. “I keep hearing that from deities, and I’m not sure whether to be flattered or concerned. It’s good for you guys to be shaken up a bit, life—er, existence—would get so boring otherwise.”

Lucifer’s rich laugh boomed through the air, and he patted her on the shoulder, sending a pulse of power jolting through her body. “That is very true. It looks like you have company, so I won’t hold you.” He nodded to the forming line of grumpy souls.

“Lovely. Well, this will be one way to break in the desk.” She smiled at him. “Thank you, Lucifer.”

“You are very welcome, Lily.” He shot a downright terrifying glare at the waiting line of souls, sending a third of them scampering back towards the main line. He winked as he turned. “Perhaps you’ll be able to get some reading in today.”

Lily was still grinning when an Asian man stormed up to the desk, cussing a blue streak.