Prologue

‘Depart from me,you who are cursed, into the eternal fireprepared for the devil and his angels. – Matthew 25:41

"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." – The character of Satan, in John Milton's Paradise Lost

For most of us sinners, Hell remains a concept out of reach; human fear that has been pulled taught and tormented or hope that is singed away by years of agonising over goodness, properness, primness. For some, a serenity is found in this quiet but painful limbo. They can live with the threat of Hell and be comforted by the promise of Heaven. Peace comes to them in waves, and they may live a life in the quiet of the Lord's whisper, where He soothes their worries and ensures they are safe. His children.

These are the people who believe they are inherently good. Inherently righteous.

But what of those of us who stray from God's light? What of those of us sinners who turn our backs with glee?

What about me, Alessandro, a don whose life had been given to the Lord in earnest—but whose pleasures and hopes and desires were never snuffed out by the Lord. Not once. Not once ever satiated.

What about me, who has tasted Hell on his tongue? Who would welcome it again? Who covets it; who would make a covenant with a Prince of Hell to live my days in that fiery torment?

Well, I shall tell you: there is no salvation for me except what I find in the ‘now'. If I have forsaken my eternal life at God's side—a life of nothingness and internal peace, in exchange for the bliss of a body torn asunder by demonic desire—then there is nothing more for me here.

I knew it as soon as Asmodeus returned to its domain and left me in its wake, quaking in rapturous bliss, aware of my own mortality and the years I had wasted being good and pure. I regretted never letting myself partake in human pleasure. I regretted piety, for all it had stopped me from feeling.

I will walk into Hell with my eyes on God and let the demons take me from behind.