10. 10

10

Kassel

“ K assel?”

“Kasseeel…”

“KASSEL!”

Kassel blinked into reality, the familiar pink-tinged fires of the second circle of Hell flickering into view and framing Zorun’s unimpressed figure standing in front of him.

“You with me, Mr. Hell?”

“Yes.”

“Glad to hear it.” Zorun snorted. “And what about him?”

He jerked a thumb at the suspended human soul dangling from his entrails over the pit. Kassel wasn’t sure exactly how long he’d been hanging there. It could have been an hour, it could have been a week. He’d stopped screaming by this point and kind of just looked… mildly confused.

“I know this is torture, but Uriel’s balls. You’re just being a tease at this point.”

Zorun let him down from the hook and sent the soul along with a pat on the shoulder. “Make sure you don’t get entrails on the new carpets!”

The soul nodded and waddled along, cradling his insides. Kassel frowned after him as Zorun turned to face him with his arms crossed. “That’s the third time this week. Your turnover is through the floor for this month’s quota, I’ve had to spread out your numbers by transferring them between circles just to make sure everyone gets their torture time.”

Kassel pressed his lips together. “Since when have you cared about statistics?”

“Since the imp disguised as a human came down to Hell and reinvented the system. I don’t know, asshole,” Zorun grumbled. “Just… get it together so I can report in that everything is ‘hunky dory’ and I don’t have to sit through another management course.”

“Is hunky dory a technical term?”

“Don’t get smart with me!” Zorun ripped a battered checklist from the back of his pants and shoved it in front of Kassel’s many eyes. On it was a scale that had been customized from red to green.

It went in order from Bad News Bears to Hunky Dory. Always Look on the Bright Side of Life seemed to be the middling section.

“I… see.”

“I should hope so, eyeballs,” Zorun snapped, taking the paper back and shoving it in his pocket again with a shudder, cursing colorfully under his breath.

“Beau would like it,” Kassel found himself saying without thinking, then froze.

Zorun froze too, eyes slowly making their way over to him, sharp and assessing.

“Beau, huh? You know, you haven’t been quite the same since you got back from your summoning. Do we need to talk about it?”

Kassel began to walk away.

Zorun followed swiftly on his heels. “That certainly convinced me that there isn’t a problem.”

“There isn’t,” Kassel said. “I fulfilled the summoning exactly.”

“Yes, yes. You’re a good little employee of the month, I’m sure Oren will put another plaque up in your honor.”

“There isn’t a plaque anymore.”

“Because your rabid fan club stole it! The new picture wasn’t even up for an hour before I had to replace it. AGAIN. We went through fifty a week when you were gone. The whole of Hell was in mourning!”

The mountain of letters that had been posted under his door and the banners and gifts left for him on his return corroborated that. Kassel hadn’t looked at any of them. He didn’t even feel like he had come back. He felt like he’d left a vital part of him up top.

He just couldn’t work out what it was, and it had left him debilitated.

He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep. He walked through his usual routine, went to his workplace, but nothing felt right or the same.

And the person he wanted to ask about it he could no longer reach.

“KASSEL! You’re doing it again!” Zorun yelled at him.

He came back to himself to find he had stopped walking in the middle of the hallway.

“Does human saliva contain magical properties or something? One chaste kiss and you’re gone, just like Luc. It’s disgusting.”

Kassel frowned at him, a few of his eyes twitching.

“Or is it the virgin thing? I know we have that handy little trick that we used to use centuries back—”

Kassel slammed Zorun against the wall, surprised by his own hand on Zorun’s bare chest.

Zorun smirked. “Did I hit a nerve?”

“Don’t talk about him like that.”

“And why is that?” Zorun asked, seeming like he was pressing for something.

Kassel ground his teeth, a swirl of unnamable emotions creating a flurry inside him, whipping into a budding storm. “Just don’t. I’ll only give you one warning.”

“Did someone have a little extra fun on their summons?” Zorun continued to poke. “Is the virgin perhaps not so virginal anymore?”

Kassel grabbed two of Zorun’s four horns and used his grip to propel Zorun’s head back into the wall. Debris fell and Zorun grunted but laughed it off, giving him a booted kick to his chest for good measure.

Kassel rocketed back into the opposite wall and was just about to propel himself forward to meet Zorun in a real clash when tiny footsteps rounded the corner.

“Why is the ground shaking?” Oren asked, aghast as soon as he saw them. “Zorun! Kassel! Are you fighting?”

Zorun groaned. “Can’t have any fun around here anymore.”

Oren stomped up to them, hands on his hips. His flamingo-patterned shorts matched his bowtie of the day. “We’ve talked about this, Zorun. It’s unbecoming for senior management to be starting fights in the workplace. And, Kassel, I never would have expected this from you .”

Kassel glowered and said nothing, still seething with roiling emotions.

Oren’s stance deflated and he gave him a comforting touch on the arm. “You’ve been having a rough time since you got back, haven’t you?”

“Which is why I was trying to get him to let off a little steam,” Zorun interjected, waving an exasperated hand at him. “The moron doesn’t even know he’s upset.”

“I’m not upset.” Kassel denied it, even as the words rang in his head. “Am I?”

“Oh, you poor thing. It’s worse than I thought,” Oren said, taking his hand quickly. “Follow me.”

“Why?”

“I’m staging a PowerPoint Intervention.”

“A… what?”

“Zorun!” Oren called back, ignoring Kassel’s question. “Go find Luc and tell him this afternoon’s booty call is on pause.”

“No way! Last time I walked in to tell him something like that he had his dick already pointing in my face, waiting!”

“Delegate it then.”

“ Ooohhh Jeeeek !” Zorun called, walking away.

“Poor Jek,” Oren murmured. “He always gets picked on. Maybe I should make him employee of the month this time to make him feel better. You wouldn’t mind, would you?”

“No.”

“Fantastic.”

They made it to the meeting room, and Oren pushed him into a chair, moving to the front of the room where he pulled down a projector screen.

“Routing electricity and internet down here required a legit miracle. I’m happy G owed me,” Oren said as he pulled out his laptop.

“I thought you cashed in that favor already?” Kassel mumbled.

“Not in writing I didn’t.”

Cutthroat. Scheming. Inherently good, but with a tinge of darkness making it murky and gray.

Nothing like Beau’s ethereal spirit.

Kassel longed to see it again. Just a glimpse. To be near its calming, warm presence.

“Kassel?”

Kassel turned his hazy gaze upward.

“This is worse than I thought. We may have to skip slides one through twenty,” he muttered, adjusting his glasses before tapping away at his keys.

An image appeared on the projector screen, a large heart with the word LOVE written under it in every human language and even demonic script.

“I was working on this as an HR seminar at first, but ever since you got back I’ve tweaked it a little,” Oren said.

“What does this have to do with me?”

Oren stared at him.

“Well I wasn’t expecting you to get it on the first slide,” Oren mumbled, “but maybe this is going to be harder than I thought.”

He clicked to the next slide, which had the word love at the top and varying definitions explaining it below.

“For the purposes of expediting the process, we’ll be concentrating on the romantic connotation. I have some examples on the next page here.”

He clicked to the next slide and hit another button that made a little bubble pop up with the words ‘you try new things for them.’

“As far as I know you spent your time with Beau engaging in various new activities,” Oren said.

“It was a part of the summoning,” Kassel said. “Things he wanted to try but had nobody to do them with.”

“And you enjoyed yourself,” Oren said.

Kassel tilted his head and felt the corner of his mouth tick up the tiniest increment. “He is fun to be around.”

Oren squealed and beamed at him, clicking again to make another bubble appear.

‘You prioritize their happiness,’ it said.

“This?” Oren asked, expectation pouring from him as he silently asked Kassel to provide the answer.

But Kassel wasn’t sure what he wanted him to say. “It was the point of my summoning. You said I had to make him happy.”

“But you went above and beyond. It wasn’t because I said you had to. You wanted him happy.”

A shy little smile entered Kassel’s mind and wouldn’t leave. The pout that made him itch to do something. The bell-like laughter echoed in his ears.

“Which brings me to my next point.” Oren clicked.

‘Everything makes you think of them,’ the bubble read.

Kassel squirmed in his chair, feeling something building within him, a drum beating faster and urging it onward.

“We’re talking about him.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

Oren clicked again.

‘You daydream about a future together.’

Those words stung sharply, the serrated edges making sure to draw out the pain as memories assaulted him of Beau trying to come up with ways to get to Hell to be with him. Wondering if there was the smallest chance. Begging not to be forgotten.

The future Kassel planned didn’t have Beau in it because it couldn’t. It was impossible. But he still planned on spending the rest of his life remembering him. He could never forget his brightness. His goodness.

Oren clicked.

‘You feel physical symptoms.’

Kassel found his fingers were shaking. He was tired. Restless. Heavy. He no longer felt the same. Something within his being had moved, changed, morphed him into something dramatically different. It had unlocked emotion within him for the first time, and he felt so much, all the time. It was maddening, impossible to repress, no longer possible to ignore.

“So the reason I can’t do anything…”

“Is because you’re heartsick,” Oren said sympathetically.

“I don’t have a heart.”

“You do now.”

Kassel felt like a hole had been punched through him exactly in the space a human heart would go. “Beau… is mine?”

Oren nodded, giving him a sad smile as he clicked one last time.

“And this…” The bubble read ‘you crave physical intimacy.’ “I watched you for centuries and never got the impression that you wanted to be around anyone. Like something was missing. I think I get it now.”

“Get what?” Kassel asked, surprised his mouth could still move, that he hadn’t gone completely mute.

“You needed something deeper,” Oren said. “A real emotional bond before you started wanting someone for real.”

Kassel blinked into the middle distance.

It was true that he had never explored a relationship of any kind like he had with Beau. Other demons were transitory, passing by him without making a dent. They wanted nothing deep from him. Everything was on the surface, hardly disturbing Kassel’s existence.

Was Beau’s emotion and tender soul what he had been missing all along? What he had been silently waiting for and seeking without knowing it?

Someone to connect to.

A sudden, obnoxious foghorn filled the air, startling Oren into jolting and disconnecting the PowerPoint. Not that it mattered anymore. Kassel was thoroughly, painfully informed.

The foghorn continued to blast, loud and brassy.

“What alarm is that?” Oren asked.

The sound was vaguely familiar, like a blast of déjà vu from another lifetime, but Kassel couldn’t place the niggling piece of information and didn’t have the mental capacity at that moment to even try. “I don’t know.”

Oren hmphed and headed for the door. He caught none other than Jek slithering down the hall. “Jek, what’s happening?”

“Sssomeone essscaped Hell.”

“What?!”

“The Hellgate wasss found unlocked. No one knowsss how long it wasss left open or who managed to get out. Luc isss—”

The entirety of Hell suddenly shook in its boots, the torches snuffed out by a blast of wind as a roar of biblical proportions rang through the halls.

“Someone’s a grumpy bunny. I better go calm him down,” Oren said with a sigh.

Kassel got up, unable to sit still anymore. He felt like he was crawling out of his skin. “I’m heading back to my room.”

“That’s good. You need time to process,” Oren patted him on the arm, staring at him earnestly. “We can finish this conversation tomorrow.”

What use were more words? They wouldn’t change anything.

Kassel simply left the room, traversing the dark, empty hallways back to his bedroom.

He pushed the door open and stepped in, feeling beyond weary, and what was that word Oren had used? Heartsick? Like he had told Oren, he didn’t own a heart, but he couldn’t think of a better way to describe this hopeless, enervating feeling.

He noticed another gift had been left for him while he was at work—a huge box half Kassel’s size, wrapped up in printed green wrapping with a bright red bow. It reminded him of Beau’s house and he felt another lance of pain cut him open.

Why would people have emotions they acknowledged when they hurt like this?

He bypassed the box and walked numbly to the window, staring out into the abyss and feeling his eyes prickle in a strange way. He blinked them, one after the other, but the hot, stinging feeling persisted until liquid began to leak down his face.

He touched it and pulled his hand back. Something thick and black was staining his fingers.

Tears, he realized, recognizing them from Beau’s vulnerable face. They didn’t look the same, but the essence could be tasted in the air.

Sadness.

Loneliness.

Heartsickness.

Love.

He clutched his chest, grunting in pain. All the eternal torment in Hell couldn’t amount to the anguish that had been unlocked within him.

There was no hope.

Time passed too disparately in Hell. Even if he could get permission to visit Beau, how much time would they truly have before Beau was gone and in Heaven? Would it just be more painful for both of them if he tried to steal pieces of Beau’s fleeting earthly time before he was gone for good?

There was no place for demons where Beau was destined to end up, especially not to mix with those who had earned paradise. It was the hard line G had put in place, a rule never to be broken. And while he would fight Heaven for Beau, would Beau even want that?

He didn’t know what to do.

He wiped his face dry and continued staring out into the inky black, watching as the fires of Hell began to light back up one by one in the wake of Luc’s tantrum. Behind him something shuffled. He ignored it. He didn’t want to speak to anyone.

But no one spoke, and belatedly he realized he hadn’t heard the door opening either.

The shuffling continued, and he looked back over his shoulder. The door was indeed shut tight and there didn’t seem to be anyone in the room.

The giant box rocked.

Once.

Twice.

Kassel stepped closer, glancing at the tag hanging off it before he risked looking through the surface with his eyes and getting scarred for life. He was already miserable enough.

To Kassel

Murder is a gift 3

TA

TA?

There was no demon who had two initials. Except…

It slotted into place immediately. He’d seen this sign-off only once before, on a document that had been handed back to Oren with a ‘sorry, didn’t feel like it’ scrawled across the front of it in blood.

The twins. Who apparently were so codependent they couldn’t even be separated by an & sign.

But why were they sending Kassel a gift? Surely they’d addressed it wrong? Come to think of it, when had they sent it? He hadn’t seen them terrorizing the halls in quite a while.

The box shook again, more visibly at this point, and Kassel was just about to peer through the surface when the top popped off.

Standing there, body wrapped up in the same bright red ribbon, was none other than the heart he didn’t own made flesh.

“Beau.”

He was hallucinating.

The messy hair topped with a bow. The embarrassed pink blush dusted across soft cheeks. The disorientation in crystalline blue eyes.

Only Beau had never looked like that when he’d been with him.

He took another tentative step forward and those eyes locked onto him, the blush deepening to a rose red.

“Kassel?” the figure murmured hopefully.

Heaven had just spoken to him. He’d been blessed by something holy. In the presence of the divine.

Beau.

It was really him. Beautiful and warm, his soul burning so brilliantly it was hard to look at.

Because it wasn’t blocked by his human skin any longer.

Beau was dead.