Short Story WIP
Note: This story has been in my brain for over a year. I want to make it into a web comic or visual novel, but thought I’d try writing out a bit as a regular novel, too. Not much so far. Just a little something.
The portal to Earth. It’s a big whirring, clunking machine made from the bones and screams of tortured souls, set in a wall of obsidian, in the Dark Central Plains of Hell. With a quick flick of a few dials, I can go anywhere in the world.
Right now, I’m returning from my last post—Washington D.C. Arguably the easiest place to corrupt souls—all the damn politicians. It takes a mere whisper, and their souls are mine for the taking, marked for Hell, and collected when it’s their time to die. Easy.
I have been a corruption demon in Hell for several millennia—I don’t know how long precisely, but I do know that in the beginning, humans were innocent. All this “original sin” bullshit was something humans made up to force their own morality on others, but God never said anything about it. He created humans for the sheer pleasure of watching them run around. Like ants on an ant farm.
“He’s coming through now,” I hear Samael say. My handler and brother, if one can call him that. We were created at the same time, birthed from the same fiery pits as all other demons. He helps me get from Hell to Earth and back again.
I grunt as I push through the last bit of resistance from the portal. It’s always so messy, and I’m once again covered in some sort of slime, the smell of which never comes out. My feet touch down on the stone floor and my body morphs from my human form back into my demonic figure—horns, wings, a tail, the whole ridiculous and stereotypical getup. I’m what humans expect demons to look like. My skin is rough with a red-purple hue and small patches of scales, like what might be found on a dragon, if such a thing were real. My eyes glow bright gold and my long black hair is braided down my back in between my wings. I’ve been told I’m quite handsome, compared to other demons. When I glance around the control room at Samael and the underlings, I know that assessment is accurate. Most of us are ugly as fuck.
“When are you going to get the portal cleaned up, Samael? I’m tired of coming back covered in slime.” I shake off my limbs, flinging portal slime onto desks, the floor, and one glob landing in the middle of Samael’s chest.
“Ugh! Really? Can’t you go shower instead of shaking off like a dog?” He swipes at the glob with his sleeve, only to bury it deeper into the fabric of his shirt. “Damn it! This stuff never comes out!”
I fling more his way, and he jumps back in disgust. I whip off my shirt and shove it into his arms. “Get the portal calibrations adjusted, Samael. I’m going to shower.”
Cover photo by Maximilian Müller on Unsplash