Done a bit more work on the start of this one.
Hopefully ER, this no longer reminds you of your home life, although if it does you have my sympathies.
The Lore.
By Alex Corbett.
It was a quiet day in hell. Well, if one could drown out the wailing of The Damned being tortured at any rate (Lucifer had never been a fan of their music and had a particular objection to Smash It Up for some reason). A man (or at least something in the approximate shape of a man) clad in a tattered black robe walked quickly up to a serpentine figure, whose tail was thrashing around in frustration. As the robed figure approached he has dwarfed by the snake like creature. Looking down on at him he hissed "Has a black priest been summoned?" The terrifying effect of his voice was somewhat modulated by the effects of not having nose, something that was undeniably useful in hell.
"Yes my direst lord. As soon as we saw what had happened we called for one."
"You called for a priest before informing ME?"
"Noo, my lord Aamon. I came straight to tell you, while one of the lesser demons was sent to fetch the priest."
It was not considered wise to upset a Grand Marquis of Hell with forty infernal legions at his command. Especially when his favourite daughter had been possessed. In a place where creative tortures were commonplace Aamon was looked up to as an inspiration. In no small way due to this, he was also viewed as a demon you did not want to upset
“Which one of them has dared do this?”
“We think it is Michael, dread lord.” Was the answer the quivering demon replied, endeavouring to put a whole lot of begging not to be tortured please if that was possible into the short sentence.
A shudder ran through the body of the demon prince from his fur covered head to the tip of his long trailing snake body and tail and he propelled himself faster along the corridors of hell, his lion like paws digging into the ground and dragging his long body along behind him.
Before long he had reached his home lair. Well he called it a lair, but really it came in the shape of a nice three-bedroom cottage in a mock Tudor style right down to the thatched roof. The roof regularly had to be replaced as what with being in hell it was more often on fire than not, but regardless it was a nice touch. The job of Demon Price didn’t pay as well as most people thought it would, but it did come with some nice fringe benefits. Aamon especially appreciated it being a bungalow. The lack of legs made stairs a pain. He had done his best to make the cottage look a bit more gothic with decorations purchased from a dollar store, some excess stock left over from Hallowe’en one year, but it still seemed to lack the decorum Aamon felt a senior demon prince should have. He looked forward to the day one of those TV interior decorators died and came down here. Considering the pain on people’s eye balls they inflicted, surely all of them were heading to hell when they died after all and Aamon was nothing if not appreciative of a fellow master artist at work.
Slithering down the hallway, Aamon burst into his girl’s room in a manner that had terrified more than one teenage boy demon with designs on his daughter. It wasn’t that Aamon was an overly protective father. He just liked to see if he could frighten them to death, something he frequently managed. Afterwards he’d collect the heads and had them mounted on wooden plaques in the dining room. He liked to chuckle over them over dinner.
It took his mind off his wives terrible cooking.
The black priest was there waiting for him. He had two large eyes and a protrusion from his face that would be best described as an insect’s hand, if insects had hands that is. His red skinned demonic hands gripped a leather-bound copy of The Devil’s Bible, using it to cover his face as Dementia, his youngest daughter vomited a sparkling rainbow at him while cursing him, telling him that his mother looked after orphaned puppies in heaven.
Aamon swore and sent some particularly nasty thoughts in the direction of upstairs. Every time the boss man went on holiday the angels would pull crap like this. It was even worse when the Big G took some time off. The last time that had happened they’d came down here like a bunch of drunken frat boys and toilet papered his lawn, but what had really irked him had been that they’d smashed his collection of garden gnomes. Satan could sort all this out easily enough, but he was on two weeks holiday in the Seychelles (where he’d invested in a time share bungalow back in the 80’s) and the mobile phone plan he’d signed up to had terrible coverage out there. Not that Aamon would call on Lucifer for help. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t help, or that Aamon feared him but he did have terrible flatulence and in a place, that, well let’s face it contained the fires of hell it was a dangerous combination. More than one ambitious demon who had invited the boss around for dinner seeking a promotion had instead found his home being burned down around him after the Morningstar had let one rip.
Aamon was old enough to remember the so-called fall. Rebellion against heaven my arse. Or rather Satan’s arse. That was the trouble with getting humans to write things. They’d mistranslated between Enochian and Hebrew. For a while the Big G had tried correcting them, but it only led to schisms and more infighting so nowadays he just left them to it.
The truth was, it was because Satan let loose in god’s presence and offended the almighties delicate nostrils. What was translated as ‘the fall’, was meant to read ‘the fart’. Still he couldn’t blame Big G for his reaction. Heaven had to be deep cleaned after that one to get rid of the smell (and as per usual humans had misread that one as some great flood). And ever since anyone who couldn’t control their gas was sent to hell where the fires would at least ignite their emissions so no one else would have to be troubled by them. No wonder the humans thought of this place as a land of punishment. Mind you, it was surprising just how many of them who were considered evil ended up here. Hitler, Gadhafi, Hussein, Ghandi... uncontrollable flatulent’s the lot of them! One of them, Attila had received the nickname Attila the Bum he was so bad.
Demons were excellent at torture but were somewhat lacking when it came to being witty.
Aamon was rudely shaken from his meanderings by his daughter’s latest outburst “Your grandmother knits warm socks for homeless people!” As Aamon watched her demonic red skin, covered in scars and unholy markings became smooth and without blemish. He who had tortured (flatulent) souls for an eternity found himself struggling not to throw up at the sight of it. Her goat like slit eyes lost their healthy red glow and instead became an angelic blue.