The Devil's Deal

Hell was nothing like I had expected. I had expected fire and darkness everywhere, the smell of smoke and the sound of people being tortured. But it wasn’t. It was… rather like Earth.

Which in a way made sense, because Asmodeus looked nothing like I’d expected a demon to look. He wasn’t warped and disfigured; he didn’t have claw-like fingers and he didn’t have horns. His eyes weren’t red and his skin wasn’t dark, and though he was transfigured at times he looked relatively normal – except for when he was angry.

It made me wonder if being a demon meant being warped on the inside rather than the outside, and if I’d met more in my lifetime. Maybe being a demon meant having the essence of hate bubbling up inside of you; angry claws wrapped around your heart and the whispers of evil in your mind. Maybe Asmodeus was disfigured completely on the inside – almost unrecognisable, something obviously less than human but more at the same time. It gave me peace to imagine he was ugly on the inside. It made it easier to look into his eyes.

Hell was dark, for one. The transportation had made me feel like I was being ripped apart, like tiny hands were picking me apart molecule by molecule and then carelessly placing me back together. It was hard not to scream and I’d had to shut my eyes, though when the ground was steady and I no longer felt in pieces, the world around me was still in blackness.

I could see people – demons, they must have been, and more of them than I’d expected. It looked like a large community, a community in which everything was built in blacks and reds and every object looked like it had been transported from thousands of years ago.

It was easy to tell the demons from the slaves. All around me, demons sat there talking to each other, dressed in long, thick robes and staring about with startlingly dark eyes. Beside some of them were humans, lowered onto their knees like pets and naked from head to toe. And the worst part was that most of them didn’t even look terrified… didn’t even look alive, for that matter. Their eyes were glassy and their faces were expressionless, and they all looked monotonously the same… like they appeared to me as what was inside of them.

It was like a BDSM club gone wrong, I thought to myself wryly.

Gaap was looking at me in lucid excitement, his large, beady eyes flickering like flames as he stared. His hand was still clenched tightly around my wrist and I shook it free, taking a step backwards and avoiding his eyes. He made me uncomfortable, more than anything. While he seemed less opposed to the idea of humans than Asmodeus did, there was something about him… something almost untamable that shook me up.

My eyes sought out Asmodeus to find that he was glaring out around him with dark eyes. His lips lifted into a sneer as he slowly shook his head, white hands lengthening into claws and eyes glowing with a hint of red.

“Come on, Human,” he grumbled, barely glancing at me as he began to walk away. “These demons are hardly better than you. Don’t know why you had to take us through this way, Gaap.”

Gaap grinned toothily beside me, exposing pointed fangs. His eyes sought out mine and the glowed, almost ethereally, before he motioned for me to follow the sulking demon with his hand.

“Why does he hate them?” I whispered to Gaap, and he looked up at me with eyes eager to please.

“They choose to remain in their human forms,” he said excitedly in response. “Some of them even love their human slaves.”

My eyes widened. So it was possible, then, for demons to love humans? Asmodeus had made it seem as though they very thought was laughable and disgusting. I wondered to myself wryly why I hadn’t made a deal with a more affable demon, but then found myself blushing furiously at the thought.

“Why are you talking to her?” Asmodeus called out from in front of us, not bothering to glance over his shoulder, though the thick, rigid stance of his body gave him away. “She’s a slave.”

I glanced over at the humans and I grinned dryly. “Looking for a chance to see me naked again, are you?” I muttered to myself, scared to say the words too loudly. But with the way his posture stiffened and his body stilled, I knew that he must’ve heard me.

He turned to look at me with blazing eyes, hands lengthening into claws as he stared at me furiously. Even Gaap withered up beside me in intimidation, bowing his head slightly and twisting his body. Asmodeus looked utterly unhuman – utterly alight as he stared at me. He sneered, exposing thick fangs and pointed teeth. “Watch your mouth, Slave,” he snarled, though he looked slightly rattled. He heaved in a breath and narrowed his eyes before turning away and hastening his pace, feet stomping as he stalked off.

Rolling my eyes at his childish reaction and all the while trying to calm my racing heart, I took in a deep breath as I began to follow him, holding my head high. I refused to be like those other humans. I had granted myself and my brother life for a reason – I would not live the rest of it in fear. I would not let him make me wish for death.

We came to a large, stone door that looked to be alight with flames, and emitted so much warmth that I hastily flinched away, expecting it to burn me. Gaap snickered whilst Asmodeus rolled his eyes, his body stance still thick from my earlier words. “Don’t be pathetic,” he growled, just loud enough for me to hear. And then he reached forward and placed his hand in the center of the stone, his fingers becoming alight with flames so vast and fluid that I let out a gasp of shock.

The flame turned blue and the door let out a loud, scraping creak as it began to slowly drag open, and Asmodeus quickly stalked through. Gaap nodded to me and gestured for me to go inside, but I found myself hesitant and wary with fear.

I didn’t know what to expect in there, but I knew that if it was anything like Asmodeus’ insides it would be nothing less than terrifying.

The inside was like the Hell I’d always dreamt of. Flames – as high as the eye could see, burning stone making up the only walls. Coal littered about as the only pathways, and in front of me, something more terrifying than I’d ever imagined.

Demons. Real ones, though more distorted than I’d imagined. They were large, hunched creatures with beady black eyes and scaly skin, and large, meaty claws at the end of their arms. There were spikes down their backs and a large, weapon-like tail, and they all looked so monotonously ugly and retched that I felt myself beginning to go faint.

I looked beside me and I let out a scream as I watched Asmodeus morph and change, a thick, demonic smile on his lips as his body swelled and broke out in blood-coloured scales. His hands lengthened into thick claws, his green eyes flickering with black flames as he looked out around him in glee. He was large – almost larger than the others, and he met my eyes with an utterly feral look on his face – like something out of a nightmare.

He grinned then – all teeth and scales, mouth warped so vividly that he was wholly unhuman. His eyes were still green – the only reminder of who he was, save for the wicked look on his face. “Welcome home, Mortal.”

I let out a scream and fell to the ground.