Under Lock and Key

The screams of the body I possessed echoed through the canyon. The piercing noise permeated my entire form. The demon in me raised up a growl of delight, feeling the pain that I caused her. Reveling in it. But there was some small part of me that cringed. That regretted having to leave the poor girl here. That regretted having to use her body as a surrogate skin…

I let my cloudy, black form ripple with relief as it exited the human female’s mouth. The torrid heat rising up from the canyon wasn’t so horrible now that I was free from the layers of human skin that had encased me. Kept me alive, here on the upper level. I let my cloudy form float higher, spiraling above the rock and dirt below. I caught a glimpse of the unconscious girl that I had destroyed. Her young, pale body lay sprawled out in the dirt, a trail of blood flowing from her nose, her head thrown back and her back arched and stiff. Her limbs were dirtied and browned, caked with filth stirred up while running through the canyon.

I wonder if she’s still alive. That smaller, quieter part of me mused as I drifted higher, preparing to level out.

”Forget about whether she’s alive or not.” A haughty, if not a bit amused male voice cut into my thoughts.

I felt a ripple whoosh through my smoky form, followed by a slight tingling sensation as a swift-moving cloud rushed through it. Unbidden, a surprised hiss escaped from my form. I swirled in the current that the other form had made, turning to face it.

”Really, ‘Ella. You must get your head into the game.” Crowley’s voice tutted at me from the large, black mass that floated before me.

I hissed again, the demon in me rebelling against the authority Crowley had over me. But as he whooshed through me again, spiraling downward into the canyon, on his way down to the lower levels of Hell, the obedient apprentice I had been molded into signaled my form to level out and dive after him, rushing down through the torrid air, keeping his form within seeing distance, always. I rushed down, past the tip of the canyon’s edge. Away from this tamer version of the eternally torturous prison below.

The levels of Hell are a hard thing to explain. The first level is one that human souls, or even human bodies, can survive on, though it is very uncomfortable. Sulfur does not permeate the air the way it does on the lower levels, so they can breathe with some ease. But the heat is nearly unbearable for them, even on that level. Although, it is not as if they worry about their physical discomforts.

The mental torture.
Now that is what gets them every time.

No matter what level of Hell you are on, no matter what you are there for, you are going to be tortured. In ways that defy the imagination of even the most deviant sociopath, or murderer. Things go on down here that no human mind can comprehend.

That no being can describe.
I would know. It was this extensive torture that caused me to allow the high demon to twist me. Turn and mutilate my soul into one of them. Just to get away from the torture that awaited me; day after day.

For an eternity…

A vicious, painful howling graced my audition, and I let my thoughts snap back to the present. I had sped up during my revelry. In fact, I was now flying down the pit at a much faster rate than Crowley, or, at least, that was what I gathered from the fact that I no longer saw his shadowy shape falling before me. I pulled up, feeling my exterior ripple, trying to stop in mid-air. I twisted, my form shrinking and dispersing a bit in the middle from the strain. I glimpsed Crowley’s black, smoggy form a few feet back, floating lazily along and growing ever smaller as I fell through the canyon.

I could not stop myself. Each time I tried to stop my form, to reverse the falling motion and pull up, the cruel, torrid wind pulled me farther into the abyss, as if it were sucking me downward. The sight of the second level of Hell passed me in a blur of brilliant red stone, the air already beginning to thicken with sulfurous ash.

I began to feel a slight fear clutch at me. It was oddly funny, to tell the truth. I had not felt fear of Hell in many years. But as the interrogation chambers of the third level flew past me and I still continued to fall ever-faster, I began to fear.

Fear and questioning as to why I was falling. This had never happened before. I strained my form, trying to glance about behind me for Crowley.

All I saw was blackness extending up the canyon rift. If he was still behind me, his black form was perfectly camouflaged. I flailed within my black, cloudy existence. Trying, to no avail, to claw my way out, to grasp the surface of the canyon wall as the fourth level whizzed by, the coppery scent of blood thick in the choking air.

But still I plummeted. As if a magnet were sucking me straight down into the deepest, most horrific level of Hell. My form rippled as I let out a howling shriek. If any demon were around, they did not take notice. I pulled harder against the violent down-draft that was pushing me. I knew what lay on the bottom floor of Hell.

We all knew.

His prison.

Lucifer.

Part of me rejoiced at the chance of glimpsing him. Our ruler. Our king.

And another part of me, the same part that had worried and cared for the girl whose skin I had worn, repelled the very thought.

So torn, I continued to fall.

Fifth floor. I tried to struggle. I tried to stop. I was getting to close now. To close to where he lay. I glanced about me frantically, trying to spot something that my smoggy form had a chance of clinging to.

There was nothing.

But what I did glimpse, made that compassionate whisper inside me blanch.

The fifth floor was the room where Hell’s master torturer worked. Day in and day out, he chose his victims at random and slowly, methodically, cut them apart. Piece by piece. Little by little. They would howl and cry out in pain. Beg for the mercy that no demon of his caliber would dare to show.

And then, in an instant, they would be whole again, only for him to begin anew.

A shudder ripped through me, my remembrance of my many days on his table zipping to the forefront of my mind.

And then I heard it.
Just as I breached the bottom of the fifth level.
As the eternal flames that blazened up from the sixth floor’s bottom began to make themselves visible. As my hazardous flight began to slow and I began to feel control of my form returning, I heard it.

That horrid, horrid noise.

It was the loudest shriek I had heard emit from a soul’s mouth. It was filled with the epitome of pain and sorrow. The ultimate cry for help. The depraved scream of a soul that bore a weight too heavy for just one man.
One, human male.
For male it was.
And I could only guess it was human. Animals did not traverse these depths.

But this scream did not sound human.
Not in the slightest bit.
It was a shear, animalistic, wailing howl that combined all the sorrows of a cursed existence into one burst of audible voice. It lifted up its horrid sounding voice once more, and as the flames from below leapt up to lick the edge of my form, I thought I heard it scream a name.

I was most sure it was a name. I would bet many souls on it.

Dean was what I heard it scream.