Chapter 2
Malachi
Hell.
Eternal damnation.
An inferno of death, fire, brimstone, torment on repeat—the whole apocalyptic brochure.
That’s what they sell you, anyway.
Truth is, Hell’s less inferno and torment and more paperwork and passive-aggressive memos.
Eternal damnation hasn’t gone anywhere—it’s simply been repackaged in tailored suits and mandatory compliance briefings. A bureaucracy so dense it makes mortal governments look like lemonade stands.
Ink splatters across paper as I scrawl my name across the bottom of another report—Malachi, Torture Administrator of the Ninth Division.
There are twelve divisions of Hell in total, stacking from Satan’s offices in the First down to the Dregs of the Twelfth.
The demons in the Ninth don’t have the budget for shapeshifting, and we certainly don’t have the telekinetic flash of the assholes who can flay a man with a thought. I’m a physical demon. I have to get my hands dirty.
But when I first signed up to be a Torture Administrator, I thought it was a promotion of some sort.
A little authority, a little prestige. Maybe a corner office near the Lakes of Fire.
But no. Turns out the title was a complete trap.
Not damned enough to be on the rack, not politically oily enough for the upper floors.
Stuck in the bureaucratic no-man’s-land between them, wearing a tie spun from the silk of a worm species that went extinct on that blue-and-green planet seven thousand years ago.
Sure, I still get to do the fun part—flaying, branding, the occasional impalement if it’s a Friday—but I can’t so much as dislocate a shoulder without filling out a ten-page Post-Punishment Evaluation Form.
Everything from ‘method employed’ to ‘screaming decibel range’ has to be documented, initialed, and filed in triplicate.
It’s hard to be truly menacing when you’re thirty minutes behind schedule because your rack hasn’t been cleared by a safety inspector.
Hell and its bullshit rules.
I’m. So. Fucking. Bored.
I need a vacation. If I have to spend one more century in this sulfur-choked pit, I’m going to lose what little is left of my mind.
I’ve been sitting in the queue with the Board of Infernal Affairs for over two centuries, waiting for them to approve a simple travel visa, and I’m beyond sick of the stagnant ‘pending’ status.
Maybe I’ll take it up with the boss and see if she can grease the wheels so I can indulge in a little self-care elsewhere.
“Excuse me, Veraxia,” I mutter to the empty office, straightening my tie in the reflection of the paperweight. “I’ve been a very good boy this eon. Would it be too much to ask to expedite my request so I can go and dick around somewhere that isn’t… well, here? I’ll even bring you back—”
A shriek rises from outside the window, like nails on a chalkboard. “Mercy! Have mercy, please! I’m begging you!”
Get in line, buddy. We’re all begging for something.
Below the window, the yelping hits a new, glass-shattering octave.
I sigh, drag myself up, and shove the window open.
A blast of heat, sobs, and screams flood the room.
I perch a knee on the soot-stained windowsill and peer out at the view.
Every level is crawling with activity; one big nauseating sprawl of workstations, cubicles, and torture platforms.
“Oi!” I roar through the wails. “Keep it down! Some of us are trying to file reports up here! Have some bloody decorum!”
Rhaziel glances up at me from the Pit, a shit-eating grin splitting his face. His wings flare behind him, soot-flecked and ragged at the edges.
“Mal!” he bellows back, his voice echoing off the basalt walls. “Sorry, mate! Just breaking in a new one. A real live-wire, this one!”
Below him, the mortal writhes on the slab, black smoke rising from the raw skin between his shoulder blades. “I didn’t mean to do it! It was an accident, I swear!”
Rhaziel shrugs up at me, casually waving a glowing branding iron that drips sparks into the abyss. “He drowned kittens—five of them. Five, Mal. Who drowns an entire litter?”
“Bit excessive,” I shout down. “You really should have stopped at one if you were going for symbolism, mortal! Five is just showboating!”
Rhaziel lets out a bark of a laugh. “Want a go? I’m finishing the branding before he heads to the reflection chambers, but I think I’ve got some room in the schedule if you want to blow off some steam.”
“Tempting,” I call back, gaze briefly flicking back to the stagnant pile of forms on my desk. “But the paperwork would add way too much to my load. Break a leg though, Rhaz. Preferably his!”
The mortal’s high-pitched scream chases me back inside as I slam the window shut. I chuckle to myself and hop down from the sill, and head out into the hallway.
I drift past the cubicles of the Ninth Division, past rows of lower-tier demons like me hunched over mountains of parchment, the clack of manual typewriters echoing in every direction.
The hallways here are a labyrinth of flickering fluorescent lights and weeping stone, the kind of architecture designed to make you feel small before you’ve even started your shift.
Then I head down the crumbling stairwell, past Soul Procurement. I breeze past the Department of Eternal Lamentations, where the interns are currently crying harder than the damned, and pass by whatever office now handles metaphysical inventory since the big corporate rebrand.
The deeper I go, the quieter it gets. These corridors are older, carved into the raw magma-threaded rock, back when this place was still fresh and hopeful—back when Hell believed they were pioneers rather than glorified clerks.
Signs along the rough walls flash the same message in a dozen dead languages, the runes glowing with an angry, warning light: FORBIDDEN ZONE. OCCULT TRAFFIC ONLY.
I grin, adjusting my tie. Perfect.
“Not happening, Malachi.”
The voice rumbles down the passage before I even reach the iron gates. Two towering gatekeepers practically made of scar tissue stand in my way, blocking the entrance to the level.
Ah. The last surviving Neanderthals of the Afterlife.
“Aww, come on, Grath. Ulrik.” I pout like a child. “I’ve been cooped up in my office all day. You wouldn’t deny a colleague a little leg-stretch, would you?”
Grath crosses his massive arms, the metal of his gauntlets screeching against his chest plates. “Fuck off, Malachi.”
“Just a peek?” I ask, tilting my head. “I’ve heard the desperation is lovely this time of year. I just want to see the view.”
“No. You know the protocols for the Forbidden Zone,” Ulrik grunts through his tusks—they’re so overgrown they’ve punched through his upper lip, giving him the look of a perpetually confused walrus in a breastplate. “No unescorted entry without written consent forms.”
I sigh dramatically, looking at my nails. “Alright, alright. You drive a hard bargain. I’m not here to start a war, boys. I just need a walk.”
I fish around in my pocket until my fingers close around smooth, cold bone. I pull out two pale, pristine teeth and flip them between my fingers like coins. “Wisdoms. Extracted them myself last night. Mass murderer, heavy on the cannibalism, excellent enamel.”
Their gazes follow their favorite form of currency hungrily.
“Go on,” I coax. “Buy yourselves something nice. Maybe get a polish on those tusks, boys. You’re starting to look like you chew gravel for breakfast.”
Grath hesitates for a second before his massive hand darts out, snatching both teeth from my palm with a snarl.
“Official warning,” he mutters, his voice dropping into a rehearsed monotone as they open the gates. “You don’t cross the lines. No contacting the subjects. No physical manifestations. You touch the Veil; you face the shit. And we did not let you in. Understand?”
“Crystal clear,” I lie smoothly.
They both step aside, their heavy boots grinding against the floor. I stroll through, tossing them a lazy, two-finger salute as the iron bars groan shut behind me with a final, heavy thud. “Appreciate it, gentlemen. Don’t work too hard.”
Assholes. If I had hands that big, I’d find a better hobby than standing in a drafty hallway reciting the employee handbook.
The air buzzes with static the deeper I go into the corridor. I look up, eyes panning over the cosmic call center for idiots who think they can outsmart death or summon things that will make their pathetic lives just that little bit better.
Electric residue hums across my skin as I wander between the portals at a leisurely pace.
Each one yawns open onto another slice of mortal desperation—bedrooms buzzing with panic, basements moldering in secrets, churches sweating fear through polished pews.
All unique, yet all steeped in the same intoxicating mix of fear and wishful delusion.
In one archway, a girl is huddled on a bedroom floor, drowning in a sea of guttering candles. She’s chanting something—a string of warped syllables that have clearly been ripped from some half-assed tutorial on a ‘hex-your-ex’ blog.
Before I can even find a comfortable place to lean, the portal gives a single, irritated ripple and dissolves into a smudge of grey smoke, leaving the space empty.
Three gates down, things are slightly more promising.
A priest is in the middle of a full-blown meltdown. He’s hunched over a kid strapped to a bed, scripture pouring from his mouth in hoarse, ragged bursts. His collar’s askew, sweat dripping off his jaw and onto the boy’s heaving ribs. Holy water drips from his hand, splattering across the mattress.
Ah, an exorcism. Very retro.
I linger for a second, waiting for the head-spin or the projectile vomit, but the priest’s faith is as shaky as his hands. The connection is too weak to hold. It collapses inward with a sharp, dismissive snap, cutting the holy man off mid-shout, blinking the entire bedroom back into the void.