(Mis)Conceptions of Hell

It was the hottest day of the year up on the earthly plane, like a nice, cold day in Hell—not that they had many of those. The warmth of the sun felt soft on her soul—much gentler than Hellfire. Tyria stretched, a long, luxurious stretch that made her soul curl in pleasure.

“You done?” Jonas asked, a drawl to his voice that oozed boredom like tar from cracks in the asphalt.

Tyria ignored him. Jonas was a relatively new demon—what was 50 years, in the grand scheme of things?—and Tyria didn’t care much about what he thought about her habit of exhilarating in earth’s more temperate atmospheres. She gave it another few minutes—she never knew how long it’d be before she got another chance—before she finally turned to Jonas. “All right,” she said. “Let’s get on with it.”

Today’s assignment was easy. There were a few corrupt souls trying to avoid Hell by staying on as ghosts on the earthly plane. Tyria and Jonas were supposed to break their earthly tethers and give them a nice, solid kick off earth.

It’d be good exercise after having been on desk duty the last five years with the rare break. Tyria had the unfortunate delight of being good at paperwork. Hell wasn’t that bad, if anyone asked her—it wasn’t their fault that the PR gave them a bad rap—but paperwork would never be fun. Alas, as a scribe from the early Roman Empire—shame that had eventually fallen—she was considered one of the best.

Tyria was grateful for the break. Someone in Hell was clearly pleased with her work. Maybe she’d get a raise, soon. Or better yet, a promotion. Surely she was due a round as a temptress? It was a newer position—Hell didn’t use to need tempters, but humanity’s collective conscience had shifted its expectations of what Hell entailed—and she thought she’d be quite good at it.

Maybe she’d take the opportunity while on earth to practice. Show the bosses her potential.

Not a bad idea.

“Tyria,” Jonas snapped and Tyria realized she’d gotten lost in her thoughts.

She rolled her eyes. “Hold your horses,” she said, unimpressed. “That eager to go back to cleanup?” She wrinkled her nose, giving him a look up and down, she could practically see the soul slime clinging to him. Souls got so messy when they realized they were in Hell, shedding hope like sweat and leaving trails of it everywhere. It was the PR, everyone expected Hell to be nothing but torture.

She didn’t get it. She’d grown up in a time of the underworld—she’d hardly expected Tartarus after all—and most of her closer friends she’d made soon after death had had their own concept of the afterlife. This whole division into Heaven and Hell was relatively recent—tallying acts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ was terribly uninspired, if anyone asked her—and even now, the underworld, Hell, whatever one called it, was slowly evolving into something else.

Though while Tyria wasn’t a huge fan of the current set up, she despaired just thinking about the bureaucratic mess that came with afterlife evolutions. The last evolution had made paperwork a mess for centuries.

Jonas grimaced. “No,” he grumbled. “But I won’t get promoted if I stand around dallying.”

She rolled her eyes. Whatever. “Fine, let’s go.” When on earth they tried to pretend to be at least somewhat human, so they took the bus, fritzing out the bus fare so it accepted her non-existent bus card. She ‘dropped’ it a minute later, letting it skitter down the bus aisle, just to see if someone would try to return it to her or if they’d take it for themselves in hope of some free bus fare.

She smirked when a kid in a hoodie picked it up, slipping it into their pocket in a failed attempt at stealth. She’d give them a nice reward for that. After all, if the theft went badly they might learn their lesson and that really wouldn’t do at all with the current regime.

Jonas rolled his eyes, clearly unimpressed with her successful temptation. Tyria ignored him. She wanted that job change.

They climbed off the bus a few stops later, switching to another bus line—why couldn’t Hell have sent them up a little closer to their target?—for another few stops.

Finally, they stopped in front of a rather nice apartment building. Tyria fritzed the call box to let them in, sauntering in and following the scent of putrid soul up to the fifth floor. The scent of rot was so strong Tyria could almost taste it when they got to the apartment the ghosts were still set up in.

She could sense living beings in the apartment. Well that wouldn’t do.

“Set off the fire alarms,” she told Jonas.

Jonas groaned. “Do I have to?”

Tyria sent him an unimpressed look. “Don’t tell me you haven’t learned how to harness fire, yet. You’ve been a demon for fifty years.”

“I can do it,” Jonas grumbled. “I just don’t like it. I died in a fire, thank you very much.”

All right, Tyria acknowledged. That would be slightly traumatizing. “Fine. I’ll just do everything, why don’t I?” She really better get a promotion after this. Because admittedly she didn’t enjoy harnessing fire either. Due to Hell’s evolution, fire had developed the faint scent of brimstone. Curse whoever had started the belief that Hell was nothing more than fire and brimstone. Entirely inconvenient.

She found the closest smoke detector and focused. The soul was a strange thing. It was a whisper, a scream, a laugh, a sob. It was… life, encompassed in a seed and expanding to fill the world. She picked the part of her soul that felt like fire—laughter at festivals as she circled the bonfires—and gave that memory a spark of power.

Fire burst from her hand. She channeled the memory of smoke in the air, watching a tendril of smoke spiral up. For a moment it smelled of sacrificial meat and tallow and she took a deep breath. The next moment brimstone permeated the scent, ruining it.

The piercing shriek of the fire alarm sent her straight to the edge of what humans called a ‘migraine’—which shouldn’t be possible when she was dead—unfortunately demon senses were significantly better than human senses.

Five minutes later, the humans in the ghost-infested apartment exited, lugging a cat carrier behind them. That poor little creature. Tyria almost felt bad, now. Green eyes peered out from the carrier bars and Tyria resisted the urge to coo. If whoever had associated brimstone with Hell deserved something terrible, then whatever blessed human had decided cats had witch affiliations—with their own unfortunate associations—deserved something very nice.

She had her own little cat soul that kept her company while she did paperwork. Eira was a beautiful creature and Tyria rather loved her.

The humans disappeared down the stairs, cat in tow. Tyria let herself into the apartment, Jonas following along behind her.

Pristine white walls and dark black granite counters greeted her. The walls had several paintings, imbued heavily with emotions of hope, sorrow, and peace. Personal. One of the humans here was an artist. It was nice, Tyria decided.

Or it would be if it didn’t smell of putrid soul.

“All right,” Tyria said. “Manifest yourself, you cretins.” She could force the ghosts to manifest, if she needed to, but she’d prefer they do it themselves. It’d sound much nicer for them on their intake report if they’d at least somewhat cooperated. They needed all the help they could get, really.

There was nothing but a blossoming scent of fear.

She rolled her eyes. Hell really wasn’t that bad.

“Shouldn’t we just do it?” Jonas asked after a minute with no reaction from the ghosts. “It kind of stinks in here.” He grimaced. “I don’t actually want to stay longer than necessary.”

He had a point. “Oh, all right.”

She reached into the energies of the world, searching for the vibrations that indicated an untethered soul.

Hmm. A D minor chord. That was rare. Nice, though. She liked the minor chords.

She caught hold of the vibrations and dragged. For a moment, the air filled with a discordant melody.

Two people appeared, eyes wide with terror.

Middle-aged for this generation, looking wet and soggy from how much their souls had wept. “Oh really,” Tyria muttered. “Hell’s not that bad!”

“Of course you’d say that,” one of them shrieked, tugging at their hair in obvious distress. “You’re a demon! You just want to drag us down and torture us.”

Not for the first time Tyria was glad she’d lived and died long before now. It took forever to acclimate new souls to a less horrific version of the afterlife than they’d for some reason raised themselves to believe. Sure, her conception of the afterlife had been a little boring—it’d taken her a little longer than she liked to admit to realize she wasn’t just going to wander in the mists and shadows for eternity—but at least she hadn’t terrified herself with the idea of it.

“Jonas,” Tyria said. “You talk sense into them,” she said. He’d died far more recently. Clearly he was better prepared to deal with the sociocultural misconceptions going on here. “I’m going to work on their tethers.”

She pulled herself onto the counter, shifting into a lotus position and once more focusing on the weave of the world. If their energies had resonated in D minor, their tethers hummed a surprisingly beautiful purple. If she needed to, she could brute force cut them, but that was considered rather mean. She’d known some people who took over a year to recover from a cut tether. Untangling was far kinder. She set to work.

Weaving had never been her specialty—though her mother had tried to teach her, to raise her ‘right’—but she was proficient. She ran metaphysical fingers over the strings, picking and teasing at the knots entangling these wretched souls onto the earthly plane.

She hummed as she worked. Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, to complement their vibrations—she’d quite liked the ‘classical’ era, though the variety of today’s music was growing on her—and help her align more closely with their place in the world’s tapestry. It fascinated her, the way life had twisted itself up in color and sound, a tapestry and a symphony in one.

Beautiful.

She finished with the tethers, setting them loose.

Lovely.

Now it would just take a quick kick and they’d find themselves free-falling into Hell. Or spiraling up, she supposed. She really had no idea what their tallies looked like.

She was just about to pull herself out of meditation when she recognized a softer, quieter hum. F major. Oh. There was another soul here.

She blinked back into focus. Jonas was desperately trying to explain the structure of Hell to the two very obstinate ghosts insisting they knew best. As though they’d ever been. Tyria rolled her eyes. How ridiculous.

None of them paid her any attention as she slipped out of the room and towards the other soul.

“Hello there,” she called into the empty space of a bedroom. “Want to show yourself?”

It took a moment, but then a shimmer like a heat wave and a small child appeared, building a ghostly tower with metaphysical blocks. “Hi.” The kid smiled shyly. “Are you here to play with me?”

Tyria considered that, then shrugged. She sat down opposite the kid, grabbing a block. Talented. Not all ghosts figured out how to create metaphysical objects to interact with. “What’s your name?” she asked. Kids weren’t nearly as annoying as adults. They didn’t normally stick around. When they did, it was normally because an adult in their life had died at the same time and refused to move on.

“Kit,” the kid said. They stacked another block, slightly cattywampus. “Am I dead? I think I’m dead. Because we were all in the car and then it got really loud and scary and then we were all here at home again. Except not.”

Of course the kid had noticed. “Yes,” she said. “Does that scare you?”

Kit shrugged. “Not really,” they said. “But mom and dad are terrified. They keep talking about embezzlement, whatever that is, and how they hadn’t really meant to steal all that money.” Kit made a face at that. “Which doesn’t make sense. One time I took a sucker from the pantry and they told me stealing is wrong. I told them I hadn’t meant to steal and they said that’s not the sort of thing you do on accident.”

“Humans are silly that way.” To be fair, so were angels and demons, but that was just the nature of the soul. Complicated things, really. “But because you’re dead, you can’t stay here on earth. It’s not good for your soul. It rots, like fruit left out too long.”

Kit stuck out their tongue, nose wrinkling up in disgust. “Ew. One time we went on vacation and came back to find the oranges had turned blue and fuzzy!” They examined their arm as though looking for any such mold.

“It’s unpleasant,” Tyria agreed. “But you’re okay, right now.”

Relief crossed Kit’s face, before they turned back to their questions. “Am I going to Hell?” they asked. “Like mom and dad say they are?”

Tyria shrugged. “Don’t know, kid. Not my department. I’m just here to help you untether your soul and set you free. But if you do… well, it’s not a bad place. You’re young. You won’t need to do paperwork for at least a century.” It was a nice thing about souls, they were still allowed to grow. It would be rather unfortunate to be stuck as a five year old for eternity.

Or however old this kid was.

Kit focused on their blocks for a second. The next block went up, the block pushed the cattywampus tower over the edge. It crashed down, blocks scattering. Kit looked back at her. “So I might go to Heaven, then?”

“Still not my department,” Tyria said dryly. “But I hear it’s nice there, too.”

“Will I get wings if I go to Heaven?” Kit asked.

Tyria held back a snort. “Never met an angel with actual wings,” she said. “Though I suppose you could probably manifest them. I know a few demons who rock the whole ‘horn’ thing. But everyone I know who tried tails agreed they were inconvenient. Made sitting down a hassle. I imagine wings are similar. Can’t really lounge if you’ve got wings getting in your way all the time.”

“But I could fly,” Kit countered.

“You can do that without wings, too,” Tyria said. Not that she did a lot of flying. All these centuries and she was still terrified of heights. Things were far nicer when her feet were on the ground.

“Oh.” Kit considered that. “That’s cool.”

Kids. So easily pleased. “So I’ve been told. You ready to let go, kid?”

Kit took a long minute to consider that. “Can I stay with my parents? Wherever they go?”

Tyria hesitated. “Doesn’t work that way, kid,” she said gently. It was one of the harder things to tell a kid. “But I promise, no matter where you end up, there will be someone there for you.”

Kit frowned. “If I don’t go to the same place as them, can we visit each other, still?”

“Sure,” Tyria said. “I know plenty of people who vacation to Limbo.” She didn’t have any angel friends, so she’d never seen the point, but she’d heard good things.

“Oh.” Kit took another long moment to consider that. “Okay,” they said. “I suppose that’s better than being stuck here. I’m kind of tired of building blocks.” They glared at the fallen blocks. “What do I do?”

Tyria smiled. Good kid. “It’s pretty easy, actually. Imagine you’re in a pool. At first you’re holding on to the edge but then, once you feel safe, you just let go and float away.”

Kit closed their eyes, skin scrunching at the corners as though picturing that exact thing. Slowly, oh so slowly, Kit disappeared. Tyria searched the world’s energy. Sure enough their vibration had faded away, leaving only the echo of their melody.

A good kid. If she saw them in Hell, she’d congratulate them. If not, she was sure Heaven would take good care of them. She stood, vanishing the metaphysical blocks and strode back into the kitchen where Jonas had given up on talking sense into the parents.

Ugh. “All right,” she said. “You people either need to let go or I’m going to kick you out.”

The bigger of the two crossed their arms and glared at her. “I’d like to see you try.”

Tyria rolled her eyes, seriously? Did they think just because their physical bodies had been bigger than hers they were somehow more capable than a demon of over two thousand years? Ridiculous.

She gathered the world’s energies in her grasp. “Say hello to Hell,” she said cheerfully. She tugged the energies the way she would tug the rug out from under them. Two confused shrieks greeted her as they fell back and through the dimensional ripples. “What idiots,” she muttered. She turned to Jonas. “So, that was fun. What do you say we take a detour back to Hell? I’ve heard so much about Broadway. I’d love to see a show.”

Jonas sighed. “If I get demoted for this, I’m blaming you.”

Nonsense. There was some show called Wicked. Sure, she was going for the music, but she could just claim she was getting tips on well… being wicked, since that was the trend in Hell right now. At least until the next underworld evolution.