“Think of heaven and hell as more of a PR divide. They just have the better marketers.” The demon Jaalbzznk led Samantha from New Mexico down a spiral staircase with razor blades for hand rails and stone steps blacker than midnight. “We both provide the same service,” Jaalbzznk hissed with a fork tongue – he was in every way your typical demon painted in renaissance masterpieces. He probably was the demon painted in renaissance masterpieces. “after-life services.” He continued.
Samantha kept her arms folded against her chest, eying the handrails with horror, and looked down at the her short guide. “Why the fire and brimstone?” She asked.
The demon’s black tail whipped against the staircase with a small ting. “Management made a décor decision based on budget a long time ago. I wouldn’t bring it up. Touchy subject around here.”
The staircase descended into a red fog. Thick enough to lose sight of anything beyond the length of Samantha’s arm, but just visible enough to keep following Jaalbzznk. The demon with goat legs left small bloody hoof prints, and Samantha cringed whenever she noticed ticks or fleas or whatever they were scatter and coarse through Jaalbzznk’s matted fur.
“So after-life services?” Samantha hesitated with a drop of hope in her tone. “Does that mean hell isn’t, you know, hell with torture and stuff?”
“Oh, no, no, no. We do our fair share of torment, anguish, guts of IRS agents spilling out onto a trough for the damned to eat.” The staircase ended onto uneven stone ground, but the fog immediately lifted. The new world opened up and Samantha couldn’t hide her gasp. It was hell. As far as she could see without her glasses were plumes of ash rising from vents, cages with moving skeletons, birds – or, rather, nightmares on wings swooping down on people chained together at the necks, plucking out eyeballs or scalping heads, pools of bubbling lava with fingernail marks at the edges.
Jaalbzznk motioned to a man they were passing on the side of the path, half eaten by a group of cats lapping at his exposed bones. “We made Nolan milk flavored, and Orobas’s cats have been licking him for a hundred twenty-six years.”
Kill me.
“He was a terrible son to his mother, you see, who was one of those crazy cat people. Can’t much blame him, though. Nasty things they are.”
Samantha thought one of them looked like her orange tabby. Oh no! Mr. Edwards! She mentally pushed aside the view of another demon using a spork to eat the brains of a man and hoped somebody would remember to feed her cat at exactly 5:30pm.
“Hell and heaven are no different, see.” Jaalbzznk snapped Samantha’s attention back to him.
“I thought Heaven was supposed –“
“People always do.” The demon said off-handedly, Samantha thought she even heard a sigh. “No. The afterlife is supposed to remind people to live for the lives they have up on the earthly realm, not grovel to some giant floating heads and waste their lives. Heaven and hell are equal opportunist torturers. We just have fun with it. They” he said with derision, “simply bore you to madness. No creativity at all.”
“So what’s the decision? Like, if it’s all the same, who decides who goes where?”
“Not who. What.”
“Ok, then what? A tribunal of angels?”
“Oh sweet tasty chlorine no! Those bastards can’t tell a severed head from a lollipop.” Jaalbzznk openly cringed. Samantha looked around at the endless eternity of torture, then thought how bad angels could be if they made this demon shudder. “No. Not angels. But then again, we don’t actually know what makes the decision. Can’t figure it out. Us or the crowed upstairs. Complete mystery. Come, this way.”
The demon slinked into a doorway Samantha hadn’t noticed before and led them through. She braced herself for a new scene of torment and damnnation.
It was a white room. Marble white with golden cracks glazing out like splintering lightning bolts. The ceiling, floors, and walls were all the same, the cracks were the only thing giving depth to the room. Samantha pieced together where all that budget went that Jaalbzznk had mentioned. The only decoration was a throne, and as they approached she noticed it was constructed of bronzed skulls and… and were those penesis used as grout? Without warning, a figure dropped from the ceiling and with a crack like an earthquake landed on the throne. She knew without a doubt. This was the devil.
Shit.
Jaalbzznk spoke first.
“My great and honorable lord,” The demon said, Samantha could swear she heard traces of sarcasm in his voice. “I bring you the one called Samantha, destroyer of Bowers.”
The devil. Lucifer. Satan. Shit-fuck. The thing – she was hesitant to prescribe the literal devil a gender even in her head. Does that give it humanity?
“Samantha.” It sounded like an entire world cracking apart. “Our Samantha.” It smiled with teeth of black toenails with a tongue of rotten flesh licking at them. “You do us a great honor in your death.” It lowered its head just noticeably enough. “I trust Jaalbzznk has treated you with warmth and hospitality?”
Samantha couldn’t stop looking at the devil sitting on his throne of skulls and flacid dicks.
“I asked if Jaalbzznk has been a kind host?”
“Oh, yes. He’s been good.”
“Has he told you why you’re here?” Satan leaned forward, his mammoth black horns curving to the ceiling should have toppled him over by any respect.
“I’ve died.”
Satan howled with laughter and the walls shook, Samantha crumpled to the floor and covered her ears. It was like getting hit by a semi-truck. Which was a feeling she felt oddly familiar with.
“Yes, Samantha. You have died and the great nothing has sent you here to Hell.” It motioned for Samantha to stand back up. “But do you know why you’re here, with me, in my chamber – and not being dipped in tubs of scolding water? Do you remember your way to the afterlife?”
“My way –“ She stood back up and brushed herself off. Wait. How did she end up here? How did she die? Last she remembers, she had just gotten off work and was driving down the freeway. She had been in meeting after aggravating meeting all day. Who needs the approval of three different boards to certify a small change in a contract even before that contract was finalized? It was the worst! Samantha remembered. She was driving after work to meet up with..
Oh. Oh no.
She felt her phone buzz in her pocket and her car’s Bluetooth wasn’t working. The thing never connected to her car the first time. She had meant to get it fixed but kept pushing it off – along with getting her tires rotated, oil changed, brakes checked, and something about a gasket leak. She remember reaching into her pocket to respond to a message. Then, a horn from a semi.
“Death by texting and driving. Yes.” Satan brought her back.
“I’m so sorry, I –“
“Remember, everyone dies, Samantha,” Jaalbzznk said. “And it’s only by chance you landed with us. Be thankful.”
“Yes.” Satan said. “Be thankful. In your haste to get to The Oinking Pig Pub, you lost track of the road, hitting a semi-truck, and your car rolled over a bystander, smashing him into a bloody pulp forever staining the concrete with his organs that were melted into it.”
“Oh my god, I didn’t –“ The sobbing started immediately. How could she have taken a life over something so stupid? This wasn’t the way anything was supposed to go. She wasn’t supposed to be dead. She wasn’t supposed to kill anyone. She wasn’t supposed to leave Mr. Edwards behind like this!
“You misunderstand, Samantha. The wretched creature you saw fit to flatten was none other than Bowers himself.”
“Bowers?” she said between gasps of air.
“Bowers was our Jack of Spades.” Jaalbzznk said. “One of our most wanted souls. And you, fair, kind, airheaded Samantha, killed him on your way out.”
“And for that act of ignorant bravery, no matter how unintended, you have earned a seat on my council as per my edict. Anything that brings me a soul of a most wanted has earned their place.”
“I thought dead people were randomly sent to either heaven or hell?”
“You’ve been listening. You’ll make a great council member.” Satan said. “Yes, but we’re able to submit requests for certain souls. Bowers on was that list, and now he’s in our waiting room.”
“Waiting room? What will you do with him?”
“You’re a council member now, Samantha,” Jaalbzznk said with a smile. “You help decide. Please, this way.” The demon put his hand on her back and led her back through the door. She looked over her shoulder at Satan who began laughing to himself with delight.
They left through the same door, but instead of the hellscape from before it was a normal conference room with a long oak table in the middle. Around it were various people and creatures of all shapes and demonic possessions. Was that Amelia Earhart next to Julius Cesar who held the hand of a half-dead centaur?
“Please, take a seat.” Jaalbzznk motioned to a normal swiveling office chair next to Salvador Dali. Samantha noticed it had great lumbar support. “May I introduce to you the slayer of Bowers. The conqueror of the Jack of Spades. Councilmember Samantha.”
The room burst with applause.
The New Martian 