Happy Holidays, Anjael!

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Fiendish Incarnations: A Love Story from Hell

Summary: There’s a generally accepted belief that demons can’t fall in love. This is false. It is more accurate to say that demons rarely admit to being in love. Or, a brief history of the Prince of Hell and the Lord of the Files from before the Beginning to after the End.

Every demon was an angel once. This fact was a source of acute anguish for a short period after the War in Heaven, and then as the centuries passed it became regarded more and more like a bad haircut in college that hangs around haunting passports and driver’s licenses—embarrassing, and revealing of a rather severe lack of taste, but ultimately something that can be laughed at.

Long ago, the world consisted of little besides angels and ambitions. It was difficult to tell one day from the next, largely due to the fact that time had neglected to be invented. It was tricky to say what was up and what was down, what was center and what was edge, whether the world was immense or infinitesimal. It was likewise hard to tell one angel from another, since norms around personal space, like the angels themselves, had yet to solidify.

Strictly speaking, there was no such thing as non-personal space either.

Angels were muddled together in a form that celebrated religious scholars would later describe as “a dazzling swirl of eddying quintessence” and “an indescribable confluence of primordial luminosities.” Actually, it was more akin to celestial pea soup. Even in such a seemingly harmonious social environment, there were odd elements out. A split began to emerge between the most contented essences and the most dissatisfied ones. When the Earth entered its production phase, and the angels separated themselves into distinct entities, it became clear that Heaven was plagued not only by elements of discontent, but worse still, by disreputable characters.

“Feels like we’ve been a bit overlooked, that’s all,” said a small, pale angel with eyes so intense they seemed to demand compound lenses. 

It was shortly before dawn on the fifth day of the world, right after Team Animals With More Than Four Legs finished bringing their creations into existence and just as Team Scaly And/Or Slimy Animals was about to make its debut.

An angel with a long auburn ponytail paused. ‘I know what you mean,” she said. “Seems like ever since someone drew up the specs for the ‘puppy’ the Archangels have been doing nothing but praising the brilliance of Team Mammals.” She paused. “Also making a lot of high-pitched squealing noises.”

“Tell me about it. None of them stopped to give me one kind word about the fruit fly,” the first angel said. “How’s Team Scaly And/Or Slimy Animals doing, then?”

“We’re coming along alright.” The angel with the ponytail considered. “Someone just got approval for a lizard that changes color, and his friend got a big order for the jumping amphibian we weren’t sure was going to take off. That slacker who took the design for worms and slapped some scales on it still won’t shut up about how amazing the ‘snake’ is going to be.”

The shorter angel laughed. “I tell you, if I was in charge of this place angels like that would be demoted.”

“I wish you were,” the other said. “I’ll see you around, I’ve got to go populate the seas.”

***

Afterward, things went rather spectacularly and sulphurically awry. The most inquisitive and complaint-prone angels were cast into Hell behind Lucifer, falling in a fiery cascade that could make the most resplendent meteor shower look like mere drizzling.

A million meters below Heaven, Beelzebub picked themselves up from the ashes. It was very dark in the roiling belly of the world, and choked with shadows and soot and sin. Blackened bits drifted through the unwholesome air, the charred remains of angel feathers. Tentatively, Beelzebub stretched their wings into the blackness. They did not flutter or flap anymore.

They buzzed.

Now that’s just excessive cruelty, they thought bitterly. It was not a thought that they would have too often in the future.

Hell turned out to be much larger than anyone had anticipated, and it was difficult to navigate due to the large lake in the center that was, in defiance of all sensible meteorology, simultaneously freezing, boiling, and on fire. It was several days before a large group of demons coalesced and formed a search party for Lucifer. They searched partially because they wanted to have a leader and partially because they wanted to have some very harsh words.

“Lucifer’s not coming out!!” Dagon called at last, climbing over a twisted stalagmite. A plume of flame roared behind her, sickly and sparking. “He’s locked himself in some godforsaken pit. Miracled the door shut.”

Beelzebub took hold of Dagon’s sleeve and pulled her away from the group. 

“What do you mean he’zz not coming out?” Beelzebub asked.

Dagon’s glassy eyes scanned around for any eavesdropping demons, then she turned back to Beelzebub. “He’s sulking. Looks like the Fall hit him pretty badly. I don’t think he’s in any shape to lead a swarm of mayflies, much less a legion of...whatever we are now.”

The first curse in the world had cast all the fallen angels into the murky and poorly ventilated depths of Hell. Beelzebub, upon hearing Dagon’s report, uttered the second one.

“If Lucifer Morningstarlet can’t get off hizz damned fainting couch we’ll have to corral theze idiotzz ourzelvezz” they said. There was a glint of fury in those insectoid eyes. 

“I agree,” Dagon said. “Better to be a lord of the forgotten and the flies than a harp-stringing hypocrite up Above.”

Beelzebub looked at Dagon as if seeing her for the first time. Her halo was gone, and in place of the golden light that used to shine forth was an eerie silver gleam from stripes of scales. It made the hair on Beelzebub’s neck stand on end, and not entirely from fear. In fact, not very much from fear at all.

“You think you can tell them we’re carrying on, Lucifer or no?”

Dagon’s smile was like shards, seaglass not yet smoothed over by a repetitive tide. “I can try.”

***

Hell is an odd thing to get used to, but when you have eternity, a serious lack of other options, and a more than healthy amount of gallows humor, you can make it work. (If fair is foul, it’s only right that foul gets its turn to be fair.) Gradually, the oppressive heat in Hell faded into normalcy, as the mold and mildew transmuted into expected pleasantries, and the beauty standards became entirely non-standard. Demons stopped retreating in fear from the roiling sulfur pools and eventually installed Jacuzzi jets. 

Everything in Hell was tolerable, and perhaps even enjoyable, if you only looked at it with the right slant, Beelzebub decided. Even the rare showers of ethereal staplers and inkwells that fell through the vents from heavenly desks ceased to be a painful reminder of what was left behind and became simply an intermittent source of extra office supplies.

***

In the beginning, Beelzebub and Dagon called it “double-checking the personnel reports”. It did start out as actual paperwork, with the Lord of the Files delivering ream after ream and stack after stack of paperwork to Beelzebub’s mildewed office. Maintaining an infernal bureaucracy, it turns out, involves a nigh-infinite number of official forms and a degree of executive collaboration demons are inclined to regard as mythical.

The Lords of Flies and Files rejected vacation applications, tossed aside repair requests (Beelzebub’s policy was that if it hadn’t caved in yet, best to wait until it did, while Dagon found wreckage aesthetically pleasing), and laughed at temptation reports from agents sent to Earth. They toasted the triumph of sin. They oversaw the intake of damned souls and witnessed schism after raging schism erupt within the gentry of Hell. They spent a lot of time together between the same intricately organized file cabinets, poring over papers at the same festering desk.

When Beelzebub had a large pool installed in their office, everyone was too frightened to raise any eyebrows, let alone raise anything that might resemble an objection.

***.

There’s a generally accepted belief that demons can’t fall in love. This is false. It is more accurate to say that demons rarely admit to being in love, and instead typically refer to it with such terms as “mutual annoyance,” “intimate rivalry,” and “violations of company policy.”

Similarly, there is no official demonic term for a romantic getaway, but among the hellish travels taken to Earth there are a few which are perhaps not so hellish to the travelers.

After the world didn’t end the Hell was teeming with thousands of disappointed demons. Armageddon was set to be an even bigger and more exciting affair for Satan’s team than the invention of reality television. On top of managing the displaced aggression of a horde of demons, the failure of Armageddon was also an administrative nightmare. The Lord of the Files was working overtime and feeling positively ragged, as though she had been breathing too long in sanctified air. The only upside was that, due to the treasonous circumstances under which a particular employee departed, there was no need to come up with an infernal severance pay policy.

“You know,” Beelzebub remarked one day to Dagon while twisting a strand of hair out of her scaly face, “As long as the world’s still hanging around crawling with idiots, we might as well take a break and go look at it.”

Dagon looked up from a towering stack of carbon paper (deals with the devil are always preserved in triplicate). “Won’t it be noticeable if two demons are wandering around on the surface after all that’s happened? Or rather, after all that hasn’t happened?”

“Two demons might be noticeable,” Beelzebub admitted. “But what about a fish and a swarm of mayflies?”

It’s not easy to shift shape, but it’s worth it to experience Earth as a creature designed for it. The colors are brighter and the world is more vibrant and raw. To creatures of Hell used to shrouding themselves in the darkness, simple existence on the surface is almost too vivid, too bright, like a splash of water on skin scraped too thin.

One month to the day after the world didn’t end, the moon rose over a bog lit with fireflies. A fish watched its progress in the sky with globe-like eyes that swiveled as she swam in the murk, and a cloud of mayflies darted and danced over the swamp between Heaven and Hell. Although the world’s continuing existence was something of a bureaucratic headache, for that evening the Prince of Hell and the Lord of the Files were glad to have a piece of it left for themselves.