A Demonic Love Story

Pain began each day for him— physical agony undreamt of by mere mortals.

It was always the same. 🥱

First, straight out of his snake-ridden dung heap bed, he was flayed alive, his flesh peeled off his hideous body by a series of ingenious rollers and razors. Every inch of his epidermis was meticulously sliced away, unveiling a few billion live nerves. Apish-monsters-with-praying-mantis-heads then pushed, prodded, and poked him, rolling his skinless body in a great dune of salt. When he was pulled screaming from the sodium, he was ran under a lava shower, then entrapped in an absolute zero frost. Chipping him out of the ice block, the monsters also inflicted 666 new stab wounds before he was finally released for duty in Satan's service.

For Zaazu the demon, every day started like this. And yet somehow the slicing salty burning stabbing freezing tortures he experienced today were the worst ever.

That was how Zaazu knew it was going to be another banner day in Hell!

Zaazu was a low-level demon working on the Third Layer of the Abyss. He was spawned evil, suckled on hatred, and raised on anguish. He was a lazy demon, worthless and weak, and that was why he’d been stuck in the fast-food industry for the last two hundred years. Ever since Dante forever linked this Layer to Gluttony, the Third Circle of Hell has been all about the food.

Zaazu would never be promoted. He would never become a Greater Demon, let alone an Arch Demon, no matter how many eternities he toiled. He was slothful. He suffered more than he inflicted suffering and because of that, he would never know greatness.

For trillions of damned souls, Hell meant repetition. Every dolorous day was exactly the same as the day before it, for all eternity. That was the section of the underworld where Zaazu worked.

Arch Demons loved surprises. The fiends in Upper Management were adept at spontaneous evil. Zaazu was entirely too unimaginative to handle surprises. For him to act spontaneously would require a lot of advanced planning.

He liked knowing what to expect. His job was always the same— his infernal duties clearly spelled out in his Employee Handbook.

As always, Zaazu reported for duty at his normal workplace: one of 666,666,666 Crap-in-the-Box restaurants Hadeswide. He anticipated a routine shift. He had no inkling he would be surprised today like never before.

⚡⚡⚡___***666***___⚡⚡⚡

Spider-like abominations rained down from above, scuttling over his body to weave corrosive webbing that he would wear today as clothing. Onto Zaazu's chest, an apish-thing-with-a-praying-mantis-head pinned his nametag. It read: Hello, my name is Legion.

A superior told him it was meant as a joke.

He didn’t get it.

Zaazu exited the spawning chamber where he was greeted every morning with pain. Tromping through green clouds of brimstone, sulfur, and devil stank, he entered the back door of Crap-in-the-Box, marked...

😈 INFERNALS ONLY.

He slogged past the employee break room (where employees were broken) and entered one of Hell’s kitchens.

For the most part, all the scullions working back here were demons. The damned tended to be either the ingredients or the cordwood. In one giant cauldron hanging over a soul-roasting blaze, pieces of spirits and living body parts churned atop a noxious brew. A sous chef with the torso of a hippo and a face vaguely resembling a jackal was scalping bags of shrieking human heads; exactly the way a mortal peeled potatoes (gouging out the eyes first.)

The screams coming from the ovens were frightful.🔥😱😱🔥🔥😱😱🔥😱🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Zaazu clocked in a few minutes before his scheduled shift but, as usual, when he looked at his timecard, it showed he was six eternities late for work. He sighed, knowing he'd catch shit for this from Gobblepuke. It happened all the time. Angry, Zaazu kicked the damned soul who had the timeclock shoved up his ass.

Bullying past his contemptible coworkers, Zaazu marched straight over to the muck-shake machine, which was operated by a froggish demon named Bob. Without preamble, he grabbed Bob by his low-hanging soft parts, squeezing hard as he slammed him into a sludge-stained wall. “Hey, Bob,” he said, as he did every morning. After putting Bob in a headlock, Zaazu drug him over to the fry station, asking amiably, “Read any good blasphemies lately?” He seized one of Bob’s flabby arms and jammed it into boiling magma.

Bob howled in pain.

The blue gremlin on Poison Pickle Duty applauded.

As he rammed more of his coworker’s hand into the fryer, Zaazu commented to Bob, “Hellish weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

When Zaazu finally pulled Bob’s arm out of the magma, it had been reduced to a charred, smoking stump. Grabbing Bob’s dangling ears, Zaazu yanked Bob’s head down, kneecapping his blunt forehead. Ectoplasmic bones snapped, sounding like whip-crack rubber bands. After kicking Bob a few more times, Zaazu left his coworker bleeding on the floor, saying, “Take it sleazy, bro.”

Whistling unhappily, Zaazu lumbered up to his regular station at the Crap-in-the-Box front counter.

Famished souls were already lined up, some stretching single file for parsecs. Zaazu saw the same damned faces in the line that he always saw.

Goblins armed with whips and pitchforks tortured the starving people. The only entities here that were allowed to eat were the goblins, and they delighted in taunting the starving damned by chowing down on the finest Floppers: giant writhing tapeworms served with special sauce, lettuce, sleaze, freckles, assholes, on an incubus-seed bun.

Zaazu’s only coworkers behind the counter were four monkey mummies and a donkey boy. All four of the linen-wrapped simians were currently filling the mice-cream machine with urine. The monkey mummies pissed like men, standing up, with only their anthropoid penises uncovered. Zaazu knew that once the mice-cream machine was full, they would start filling glass coffee pots to hurl at the patrons.

Those guys had legendary bladders.

As for the donkey boy, all he ever did was dance the flamenco. His cloven hooves smashed feet flat. Everywhere he danced, customers fell.

It was a decent crew, by Hell's standards anyway, but he did miss all the demons that were lost (reassigned) because of Covid.

At the head of the line of damned souls was the spirit of an old man wearing nothing but a Viking helm. Writhing fiddler crabs were clamped onto his genitals. He was clearly starving; every rib was visible in his emaciated chest.

“How may I hate you?” asked Zaazu. There was no help in Hell.

Drooling, the old guy fumbled out a wallet, taking it out of his wrinkled ass (since he had no pockets). He began searching through red-hot cards, his fingertips sizzling. In a weak voice, he asked, “Can I get my senior citizen’s discount without showing my card?”

Flatly, Zaazu said, “No.” Then he spat slime.

“Dammit!” said the damned man. Wiping slime out of his eyes, he whined, “I can’t find my card!”

With a quick jab of his massive paw, Zaazu knocked the wallet out of the man’s hands. “In that case, you’ll need to go to the back of the line.”

The old man gasped with fear. “You can’t do that!” He put a skeletal hand against his bloated belly, screeching, “I’m starving!”

Zaazu bellowed, “BACK OF THE LINE!” A group of the goblins came to haul the sobbing man away.

Zaazu shouted, “Next!”

His second victim was a personal favorite of his. The specter of a skinny dead woman stepped up to the counter and said, “I’d like to file for unemployment, please.” She was red-faced, obviously exasperated, hungry, and unhappy about her long wait in line.

Zaazu smiled and said, “Damn you for choosing Crap-in-the-Box, home of the Big Scat! Today’s Septic Special is our mandatory Melanoma Meal: a quarter-pound brain(cancer)burger, stench fries, and a dingleberry shake. How many don’t you want?”

“What?” With a shake of her head, the damned woman stuck to her agenda, insisting, “I need to file my unemployment today. If I don’t get my benefit check, I’m going to lose my apartment! 😱 I’ve already lost my car!‼”

Zaazu considered himself extremely well informed. True, he didn’t know what a ‘car’ was, but he was fairly certain that an ‘apartment’ was a location where small animals were ripped apart.

The tormentor delighted in telling the tormented, “Crap-in-the-Box is one of the biggest corporations Hadeswide! We’re in this for the profit, dumb ass!"

Eyes bulging, the woman pulled her own hair. “I really need that money!” She pled with Zaazu, “What am I going to do?”

“Roast, maybe?” answered the demon.

Right on cue, the fire imps arrived. Bouncing up to the woman, they spat flames on her. The burn-babies then chased the woman’s soul out the door.

Zaazu yelled after her, “Have a lice day!”

He was about to say ‘Next,’ when something unexpected happened.

He hated when unexpected things happened.

A small red-headed woman— in an apparent state of panic— bullied her way into the restaurant, scurrying right over the maimed people on the floor, oblivious to their groans. The goblins didn’t stop her when she ran right up to Zaazu. Clutched tightly in her left hand, the damned soul (woman?) was holding a photograph, an 8x10 glossy of someone.

Zaazu should probably berate her. He should hurt her and send her to the back of the line.

‘Waiting is Hell!

and Hell lies Waiting!!’

...as some Arch Demon once said.

Zaazu knew he should do something, but he wasn’t sure what.

The redheaded woman (with hair that reminded Zaazu of flames) thrust the picture at him, pleading, “Have you seen my daughter? She eats here all the time. I thought maybe she came here after school. Please! Have you seen her?”

Looking at the ‘woman’ (not the photograph), Zaazu realized ‘she’ had actually been a man when still alive. The demon was looking at the doomed soul of a former sexual predator who kidnapped numerous girls. The punishment for his sins was to experience the terror of his many victims.

Zaazu sighed, looking back at the monkey mummies. “I need another scorecard, guys!” The monkey mummies laughed so hard at the inside joke, they partially unraveled themselves.

Again, the damned serial killer pushed the photograph into Zaazu’s ghastly face. “Just look,” she(he) blubbered. “Just look at her picture! Are you sure you haven’t seen her?”

The demon took a good look.

🧘‍♀️👀 ⚡🖤🔥

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Unfortunately for him, it was Love at First Sight! 🔥

Zaazu found it hard to concentrate on displeasing people after falling in love.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the female in the photograph— the pale, freckled-faced girl with blazing red hair. Intuitively, Zaazu knew that the man who kidnapped the girl didn’t ultimately kill her. She still lived, somewhere up above him. He kept looking skyward, up at the grimy ceiling, up toward the Earth that was Hell’s Heaven.

He fell behind in his duties. He wasn’t denying food to the starving people fast enough. His supervisor, Gobblepuke, was a real son of a bitch. Zaazu often got into brutal altercations with Gobblepuke. Every time he did, he always lost. His boss was only a lesser demon himself but he was a much bigger lesser demon than Zaazu.

So when Gobblepuke came up behind Zaazu and ripped out his spine for working too slowly, Zaazu couldn’t do much in retaliation. He cursed his boss like a ghost pirate on the Styx, but he did it from the floor.

Without a spine, he found it impossible to stand at the counter. For the next 666 hours, the monkey mummies and donkey boy worked on top of him. Having to pick up Zaazu’s slack, they were angry as fuck! ⚡🐵🔥 The monkey mummies saved their choicest shit to throw at him instead of at the customers.

Unable to stop thinking of the redheaded girl, Zaazu felt nauseous.

Thousands of hours later, when Gobblepuke finally restored Zaazu’s spine, Zaazu immediately lunged at the monkey mummies, intent on throttling them. Gobblepuke stopped him with a vicious punch to his head, telling him, “The Big Boss wants to see you.”

Several people in back— including Bob— all said, “Uh-oh!” The snotty blue gremlin on Poison Pickle Duty jeered, “Somebody’s in trou-ble!”

Picking up Zaazu by the nape of his neck, Gooblepuke carried him to the back of the restaurant. Between occupied iron maidens and the kitchen’s mountainous pile of uncooked spider-steed meat— there was a deep, dark hole. Cackling, Gobblepuke tossed a cursing Zaazu into that yawing cavity.

Shadowy things sliced him with teeth, talons, and knives... as he plummeted through the darkness.

Finally, Zaazu hit bottom, hard enough to nearly flatten him. Before he could orient himself, he was lifted into the air. He found himself face-to-face with a sixty-six-foot-tall Greater Demon named Upchuck. The Diabolical District Manager over this little section of the Third Layer of Hell looked at Zaazu and roared, “YOU’RE DEFECTIVE!”

Zaazu was smarter than that! He shouted back, “No, I’m not!" He puffed up with pride. "I’m a demon!”

Upchuck proceeded to rip off Zaazu’s arm, which he then stuffed down Zaazu’s throat, silencing him.

The Greater Demon repeated himself, “YOU’RE DEFECTIVE! You are in l… luh . . . luh. . . .” He shook his head, unable to say the word. “You don’t HATE that woman!”

Zaazu somehow intuited whom Upchuck was talking about. ‘That woman’ was the redheaded mortal girl who’d been blazing in his mind all day. He would tell Upchuck that he thought he was seriously ill if he didn't have a mouthful of his arm.

The Greater Demon shuttered as he was finally able to speak the atrocious word, “You’re in love!” Upchuck’s tongue caught fire. 🔥

Zaazu couldn’t believe it! He knew about love! Tainted love was rampant in Hell, especially egomanical self-love! He’d often used love himself, as a weapon, taunting damned souls with favorite foods and fond memories that they would never be able to experience again!

But demons couldn’t fall in love! That was impossible!

Upchuck seemed to think differently. “You care for that mortal. You want to make her,” he hissed the word contemptuously, “happy!” Upchuck hacked up something putrid, spitting bile in Zaazu’s face. “Admit it!”

Since he couldn’t speak, Zaazu nodded.

“A demon that cares for a living mortal!” Upchuck shook his detestable head. “Appalling!” He demanded to know, “What are we going to do about this?”

Zaazu shrugged. He still couldn’t believe he was in love.

No wonder he felt sick.

Upchuck grabbed Zaazu’s nose, pinching it painfully. “I’ll tell you what we are going to do! We’re sending you to Earth!”

Zaazu’s eyes began to bleed when they doubled in size.

Upchuck chuckled. “That’s right, maggot! You want this woman? Fine! We’ll send you to her!” His smile wickedness unbound, Upchuck released Zaazu’s nose. “That is what you want, isn’t it?”

He realized he wouldn’t hate spending eternity with the woman. What was astonishing was that he didn’t hate the idea that he didn’t hate her. All of this was too bizarre! He couldn’t go to Earth! He was Hell-spawned!

“Without a human body, you won’t be able to stay up there long. This is not a sanctioned possession. You will present yourself as you truly are, in all your ugly glory!” It sounded like poetry when Upchuck said it...

“The only way you’ll ever know, Zaazu,

if she can feel the same way you do,

is if you show her the Real You.”

Zaazu felt especially queasy. Not only was he excited, he was hopeful, yet another feeling foreign to demons. He was told, “This is a great gift that Lucifer has given you! You don’t deserve it!”

Zaazu believed that! For real! His Lord Satan— Maker of All Magnificence, Prince of All Truths, Purveyor of all Perversions, Bringer of Da Heat— was truly Divine!

“So, you’ll go? Do you think you can get this woman to luh . . . to feel affection for you?” He spat the word ‘affection’ with distaste.

Zaazu tried to answer but couldn’t. When Upchuck yanked the arm out of his throat, Zaazu immediately shouted, “Yes! I want to go! And I will make her love me!” 🔥 His tongue ignited when he said the L-word.

Upchuck smiled nefariously. “Very well.”

A tornado came down and Zaazu was taken up. A dark whirlwind filled with bile, bullshit, and blunt objects battered him bloody as he ascended. The raging hell-storm drove the demon skyward, towards Earth.

⚡🔥🌪🌪😈🌪🌪🌪⚡⚡

(Ten years ago) When she was fourteen years old, Lucy Lambert was kidnapped and raped by an old friend of her grandfather's. He drugged her and took her to a secluded cabin in the country, where he kept her captive for four days, handcuffed to a bed. Then he fled the state. Before the police could bring him to justice, the old man had a massive coronary and died. In Lucy's opinion, there should be more to that story, but there wasn't.

She couldn't know that even now, her rapist was being tortured in Hell.

Lucy Lambert had fallen on hard times, not having worked since before Covid shut everything down. To pay her bills, she picked up a few shifts with GrubHub here and there. She lived in a tiny apartment. She had no close friends. She didn't trust anybody. She hadn’t been on a date in four years.

Lucy was more than ready for love… just not the love of a demon.

She grew up in a religious family. Because of her experience with the rapist, however, she had a crisis of faith. She hadn’t been to church in a decade. She still believed in God. She was just convinced that He never answered prayers. She pessimistically believed that God was nothing more than a silent witness to human affairs— like Uatu in the Marvel universe.

Tonight she was basking in a hot bath, laying in steaming water, listening to her Pandora I’m A Lonely Bitch mix, when she caught just a whiff of some noxious stench. She sat up so quickly, she splashed water out of the tub. What was that? She looked at the closed, clean toilet, which couldn’t be the source of this nauseating odor. This was like no other stink she had ever smelled (because there was brimstone mixed in with it). It was like Rotten Bad Everything— excrement and skunk and sulfur and death.

She jumped up and cranked on the shower, hoping to cleanse the air. Instead, she inadvertently gave the monster its entry.

Noisome goo sprayed from the faucet. Black sludge (speckled with green snot and sprinkles of bright red blood) swiftly coalesced into a lunging devil that locked her down solid.

Lucy vomited up all the Taco Bell in her belly.

When Zaazu showed his concern for her by licking up her puke, Lucy screamed.

At first, Zaazu was pleased when he heard Lucy’s shriek, thinking she was just greeting him, but then he realized shrieks aren’t used as greetings by mortals.

He tried to tell Lucy not to be afraid, but his head still hadn’t fully formed yet and his reassurances sounded like splatters.

Lucy screamed even louder.

Finally, the inferior demon was as physical as he'd ever get. He looked at Lucy Lambert with dissimilar eyes, burbling, “Don’t be afraid.” He smiled, showing his tiger shark teeth. “I won’t harm you.” Mindless with terror, his beloved thrashed and screamed, her flesh so unimaginably soft. Heroically he fought the urge to cut her wrists just so he could see/smell her bleed.

Old habits die hard.

He told her, “I’ve come all the way from Hell for you, Lucy!”

Lucy’s eyes were bulging as she screamed at him, which Zaazu found incredibly attractive. Bowing down on one knee, Zaazu held onto Lucy’s arm with his vise-like grip while placing his other hand over his icky chest. He made the declaration that would change everything, proclaiming with unprecedented sincerity...

“I love you!” 🔥

He beamed at his inamorata, mouth smoking. 🖤😈⚡

Lucy Lambert hadn’t been able to piece together a coherent thought since Zaazu grabbed her. She’d never been so terrified in her life, not even by her rapist. The demon's appearance in her bathtub had reduced her to nothing but a witless shriek. As her terror reached unfathomable heights— Lucy reacted instinctively, praying, Dear God, please! Please let this stop!

Her prayer was answered.

Lucy suffered a massive coronary and died.

Zaazu moaned as his beloved went limp in his arms.

“Nooooo,” he warbled.

“Didn’t you hear me? I said I love 🔥 you!”

He was utterly clueless why his declaration of love didn’t make everything all better!

He saw Lucy’s soul as it left her body. For the first and only time in his existence, Zaazu also caught a glimpse of the true Heaven, the one above Earth. Bright twinkling beams poured down from the skies and Lucy’s spirit rose into the ethereal light. She was going to a place where Zaazu couldn’t exist. Zaazu was pure evil; where Lucy was going, evil didn’t exist.

Zaazu was possessed with an all-consuming fury. He thought, I'll kill all these bitches! Everyone on this accursed planet! I'll create such TERROR and DEVASTATION that the—!

Zaazu’s body sloshed apart. He became spew again. His infuriated liquids were sucked down the bathtub drain, mixing with strange suds at the last moment to give him one final glimpse up at utopia.

Pain began each day for him— agony undreamt of by mere mortals. But this morning, for the first time in thousands of years, Zaazu’s day started differently.

Today, Zaazu’s pain was emotional.

He awoke surrounded by shrines to Lucy, who he still loved with all his diseased deformed demonic heart! All around him were pictures of her, a million or more photographs, all of them taken at various times in her life when she was frightened (and therefore looking her very best!)

He wistfully remembered her yesterday screams, but they seemed distant to him, as if they were already fading. He wondered if he would eventually forget her completely. Knowing her was a torture, yes, but the thought of losing every memory of her was so much more unbearable!

In the Abyss, every day’s anguish was infinitely more excruciating than the day before.

The torment of love lost was the worst imaginable.

That's how Zaazu knew it was going to be another banner day in Hell!

So what do you think? Was that one fucked-up romance ☝ or what?

⚡😁👍

I appreciate your readership. If you're up for a slightly more serious tale about Hell in the 21st Century, boy, have I got a bargain for you! 👇

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__________________Bolt ⚡