Trigger Warning: Torture, childhood trauma, swearing
The Road to Hell
"Hello, Hank."
Hank's chair rattled to a stop in the middle of the cell, his wrists and ankles bound by velcro to its arms and legs. Sweat beaded on his brow in anticipation of what was to come. Or maybe he was just hot—it was hard to tell in Hell.
"Jesu—" Orwell began as he read through Hank's rap sheet before realizing where he was. He glanced furtively above the wall of the cubicle cell to see whether his boss had noticed his slip up. The giant devil was frowning in another direction, giving him hope.
Orwell swallowed and changed tack. "I mean, shit Hank, any one of these things would get you sent to Hell. Did you really rob your own grandmother?"
Hank stared blankly ahead.
Orwell sighed. This was typical behaviour for sinners who passed through his station. The silence was a defence-mechanism. By not acknowledging guilt, they could mentally externalize their fate. How many sinners had passed through the gates of Hell, clinging to the tenuous belief that their eternal punishment was somehow someone else's fault? Orwell shook his head, for one of the items on his job description was to disavow them of this notion.
"Broke your girlfriend's nose?" Orwell continued, enumerating the items. "Yanked your dog's tail off? Drove drunk and got into an accident that put your stepson into a coma? Hank, I gotta tell you, I've seen a lot of borderline cases and you're not one of them. You're one genuine douche-bag who genuinely deserves everything you get."
Hank spat, the spittle sizzling on the hot floor until it was just a crusty scum stain.
Orwell reconsidered his initial take. Maybe Hank wasn't just a typical wanna-be victim? Maybe he had been through the nemesis stations so many times that his conscience had become inured to shame? Orwell sized him up: big guy with scar on his chin, cow skull tattoo on his arm, more hair on his chest and back than on his head. He looked every inch like he had had a tough life, but not like someone who had sat long in the fires of Hell.
"Damn, you're one tough son of a bitch, ain't ya?" Orwell asked.
"Get on with it," was Hank's only reply.
Orwell shrugged. Hank had an eternity ahead of him to be reconciled to the consequences of his life choices. His job was just to help the process along. He reached for the vise-grips.
"My, those sure are some pretty fingernails," Orwell commented, locking the vise-grips onto the littlest nail on Hank's left hand.
"Get on with it," Hank repeated. He seemed neither angry nor resigned, which puzzled Orwell. Was it possible that someone just got so used to bad things happening that they stopped feeling? He supposed there was only one way to find out.
Squinch!
The nail pulled out with a tearing sound that still gave Orwell the shivers. Blood squirted on to the floor, where it bubbled and dried into char. Hank frowned, but he didn't call out or swear or do any of the normal reactions. Instead he leaned towards Orwell and fixed him with a meaningful stare.
"Is that the best you got?" he whispered.
Orwell tried to be philosophical about his job. Whereas Heaven was the carrot that beckoned men to be good, Hell was the stick that threatened them if they were bad. And the stick needed to be wielded by someone, so it might as well be him. Normally his station involved slow torture interspersed with teary confessions and moaning laments. In the end the sinner was bloodied, yes, but the real wounds were of the soul. In this instance, however, the stick would need to be more of a club, and the blood would need to flow and splatter freely. This was the way. Orwell would not say that he enjoyed his work, but in Hank's case he was willing to make an exception. As he hacked and bludgeoned and ripped, Orwell could imagine Hank's victim's baying for more vengeance. There was no punishment easier to dole out than a just one.
In the end Hank didn't even whimper. He never cried out, or gasped, or even winced. He just absorbed the hateful malice like some sort of human sponge. Orwell grunted with exertion as he broke the man's last kneecap with a hammer.
"Losing your knack, Number 23?" the giant devil asked, peering over Orwell's cell wall. "Maybe you should take a break."
Orwell grunted and looked at the empty chair in the corner. He was exhausted, but he knew better than to admit weakness in front of his boss.
"This one's a tough nut to crack," was all he would admit.
"They all break, in the end," the devil said casually. "Next!"
The bloody pulp that used to be Hank was sucked out of the cell. Orwell sighed and turned to look over the new rap sheet before the next sinner arrived. The screech and clatter of some rusty mechanism behind the scenes whorled into motion, and soon another chair rumbled into Orwell's little domain.
"Hello, Krayden."
Orwell looked up and did a double take. Before him sat a boy no older than seven. Something fell out of the bottom of his stomach.
"Who are you?" the boy asked, looking around, confused. He struggled at the velcro that bound his wrists and ankles to the comically large chair.
"That's not important," Orwell said, trying to get a grip. The sweat was up on his forehead now, and he felt a little dizzy on his feet. He desperately turned his attention back to the rap sheet.
"It sure is hot in here," the kid prattled. "You got anything to drink?"
Orwell tried to tune him out. "Holy crap, it says here you stabbed your teacher with scissors!?"
Krayden shrugged sheepishly. "I get angry sometimes."
"No shit? What about ripping out your little sister's hair?"
"She bit me first!"
"Says here you lit your cat on fire?"
"I told him not to walk on my toys!"
Orwell's questioning was getting the boy worked up, which was usually the point of reading out the rap sheet. Maybe he could get away with just a few pinches and the boy would confess all?
"The thing is, Krayden, my job is to make you admit your mistakes, one way or another. Do you see these tools here? They are for little boys who don't tell the truth."
The kid squirmed in the oversized chair. "They made me do it," he said evasively.
Orwell felt his stomach start to reel. People learned early to blame others for their bad choices, it seemed, and now he was going to have to do his job or literally get fired. He picked up the vise-grips and moved towards the boys mouth, reasoning that those baby teeth were probably near to falling out anyway.
"Fuck you!" the kid shrieked in his high-pitched voice, trying to dodge from side to side.
The dodge might have worked, except for the boy's precocious swearing. As the kid tried to close his mouth around the words the vise-grips shot in, and in one fluid motion Orwell ripped out one of the kid's front teeth. Blood dripped out of the boy's mouth, giving him a demonic look as he spouted more obscenities.
"You're a piece of shit! If I ever get out of this chair, I'm going to bite off your nose and piss down the hole!"
Orwell smiled at the empty threat, his stomach settling somewhat. His job was easier when the punishment was just, and this psychotic little git seemed more than deserving of what he was about to receive. Orwell moved the vise-grips down to seize one of the kid's fingernails.
"Hey kid, I bet I know which finger you use the most," he teased.
"Fuck you!"
Orwell yanked and the kid howled as blood splattered onto the cell wall.
"Still a tough guy now?" Orwell asked.
Krayden scratched at the arms of his chair as if he were sharpening his claws. "You just wait til my step-dad catches up with you! He'll wipe his ass with your stupid face!"
"Sounds like a really scary dude," Orwell agreed, going back in with the vise-grips. "But I don't see him here, do you? I know this is a lot of growing up to do all at once, but it's time for you to take responsibility for what you've done. Just you, all alone, with nobody to help and nobody to blame."
Krayden jerked and thrashed and spat out of his bloody mouth. "You just wait. Once he sobers up, he'll be here. He never misses the chance to beat on someone. He's just gotta wake up ... wake up ... c'mon, wake up ..."
Orwell paused. The kid seemed to be slipping out of consciousness, which would blunt the effect of the torture. He'd heard that newly arrived souls could sometimes flit back to their mostly dead bodies, although he'd never seen it himself.
"... Wake up, you big piece of shit ... Mom's going to slit your throat in your sleep when she sees you've been driving drunk again ... c'mon you big hairy dick ... I fucking hate you!"
The creeping feeling of nausea overcame Orwell again. Step-dad ... hairy ... drunk driver ...
"Whatchoo staring at, you dumb shit?" the kid squeaked, returning to his senses.
Orwell tried to swallow, despite the dryness of his mouth. "Is your step-dad named ... Hank?"
"Yeah, you would know Hank. That piece of shit always hung out with loser bullies like you."
Orwell was vaguely aware of the sound of vise-grips clattering to the floor. This kid might well be a psychopathic asshole in-training, but it was hardly his fault. That douche-bag Hank had practically forged his step-son in his own image, before doing him the favour of killing him in a car crash as a drunk driver. Where was the justice in that? What fault could the kid truly admit to, other than being abused and mistreated for as long as he could remember?
"You don't look so well, Number 23," the giant devil commented, peering over the cell-wall. "If you do not wield the stick to punish the sinners, who will?"
Orwell stumbled, catching himself against the wall of the cell and burning his hands in the process. He looked back at the boy, writhing in a mix of anguish and fury. He tried to force himself to bend down, to pick up the vise-grips, but the hurt look behind the child's eyes bore down into his own soul, causing him to collapse and vomit at the thought. No, he couldn't do it. Weeping and barfing in equal measure, he crawled his way to the chair in the corner.
"I'm done," he said, shaking as he heaved himself into the chair. "I'm so done."
The giant devil nodded.
Orwell was vaguely aware of what happened next. Somehow he was transported out of the cell, riding the chair through tunnels that echoed with the screams of the condemned. His stomach reeled as he climbed and dropped, and there was the ever-present sound of rusty metal screeching ominously. He noted that his wrists were now velcroed to the chair, but he had expected no less. He deserved to be on the other side of the torture for a while, after everything he had done. At least now he could hold up his head with dignity, after making at least one decent decision in his pathetic life.
There was the glow of light at the end of the tunnel as the chair slowed up to rattle into a torture cell. Orwell blinked, trying to get his bearings.
Little Krayden was reading his rap sheet, or at least pretending to. The crust of blood still caked his jaw like a devil's goatee. When his squeaky little voice piped up, he sounded like a psychotic tooth-fairy.
"Hello, Orwell."
The Road to Hell
Spoiler
"Hello, Hank."
Hank's chair rattled to a stop in the middle of the cell, his wrists and ankles bound by velcro to its arms and legs. Sweat beaded on his brow in anticipation of what was to come. Or maybe he was just hot—it was hard to tell in Hell.
"Jesu—" Orwell began as he read through Hank's rap sheet before realizing where he was. He glanced furtively above the wall of the cubicle cell to see whether his boss had noticed his slip up. The giant devil was frowning in another direction, giving him hope.
Orwell swallowed and changed tack. "I mean, shit Hank, any one of these things would get you sent to Hell. Did you really rob your own grandmother?"
Hank stared blankly ahead.
Orwell sighed. This was typical behaviour for sinners who passed through his station. The silence was a defence-mechanism. By not acknowledging guilt, they could mentally externalize their fate. How many sinners had passed through the gates of Hell, clinging to the tenuous belief that their eternal punishment was somehow someone else's fault? Orwell shook his head, for one of the items on his job description was to disavow them of this notion.
"Broke your girlfriend's nose?" Orwell continued, enumerating the items. "Yanked your dog's tail off? Drove drunk and got into an accident that put your stepson into a coma? Hank, I gotta tell you, I've seen a lot of borderline cases and you're not one of them. You're one genuine douche-bag who genuinely deserves everything you get."
Hank spat, the spittle sizzling on the hot floor until it was just a crusty scum stain.
Orwell reconsidered his initial take. Maybe Hank wasn't just a typical wanna-be victim? Maybe he had been through the nemesis stations so many times that his conscience had become inured to shame? Orwell sized him up: big guy with scar on his chin, cow skull tattoo on his arm, more hair on his chest and back than on his head. He looked every inch like he had had a tough life, but not like someone who had sat long in the fires of Hell.
"Damn, you're one tough son of a bitch, ain't ya?" Orwell asked.
"Get on with it," was Hank's only reply.
Orwell shrugged. Hank had an eternity ahead of him to be reconciled to the consequences of his life choices. His job was just to help the process along. He reached for the vise-grips.
"My, those sure are some pretty fingernails," Orwell commented, locking the vise-grips onto the littlest nail on Hank's left hand.
"Get on with it," Hank repeated. He seemed neither angry nor resigned, which puzzled Orwell. Was it possible that someone just got so used to bad things happening that they stopped feeling? He supposed there was only one way to find out.
Squinch!
The nail pulled out with a tearing sound that still gave Orwell the shivers. Blood squirted on to the floor, where it bubbled and dried into char. Hank frowned, but he didn't call out or swear or do any of the normal reactions. Instead he leaned towards Orwell and fixed him with a meaningful stare.
"Is that the best you got?" he whispered.
Orwell tried to be philosophical about his job. Whereas Heaven was the carrot that beckoned men to be good, Hell was the stick that threatened them if they were bad. And the stick needed to be wielded by someone, so it might as well be him. Normally his station involved slow torture interspersed with teary confessions and moaning laments. In the end the sinner was bloodied, yes, but the real wounds were of the soul. In this instance, however, the stick would need to be more of a club, and the blood would need to flow and splatter freely. This was the way. Orwell would not say that he enjoyed his work, but in Hank's case he was willing to make an exception. As he hacked and bludgeoned and ripped, Orwell could imagine Hank's victim's baying for more vengeance. There was no punishment easier to dole out than a just one.
In the end Hank didn't even whimper. He never cried out, or gasped, or even winced. He just absorbed the hateful malice like some sort of human sponge. Orwell grunted with exertion as he broke the man's last kneecap with a hammer.
"Losing your knack, Number 23?" the giant devil asked, peering over Orwell's cell wall. "Maybe you should take a break."
Orwell grunted and looked at the empty chair in the corner. He was exhausted, but he knew better than to admit weakness in front of his boss.
"This one's a tough nut to crack," was all he would admit.
"They all break, in the end," the devil said casually. "Next!"
The bloody pulp that used to be Hank was sucked out of the cell. Orwell sighed and turned to look over the new rap sheet before the next sinner arrived. The screech and clatter of some rusty mechanism behind the scenes whorled into motion, and soon another chair rumbled into Orwell's little domain.
"Hello, Krayden."
Orwell looked up and did a double take. Before him sat a boy no older than seven. Something fell out of the bottom of his stomach.
"Who are you?" the boy asked, looking around, confused. He struggled at the velcro that bound his wrists and ankles to the comically large chair.
"That's not important," Orwell said, trying to get a grip. The sweat was up on his forehead now, and he felt a little dizzy on his feet. He desperately turned his attention back to the rap sheet.
"It sure is hot in here," the kid prattled. "You got anything to drink?"
Orwell tried to tune him out. "Holy crap, it says here you stabbed your teacher with scissors!?"
Krayden shrugged sheepishly. "I get angry sometimes."
"No shit? What about ripping out your little sister's hair?"
"She bit me first!"
"Says here you lit your cat on fire?"
"I told him not to walk on my toys!"
Orwell's questioning was getting the boy worked up, which was usually the point of reading out the rap sheet. Maybe he could get away with just a few pinches and the boy would confess all?
"The thing is, Krayden, my job is to make you admit your mistakes, one way or another. Do you see these tools here? They are for little boys who don't tell the truth."
The kid squirmed in the oversized chair. "They made me do it," he said evasively.
Orwell felt his stomach start to reel. People learned early to blame others for their bad choices, it seemed, and now he was going to have to do his job or literally get fired. He picked up the vise-grips and moved towards the boys mouth, reasoning that those baby teeth were probably near to falling out anyway.
"Fuck you!" the kid shrieked in his high-pitched voice, trying to dodge from side to side.
The dodge might have worked, except for the boy's precocious swearing. As the kid tried to close his mouth around the words the vise-grips shot in, and in one fluid motion Orwell ripped out one of the kid's front teeth. Blood dripped out of the boy's mouth, giving him a demonic look as he spouted more obscenities.
"You're a piece of shit! If I ever get out of this chair, I'm going to bite off your nose and piss down the hole!"
Orwell smiled at the empty threat, his stomach settling somewhat. His job was easier when the punishment was just, and this psychotic little git seemed more than deserving of what he was about to receive. Orwell moved the vise-grips down to seize one of the kid's fingernails.
"Hey kid, I bet I know which finger you use the most," he teased.
"Fuck you!"
Orwell yanked and the kid howled as blood splattered onto the cell wall.
"Still a tough guy now?" Orwell asked.
Krayden scratched at the arms of his chair as if he were sharpening his claws. "You just wait til my step-dad catches up with you! He'll wipe his ass with your stupid face!"
"Sounds like a really scary dude," Orwell agreed, going back in with the vise-grips. "But I don't see him here, do you? I know this is a lot of growing up to do all at once, but it's time for you to take responsibility for what you've done. Just you, all alone, with nobody to help and nobody to blame."
Krayden jerked and thrashed and spat out of his bloody mouth. "You just wait. Once he sobers up, he'll be here. He never misses the chance to beat on someone. He's just gotta wake up ... wake up ... c'mon, wake up ..."
Orwell paused. The kid seemed to be slipping out of consciousness, which would blunt the effect of the torture. He'd heard that newly arrived souls could sometimes flit back to their mostly dead bodies, although he'd never seen it himself.
"... Wake up, you big piece of shit ... Mom's going to slit your throat in your sleep when she sees you've been driving drunk again ... c'mon you big hairy dick ... I fucking hate you!"
The creeping feeling of nausea overcame Orwell again. Step-dad ... hairy ... drunk driver ...
"Whatchoo staring at, you dumb shit?" the kid squeaked, returning to his senses.
Orwell tried to swallow, despite the dryness of his mouth. "Is your step-dad named ... Hank?"
"Yeah, you would know Hank. That piece of shit always hung out with loser bullies like you."
Orwell was vaguely aware of the sound of vise-grips clattering to the floor. This kid might well be a psychopathic asshole in-training, but it was hardly his fault. That douche-bag Hank had practically forged his step-son in his own image, before doing him the favour of killing him in a car crash as a drunk driver. Where was the justice in that? What fault could the kid truly admit to, other than being abused and mistreated for as long as he could remember?
"You don't look so well, Number 23," the giant devil commented, peering over the cell-wall. "If you do not wield the stick to punish the sinners, who will?"
Orwell stumbled, catching himself against the wall of the cell and burning his hands in the process. He looked back at the boy, writhing in a mix of anguish and fury. He tried to force himself to bend down, to pick up the vise-grips, but the hurt look behind the child's eyes bore down into his own soul, causing him to collapse and vomit at the thought. No, he couldn't do it. Weeping and barfing in equal measure, he crawled his way to the chair in the corner.
"I'm done," he said, shaking as he heaved himself into the chair. "I'm so done."
The giant devil nodded.
Orwell was vaguely aware of what happened next. Somehow he was transported out of the cell, riding the chair through tunnels that echoed with the screams of the condemned. His stomach reeled as he climbed and dropped, and there was the ever-present sound of rusty metal screeching ominously. He noted that his wrists were now velcroed to the chair, but he had expected no less. He deserved to be on the other side of the torture for a while, after everything he had done. At least now he could hold up his head with dignity, after making at least one decent decision in his pathetic life.
There was the glow of light at the end of the tunnel as the chair slowed up to rattle into a torture cell. Orwell blinked, trying to get his bearings.
Little Krayden was reading his rap sheet, or at least pretending to. The crust of blood still caked his jaw like a devil's goatee. When his squeaky little voice piped up, he sounded like a psychotic tooth-fairy.
"Hello, Orwell."
[close]
Voting is closed, and it seems we have a bit of a tie. I hereby invoke rule 278b of the FWC Constitution granting the contest administrator UNLIMITED POWER in such a scenario. Buwuhahahahahahahaah! Who shall hold the hem of my cape out of the mud during my triumphal parade? 
