Adventure Game Studio

    It had been ten years since the S.S. Devil had passed the end of the universe;  Ten Earth years calibrated within the server banks that housed and ran the intelligence of Captain Bryant Khipper, as they had done so for over fifty millennia, local ship time.  Now, Bryant sat at the Devil's log station that did not physically exist anywhere along the lengths of its sleek twin silver hulls, tied together across their middle by its vast, semi-spherical lightsail, and he started to type:

    To Whomever it may concern,

    This will be my final duty as captain of the Starship Devil:  To send this log out into the white void between universes, in the bold hope that it finds its way down the gravity well of one or more of them, into the hands of someone able to decipher it.

    Our...my?...no; OUR mission was to find and cross the edge of our universe.  Myself and my crew, all of us neural-sim bots uploaded from real people who once lived on a planet we called Earth, have worked together in the Devil's data banks for eons, keeping each other sane.  Over the last ten years, I have been shutting the rest of them down one by one, to save energy.  Just now, I said goodbye to Holga, my lover and last realtime link with my humanity.

    Bryant turned his middle-aged balding head and looked over at the rustled bed he and Holga had said their goodbyes in.  Holga's eternally masculine lips had mouthed, "Love you," before fading into the retro-2300s wallpaper they had chosen together for their nook;  Virtual wallpaper that had outlasted biological humanity, as far as Bryant had seen, for over forty-thousand years.  He typed on:

    I say "realtime link"  because there is one other, and I will prattle about it a bit before getting to what you really want to know, whoever "you" are, and selfishly tell myself that it's just to help you get a better foothold on our language:

    Ever since we attained enough velocity to cross the event horizon at the border of our universe, we have been in an orbit around its gravity well.  That, outside universes, the background would be a glaring white, and not inky black, was a huge surprise to us "all".

    And that our ship would begin to expand, although without increasing in mass, to eventually become millions of magnitudes bigger than the vast home it had originated in.  Ha, I guess I AM telling you what you most want to know about, after all.  Yes, we...well, I... now orbit the tiny singularity that we called "the universe".  The ship had detected many others out there in the blank page of whatever this outside place is, but the power needed to cross those gaps is unimaginable.  I have not been able to even escape the pull of our own.

    So, I have no greater truths for you but these:  I am going to take one last go at the helm, and record what I experience through the QET, that's our Quantum Entanglement Telescope, and attach that file to this log.

    Bryant stood from his chair, and the keyboard and monitor before him morphed into the ship's bridge.  He put his plump-fingered hand on the imaginary thrust handle and eased it forward.  The radius of the Devil's orbit started to increase immediately, and the now-tiny universe at the center sped forward in time.  Bryant's brow drew down, his eyes on the last sliver of fusion material left on the panel's glowing dial.  He would be visiting his daughter one last time.

    Linking the QET to the computer's virtual environment he lived in had not been easy, but he'd had all the time in the world.  He hit "Record" with an offhand gesture on a button console floating above his long-ago wife's hospital bed.  She cradled baby Jessica in her arms.  Bryant was not there;  he'd been in training at NASA.  His hand, still gripping the invisible thrust control, moved forward even more.  The QET adjusted to his long-used presets and he fast-forwarded to Jessica's tenth birthday, one of the ones he'd been there for.  He smiled and then steeled himself and moved the bar even further forward, seeing her graduate university, fall into heroin addiction, overdose, survive, with him gripping her hand at her bedside, promising her he would always be there for her, then saw himself die in the car crash that had ended his life on the way home from the detox center, sixteen months after he had uploaded his highly trained brain to the Devil's servers.

    The fusionable-material dial flashed red in pulses.  He hit a button floating over the moonlit wreckage of the car crash, ending the recording and sat down to type again as the chair appeared under his butt:

    That's what a human life can look like.  I have watched her past that point, fast-forwarding and rewinding the universe.  It never changes.  Everything is predetermined.  Jessica never beat the heroin.  It took years of struggle and high points where it looked like she would;  three years clean at one point.  But it got her.  If the QET was one of those ancient videotapes, I would have worn out the bit where she was born.  And I am glad that I got the chance to see that.

    But now I am also out of time.  The engines have died, and the S.S. Devil's orbit is decaying.  Take from this what you will.

    Much love,

    Captain Bryant Khipper.

    As the orbit of the Devil spiralled inwards on the universe at its center, worlds to so many through a vastness of time, mostly ignored by Bryant in favor of his Jessica, fled backwards in rewind to a single tiny unmoving point.  As the ship, many millions of times larger, imparted its matter at the end of its dive, the tiny point began to expand.

Clouds hung deep in the sky. He was walking through the streets of the city. Invisible. An invisible force as he always was, looking upon the people rushing past, going to work, drinking coffee, living their lives, fleeing from their life. He watched them without seeing them, as they called him without speaking, as they followed him shrinking back.

A church stood at the corner of two busy streets, one dirtier than the other, one more broken than the other, broken like the steps of the church. It was small, towered over by skyscrapers that had long grown over the once tall and proud steeple. Glass had fallen from the windows, had been crushed under thousands of unconcerned rushing feet, had become dust, as all is fated to become dust. And as the church was fated to cease being a church. It stood empty now. Cold.

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." he murmured under his breath and a shudder ran down the spines of the passers-by. They jerked, they halted their steps, but their lives were busy, their days went on and so they did not stop for long, did not look up, did not understand.

Only the man under the lonely park bench, the lonely man under the lonely park bench, did not jerk, did not stir, did not turn around. Did not live.

The bench itself was occupied. Not by a man, not by a woman, nor a dog or a cat, a pigeon or lamb. Though a lamb it was, one could say, or rather the shepherd. He was never quite certain. And so he plopped down on the occupied bench, occupied by the statue of a man, lying obscured by a metal blanket, while a dead man slept forever underneath. He sat on the stiff, cold legs. A smile was on his lips for his own incredulity.

He looked long at the unmoving figure. Naked feet, wounded, peeked out underneath a crumpled blanket that hid face and hands. His long fingers brushed over the cold blanket, his longer nails scratched the metal.

This sound again called attention to him, though no-one saw. They never saw. Not him and not each other, not the man and not the statue. Not even when it sat up now, not even when the blanket slipped from its face. Expressionless, empty, cold. Non-existent. Blank, as the artist had never created it. He had cared more about the feet, about the wounds, distinct wounds on his feet.

The statue did not look, for it had no eyes, it did not speak, for it had no mouth, it did not smile, for the man next to it on the bench was not meant to be smiled at.

"You come?" the statue said without words and without sound. "You visit."

"I thought you could do with some company." He laughed. "Your last companion seems to have abandoned you." He gestured underneath the bench.

"He has joined me in a different realm." the statue said piously.

"Has he, now? I thought he would be one of mine." His voice dripped with sarcasm. Slimy, burning sarcasm.

"You know better." There was a slight smile on a non-existent lip.

"Of course I fucking know better."

The statue sighed. "Do not swear in my presence, if you please."

"As if you care!"

"As if I care, true. Still. There are – traditions."

The invisible visitor shrugged, only to suppress the belly-laugh in his throat.

*

For a while, the statue and its visitor sat silent next to each other, starring at an abandoned church. More people entered and left it now then in the last years of its service. They looked around furtively, they sneaked in and out quickly. They entered with money, they left with temporary relief. High.

"As it was when there was still a god in there." the visitor said, answering both their thoughts.

"My father is in all and everyone." the statue said, wrapping its blanket closer around itself as a cold wind made it shudder.

"Sure is. In all the people walking past, ignoring you, ignoring the dead man under your bench. One of yours, as you noted."

"One who had entered my home more than once, yes." A heavy arm pointed towards the crumpling church.

"Of course. Though the question is when, is it not?" the man teased, pointing himself to just another addict slipping into the deteriorating building.

"Why do you always have to be so cynical?"

He laughed. "Shouldn't the question be: Why aren't you?"

"There is still good in this world. I am still in this world." The words were silent, almost as if the statue didn't believe them.

"Still. Still. Shall we put it to the test? How much good there is still in these people?"

The statue creaked and groaned as it fully turned towards the man next to it. "Are you trying me? Tempting me?"

"Ain't I always? And tempting you is so much fun!" There was almost a childlike excitement in the growling voice of the visitor.

*

A woman was walking the same path the man had taken before. Over dirty streets, past towering skyscrapers, towards a fallen church. Not to enter it, just to walk past, busy. She did not look up, she never looked and never saw, for the phone in her hands spoke more to her than the people or this world. High heels clicked over the pavement, high heels got stuck in a broken tile.

She stumbled, a foot slipped from a shoe. She sighed.

"This woman." The visitor nodded towards the woman cursing the bad maintenance of the city. "One of yours, is she not? Or so you believe? We."

The statue nodded. "As you well know."

One foot only in stockings, the woman hunched down. She pulled on her shoe with one hand. The other was occupied, holding a phone. And she pulled some more. And the shoe was in her hand. But the heel was not. With another sigh, she put the phone away in her purse and with a third one she looked for a place to sit.

"She sees you. - Well, your statue." the man, still invisible on the park bench, said.

"Could you move, please. I need to sit." she said, but not to him.

And the statue did not move.

Dark clouds obscured the sky. Rain pattered down. The wind blew fallen leaves, lost in the city, over the streets.

"Your doing." the statue said, turning its faceless face to the sky. It was not a question and there could not have been an answer, for the man no longer sat next to the statue on the park bench with the dead man underneath.

He had slipped over to the woman. She had her hands on her hips, waiting. And she spoke again, asking the man to move, but he did not. And the other man did not wait for a third time, but whispered in her ear just a single word: "Homeless."

It had been her thought before, but now she was certain.

"Shall I do more?" the visitor asked his companion, now back on the bench. "Need I do more?"

The statue said nothing, but the woman pulled out her phone again.

"Yes, there's a homeless man sleeping on a bench in front of the old church on the corner of Churchstreet and Devil's Street -" she said into her constant companion.

"Benevolent, malevolent?" the visitor whispered in a sing-song tone, his deep growling voice adding a chill to the rain. "Worried? Or vicious?"

"Yes, just – send someone, okay?"

"Yours – or mine?" the whisper continued. Now the belly-laughter he had suppressed before filled his body. It shook the park bench, the street, the old church. The wind rattled the broken windows, blowing glass into the building and dust away. A storm howled in the distance, coming closer, ever closer.

And as it swept through the narrow street, and as the rain soaked her, and as her mobile phone feared for its life, she did not wait. One shoe in her hand instead of the phone, one still at her foot, she hobbled away. Soon her stockings would rip, soon the uneven stones would cut into her flesh, soon she would have wounds on her foot. Not as deep as the wounds of the statue, not as pronounced. But those she would see while these she did not.

"Good or evil?" The whisper carried with the storm. "Just a word, a single word. That was all I had to say to her, just a simple word. Good or evil, bad or pure?" The laughter turned into a cackle.

The statue did not answer.

*

Again they sat in silence, while addicts still slipped in and out of the old church building. And a dead man still lay underneath the park bench. And still the wind howled.

And then sirens howled with it. Coming closer, ever closer. And lightning flashed over the sky and police lights flashed in the streets.

In the church, the sirens echoed through the hall. Furtive looks became quickened steps, temporary relief worry and panic. The addicts, the dealers ran, they scattered and they slithered over the dampened ground as the wheels on the police cruiser slithered to a halt.

He did not notice them, the addicts, he did not care as he pushed open the door of his car, as he stumbled out. His hands on his hips, on his gun, he ordered: "Police, turn around."

Faces turned, people rushed, passers-by and addicts alike. As they noticed that the words were not meant for them, they kept walking. But the statue on the bench did not stir.

"Hands where I can see them!" And the statue did not move.

"I said: Turn around!"

A flash jerked over the sky. Light flashed on the metal. "Don't move!"

"Oh, the irony." the man on the park bench leaned back against the backrest, stretching his arms wide and high. "Turn around. Don't move. Silly."

"There is so much fear in him." the statue said, speaking for the first time in a long while.

At the second flash, the officer drew his gun.

"Fear or anger?" the visitor asked lazily, turning back to his stiff friend.

The statue did not move, it did not stir, it did not jerk, it did not speak. The statue was a statue.

"Get up! Show me your hands!"

A gust of wind brushed over the man's shaking hand. And at the fourth flash, he fired. The homeless man had moved, jerked, stirred, threatening,... something. He was sure.

Did he fire, or did the gun fire? Either might be true and still it would not change the end. A bullet followed the barrel of the gun, followed it further still through the wind, followed its line towards a sleeping statue on a park bench in front of an old church. Followed it, until it touched the metal, until it ricocheted.

But a visitor sat on the park bench next to a statue that afternoon, dangling his legs against the corpse underneath. And in the next flash of the storm, this was the last image the officer saw:

There, two men sat on a bench, neither lay. One homeless, faceless, wounds in his feet. The other a statuesque man, tall and proud. Serpentine horns adorned his bald head, the skin red of burning flesh. And maybe a hoof kicked up from the ground and maybe it kicked the bullet in its flight.

The bullet ricocheted back towards the police car, back to the gun it had come from. It flew past the barrel, past the arm holding the gun. All the way up to his head, his forehead, through the skin and the skull and his brain.

And he fell.

"You influenced the bullet." the statue accused.

"Oh, too bad. So sad." The devil answered with a comfortable shrug. "Now, at least, they might find the body of your lamb." he said as he stood up, pointing underneath the bench again. "Did you know, his name was Jesus? Oh, the irony." The guttural Spanish J disappeared with the wind, as did the devil, invisible, drifting away.

The statue lay down again, still once more.

The statue of a sleeping Jesus on a park bench exists (it's called Homeless Jesus by Timothy Schmalz), though its specific location is made up. The fact that people called the police about a homeless man sleeping in front of a church when first seeing said statue is real, though all further details are completely my own. (In short, the story is inspired by the statue and its reception, but nothing more.) For more information on the statue, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeless_Jesus

"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."

A couple interesting concepts here, maybe too many for such a short piece to give them all proper descriptions and weight. We have: the functionality of the spaceship; the lives or non-lives of the crew; the flight out of the universe; the memories of the main character. All these things, individually, could be very interesting, but they are a bit thrown together randomly and no part manages to really shine.
What isn't there is an actual connection to the topic (unless I missed something). Just calling a space ship "Devil" really doesn't make this a story about the devil (in whatever form), especially considering this note in the first post: "A story about a Tasmanian devil...? Eh, that's a bit of a stretch." This story was far more of a stretch.
Still, there's so much potentially fascinating stuff in here - You posted very early, I wish you had taken a bit more time to expand on several of the ideas present here.

Brutal. But as it is so often with torture, the mental part might be stronger than the physical part.
It was fairly obvious where the story was going, considering it was made clear fairly early on that Orwell was a prisoner by showing the devil supervising him.
It's interesting that the physical torture Orwell is about to endure is almost a relief for him. And even more so the reason why he stops being a torturer himself: It clearly shows that he has something good in himself. What isn't clear is if the devil intents to destroy this good, if he just uses it to enhance the mental torture of Orwell or if we are even more in a purgatory setting, where showing some goodness leads to something better on the far horizon. - In short, there might be some philosophical concepts that could be explored here.
Also interesting is that ci´hild becomes the new torturer. Does that mean that Orwell was tortured before as well? And that the child will be tortured again as well as soon as he shows any scruple?

Baron - 2 points
Mandle - 1 point

Mandle - 2 Votes
Sinetrena - 1 Vote

Mandle 2
Baron 1

I found it hard to choose between the three,so in the end I went with Mandle's as it was the most interesting to me with its spacey-wacey-timey-wimey peek outside the universe.

Sini's story was a little hard to follow in terms of the various characters, invisible, dead, sleeping. The context note at the end was handy, and gave the story new clarity, I would recommend making that part clear first, rather than at the end.

Baron's story got my 1pt prize. It's a little hard to sympathize with Orwell's change of heart when he has just been pulling people's fingernails off. That said I enjoyed the system you've created here where the baddest guests in hell can become the disher-outers of pain instead of the eternally abused

More hellish than diabolical. The concept was fascinating - escaping the universe - even if the last-man-on-Earth nightmare is an overplayed trope. Captain Bryant Khipper's plight might be a bit more poignant if we had got to know him a bit better. I liked the link between time and expansion, making a mockery of our teleological sense of time. This adds to the nightmare - all is predetermined. I just feel that said nightmare could have been better told focusing on the tragic story of Jessica instead of the cold and sterile mission of the bizarrely named S.S. Devil.

I actually dropped my daughter off within a kilometre of this statue today! Small world...
It's an old story, an angel and devil competing over souls. I like how statue-Jesus is above stooping to the competition, although the resulting one-sidedness of the competition adds to the unfairness of our mortal plight. The message, that we hardly need a devil whispering in our ear to be wicked, is as disheartening as it is cynically accurate. It almost makes me wonder at the plight of the poor devil himself - his skill and scheming is hardly necessary anymore, consigning him to the same irrelevance as the ruined church.

Mandle - 1 vote
Sinitrena - 2 votes

Sinitrena: 2
Baron: 1

Sini: I had to read the note after the story to really understand what was going on, and even then, not 100% sure, but I loved your characterization of the devil (and of the long-suffering Jesus), and also some of your turns of phrase like "Did not live." that were so dispassionate that it made us, the reader/observer of the scene, feel not quite human and the whole thing quite surreal. Your story got my main vote.

Baron: I felt a real Jacob's Ladder vibe from your version of Hell and enjoyed the moral take to some extent, although it ended up feeling just a little heavy-handed to me in the end. The devil as a disinterested office boss was interesting. After all, he would be quite blase about the whole thing after so long, but also made him a bit of a vague character. Still, an enjoyable story that I won't forget.

Fascinating story, full of cool ideas! I wanted to know more about its world and characters, great work. Maybe it's a bit loose on the theme, but I don't mind since the story is good ;)

The bench statue is such a great idea and a really interesting starting point for the story. I liked how it unfolded, slowly getting to understand the full picture. The dialogues are well-written and really define the personalities of the characters. A very enjoyable, if sad, story.

This story felt like a punch in the gut sometimes - but in a good way that fits the theme. Your representation of hell is quite good and horrifying in several different ways. Another very good read!