Chapter 5: Death’s New Pet: Chapter 3

“No,” the growl rumbles around the room so deeply it almost vanishes as if the word was never uttered from my lips. “I will not take a new fucking pet.”

Opposite me in my office, the Devil snarls. “You will accept a new pet because I fucking said so.”

“I will not.”

His thick eyebrow twitches disapprovingly and he swirls his glass of absinth in one hand, never taking his eyes off me. I maintain eye contact and jut my chin up defensively.

It’s not going to fucking happen.

“Son,” he tries to reason with me, but he should know better by now. You can’t reason with Death, but the daft cunt tries anyway. “You must be so lonely down here. I just—” he shakes his head as the frown seeps into his ugly grimace. For a second, it looks as though he’s anxious, but it disappears just as quickly as it appears. Getting a better look at the deepening wrinkles in his skin, I rock forward in my chair.

“I don’t get it. Why can’t you be like your siblings? They get so excited about having pets. It keeps them entertained and gives them something to do. You know this family has had a long history with pets and—’

I drown out the shitty lecture I’ve been receiving since my last pet died. At least the previous lectures were via telepathy rather than him burdening me with his actual presence in my realm. But here he is, wasting my time and using up far too much oxygen. Subconsciously, my fingers curl into fists until the white balls are threatening to leap out of my knuckles. I just about contain the anger coursing through me.

Kill the daft cunt. Make him explode into thousands of shards of glass and then use them to murder the rest of the family. The evil beast within me craves his demise. It takes everything within me to keep a lid on his untameable fury.

With a clenched jaw, I try to find something else in my office to entertain myself with whilst the devil lists all the benefits of inviting a mortal back into my realm. It’s futile. What my father fails to remember is that this realm of Hell sustains no life. The living souls never stay living for long near me. If anything, they get in the way, waste my oxygen, waste my limited resources. And quite frankly, they require too much attention to ensure the other beasts in my realm don’t get to them when my back is turned. I’ve lost millions of pets to one dog alone. They are weak, pathetic, blubbering— and not even in a good way, in a self-wallowing way.

I silently curse only having two armchairs and a dim light in this office. It would be quite easy to conjure up something to join us in the room.

Perhaps I can watch the newly-discovered torture technique I’ve been perfecting? I think I’ve now gotten it to the point where I might as well click a button to get the soul to scream for me. It’s so fucking delicious. I was up all night playing around with my test subjects. I’ve never been so erect as when I’m listening to those tortured cries for mercy. Even now I’m starting to get excited about my plans this afternoon of bringing those fantasies to life.

“Are you fucking listening to me?” My father snaps, pulling my attention back to him.

I wave my hand around dismissively. “Don’t waste your time, father. I will not get a new pet.”

In response, his coal-coloured hair seems to turn darker when those tar-stained eyes harden. His jaw flexes when he grinds his teeth together, making the muscles pop in his face. I instantly recognise the muscle that leaps out of his cheeks as the same one that permanently throbs in my own face, and I unwittingly see the resemblance between father and son when he’s angry.

We are similar sizes in our human appearance with large square shoulders, towering a seven-foot height but whereas my father is lean, I am almost entirely muscle from the centuries of torturous labour I have been cursed to endure. The main difference between us though is that my father’s tanned skin is relatively free from marks, mine flushes with black inky patterns when I’m angry. Each minuscule, tattooed dot represents a recent death, instructing me that I must transport their soul to whichever part of hell they deserve. If I ignore the souls, they burn and devour into my flesh until the agony is too much to withstand. A constantly updating, inescapable fucking to-do list, if you will.

My hand burns as a fresh new set of souls pass into the afterlife and into my realm. One dot stings worse than the others and I find myself rubbing at it absent mindlessly to soothe the never-ending pain.

“I don’t want humans in my home,” I growl. “They just keep dying. They are fucking useless.”

“Don’t—” my father pinches his eyebrows together with a frustrated sigh. “They die because you kill them. Stop killing them and then you won’t have that problem.”

Like a beast that’s heard injured prey in the distance, my head snaps to the side. For a moment, the devil hesitates but the moment is so brief it could be mistaken as a breath. The only thing he fears is his uncontrollable, unreasonable, erratic eldest son who thirsts for murder. With a click of my fingers, I can remove the life forces from most of the Beings in Hell. The only thing stopping me is that I cannot be bothered to pick up the slack of their laborious tasks as well as rule the underworld.

I am many things: evil, perverse, sinful… but I’m not fucking stupid. Nonetheless, my father has royally pissed me off to the point I consider ending his life.

My eyes darken. “What’s the point of the pet if not to kill it?”

Desperately, he tries another avenue. “Are you not lonely?”

“I’m perfectly happy being alone.”

“Nobody is happy being alone!” he roars, spilling the alcohol on my marble floors as he throws his arms around. “Ever since Pain was put to death—”

My whole body triples in size and the furious black mist makes my rage evident. “You dare mention that dirty little cunt’s name in my home?”

“Woah!” He lurches backwards, hands defensively high. “Calm down, Death, what I meant to say was the last time you let someone into this realm was seven centuries ago with your wife and—”

“Ex-wife.”

“Whatever. All I’m saying is that you haven’t responded to any of our telepathy calls in at least five. You can’t keep shutting us out.”

“Careful, Father,” I warn maliciously. “You’re starting to sound good.”

He bristles. To ease the building anger, I gulp down the remainder of my alcoholic concoction and refill it with a snap of my fingers.

“Death, you will need to forgive us sooner or later. A divided royal family is bad for—”

“Not my problem.”

“You’re alone here. You must get lonely—’

“If I remember correctly, you cursed me down here alone, did you not, dearest father? Perhaps you should have thought about it all those aeons ago… That your eldest son might become unwilling to play happy families after you cursed him to serve your punishment. Not to mention recent affairs, right? I didn’t cut you all off for no reason, and you fucking know it. You chose that little bitch over your own son. Remember that? Me cutting you all out is kinder than what I would actually like to do.”

His face twists guiltily and it makes me feel sick. He pushes forward in his chair and the light casts an awful shadow across his face, revealing what I thought I saw earlier— more wrinkle marks. My head cocks to the left, confused. Why is the devil ageing? Hellish Beings never age.

“Is that—” Before I can finish my question, a ridiculous feeling of sadness fills my chest, slithering into my lungs and tightening until I choke on the breath. The pain stings like thousands of knives being plunged into my heart and my eyes prick with tears. Flashes of blonde hair haunt my mind and an ugly cry leaves my lips as I desperately try to force the image out of my head. I will not think about her. As soon as the image enters my mind, I leap to my feet and ready myself for an ugly fight. The realisation dawns on me about who has entered my realm.

“Misery,” I snarl my little sister’s name. On cue, she steps into the light, revealing those dark red eyes, twinkling with mischief. She smiles up at me and stops her devilish charms, letting my lungs return to normal. That usual mocking look licks her face.

“Is it nice seeing Pain again?”

Even the mention of my ex-wife makes me gag.

“I will torture you like you’ve never been tortured before,” I growl deeply. My fingers curl into fists and I feel the scars on my skin flash darker and darker until they stain my skin permanently.

“Don’t torment your brother.” The devil scolds my sister, much to her amusement. She sends me a wicked smile and flicks her crimson-coloured cloak out behind her. She juts out her bottom lip. “You are no fun.”

“What are you doing here, Misery?” I seethe. “You are not welcome in my Realm.”

“Relax, you know I can’t stay long anyways.” She rolls her eyes and flexes her hand out to check the intensity of her skin colour. A slight grey tinge starts to stain her body.

“Good to see your curse still stands,” she says bitterly, but I don’t respond to her. Any Being that enters my realm without permission will slowly perish an agonising death. Even though Original Beings may not die permanently through this curse, the process is excruciating after a certain time and will certainly knock them into a temporary deep sleep. If the curse works, they will be knocked out for a couple of millennia.

She turns to our father, “Have you told him the good news yet?”

He shakes his head.

“What news?” I grit my teeth together.

What is it that they’d risk the torturous pain and impending temporary death over?

The two share a knowing look. Dark tendrils of smoke seep from my body as I start to tremble with rage. “Fucking tell me.”

My father breaks first. “Your sister is hosting a huge event, the biggest one we’ve had in aeons, in fact.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say there’s been some trouble in Hell,” Misery scoffs. “Some of the Beta Beings are getting a little restless and bored, they’ve started turning on each other, starting wars, whispering rumours to the angels.” She checks her viciously long fingernails as if the news bores her. “You know, the usual.”

This makes me furious.

“You dare come to my realm to tell me you’re worried about rumours. Are you not part of the Original Hellish family?” I glare at my father “The fucking founder of the family? And you’re scared of some rumours? What has this place turned into? Grow up, we’re not humans, rumours do not scare us. Nothing scares us.” The dark tendrils of smoke hang heavy around the room, almost blocking my view of my wicked family. “You two seem to have turned fucking soft! Where is the anger? The hatred? The torture? Deal with those beta cunts yourselves and leave me out of it.”

“Not just any rumours.” Misery quickly corrects herself. “Political rumours.”

My patience thins as my hand stings again in the same spot as before. I glare down at the abnormally large, tattooed blob throbbing. Must be a pretty awful fucking person for that size of a punishment. I scratch it. “I don’t care for politics, you know this, sister. You are really testing my fucking patience. You have thirty seconds to leave my realm before I put you both to your death bed.”

“You might want to care. Give me five minutes and I will be out of your hair,” Misery says cryptically, looking between me and my hand almost as if she knows something I don’t. “Don’t worry about the details, brother, I’m handling that. You just need to be aware of the little game I’m hosting.” Her eyes twinkle mischievously as she paces around the room. “You don’t want a human because they are weak and pathetic and don’t last down here, right? But our dearest daddy needs you to have a human pet to keep up appearances of this powerful, ruling family with subordinates and blah blah blah—”

My jaw tenses. “Where are you going with this, Misery?”

“How about a series of trials to whittle down ten mortals to one to get you one that isn’t weak or pathetic? One that might last. The winner will be your new pet.”

“I don’t want another pet. When will you fuckers get that in your head?”

“Okay, fine, I don’t care,” she hisses. “You can kill the thing after my trials are done. You can feed it to your dogs, I really don’t give two fucks about what you do with the mortal. These trials are how we remind the Beta Beings who are really in charge. We show them the real beasts that will rip them apart if they dare consider revolting against us. Besides, who doesn’t love a bit of human torture as entertainment? It’s been so long since there’s been something interesting to watch.”

I glare at her pouty face and resist the urge to strangle her. “What’s in it for me?”

“The security of Hell,” my father says much to my amusement.

I release a dark chuckle. “You really don’t know me if you think that bothers me. Hell might fall, Father, but nobody would ever dare take my Realm. The curse of constant agonising labour isn’t worth the location and so I’m right as rain whether Hell stands or falls.” I stalk closer to him. “Actually, Hell falling works in my favour, remember. You traitorous cunts that call yourself family will be put in restraints, and I won’t have to deal with unwanted visits and constant nagging and favour begging. I’ll be free to get on with my job.”

“If you agree to this, I won’t bother you about having another pet,” my father suddenly confesses. “I will never enter your realm again.”

My ears prick. “So, I can kill the pet after the trials are done? And you guys will be gone for good?”

“Yes,” he says reluctantly. “And that is a promise, Death.”

He presents me with his bare wrist, forcing his veins to the surface, showing me that he is willing to make a deal. I cock my eyebrow suspiciously. A deal with the devil is never something to refuse, they are some of the most agonisingly delicious acts.

Instinctually, my fangs jump out but common sense screams at me to run away. What the fuck is going on to make both my sister and father visit me in person and require my appearance in their political games?

“Agree to the games. Agree to play your part as a willing host in offering the winning mortal the opportunity to become your new pet, and I promise I will never enter your realm again once the trials are finished. You can put me into a temporary death if I do.”

“Never?” My voice darkens at the fantastic opportunity.

“Never.”

He waves his wrist in front of my face, and instinct drives me forward before I can rationalise the deal. I sink my fangs into the soft flesh before he can change his mind. The bitter dusty taste burns my mouth most deliciously as I scar his skin, proving for the rest of eternity that a deal has been made. I put distance between us as quickly as I can once the deal is finalised, feeling dirty with myself.

“May the Death trials begin,” Misery grimaces, the smile on her face stretches from ear to ear until I’m convinced it might fall off her face. My father and her exchange a satisfied look with one another but I cannot bring myself to rejoice in the new deal I’ve just made. Something tells me this is a deal which will have grievous repercussions. One that even Death incarnate might actually fear.