Chapter 1

ByslSfynx worked hard at being what he was. He wanted to be the best he could be. He really had no choice at that, since he lacked free will. He was what he was. If that’s all there had been to it, there would have been no story at all. But, he had a slight flaw in his makeup, his personality. Probably an accident, although some folks said it was “enemy action”, since it caused such a fuss, and, just for a few moments, upset the whole order of things.

ByslSfynx was a demon, a devil, a minor deity in the second circle of hell. He was good, or bad, depending on your point of view, like I said. His personnel record was full of green marks and pluses, not that he’d ever be allowed to see it. He was rated trustworthy and loyal and he’d even gotten a gold star once for pointing out some needless duplications in a paperwork mess the circle was bogged down in a few hundred thousand years ago.

ByslSfynx lived in Hottentadia, a sleeper village, and commuted to work on the Hell train. He worked all the overtime he could get, just because he found his home life boring and tedious. He enjoyed his job most of the time, other than the damn wind. The wind drove him crazy sometimes, but hey, that’s what the second circle was all about.

One day he was talking to YtterYing, a co-worker and fairly good friend. YtterYing had been to the Freudian Scrotum, a new club that had opened in the upper West end. He’d danced all night and then gotten in a fight and got the proverbial hell beaten out of him, but he was all better by morning, as usual. He raved about the girls in the club, and made ByslSfynx promise to follow him there next weekend.

A huge knot of souls blew by, and got hung up on Mount Squat. Not again, thought ByslSfynx. That happened a dozen times a day. A crew of souls had worked on the outcropping for a few thousand years once, but all they’d had were fingernail files. Somehow the project had gotten back-burnered, and never started up again.

“Shit.” said YtterYing, and blasted them good with his air gun. They did not budge. Some of them were even burrowing down in the cracks in the stone, by now. Double shit.

ByslSfynx gave them a shot with his gun. Still nothing. “Shit again,” mumbled YtterYing, and got on his two-way, to request an extraction crew.

Suddenly, one man lost his handhold, and the whole group just peeled away with the wind and blew downrange.

“Cancel that shit,” said YtterYing into the radio, and they talked some more. ByslSfynx looked at the Hell clock, hanging low in the Southern sky. Harry Balls, barely a minute had gone by since he’d looked at it last. He felt a pang of kinship with the souls. He knew how time crawled for them.

“Bys. Keep in touch, man,” said YtterYing, and wandered off. ByslSfynx sat on a stone, thinking. Not a lot got accomplished when he thought, outside or inside. Most devils approached thinking like mortals approached strenuous exercise; they avoided it whenever possible.

But ByslSfynx, although he didn’t have a lot of mental horsepower, had begun more and more lately to think. He thought about Hell, a lot. He thought about the old days, which sometimes gave him a warm happy feeling. He thought about the girl that lived above him, which also gave him a warm happy feeling. These thoughts went on for a while, sometimes repeating themself.

Every now and then he blasted a soul or two, just to keep his numbers up. He found where he’d stashed his lunchbox, and took a sip from his water bottle. Ugh, Lethe, again. Nasty shit. He started to get pissed, but then he forgot all about it.

“Help me...” from over his shoulder, he heard a plaintive cry. Plaintive and slightly irritating. Help you? he thought. In Hell?

He turned back to Mount Squat. There, making her way down the steep ragged side of the mountain, was a girl. A soul. A mortal. Well, a former mortal. Her path would bring her right to where he was, so he waited, his finger on the button of his two-way. He thought about just blasting her back into the sky, but it was a slow afternoon, and he was bored. Maybe her story would amuse him. Plus, mortal or not, she was a pretty girl. Even if he didn’t really have free will, ByslSfynx had a sex drive.

The girl stumbled down the last of the mountain, and slowly made her way up to him. He looked at her critically. She was cute, that was for sure. Maybe even beautiful. And young. Didn’t always see a lot of young folk here in the second circle. She must have impressed somebody.

“I’m ... I’m lost,” the girl finally said. “I’m not supposed to be here...” She looked small, and alone. And lost. She really looked lost.

“Oh, none of us are, darlin’,” said ByslSfynx, smiling warmly. He got ready to crush her spirit with a witty quip, but he stopped, and looked at her again. A weird emotion, something he’d never felt before, something his personality wasn’t equipped to handle, swept over his body. He actually ... felt sorry for her. He just didn’t know that’s what it was yet.

“Can ... can you help me?” she said, her big brown eyes melting his shriveled up little heart. “Can you get me out of here?”

“I ... I don’t think so...” he told the truth. How the hell could he get her out of Hell? He was just a minor, a very minor devil. A blue-collar devil. He didn’t even have any administrative rights. He couldn’t tell anybody shit. All he could do was follow orders.

He didn’t follow orders on this one, though. As quick as he could think, he formulated a plan.

“Come over here,” he told her, and she followed him, seeming to be just a little suspicious. But, she followed him. He led her back to where he’d placed his lunch box, where a large crack was in Hell, almost a cave. He gave her a deviled egg from his lunchbox, and told her to wait. Just a few more hours, and then he’d help her.

He spent the rest of the afternoon in a tizzy. He knew he was breaking the rules. He knew he could get his ass busted hard for doing this. But he wanted to help the girl. Didn’t he? Did he just really want a few hours of her time? What did he really have planned? he wondered about himself.

Finally, thankfully, finally the shift ended. He hurried down to the bunker, and clocked out. He got his harsh weather gear from his locker, and on his way back to where he’d left the girl he wondered if she would still be there.

To his surprise, she was. He shushed her, and wrapped her up in his raincoat, pulling the hood down until all you could see was her eyes. He guided her out of the cave, grabbed his lunchbox, and they made their way down out of the hills.

The train ride home was nerve-wracking, he imagined that everyone was staring at him, and her. In actuality nobody noticed. Nobody cared. They got off at his stop, and made their way to his apartment. He guided her up the stairs.

Oh shit. At the first landing who should they meet, but Ianthelecrux, the devil girl that lived right above him. She suddenly decided she liked him, or something, and hugged him warmly. They made small talk, and she pointed to the girl, still wrapped in the raincoat.

“And this is?” she said. Oh shit, though ByslSfynx.

“This is my cousin, Reaux,” he said. “He’s staying with me while his, uhm, skin treatment gets over with.” He hoped that explained why the girl was all bundled up.

“I see. Well, keep in touch!” said Ianthe, and disappeared down the stairs. They went down the hall, and ByslSfynx unlocked the door to his place.

He led the girl in and locked the door behind them. She wrestled herself free of the raincoat, and dropped it to the floor.

“God, that smells awful,” she said.

“Language, please,” said ByslSfynx, and put the raincoat in the closet.

“Sorry,” said the girl. She stood in the center of the room, and looked at him. It was her turn, now, to look critically at him.

“What are you going to do with me? Rape me?” she said, and he snorted.

“Hardly. I barely know you,” he said. That was a thought, though. He looked at her, hard. She was pretty damn cute. She was wearing some kind of halter top thing, and a pair of cut-off jeans. Her legs were all scratched up and bleeding from her trip down the mountains, but they looked strong and muscular. She had bruises pretty much all over her body, due to being blown around the circle by the wind, but he knew they’d heal up pretty quick. Suffering in Hell would be kind of pointless unless you healed up quickly.

“That wind sucked,” the girl said. “I’m glad just to be out of it.”

“Yeah, it really gets old after a while,” he commiserated. “How long you been in the circle?”

She surprised him with her answer.

“Just since this morning,” she said.

Damn, she was really a newbie, he thought. A total virgin.

“Well, let me introduce myself,” he said. “I am ByslSfynx. No last name,” he always thought that was funny to say, but she regarded him seriously.

“I am Tina. Tina Yearsley,” she said.

“Tina,” he said. He was actually curious. “Why do you think there was a mistake?”

She immediately burst into tears. He felt that funny feeling again, that ... sorry feeling. He got her a tissue from the bathroom, and waited for her to finish.

“I...” she said, after a few false starts. “I don’t think ... I am guilty of lust. I mean, I never even kissed a boy. I never let one touch me. My parents watched me too close. I don’t understand how I ended up in Hell in the first place, much less the second ... second circle...”

He was silent for a while. Gears turned in his head. He was actually getting better at this thinking stuff.

“Well, darlin’,” he finally said. “You don’t actually have to do these things ... you just gotta feel that way, in your heart ... know what I mean?”

“Not really,” she sniffled.

“Well, don’t worry about it for now. You can stay here tonight, and we’ll figure out what to do with you tomorrow.”

He stretched out on the couch, and fumbled for the remote. The girl wondered around the room a bit, looking at his pictures, and finally out the window.

Shit. He had a thought, another original thought.

“Stay back from the window, darlin’, if you would. Somebody might notice you.”

She looked frightened at that, and came over to the couch and gingerly seated herself at the far end. They watched TV for a while in silence.

She could finally stand it no longer. “What is this shit?” she asked, puzzled. “This looks like something from fifty years ago.”

He laughed. He liked laughing, and she made him laugh.

“Darlin’,” he said. “We’re in Hell, remember? Do you think that we get special privileges just because we work here? Sorry. Think again. All our TV is old shit.”

“Shit,” she said again. She sighed.

“Tina. What did you expect?”

“What did I expect? After I died you mean? Not this shit.”

He laughed at that. He really liked her. All he’d done since they got home was laugh. She just did that to him.

“I mean, that car turned in front of me and bam, I was on a boat, and then there I was in front of some judge or something, and next thing I know I’m being blown around the mountain. It’s not fair at all.”

He laughed again. “You aren’t the first to think that, dear.”

“Shit. I just wanna go back home.”

“Tina, darlin’, there’s no going back. You should know that much, at least.”

“Look, I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be anywhere. I didn’t believe in anything. I thought Hell was just ... ancient history or something. Something the Greeks believed in.”

“Well, actually, the concept of Hell, or our version of hell, came a little later than the Greeks,” he warmed up to the subject. He’d done well in history, in school. “The high point, of course, came with the publication of Dante Alighieri’s ‘Inferno’, the first printed edition in 1472, though some controversy exists about that date. The first...”

She had heard enough, and waved him to silence.

“Tell me again, slowly, how to say your name,” she said. They worked on that one for a while, and finally she seemed to get it.

“Are you hungry?” he said, leaping up, and going to the kitchen. She followed him, and they rummaged around for a bit. His kitchen wasn’t very imaginative, and there wasn’t much in the fridge. Just some deviled eggs, and a plate of deviled ham. On the counter was a devil’s food cake, and, weirdly, some divinity. ByslSfynx did like his desserts.

She ate some ham, making a face, but gobbling it down. ByslSfynx knew that the souls in the second circle didn’t eat well, being blown about all the time. Just whatever they could grab. Well, eating really wasn’t a necessity, in the afterworld. You couldn’t die if you were already dead. But you did get pretty hungry if you didn’t eat. Whole punishments were built around that.

They wandered back into the living room, and plopped down in front of the TV. The evening just flew by for ByslSfynx, where it usually dragged, having the girl for company was fun and new and exciting for him. Just having somebody for company was fun.

“Tina,” ByslSfynx said. “How old were you, you know, when...”

“When I died?” she said. “I had just turned sixteen. I’d just gotten my stupid license, no less. Just days before.”

“Cars are dangerous, from what I hear,” said ByslSfynx. “A lot of people end up here because of cars.”

“Yeah,” said Tina. “Bys ... is there stuff to do here, at night? Do you just sit around all night, by yourself?”

“Well...” he said, thinking. “There are clubs, yes. And stores. And parks, although the pigeons have kind of taken over. Yeah, there’s stuff to do.”

“This is boring. Your TV sucks,” she said, pouting. He laughed at her.

“Girl. This is Hell, remember?” he said, and she nodded, a petulant look on her face.

“I shouldn’t even have you here. I’ll get in major trouble if we get caught.”

“Trouble? By who?”

“Well, my supervisor, for one. And my counselor. And my guardian. That’s just a start. Even the neighborhood watch committee would probably get involved.”

“Shit. What would happen to me?”

“You’d get sent right back to the second circle, for starters. And you’d have some black marks put on your record, probably.

“My record? What record?”

“Your personnel file. Everybody in Hell has a personnel file, whether you’re a soul or you work here. All your shit goes in it.”

“Shit,” the girl sighed, leaning down on her legs. He noticed that her breasts flattened out nicely when she did that.

“So, this is Deviltown, or what, then?” she said, making a wide sweeping motion.

“Here, where I live?” he said. “Well, Hottentadia is it’s actual name. I guess it’s primarily devils that live here, yes. Devils, and a few of the bound.”

“The bound? What is that?”

“Souls who have done something so special that they are being considered for devilhood. Usually something very bad.”

“You mean like Hitler? Or Saddam?”

“Well, they’ve already crossed over, but they were among the bound for a while, a short while. Some do things in their mortal life, and some do them here.”

“You mean, if I do something wicked enough in Hell, I can become a devil?”

He laughed at the look of surprise on her face. “Darlin’,” he said, “Hell is an equal opportunity employer. You can be anything you want down here. Anything but good.”

“Shit.” she said.

The rest of the evening dragged a little. She appeared to be deep in thought.

“Bys,” she finally said. He looked at her. “What are you going to do with me tomorrow?”

The next morning he trudged off to work, a little unsettled. He hadn’t really thought the whole thing through very well, he decided to himself. He had no idea what to do with her now that he’d gotten her. They’d discussed options last night, and finally just decided to let her stay in the apartment while he went to work. He wondered how she’d stand the boredom, she’d gotten pretty bored last night while he was there. Well, it would still be better than being blown around the mountain. Maybe she could do it. He tried to stress to her how quickly she’d be identified, if she went outside. He hoped he’d gotten the idea across.

She’d slept on the couch that night. He thought about inviting her to his bed, but he didn’t want her to think he was being pushy, for some reason. He just got her a blanket and a pillow, and went into his room. She was still asleep that morning when he went off to work.