Page 17 of Hell and Its Pleasures

“I was told to come here. To find it.”

“This is part of finding it!”

A growl accompanied these words, and I spooked. Istepped back until I hit the altar, my hand seeking stability in the wood of the crucifix. Then my arms were wrenched backwards.

I fell with a strangled yelp. In a flurry of movement, and in no more than a handful of seconds, I was dragged up the crucifix by a force I couldn’t see. Splinters pricked at my skin and glided easily beneath it, splitting the skin—but I barely felt the pain. The sudden horizontality had me nauseous and distracted. The church became suddenly warmer as braziers shuddered into existence, their heat spreading in comforting waves to every frigid corner, and my body instinctively relaxed even as the crucifix shifted. Grunts sounded around me as the figures moved it, and then?—

I screamed.

Nails punctured into my palms to keep me secured to the cross. Instinctively, I threw myself back against the wood, as if fusing myself to the crucifix could somehow relieve me of the pain. As if somehow in this mirroring of Christ’s death I might transcend the bloody torture.

But I tell you: it hurt. It hurt in the way that bludgeoned back all pleasure—it hurt primarily, firstly, overbearingly. Even as another part of me can look back at this moment and see the sensuality in it, that version of me was only suffering.

I whimpered loud and writhed, but every movement tugged at the nails tearing through my flesh, and I had to fall limp just to keep new sparking hurt from jolting up my wrists. The demonic presence seemed to enjoy the noises I made, though: appreciative sounds echoed around the church like a hymn. I could smell incense on the unnatural breeze. God, I had been a fool—and yet through it all, my cock twitched with interest.

Shifting, grunting; again, some unseen force lifted the cross, and the burden of gravity slowly encumbered me, until all my weight was pressing at those two nails. If I listenedclosely, I could hear the tear of tendon in my palm. I kept myself limp, which meant that breathing become difficult and shallow.

“As holy as your lord,” one murmured to me when the crucifix had been righted.

I took a shuddering breath, desperate for more oxygen.

“I do not worship him—not anymore!” I shouted, voice cracking with the force. I wanted to be absolved of God’s love. I should have been tainted in a way to make these creatures my kind; I had abandoned so much of goodness already. And yet, to have ever worshipped God seemed too large a sin in the eyes of demonkind. I could not shake it.

“We cannot have you lurching your holy body through Asmodeus’ realm like this. Still reeking of life and goodness. The church has made its mark upon you; your soul is better than it should be.”

“It will not do,” the other, higher voice agreed.

“Goodness and piety and shame and guilt—an interconnected sin you will spread like disease should you carry about through its realm.”

I didn’t understand and, past the pulsing pain in my body, they must have sensed my confusion. Clarifying, the voices said in unison, “You are in Abaddon, little lamb.”

Abaddon. An angel of the abyss, or a doom-ridden plane. Revelations says of it:

“They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.”

But some believed Abaddon was not an angel, but a place.

“Asmodeus rules Abaddon? He is Prince of this realm?”

I couldn’t comprehend demonic politics. I was not here to comprehend demonic politics. I was there for debauchery and wickedness and nothing that required much use of my brain. But I required help in finding my master,my prince.

“You misunderstand the point of this place, to think them princes in their own right, and not prisoners,” one of the voices tells me.

“But the human has opened a gate.”

“I have heard no trumpets. No call to rally. Have you?”

They let the silence stretch so long that I wondered if they expected me to answer. Before I had a chance, they told me, “Asmodeus is not only the Prince of Lust, little lamb. It is also a force of revenge. In Hell, there be nine degrees of demonic legions as contrary to nine orders of angels. And that legion belonging to Asmodeus are named the Revengers of Wickedness.”

A term I had never heard of before.

“Is that who you are?” I asked, and they hissed in happy agreement.

“What do you want with me, then?” I whispered. “My revenge on the church and God and everyone in my life is to become Asmodeus’ completely.”

Again, in unison: “Then let us help you realise that reality, little lamb.”

They resolved, then, finally. Two shadows sundered from the umbral dark that hid in the corners of the church and shivered into two distinct forms. The first was so tall its body curved over itself in an insectile posture. It had four arms with gnarled, curled fingers flexing around nothing. Two leathery wings sprang from its back, skin so thin dim light glowed through the translucent flesh. They drooped useless, grazing the back of its hind legs, which had two pivot points like a goat’s, but were meaty and thick with hair. Small nubs of horns jutted from its otherwise bald head. The skin stretched taut here, too, seeming as thin as the glassy, vein-infested wings. Both its skin and the furry legs were a wash of dark blue grey, a faded colour with all the vibrancy sapped out of it, which made its yellow eyes hang sullenly inshallow eye sockets. Its mouth was oddly wide and grotesque, and it grinned at me in greeting, splitting half its face apart to bare its jagged yellowed teeth. It had two tongues. Both lolled over its teeth as the creature panted heavily at me.

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