Page 7 of Hell and Its Pleasures

Control your breathing. Trust in that demon: trust in how it wants to make you squirm.This waiting was a torment in its own right, an ultimate drawing out of my desire, and I believed Asmodeus would revel in seeing me like that, on my knees, so desperate for it that I had killed a man, a vessel of faith, a final nail in thecoffin of my priesthood.

But I had forsaken God wholly. Why was the demon not hearing me? Why was I being forsaken in return?

“Please!Asmodeus, please!”

Desperate, embarrassing—my voice cracked. Down the cave vestibule I heard the answering question, shrill and faint. “Bishop Fazio? Is everything alright?”

I whipped my head back to the blood-smeared wall and tried again. “Open.Open.I want it. I will give everything up!Please!”

And still nothing happened. Was that—were those footfalls? I strained to hear the crunch of dirt underfoot, and upon hearing it began to panic.

They were coming. The servants of the bishop and the church and of God would find me and the bishop’s corpse like this, and that would be the end. I would never have a chance again. I would never see Asmodeus—I would never be touched like that again.

No, no.

It hit me quickly.

The tome had told me what to do in no uncertain terms.

Give up your mortal life.

Fear burned hotly in me, but desire burned hotter. I crawled over to the bishop’s body and wrenched the letter opener from his neck. A spray of arterial blood coated my hand in warmth, and a primal terror sparked in me. By this point though I had been so scared for so long that I ascended beyond the grip of my terror and landed somewhere close to apathy. Or rather, a singular focus drove me, and all distracting emotion seeped away until I was a vessel for my purpose.

I pulled back towards the centre of the cavern, unsure what to do with myself. Unsure now that I knew what I truly had to do. But without fear, it became easier to think.

I imagined opening my guts. I remembered the feeling of Asmodeus inside me and the way those claws pressed againstthe skin of my stomach. How easily it could have punctured me, then. How easy it would have been to spill my internal organs, to have them cascade out in a steaming, looping mess across the ground. Asmodeus would have used that new hole, I had no doubt; it did not care for me, not in the slightest. And this lack of care—this true apathy, which sat in such stark contrast to God’s divine and endless love—aroused me more than anything else.

It wouldn’t care that I had killed myself to get back to its embrace. I would call be pathetic. It would humiliate me; it would laugh at my true and inescapable desperation. But I would do it anyway. I had to.

I raised the letter opener to my heart, pulled back, and?—

A rumbling sounded just as I pierced the side of my chest.

Panicked, I drew the blade back quickly and dropped it. I stood in a rush. Blood trickled down my chest, not enough to worry about but enough that the wound stung, the area around it throbbing.

The cave shook heavily. Dust and rocks dislodged and cascaded, and the ground shook. I was flung to the side, cheek scraping against the wall. Behind me, shouts and screams reverberated through the tunnel, and in an act of unholy providence, the mouth of this chamber disappeared in a matter of seconds. Rocks and rubble collapsed and closed it up perfectly, entombing me in my decision. I turned back to the cave wall, which had ruptured. Cracks sundered the rock wall apart. From between the fissures, the smell of sulphur wafted out; my mind jolted towards it, encouraged by the reminder of Asmodeus, the smell of it, and how entwined with my own arousal the scent had become.

Heat, a pulsing light, and a deep thrumming sound grew in the now suffocating chamber. I pushed off the wall as the shaking stabilised, and though dust and small rocks still rained down, I got close enough to feel the scorch of heat against mycheeks. The smell of sulphur was strong, and the fumes were suddenly overpowering. Every inhale singed my throat, and even my lungs began to feel impossibly tight. When my vision blurred and a great weightlessness spun through my head, I realised I was dying.

But there was nothing to be done. A second later, my vision went. The depths of unconsciousness claimed me.

Three

Iwoke with my soul on fire.

There is no other way to describe that feeling, except a complete internal scalding. I jolted up with a scream and went to tear off my cassock—except I already had, and was now in only breeches, smeared with my own blood and that of Bishop Fazio.

I sat on my knees and blinked away the pain, which came in ebbs and flows and never quite went away. The heat burned intensely in my stomach, pulled taut behind my belly button, almost like a cramp—but the pain was not wholly unwelcome.

Around me, the world burned. Smoky fog shielded most things from my view, and the ground was little more than the cave dirt I’d previously been lying in. But everything was cast in an orange haze, and everything smelled of burning. A cacophony of cries sounded, though distance made them made soft and faint like an ambient rustling. I inhaled deeply and felt my ribs expand, lungs inflating with air and sulphur and brimstone and smoke.

For all intents and purposes, I felt alive. Iwasalive—the wound still stung at my neck. I could feel pain, I needed tobreathe. The only indication that anything at all had happened was the scenery, and the more I looked, the more I could see very little but the red haze, the more thrill I felt.

Inside me, a war started up between the anxiety and the excitement. I had so thoroughly forsaken my old life that I was now stranded in this place. With no guide, and no direction, I stood unmoored. Ridiculous and lost.

I thought:You felt a pull to Asmodeus. You knew what you had to do.Surely you can feel that again.

But when I closed my eyes and tried to feel that guiding feeling to the demon, nothing happened. I wondered if it ever had—if that calling I had been so sure was urging me here had simply been my own desire, so hot and fierce it allowed me to overcome my fear and shame.

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