Page 8 of Hell and Its Pleasures

My stomach throbbed. I groaned and bent over it, and since there seemed nothing else to be done, I started to walk, trying my best to ignore the overwhelming sense of guilt, regret, and embarrassment. For a seemingly endless stretch of time, I did nothing but wander through that red haze. No landmarks emerged. The sounds did not shift around me, so no matter how long I walked, the distant cries of screaming sounded neither closer nor further.

An ambient limbo, a liminal moment, a walking purgatory—the new fear in me burned as hotly as the pain in my stomach, as hot as the latent arousal I felt building inside my core. I worried inherently that this would be my punishment for all I had done to get here, and that I had been tricked so thoroughly that I had willingly condemned myself to and endless walk towards nothing. Sweat pooled at the back of head and wetted my hair. Would this be it?

I don’t know how long I walked. I managed to push the fear and the upset away, convincing myself that moving forward was better than giving up and standing still. Nothoughts went through my mind, no prayers or hopes. I kept myself an empty vessel.

Until I heard the voice.

“What on earth have you done now?”

Deep, familiar, frightening. Not Asmodeus. Yet it still resonated with me, booming through my body, and an old fear was pricked to life by it. The voice belonged to someone who had been in my early life, whom I hadn’t seen in years. I stopped in my tracks and spun. The mists parted as a figure moved through them, a shrouded shape resolving into a man.

It was Bishop Jonah.

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard his voice in so many years. Asmodeus had spoken with his inflection, too; had worn that man’s vocal chords like a costume to pluck at my sensitivities, so that I would become pliable to the demon’s wishes. Obedient. When I had been younger, Bishop Jonah had trained me like a dog to expect scolding and punishments—and he had apparently trained me so well that now my body fell into old habits. Anxiety sparked in me, and I turned rigidly to face the man.

But with the trick having already been played on me once, I hesitated.

“Nothing to say?” he stepped through the fog fully. He looked at once how I remembered him over the years, oscillating from the man of thirty-something who had taken me into his flock, knowing I was a thief, and over time growing to suspect I was a sodomist in the making, to the man in his early fifties, the age he’d been when he died.

He stood taller than me, his tanned skin thick like leather and well-lined. White hair sat cropped close to his skull, and his face stretched in a permanent scowl, resembling Bishop Fazio’s eternal disgust. Without the softness leant by fat to Bishop Fazio’s face and body, Bishop Jonah’s expression tilted closer to pure hatred than disappointment. Years of anger andcallousness had sculpted this permanent expression. I hadn’t recalled it to be quite so severe and wondered if Hell had managed to age him; if he was, every so slowly, getting older and more decrepit. The oscillating image of him settled to the ageing man, still spritely enough to stand and walk, though this version of him leaned upon a cane, which he had just begun to use in life. Now his gnarled hand gripped his support and his knuckles popped, veins framing them, arthritic fingers shaking from the force. I thought:What a true and persistent Hell. Old age drawn out across eternity.

In his gaze sat a fury enhanced by the flames of Hell, which danced in the gossamer-thin whites of his eyes. I fought not to flinch away—for in that expression was years upon years of discipline—and I failed. My body feared him. I stepped back in the dirt.

Bishop Jonah’s face twitched unkindly. Was he a demon in disguise? I flinched away from him once more. What game was being played?

But even as my mind worked to unstitch the fetid fear unspooling in my body—you are beyond this man, now. He has no control over you! You belong to Asmodeus, Prince of Lust!—I found myself responding like a child. My jaw clenched and my stomach twisted. Beneath his holy gaze, I felt sinful. An infernal, abominable mess.

He will see what you’ve done to get here, just as he saw what you are from the start.

I never knew exactly what it was he saw in me that other holy men didn’t. I never knew how he had been so sure. Had God whispered the truth in his ears? Was Bishop Jonah so pure, so close to God, that he could spy the corruption knitted into my soul, or the way my skin would writhe with desire when the right man glanced at me?

“Filthy Alessandro,” he spat over his shoulder now. His saliva met the earth and the dust darkened immediatelyaround the wetness. “It surprises me not at all to find you here.”

Bishop Jonah. It was… truly him?

I swallowed heavily. “You’re in Hell.”

“Astute as always,” he growled, real vitriol coating his words like venom. He flashed me a look, a once over with a gaze that lingered a little too long on my naked chest. He glanced away to say, “Tell me. I was right, wasn’t I? That you are. . .”

He didn’t finish the question. He didn’t have to.

I recalled the seconds after I finished my confessions, special times where Bishop Jonah himself had been the one to hear all the priesthood’s sins. These were times where I never exposed all my thoughts, where I knew I had to keep things to myself. Memories of the tense silence returned to me now, the waiting seconds that stretched after my concludingAmen.The way the booth creaked as Bishop Jonah shifted inside.

“Is that all, Alessandro?”

Again, now, years and entire states of being removed, my body panicked with remembered shame. I breathed through it, biting my tongue. I heard Asmodeus instead, like the bells of a church drowning out the dead bishop’s venom. I heard the voice as it had called to me that day with holy vigour, asking me,“What had God’s love given you except shame? What had God ever done for you?”

“Am I a sodomist?” I murmured. “Only very recently.”

Which was true. I was Asmodeus’ bitch—and, so far, its alone.

The bishop narrowed his eyes. “You smell different to everything else here. Sweet, like life. Everything here smells and tastes. . .wrong. Like the flavour is on the tip of my tongue, but not quite there. A distant memory.”

He stared at me, expecting an answer. I gave him nothing.

Bishop Jonah’s face imploded. “You are not dead, are you, Alessandro?”

I decided to walk past him. This man was only a distraction to me, whether he was real or not. It was Asmodeus I wanted. Asmodeus I craved. I walked?—

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