Page 10 of Just One Little Bargain

The question should be easy. My mother is asking whether I want the life being handed to me. It’s straightforward. Logical. But the way she says want makes the word sound foreign.

“It’s what I am.” I grip the envelope tighter until the parchment bends under my fingers. “This is all I’ve ever been trained for. Everything I know fits inside these walls. There’s no version of me that exists anywhere else.”

The answer sounds practiced and flat. I’ve said it so many times it should feel true by now. It doesn’t.

She doesn’t respond. As usual, I get the uncomfortable sense she sees more than I’d ever willingly show her. She reaches for my collar and straightens it, giving me a nod.

“Good luck, Zavian.”

Then she turns and walks away, her footsteps fading into the corridor’s ambient suffering without a single backward glance.

I don’t know what just happened.

Chapter 4

Zavian (Milo)

The corridor stretches ahead in jagged stone and flickering torchlight, with screams echoing up from whatever fresh torture is happening two levels down. Hell has been home my entire existence, and I still can’t stand it.

That should bother me less than it does. Most demons treat the background noise here the way mortals apparently treat traffic. Unpleasant, constant, and eventually invisible. I’ve watched colleagues walk past open punishment chambers without breaking stride. Seen senior brokers take lunch in rooms adjacent to active soul processing, and complain about the temperature but never the sound. At some point, you’re supposed to stop noticing.

It never faded for me. If anything, it sharpened. The longer I’m here, the more I notice what’s missing.

I don’t know what rain feels like. Only what diagrams of weather systems have taught me, along with memorized mortal vocabulary for different intensities: drizzle, downpour, mist, deluge. I know that humans complain about it while simultaneously writing poetry about it, which might be their most impressive contradiction. But I’ve never stood outside with rain falling on my skin.

I think about mortal grocery stores. Entire buildings dedicated to food, organized by category, where humans push carts, squeeze fruit to check if it’s ripe, and argue about which brand of pasta is better.

That’s not the thought process of someone who belongs here.

I told my mother this is all I know. And it’s true. But all I know and all I want have been diverging for so long now that the distance between them could fill a realm.

The thought follows me all the way to The Infernal HR Department.

Every surface is a different charred shade here, from matte black cubicle walls to the glossy obsidian desk, all outlined with veins of molten red threatening to break through.

Behind it, a demon with a nameplate reading THESSARA offers a smile that says, I’m dead inside, but corporate policy requires enthusiasm.

The torches sputter orange, leaking shadows into every corner, and the motivational posters are crisp enough to lacerate your optimism at a glance. SUFFERING STARTS WITH YOU! declares one, featuring a cartoon demon giving two thumbs up. TEAMWORK MAKES THE SCREAM WORK! announces another.

A sourness lingers under the heat, halfway between melted plastic and the air in a crowded elevator. There’s a faint whistling from unseen vents overhead, cycling between breathy sighs and the occasional metallic rattle, giving the whole building an exhausted wheeze.

I already hate it here.

“Welcome to Infernal HR,” Thessara recites the words without a flicker of feeling. “How may I facilitate your eternal employment needs today?”

She’s ancient. Not necessarily in years, but in the way someone becomes after too long doing the same task in the same chair at the same desk. Her skin is black, pulled tight across angular bones, and her eyes are a cloudy yellow that don’t quite land on me. Instead, she looks through me.

I slide the envelope across the desk, trying not to flinch when her long, gnarled fingers reach for it.

She scans the contents, and her smile gets brighter while her eyes get deader. “Congratulations on your reinstatement opportunity. Please complete these forms.”

A stack of paperwork appears, thick enough to kill someone if dropped from a sufficient height.

The first one wants my full designation, rank, division, subdivision, department affiliation, reporting structure, and primary professional competencies.

I stare at that last one. What am I supposed to write?

Soul acquisition, but I’m emotionally compromised by human suffering?