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There are twelve divisions of Hell in total, stacking from Satan’s offices in the First down to the Dregs of the Twelfth.

The demons in the Ninth don’t have the budget for shapeshifting, and we certainly don’t have the telekinetic flash of the assholes who can flay a man with a thought. I’m a physical demon. I have to get my hands dirty.

But when I first signed up to be a Torture Administrator, I thought it was a promotion of some sort. A little authority, a little prestige. Maybe a corner office near the Lakes of Fire. But no. Turns out the title was a complete trap. Not damned enough to be on the rack, not politically oily enough for the upper floors. Stuck in the bureaucratic no-man’s-land between them, wearing a tie spun from the silk of a worm species that went extinct on that blue-and-green planet seven thousand years ago.

Sure, I still get to do the fun part—flaying, branding, the occasional impalement if it’s a Friday—but I can’t so much as dislocate a shoulder without filling out a ten-page Post-Punishment Evaluation Form. Everything from ‘method employed’ to ‘screaming decibel range’ has to be documented, initialed, and filed in triplicate.

It’s hard to be truly menacing when you’re thirty minutes behind schedule because your rack hasn’t been cleared by a safety inspector.

Hell and its bullshit rules.

I’m. So. Fucking. Bored.

I need a vacation. If I have to spend one more century in this sulfur-choked pit, I’m going to lose what little is left of my mind.

I’ve been sitting in the queue with the Board of Infernal Affairs for over two centuries, waiting for them to approve a simple travel visa, and I’m beyond sick of the stagnant ‘pending’ status. Maybe I’ll take it up with the boss and see if she can grease the wheels so I can indulge in a little self-care elsewhere.

“Excuse me, Veraxia,” I mutter to the empty office, straightening my tie in the reflection of the paperweight. “I’ve been a very good boy this eon. Would it be too much to ask to expedite my request so I can go and dick around somewhere that isn’t… well, here? I’ll even bring you back⁠—”

A shriek rises from outside the window, like nails on a chalkboard. “Mercy! Have mercy, please! I’m begging you!”

Get in line, buddy. We’re all begging for something.

Below the window, the yelping hits a new, glass-shattering octave. I sigh, drag myself up, and shove the window open. A blast of heat, sobs, and screams flood the room. I perch a knee on the soot-stained windowsill and peer out at the view. Every level is crawling with activity; one big nauseating sprawl of workstations, cubicles, and torture platforms.

“Oi!” I roar through the wails. “Keep it down! Some of us are trying to file reports up here! Have some bloody decorum!”

Rhaziel glances up at me from the Pit, a shit-eating grin splitting his face. His wings flare behind him, soot-flecked and ragged at the edges.

“Mal!” he bellows back, his voice echoing off the basalt walls. “Sorry, mate! Just breaking in a new one. A real live-wire, this one!”

Below him, the mortal writhes on the slab, black smoke rising from the raw skin between his shoulder blades. “I didn’t mean to do it! It was an accident, I swear!”

Rhaziel shrugs up at me, casually waving a glowing branding iron that drips sparks into the abyss. “He drowned kittens—five of them. Five, Mal. Who drowns an entire litter?”

“Bit excessive,” I shout down. “You really should have stopped at one if you were going for symbolism, mortal! Five is just showboating!”

Rhaziel lets out a bark of a laugh. “Want a go? I’m finishing the branding before he heads to the reflection chambers, but I think I’ve got some room in the schedule if you want to blow off some steam.”

“Tempting,” I call back, gaze briefly flicking back to the stagnant pile of forms on my desk. “But the paperwork would add way too much to my load. Break a leg though, Rhaz. Preferably his!”

The mortal’s high-pitched scream chases me back inside as I slam the window shut. I chuckle to myself and hop down from the sill, and head out into the hallway.

I drift past the cubicles of the Ninth Division, past rows of lower-tier demons like me hunched over mountains of parchment, the clack of manual typewriters echoing in every direction. The hallways here are a labyrinth of flickering fluorescent lights and weeping stone, the kind of architecture designed to make you feel small before you’ve even started your shift.

Then I head down the crumbling stairwell, past Soul Procurement. I breeze past the Department of Eternal Lamentations, where the interns are currently crying harder than the damned, and pass by whatever office now handles metaphysical inventory since the big corporate rebrand.

The deeper I go, the quieter it gets. These corridors are older, carved into the raw magma-threaded rock, back when this place was still fresh and hopeful—back when Hell believed they were pioneers rather than glorified clerks.

Signs along the rough walls flash the same message in a dozen dead languages, the runes glowing with an angry, warning light: FORBIDDEN ZONE. OCCULT TRAFFIC ONLY.

I grin, adjusting my tie. Perfect.

“Not happening, Malachi.”

The voice rumbles down the passage before I even reach the iron gates. Two towering gatekeepers practically made of scar tissue stand in my way, blocking the entrance to the level.

Ah. The last surviving Neanderthals of the Afterlife.