Who Put the Trash Out?

Post Script

There was a part of Hell that was removed from the rest. A part that was almost forgotten and deserted, except for the handful of prisoners kept there. Demons and Angels didn't normally end up in the same place, but then this small corner of Hell, wasn't like the rest.

The sheer feeling of abandonment that reeked and dripped from every crevice was enough to render most normal occupants mad, but this place wasn't meant for normal Hellions.

The cries of torture and endless, unrelenting, pain resonated through the desolate, hopeless space, ripping through the walls in shrieks of utter anguish. But all that was echoed back to those ears was the knowledge that there would be no reprieve, no salvation. No one in this place to hear those cries.

And the cries themselves, they were no longer pleas, bargains, protestation for mercy.

No.

The cries had long ago ceased to be anything other than ceaseless, hopeless outlets for the suffering continuously, unimaginably, endlessly, endured.

A being, a deformed, grotesque, gargantuan in stature, lumbered through the space. It was limited in its understanding and purpose. It had not been designed to resonate any empathy or to feel any pity or remorse or any emotion whatsoever. It could have been an automaton, had it not been so grotesque and malformed.

But it was not a prisoner, it was in fact one of the many who served this place to torture and flay and refuel the endless furnace, one from which the fires over which the prisoners turned, endlessly roasting as if on a spit while their flesh was burnt and flayed away, were continuously lit.

It was a monstrous beast, and it could not understand, and it did not care.

Had it the faculty for either of those things, had it the ability to read or any kind of natural urge for curiosity and enquiry, it may have glanced with more than ignorant indifference at the pile of fuel that lay heaped beside the furnace. It may have glanced at the thin white strip of tickertape that stuck out from the near the top of the pile, the white of the paper already tinged brown with dirt and heat. It may have wondered at what it said.

If it had, if it had pulled it from the heap, unravelled it with its thick, stunted digits, and read what it said, it might have been unimpressed, for all that would have been revealed, would have been the details and conditions for spells and wardings. True, they were remarkably well constructed, detailed and watertight to a fault, describing every endless instance in which something could leave a place but how nothing could ever re-enter that way. It described in great detail, how to distinguish, not based on the articles presented, but on the intent of those presenting said articles. And here, perhaps in the greatest feat of ingenuity, it stated what was to become of those articles once they had been deemed worthless in the place from where they originated.

Items thus deemed necessary to be removed and considered of ill worth to those herewith present and relinquished with such intent, will be removed to serve as fuel for hells furnace, from which shall be derived torture unimaginable and everlasting, to be unleashed upon those deemed most adversarial and villainous nemesis to the occupants at that time residing in the Safe Bunker of the Men of Letters from whence such articles originated.

The description went on and explained further and could almost have been deemed petty in the faultless and meticulous safeguards it cited as rules for what was deemed worthy of removal, regulations preventing re-entry, and details as to what was to become of removed items.

As it was however, the monstrous creature had no cause nor desire to care for such curiosities. This pile was meant for the furnace it served and the creature fed the flames with it, the tinged white paper burning in an instant, the flames it fuelled burning so hot that not even ash remained.

On the other side, the flames became liquid, molten, flowing into channels that fed it into various sectors.

The four closest were marked out in some ancient and long forgotten script. Had anyone or anything in that place known or wondered as to the meaning of the scrawls, or had the means by which to read the marking, they would have read the names of the occupants, the very same whose screams and cries rang out endlessly through the space. But there was nothing and no one there to read such things, and the markings were dulled and obscured, forgotten and seemingly served no purpose at all in a place where it wouldn't matter what an occupants name had ever been.

Except that it mattered as a point of reference, used by whatever trickery that kept the fires and flames so cleverly and continuously lit. The trickery that provided fresh fuel for the furnace, day after day after day. The trickery that led that fuel to feed channels into those chambers, above which those four names were carved and unread.

The creature heaved another pile into the furnace, as it would do for all eternity, and paid no mind to the cries that rang out from the chambers beyond.

The chambers which were fed by the flames, fuelled by the pile that was always mysteriously replenished.

Chambers above which the scrawled names had never been read, but which read the following none the less.

Azazel. Uriel. Alistair. Zachariah.

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The End.

Thank you for reading.