Hell: We Can Damn You Wholesale

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The next night, after Aziferal had started with his traditional cup of anguish and a couple of sinners being slowly roasted, he knew he had big problems.

He lifted the speaking tube (he was a traditionalist, in many ways) and roared "BEL!"

The obese demon took half an hour to come into his office and another minute to finish coming through the door.

He waved the sheets of fine human vellum at her. "None at ALL?"

Bel hadn't forgotten a single word, glyph or otherworldly sigil in the document and guessed his meaning. "The sole requirement to get into Islamic heaven," she explained, "is to be be Islamic. Doesn't matter what you do - if you accept Allah, you're in. Hell is purely reserved to punish non-believers. Since the Highest Court ruled on interfaith matters when the first Christian pope Up There claimed all European heathens, nobody goes to an afterlife not of their faith. Therefore, there are no souls in the Islamic hell. They do, however, have fully functioning premises."

"Fuck the premises," Aziferal snarled, "and fuck the Highest Court ruling, as well!" A once minor and now increasingly major aspect of that ruling was that having no faith was counted as a faith for the purpose of after-life allocation of the soul. Increasing secularisation and atheism throughout the modern world was giving the entire Acquisitions depart Down Below huge ulcers. "Where are we going to get our souls?"

Bel smirked, a movement so slow and savoured the rest of her face didn't need to catch up.

"They may satisfy Islamic entry requirements to Heaven," she said, savouring every word as it rolled off the tongue, with all the satisfaction she showed when eating human sweetbreads. "But..."

Aziferal interrupted her with a harsh crow of delight. "But we have different rules! Every single resident of Islamic Heaven will have to be audited and reassigned! It'll take centuries!"

Demons exist to cause and continue suffering. Whose, is not really important provided it isn't theirs. If it's the clerical corps of angels, that's just as good as damned (or even: pre-damned) souls.

The only thought that really concerned him now was the very simple question of: How do they justify it to Hermanarz?

Only one thing for it, really. Carry on as though they had always known and as though Hermanarz had been the one to not realise it.

"Right," he said briskly. "I believe we knew that all along, and it's still part of long-range planning. If we're lucky, we'll get some angels as well out of this. Still, all to the good. We've got more time to plan staff going through Inhuman Resources, intake of souls, and consolidation of equipment, premises and other resources. Good! Newly dead souls can be absorbed under existing margins. Carry on!"

As Bel turned, a procedure which took some time and went on for several minutes after she was once more facing out of the door, Aziferal picked up the speaking tube again.

Aramon, head of Inhuman Resources, was a wrath demon who took the form of a suit of full plate armour for an octopus with fangs.

It is considered polite, or at least acceptable, for demonic offices to have no chairs for visitors - they summon their own. Aramon didn't bother. He just dropped down on the floor and sprawled there. He did, however, have a secretary who had once been a human rubber slave and was now wearing something that had never been near a tree or, indeed, chemical factory, and who looked rather happy about it. Aziferal felt his mouth water when he looked at her, and had to magic the saliva away to let him speak.

Thankfully, they had a short meeting. It had been many centuries since Inhuman Resources had needed to handle a large influx of new staff but it was just a matter of scale and the audit that would need to be conducted on all inhabitants (Acquisitions Up There had, when asked, unhappily admitted that, yes, there would need to be an audit) would draw out the process.

"We can always use extra hands, foe-shifts, double-rations, that sort of thing," Aramon said in a voice that sounded, for extremely good reasons, as though it was being made by a small furnace squeezing air through a rusty iron grill.

"The problem will be retraining their corporate culture, but on the other hand it can be a fantastic opportunity to pick up some new ideas. I'm looking forward to finding out what the Arabs came up with."

"Bel's got the numbers," Aziferal said meditatively, only slightly distracted by the way that two of Aramon's moulded and highly polished steel tentacle tips were idly fucking the gasping, squirming secretary in both her lower orifices. "We expect them to fight every step of the way so I can't give you a definite date I'm afraid."

Aramon waved away the apology. "Let 'em drag it out as long as they wish," he said, a satisfied lick of flame escaping through his speaking grill. "We may get some of the bastards themselves."

He rose onto tentacle tips, wrapping his secretary in two of them without stopping his slow fucking, and scuttled rapidly towards the door on the remaining four.

"I'll see Bel on the way out," he said with a whole-body nod of goodbye.

When he had gone, Aziferal settled back, folded his hands behind his neck and stretched, feeling his malformed vertebrae pop, crackle, snap, heal, remould and settle. He spun his chair around to face the niche, behind his desk, in which Victoria was hanging in the traditional crucifixion pattern with authentic iron nails through her wrists and ankles and steel needles holding her head to the wall by her ears.

There were two long steel needles through each nipple, and a slow trickle of blood had traced the curves of her breasts down onto her belly.

Aziferal sighed happily, the penis hidden under his distended belly rising to full engorgement without even his conscious urge.

He levered himself to his feet as Victoria's eyes swivelled down lasciviously to stare at his erection, licking her lips happily.

"There's still more to pierce," he growled, stepping into the alcove and ramming himself between her legs.