Hell's Hiring

[WP] You and the Devil sit down for a game of chess. If he wins, he takes your soul. If you win, you take control of Hell. As the Devil prepares his first move, he simply smiles and knocks over his king. "You win."

I blinked. "Say what now?"

"You win. You're the ruler of Hell now!" The sharply-dressed man leaned back in his chair, his hands tucked behind his head.

I glanced at the fallen king on the chessboard, wondering if this was some kind of trick. Tricks and dealings were Old Scratch's thing, after all. "Just like that? What's the catch?"

"Catch? The devil shook his head with a chuckle, though I noticed something about the laugh sounded forced as if he was trying to convince himself more than me. He leaned forward, arms crossed as he fixed me with that cocky stare of his. "No catch whatsoever, except..."

All sense of bravado left his eyes immediately. He raced forward, grabbing my shoulders and nearly knocking over the chair I sat in. "I need your help!"

"Uh..." Even if he hadn't nearly knocked me over physically, emotionally he sure had. The crafty dealmaker had gone from a suave devious businessman to a panicked soul running for his life in the span of five seconds.

"Look, there's a hell of a lot of people in Hell these days, and it's getting too much for me to handle."

I scrambled up from the chair, backing away from him and raising my hands in placation. "Haven't you handled it just fine for the last few thousands of years? So there are more people in Hell now, what's the problem?"

"They're working together!" A sphere of smoke formed in the devil's palm, and he blew on it, sending the sulfurous cloud around us. Colors burst into life as illusory forms of fire took the shape of several humans. "A whole cabinet of arsonists are saying that I'm not utilizing fire properly, the network executives say my business practices are going down the tubes, and I'm pretty sure the Zodiac Killer is in cahoots with Jeffrey Dahmer to overthrow me and eat me for breakfast!"

My expression morphed from dread to complete bewilderment, brushing some of my wisps of brown hair from my face. "You sound almost like you're scared of them."

The devil's head burst through his fiery creations, his golden eyes wide with panic. "Scared? How about terrified? Horrified? You can even bring in the dreaded word: FEAR! Of course, I am! There's so many of them and only one of me, and I can't keep up at this point!"

"What about your demon cronies?"

"They all split! They say I'm getting too soft and letting the humans step all over me. But when humans that are like-minded come together, they cooperate, they get ideas, and for the worst of humanity that's very very bad! I torture them, but it's almost as if they like it!" He hovered in the air, crossing his legs and managing a shaky grin as the smoke vanished. "So I figured, hey, what better to try to understand humans than another human, right?"

I sat back in the chair, getting my breath back and now feeling more content to mull it over. "Maybe you don't need to outright give me control of Hell. Maybe you just need an assistant to help you out. A right-hand-man, I guess?"

Old Scratch placed a finger on his chin, muttering to himself. He moved his hand in a circle and conjured several other fiery facsimiles, replacing one with another almost as quickly as they appeared.

I caught that the lavender figure was me and the crimson one him, but the rest that popped up were ones I couldn't make out.

The flames vanished, and the devil's expression brightened. "Fair enough, then. That's an idea I could get behind!"

He spread his palm forward, arching it into a circle as a flame-rimmed portal opened before us. I could see a tunnel with glistening torches on either side, a ribbon of magma on either side of the path that reminded me of the lights on an airplane floor.

I started to walk forward, but his outstretched hand stopped me.

"Hold up there, Cairo. There are rules first," he said.

I quirked my brow, puzzled. "I thought you hated rules."

"I hated Heaven's rules, but I'm no anarchist. No system can thrive without rules, that's for sure. In Heaven, on Earth, and even in the hot depths of Hell." The devil snapped his gloved fingers and a list appeared in front of him. "Rule 1. Punishment given relates to the crimes on Earth. So you can't set the network executives on fire as much as you might want to. Rule 2: You can't sneak up to Heaven or Earth unless properly summoned there."

"Does that mean I'll get a demon form and be able to be summoned by people?" I asked, unable to stop a broad grin from rising on my face.

"Don't get too excited, I don't know. We'll find out when we get there. I've, uh, never brought a human soul down this way before, so this is a test run," he said quickly.

I tried to plaster on a smile, hiding my nerves at that. "And the third rule?"

"That you don't call me any of your silly devil nicknames like Scratch," said the devil as the portal closed behind me. "The name's Apollo."

*****

THE END.