Doug was a mediocre nice guy. Nobody disliked him, nobody invited him out. Not that he didn’t go out by himself, socialize, and have a good time, but at 34 he was living a simple, stable, quiet life working a back-office job at a small investment firm in Philadelphia. People lose track and regret asking him what he does for a living during the paragraph it takes to describe it. Nothing great or heroic, just decent money. Which was needed to pay back the loans he took out to get the degree to qualify for the job.
He was just finishing up his Wednesday morning at work and his stomach was grumbling. He’d woken up late and hadn’t had time to grab breakfast. He realized he had been in such a rush that he forgot to feed his dog. Feeling bad, he decided he’d take the 15 minute train ride home during his lunch break, feed him, and come back to the office. As he walked the floor, he passed his boss chatting with another co-worker. As far as bosses go, Gary wasn’t bad, which is a rare trait in bosses. “Doug! Glad I ran into you so I don’t have to email you. I had another meeting with Jason about the MoneyServe+ implementation, and got word there is a user authority export function. Unfortunately it’s only in PDF, and the whole trading floor will be using it so there’s quite a few users. He said he’d get that sent to you soon.” He was somehow always in a jolly mood, even when giving bad news.
Doug masked his irritation with corporate sarcasm. “The fact that these companies can’t provide these lists in a machine-readable format is bonkers to me. That’ll be my whole afternoon! Anyone involved deserves cosmic retribution!” Gary chuckled, “I know I know, well, enjoy your lunch!”
“You too,” Doug replied and set off to the elevator. “Great” he thought, “An afternoon copying data from a PDF to a CSV to upload to the archive. Thank God I went to grad school.” Doug's stomach roared at him again as he left the elevator. He popped into the bodega next door to the office to find it packed. “Yo Oscar!” Doug called to the man in the back. The man looked up, smiled, and gestured to the line, making his eyes big and smiled larger. Oscar was Puerto Rican and spoke very little English, and was a friend to all his regulars like Doug. “I need a buffalo chicken sandwich with everything, I’ll be back in 40”.
“OK Papi I got you!” Oscar said. He called everyone Papi. Doug grabbed a bag of chips for the train, paid the cashier, (Oscar’s wife) and headed out the door and down to the subway. He took a peek down the track and saw the train was on its way from the last station. He popped in some earbuds, turned on some music, and tore into his bag of chips.
There was a commotion behind Doug that he couldn’t hear due to the music and the ever so satisfying crunch of a mouthful of kettle cooked chips. A man grabbed a woman's purse and started running. A large man tried to intervene, but only ended up knocking the thief into Doug, who instinctively grabbed onto him, sending both directly into the path of the train.
All to black. Pure silence and stillness for an eternal moment. Then the turbulence hit. Flailing gusts of wind and rain whipped from every direction as Doug fell through darkness until he hit the frigid water with a splash, knocking the wind out of him.
As he surfaced himself and gasped for breath, he could see he was near the shore of a rocky island, whose only structure was a large obelisk-shaped office building. Doug swam to shore and tried to collect himself as the wind and rain thrashed him. As he looked around he realized he was not alone. Bodies were dropping from the sky into the water at a steady rate, a leaky faucet of the damned. They were all slowly shuffling themselves towards the obelisk. He walked towards a man and tried to call out but found himself muted by the sheer force of the gale.
As Doug approached the obelisk, he beheld the sign over the door with ‘HELL INC.’ spelled out in brightly glowing red block lettering. He entered to a massive room, like an unholy union of the TSA and the DMV. There was a snaking queue thousands of people long, all soaking wet and miserable. At the end of the line there was a long row of windows with ‘ORIENTATION” above them. Only two windows were staffed. Doug instinctively starts heading towards the back of the line, his mind racing.
“How the fuck is this happening to me!? Why am I in Hell?? Is it because I stopped going to church!? I still believe in God though!! I never hurt a person in my life, gave to charity... and volunteered at least once a year!?”
“Nice job getting us killed you clumsy fuck!” A voice came from behind. Doug turned and saw the man he fell into the train with pushing past people who had queued behind him. The man brought his fist back to throw a haymaker at Doug but stopped dead by the mere sight of the demon.
They almost look human, especially when wearing a suit. Though the sunken yellow eyes, pointed ears, and forehead horns are hard to miss. This particular demon was fatter, dumber, and meaner looking than the rest. “Back to your proper place in line soul, the protocol for the operation of this line is clearly established” As he gestured to a billboard of rules Doug had been too distracted to notice. Sure enough, among the dozens of procedures listed out was ‘Your place in line is determined when you enter the line and must not change’.
The initial shock had left the man. “EH NOBODY TELLS ME HOW TO DO SHIT! FUCK YOU BITCH” he yelled, and started to charge the demon. The demon punched through the man's chest, ripping out the man’s beating heart. As the man collapsed, the demon set the heart ablaze to cook it for a bit, bit it like it was an apple, and tossed it back onto the man’s body. The demon then grabbed his radio and spoke to it. “Employee G607 requesting waste disposal at the main entrance due to a Code B4768”. A calm voice replied “Request received, waste disposal en route”
“So… is he like…gone forever now?” Doug asked nervously. “Nah he’ll come stumbling back through that door any minute now, bet he’ll mind his manners now” said the demon, smirking at his handywork. The demon looked up at Doug and his smile vanished. “What’s that above your head?” He demanded.
”There’s something around my head?” Doug replied, while trying to look up and feel around for it but found nothing. He couldn't see it, but there was a thin halo of yellow lightning sparkling above his head. “Quit playing around and take that off!” demanded the demon. “I can’t feel anything up there, I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Doug stammered. The demon marched towards Doug and threatened “You’d do well to learn to not disobey!” and reached towards Doug's head. Doug closed his eyes and cowered. At a few inches away, the halo shocked the demon’s hand, which enraged him. The demon swung his hand quickly to grab it, and it sliced the top half of his hand cleanly. Doug's face was splashed with a spurt of thick demonic blood. The demon howled in pain, then yelled into his radio “EMPLOYEE G607 REQUESTING…EVERYONE TO HELP AT MAIN ENTRANCE FOR A CODE A1”
Doug stood there, dumbstruck, and tried to wipe the viscous blood from his eyes.
“Employee G607 did you just say Code A1?” Asked the voice from the radio.
“YES AN ANGEL IS HERE AND HAS ATTACKED ME WE ARE UNDER AN INVASION FROM HEAVEN!”
“Angel Response Task Force already en route to main lobby, please note Code A1 requires the presence of 2 or more hostile angels to trigger full lockdown”
The demon was in a flubbering panic, and picked the severed piece of his hand off the ground and backed away from Doug. An elevator in the corner marked “STAFF ONLY” dinged. Two demons exited, both tall and slender, carrying briefcases. They approached Doug and greeted him. “Pardon our rude welcome sir, we had not received the usual correspondence prior to your arrival that you would be early. Please follow me to your office.”
“My…office?” Doug choked out.
The second tall demon replied, “Yes sir, we have a private office set up for you on the 4th floor. We found the souls on that floor don’t cry out in agony too loudly, they are there for the sin of Greed and mostly work our finances. Their punishment produces more groans, hysterical sobbing at worst. If you prefer different accommodations after your tour, you can submit form R5503, please follow Mr Asgroth”
“WHAT ABOUT MY HAND!? HE ATTACKED ME!” Yelled the injured demon.
“Oh shut it Garus, our scanners clocked him the second he walked inside, we saw the whole thing. Mind blowing how fast you can fuck up a situation! Which is always why you're always assigned shit duties! We finally give you a little responsibility of keeping the fresh souls in line and in one month you assault an Angel. Absolute embarrassment to the security department. Just go to floor 6 and they’ll figure something out. I’ll be covering your station and writing a D557 for Agrodoshus. Won't be surprised if it's pushed up to Minos and you're back to a mailcart where you belong."
“Eat shit Deletros!” Yelled Garus as he threw his severed fingers at Deletros who dodged them swiftly. The fingers flew towards the orientation line, hitting squarely in the back of the head of a man damned for gluttony, who stumbled over and dominoed many in line. Garus stormed off towards the staff elevator. Deletros and Asgroth chuckled at the expense of both Garus and the bowling pin situation in the line.
“Right this way sir, the back elevator will take us closer to your office” Asgroth said to Doug, gesturing to a bypass lane on the side of the orientation queue. Doug was still in a shell-shocked and bewildered state, but began to follow the well dressed demon towards the elevator. They entered, and with Asgroth’s command of “Greed” the elevator began to move upward.
As the door opened, they were greeted with a mind-bending visual. Short walled cubicles stretching further than the eye could see. Thousands and thousands of desk workers and mail carriers pushing giant stacks of papers through the lanes, stopping to unload binders of printed out spreadsheets for endless analysis. “Right this way” Asgroth directed towards a door near the elevator. They stepped inside to a dingy 10"x10" room with a desk surrounded by filing cabinets and boxes of papers on the desk. Asgroth gestured to another door in the office. “You have access to a rare amenity in this building, a private washroom with a shower. I recommend you wash up. There should be a dry suit for you. Minos will be stopping by at his nearest convenience.”
“Minos?” asked Doug. “He’s the head of judgement and security, he will reiterate to you the main do’s and don’ts, and be your main point of contact here. Belpha from HR will also probably come by with some paperwork. I suggest you start looking through your case files, become as jaded as your predecessors always became, and be ready to ask Belpha to transfer out when she swings by. Good day sir” Asgroth pivoted and walked out the door, shutting it behind him. Doug shuffled into the washroom, stripped out of his wet clothes, and stepped into a shower with no hot water. As he washed the blood from his face, his only thought was “What the HELL is going on??”