Doug stood in the hall for a moment, staring at the center door with the inverted pentagram. It didn’t need to be a secure vault for him to not want to go in there. The Operations door was like any other. Doug was curious to what that could possibly look like, and this would (hopefully) be the last time he’d be down here. “I’m safe from physical harm, so the worst case is Minos gets mad? Just a peek, won’t hurt anything.” Doug thought as he reached for the door with images in his head of a massive labyrinth of demonic machinery. He opened the door and stuck his head in the door. It was yet another cube farm, filled with mostly demons and some humans mixed in. One of the humans near Doug had their phone ring, picked it up and answered, “Central Switching, how may I direct your call?” Doug recognized the voice as the sarcastic woman he spoke with earlier. He could only see her profile, but he thought she was pretty. At least, as pretty as one can be in Hell without access to showers. Or maybe anything down here that isn’t oozing some weird pus seems acceptable?
Doug backed out of the room. Not worth sticking around to run into Minos. He walked to the elevator and told it to take him to the Greed floor. By this point he knew which direction his office was, so he started walking slowly through the aisles with an uncomfortable feeling. He still felt pity for the workers trapped in the endless paperwork, but less so. That Jack guy admitted he should be here and it was actually helping, and knowing that this was a temporary thing and not forever made it less extreme. Maybe this is why all of his predecessors got jaded and gave up?
He reached his office and went inside to find a stack of letters on his desk in a variety of colorful envelopes. He sat at his desk and started flipping through them. Some had ‘From the desk of’ with a saint’s name on them, others were addressed directly to Doug. He started opening them and found they were prayers from various people. Some of them were from strangers who had witnessed the accident. Others were from family, co-workers, and friends, some of whom he hadn’t spoken to in years. Oscar and his wife seemed to have prayed together and their letter came as one. Doug broke down crying as he read that one, but continued to read on. He never had really grasped the impact he had on people. Part of the reason he had been non-chalant about his worldly demise up to this point was the feeling that he wouldn’t really be missed much up there.
It took him a while to get through the stack, slowly finishing that pint and having a couple more smokes. By the end he was emotionally drained and once again drunk, wanting to just pass out and sleep through the rest of the week. He still felt restless though, even though he figured it had to be the equivalent of nighttime given the amount of time he’d spent down here. He realized he’d been shown to his office, but there was no mention of a room. He weighed his options, which included wrapping a binder of Jack’s good deeds in the ragged towel from the bathroom to use as a pillow. He decided he’d try and call Belpha to ask. As gross as she was, she was at least nice. Doug grabbed the phone and heard the same voice, “Central switching, how may I direct your call?”
“Belpha, please.” Doug requested. The line rang a few times. “Belpha here” she replied, still friendly but not as much as before due to the stress of the day. “Hey Belpha, this is Doug. Sorry if I’m bugging you with something that’s in the handbook, but do I have a room to sleep in?”
“Sleep?” Belpha replied with confusion. “Ain’t no sleep in hell darlin, ain’t no such thing as tired for your kind any ways why you wanna sleep?”
“Honestly, I’m just kinda drunk and sad, ready to be done.” Doug said with a defeated tone.
“Well hun I can’t help you with that, you done robbed tomorrow for today and you gunna have to sit though that.” She said matter-of-factly. “We need you rested though, so I’mma call down to maintenance and see if we can work something out. I suggest you learn to pace yourself.” The line clicked and went silent for a moment.
“Anywhere else I can direct the call?” the voice asked.
“Uhhh, I guess not…” Doug replied. His loneliness was tempered a bit knowing that he was talking to a human soul, and tried to push a conversation. “How come it’s always you that answers? There's hundreds of people in your office.”
“I’m the primary switcher for the executive team.” She said plainly.
“Oh cool….” Doug was at a loss for anything interesting to say. “Guess you’ll be hearing from me sometime later then… What’s your name?”
“In my last incarnation, it was Jane, not sure I like identifying like that anymore to be honest.” She replied.
“Gotcha, it would make sense you don’t want to be associated with the person that got you in here, sorry to bring that up. See you around…” Doug hung up the phone before he started embarrassing himself further. “Even as the only angel in Hell I fumble talking to women…” he chuckled to himself.
There was a knock on his door. Doug answered it to find a demon carrying a wood and canvas cot, along with a makeshift pillow made of a sack stuffed with clothing. As the demon set the cot up, Doug noticed the canvas had what looked like a large dried blood stain on one end of it. There was no blanket. The demon bowed to Doug and left the room.
Doug went to his washroom and grabbed the raggied towel and laid down on the cot for a while, trying to fight the hangover that started to form. He tried meditating, just trying to clear his mind and not think about his situation. The thoughts kept coming though through the throbs of pain, jumping from memories of his past life, to the uncomfortable feeling of accepting the suffering of these souls, and to the brief moment he laid eyes on Jane.