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That was good! I always love seeing you pop up in a prompt!

I became so invested in the story that I had to restart the music I was listening to. A song I liked came on and I didn’t even notice. That doesn’t happen often. This was captivating, well executed, and a really interesting premise! You did a great job here and you’re clearly a very talented writer!

very well done!

kinda reminds me of "The Good Place" for some reason

This is my favorite so far! I love the new demon being confused.

I blinked twice, my brow furrowing as I considered what exactly it was I was feeling. Was it confusion? No. That seemed like not enough somehow. Baffled was more like it. "What?'

"Don't do bad things anymore!" Was all she'd said before... well... leaving me alone in the ruins of what had once been a pretty nice lair. That was hours ago. This whole time, I'd just been standing there, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.

"That's IT?" I shouted into emptiness, pulling chunks of hair from the sides of my head. Maybe this was the real punishment for my crimes; the total destruction of everything that I'd built and loved and a simple 'don't do bad things anymore'. I'd been mentally prepared for a few different outcomes- imprisonment, maiming, even death- but this? I think this was gonna be the thing to break me.

Great job! This take on the prompt reminded me of this Oscar Wilde quote. “We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.” Very much a “hell of our own making” feel to this response.

I really like this. Your tone of writing reminds me a bit of Neil Gaiman and "Good Omens"

Life is hard. There are many among us who suffer immensely and silently. Hopefully there are ways we can each lessen the suffering of one another on a daily basis, I’d at least like to hope we strive for that.

"What do you mean everything looks like heaven to you." Asked the demon. "What does that lava pit over there with the people screaming in agony?"

"What you mean that pool and hot tub?" I replied " just looks like people splashing around playing volleyball."

"What???? That's not possible and how are you not feeling the pain of the searing heat." The demon demanded.

"I mean it's kinda warm but only in the sunlight those. The shade from those willow trees looks comfy though." I said walking over.

The demon chasing after me and exclaimed "those are geysers of molten lava not weeping willows!"

Before I could reach them the demon ran in front of me and blocked my path.

"Here hold this" they said while handing me the most beautiful diamond. Shinning so brilliantly that it seemed to produce the light rather than reflecting it.

"Omg look at this thing." I said holding it to my eye. " it's like there is a rainbow inside."

"WHAT!!! That is a ball of smoldering coal!" Stamping their foot in disgust.

"Hey dudes look at this" I yelled walking over to some people who appeared to be sitting on some picnic tables talking.

As soon as they saw it I could see wonder in their eyes."it's beautiful why have I never noticed this before."

One of the people began crying "if only I had seen sooner there is so much I could have done around here!!!"

"I know right. when did we get a spa?" Said a middle aged man wiping what appeared to be soot off his clothes.

"NO NO NO!" Raged the demon. "You're infecting them!!!"

"Whoa an angel!" Exclaimed a child who was using the diamond in a game of catch with some other children."

"I've never seen one with black feathered wings before." A woman carrying an infant said walking up to the demon. "I'd like to file some complaints. Why have we been here so long but not allowed to use these public amenities?"

"What!! There is nothing but pain and suffering here! Even if we had anything like that it wouldn't be 'Public'."

"That sign right there by the pool says 'For public use. For service call (666)555-3146'." I said. Reading the sign to the demon.

Rubbing their eyes the demon screamed in terror "oh no I can see them now too!!! What have you done to me!" Before flapping it's wings and flying away.

"I'll be back and you'll be sorry!"

"OKAY!" I yelled back "Don't forget to bring a supervisor!!!"

It’s unfortunate, but I do feel a lot of people feel like this today. They want to draw lines and be on the winning team, even if winning doesn’t help either side. That being said, we are also so much more connected than we have ever been, we just have to find a way to use that to break down some of these artificial lines of us vs. them.

I’m glad you liked it. You’ve hit the nail on the head with your assessment.

Thank you!

Thank you very much! I’m glad you enjoyed!

Damn, thats a good story! Id be happy to read a second part!

Thank you so much!

This is great, thanks!

I felt around the trunk for the thousandth time. Still no latch, no tools nothing that can help me escape from this bloody car trunk. I have no idea how long I have been in here, time seems to have lost all sense of meaning. I drifted in and out of sleep in between screaming and banging on the trunk lid.

I was laying there, out of breath, my hands raw and bleeding from pounding on the trunk lid. My mind drifted back to when I was a kid, when I got trapped in my closet, I was there for hours before my parents found me. I played with my imaginary friend to pass the time…. Stanky Stevie…. He looked like a mutant muppet. Bright green fur, a big bulbous nose and a huge unibrow. He was funny and silly, we played games and he protected me.

“Oh Stanky Stevie, where are you now?”, I said to myself as I started to cry in the dark trunk.

“Hey, hey, hey!”, a familiar goofy voice said, “are we in the closet again?” I could feel him right beside me. I reached out and ran my hands through his fur.

“Hey Stanky Steve.”, I said dejectedly. “No. I am not in the closet. I have been kidnapped and stuffed into the trunk of a car. I have been here for a long time, just waiting for them to come back and kill me.”

“I don’t know that I like this game.”, Stanky Stevie said. “How about some tic tac toe or some hide and seek?”, he said in his goofy voice.

“Stevie…. This is serious. I am going to die if I can’t get out of here. It isn’t time for games…. What the fuck am I doing? I am talking to an imaginary monster in the trunk of a car…. I have fucking lost it.”, started sobbing uncontrollably.

“I am as real as you need me to be, always have been. Most people forget about monsters like me once they hit a certain age…. But we are always here, waiting to be called upon.”, Stanky Stevie said in a serious tone.

Stanky Stevie was snuggled up, comforting me, in the dark trunk. I felt better, just knowing I wasn’t alone anymore.

#BAM BAM BAM

Someone was pounding on the outside of the trunk.

“Wakie wakie! It’s time for the fun to start!”, a creepy voice said from outside trunk. I could hear the jingling of keys and then a key slipping into the lock.

“Hush now. Stanky Stevie will make it all better.”, Stanky Stevie said quietly to me.

The trunk opened, I was blinded by the bright lights but Stanky Stevie bounded out of the trunk, right at my captor.

“Let’s play a game!”, Stanky Stevie yelled as he started hitting the man.

“What the hell is going on!”, the man said.

“We are playing a game!”, Stanky Stevie said, just as he sprouted fangs and sunk them into our captor’s neck. He shook his head, ripping out chunks out of his neck. “Are you having fun‽ hahahahaha!!!”

Stanky Stevie rode the man down to the ground, ripping bigger and bigger chunks out of the man. Blood spraying all over Stanky Stevie. Then he just stopped moving and bled. Stanky Stevie looked at me, blood running down his chin. His fur covered in blood. His fangs making him look absolutely terrifying.

“Hey, hey hey! Can we play a game now!”, Stanky Stevie said.

God damn Grandfather Paradox.

"Hey beloved, what's up?"

"Gonna need you to duck."

That was all the warning I'd received as... something crashed through the wall of my office, scattering dust, debris, and all of the paperwork that I'd painstakingly sorted through everywhere. I stared blankly, blinking twice as I tried to process the scene before me. Immediately I was filled with a deep sense of loss, seeing all of my hard work go to waste in a single moment, but as whatever had been thrown through the wall started to pull itself from the wreckage, I knew there were bigger things to worry about. "Did you do that?" I asked and the woman on the other end of the call chuckled.

"He did it to himself. I told him not to try the laser beam thing, but he did."

"Laser beam thing? What are you-"

"Luciel!" The now dust covered villain roared, his expression full of rage and malice as he marched toward the hole he'd been sent through.

"Handle that for me, won't you love? I'm nearly out of power.

"I doubt it." I growled and hung up, standing and loosening my tie with a frown. "Oi! Laserface!" I called out to the villain just as he was about to climb through the hole. He turned his attention to me and frowned, pointing a finger at me.

"YOU!" He shouted, apparently forgetting Luci for a moment to turn his wrath on me. "I still owe you from last time."

"You remember me? I'm touched." I say, grabbing the broken leg of what had once been a pretty comfortable chair and giving it a few test swings. "Then you know what comes next."

"Yeah, you-" He barely got a word in before I launched the chair leg directly at his face, catching him right in visor and cracking it, rendering his laser thing useless. He let out a cry and brought hands up to his face. "Neither of you fight fair!"

"You sound like a crybaby." I said with a sigh. "Maybe villainy isn't your thing man. You want a job?"

“This can’t be Hell. It’s…peaceful.” I glanced behind me to check that the dog park was still full of owners watching their pets. The grass beneath my feet was freshly cut. I couldn’t smell the trash but I knew there must be some. There always was in the park.

“No young man, this is definitely hell. Can I ask what makes you doubt your new home?”

I looked at the demon in front of me with a hint of suspicion in my eyes. His face was human,but for the tiny horns poking through his blond hair. He wore a black suit with a silk black shirt, no tie. He vaguely reminded me of someone, I couldn’t put my name on it. It slipped from my memory each time I got close.

“ There are children playing. Laughter. For Christ’s sake, I thought all dogs went to heaven!” I half whispered with more than a little sarcasm.

The demon smirked, then spoke with his unnaturally deep voice. “Every person has free will. That is an undeniable fact. But, the thing about free will, is that each person does not view the world the same way. What one may perceive as free will, is a cage for another. Isn’t that right, David?”

That name struck a chord deep in my chest, and I winced. “ W-Wha-“

“Daddy’s here! Dad! Come play with us!”

I turned around, locking eyes with a young boy with a startling resemblance to the man in front of me, and I blinked quickly. He looked so familiar-

“Where’s your mother Peter? Go get her, quickly!”

I heard myself speak, but those weren’t my words, those weren’t my thoughts. I turned back to the man as the boy ran off, my eyes searching his face for answers.

“ In your manifesto, you wrote that you were, what was it again? Seeing demons? That you couldn’t control yourself any longer? That the Devil himself guided you on your…’mission’?”

The demons voice was cold and deep. His smirk widened into a grin as I reached into my pocket and felt cold steel against my thigh.

“That-I don’t remember-What??”

My emotions were all over the place. What did he mean, what was going on?

“Dammit David, it’s your sons birthday and you are late! I told you to be on time, for once, and you cant do this one thing I asked-“

I turned to her and a name flashed through my head. Mary. My ex wife. I opened my mouth to ask why she was with me in heaven, when my mouth spoke for me.

“ Do you believe in God, Mary?”

My mind raced. A sense of unimaginable dread came over me as my blood rushed. Why would I ask her that?

“Show me how you did it David. It was quick wasn’t it?” I couldn’t see him, but I knew the demon was looking at me with that grin on his face.

I watched in horror as my arm came out from my pocket holding my pistol. I could feel the sweat down my back as my finger squeezed.

BANG

She didn’t even have time to look shocked. Right through her left eye. Her body fell limp on the ground, as the boy-my son, watched from behind with a look of confusion.

“D-Dad?”

I locked eyes with him, every fiber of my being screaming to drop the gun. My body didn’t respond to my commands, pulling the trigger twice more and hitting my son in the chest. My arm fell to my side as I watched the pool of blood get larger.

I raised my head as I could hear screaming around me. I locked eyes with the demon. My anger flared.

“WHY DID YOU MAKE ME DO THIS?!”

The demons grin dropped and he snarled.

“ You did this on your own David. And you aren’t finished yet.”

He looked over my shoulder as I could hear footsteps behind me. I spun against my will and the gun rose. I wanted to yell out to them, warn them, anything. But still, my body did not obey.

2 shots, the first missed, the second in the chest taking down Mr. Jacob, my former neighbor.

3 shots next, I couldn’t even see if it hit anyone, the crowd of people running away was too thick.

I felt my arm raise to my skull and I flinched.

“Why?”

My finger pulled the trigger.

But I didn’t die.

I could feel the gaping wound in my skull. My blood filled my nostrils as my body collapsed. I gurgled as I suffocated on my own blood.

The demon walked towards me and kneeled down.

“ David, this is what you wanted. You wanted to make a statement remember? You were so, so angry that day. And here we are. In Hell. And so, you are going to relive that day, over and over. You were right though. This park is too nice to be hell.”

The demon chuckled as a tear rolled down what left of my face and my eyes closed for the last time.

—————————

I blinked my eyes open as I looked around. I was standing. I took a look around me. It looked like…a dog park. I could see people in the distance. Fresh cut grass. I was surprised not to smell any trash, if we were in a park. I just could not, for the life of me, remember where I was. I knew I should remember though. For some reason I knew it was important.

I saw a blond man looking at the dogs too, and I walked over. I didn’t want to yell. I wasn’t sure why I was being so quiet. Just a gut feeling.

“Excuse me sir, do you know where we are?”

The man turned to me and I gasped in shock upon seeing the two horns on his head.

“Well young man, this is Hell, and I’m no sir. Im a demon.”

I was surrounded by loving faces. My family, my kids, my wife of 49 years and even our dog on my lap when I died. I guess it might have looked peaceful for anyone watching, I was dazed and sleepy from the painkillers so I couldn't talk much and everything I did say felt muffled and slurry. Inside of course, I was in a state of utter panic. It's one thing to know in the abstract that death is near, quite another to have heard a doctor tell your family, in the nicest possible way, that you probably only had minutes of existence left. I could feel a wave of pain in the distance, kept at bay by the morphine but always just over the horizon, till the dam broke, the pain hit me all at once and then just like that I knew I was gone. The lights went out and I took what I thought would be my last breath.

That was, until I was suddenly and unexpectedly sitting on the side of a hill in what was unambiguously a wildflower meadow in the English countryside. A minute previously, I had fully expected to fade to nothing, for my existence to be extinguished and for the void to swallow me. Instead I was sitting on a nice tartan blanket, the warmth of the sun on my face, and looking below me at a nice hedgerow with elderflowers in full bloom, overtopped by a dignified old elm tree. I could smell a hint of salt in the air, I got up and took a few paces up the hill and sure enough, the field extended about another hundred yards downhill until the grass gave way to white sand and a calm sea beyond.

I wasn't alone either, as I made my way toward the beach I walked past young couples giggling and chatting on blankets much like mine, Families eating picnics with their children and their dogs and their elders, and groups of children running back and forward between the sand and their parents sitting on the grass, dogs, toys and sometimes the occasional enthusiastic grandad in tow.

Aside from the lovely vista, I noted as I walked along that my health had drastically improved in the last few minutes. The illness I had been suffering from these last few years was a wasting disease, slow and relentless it had taken my mobility, my coordination, my ability to feed myself and finally I suppose my life. I'd lived to be 78, people who live as long as that are described as having had a good innings. I would have been quite happy with the same again. Anyway now I felt not one minute of my years. I could have jogged, or run or cartwheeled down that field if I'd a mind to. No longer was I the bedbound mess I had been, my family dilligently cleaning and changing me and making sure I was comfortable. I felt like a young man in the prime of my life.

I must have walked for 3 or 4 hours along that beach, the warm sand between my toes, the laughs of happy strangers surrounding me. And in that time I thought about what I must have done right in my life to end up in such a tranquil place after. I had always been a churchgoing man, every Sunday we went to the same little church in our village. We sat in the same pews, sang the same hymns as they appeared and disappeared in their cycle over the year. Attended communion and said my Lords Prayer when called to. But the dirty little secret between me and my maker was that I didn't believe a word of it. I enjoyed the community, the friends I made along the way, As for the religion itself, a fairy tale for children. As for the rest of my life, I brought up 4 children to do as well as they could. They were happy children and moody teens and disapointed adults. They all moved away from our little town to find their own way eventually. They worked in jobs that I didn't really understand, and weren't always happy. My wife wasn't always as happy as she could have been, she told me I was boring, too sensible, too careful. But we loved each other and we worked out our problems. I wasn't the worlds best man. I thought about other women but didn't act. I got angry at my kids and my friends but didn't let it spill into grudges. I got angry at the changes in the world that I didn't understand, but I didn't let myself become a bigot. I bit my tongue a lot these last few years!

I guessed that must have been enough for God. Because here I was in Heaven. As I walked I let my imagination drift further. I could be happy here, for the years I had to wait until I was reunited with my family. They would be young and strong again like I was, and recovered from the stresses of the word.

I spotted a nice looking little village in the distance and started making my way there. The sun was starting to go down and I was surprised to find that even in the afterlife you need to sleep. As I walked off the beach and up some steps that led to a harbour, I could see a man who wasn't quite like the others around me. He was tall and slim, pale like he had recently been sick, with grey hair and a walking stick. I was surprised to see anyone could be sick or injured here, so I waved and walked over to where he sat on a little wooden bench, looking out over the ocean.

"Good Evening" I said, taking a seat next to him. " A fine evening for sightseeing"

"Hello", said the man tersly, "I wager it's not so fine an evening as you think George, your family wouldn't describe it so anyway"

Taken aback in two ways, because this man knew my name and because he was right about my family, I exclaimed "Who are you?! Where are we?!"

"I am called Slater, George. Though the others in my department call me Sel. I am the demon in charge of this part of hell"

I felt like the carpet had been pulled from under my feet. "How can this be hell?" I asked, "there is no torture here, no fire and brimstone and magma"

Slater, Sel, looked at me sadly. "It's been the work of my life to create this place George. It's hard to create anything lovely on our own, without the light of the almighty to give it life of it's own. Hell is the place we were given outside the presence of God. To make what we could of it and house those who chose not to enter Heaven."

I have a million years here, as you'll see, perhaps in another chapter of this story I can get in to the meaning his words. For now though his sober news was enough for one night.

"Fall all my labours though George, there is no love here. Most of the people you see are facsimiles I made to give the place life and atmosphere, they are no more alive than a painting or a movie on a screen. You probably don't notice the real people, walking the beach or the meadows or the forest in silence, alone. For those people, and you are now one of them, there is no comfort in a sunny day or a peaceful tableau. The only torment that hell really produces is that everyone comes here on their own, and no one who loves them ever comes after."

The full meaning of this last part hit me like the death wave, come for a second time. My family, my friends, none would follow me here. I am to wander this countryside as a stranger forever.

"If we are to be alone together forever Slater, then why even make such a place, with the fake happiness and the copies of people"

Sel said "because if we were not able to sometimes lose ourselves pretending that some of the happiness around us was real, then this place may as well be the hell you expected"

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cough Max Headroom cough

🥰

That pretty much sums up humanity. If I can’t have it, neither can you. If I can have it, I’ll make sure you can’t.