Helluva Time 12 (Patreon)

Where: Appalachian National Scenic Trail, Georgia, United States of America, Earth

When: 206 days to next Purge

Who: Collin, Employee of C.H.E.R.U.B.

Cletus had transported Mr. Lyle along with Keenie and I to one of the many national parks, before gesturing out to the glorious expanse, “Look around Lyle, God’s Gift of nature is a wonder to behold. Regardless of age, or wealth.”

Leaning over the head of the medical bed, I continued, “If you were to end your life, you’d be missing all of this.”

Unfortunately, the imps and strange demon of a species I didn’t recognize got brought along. Still it couldn’t be helped, cherubs weren’t powerful enough to specify teleportation targets when teleporting more than themselves.

“Mhmm,” the apparent leader of the hell-spawn, having found a cat costume from somewhere, began. “You going to buy that load of shit from a baby and the sheep it fucks?”

Keenie gasped, while my eyes went wide in surprise. We’d literally just met, how’d he figure it out?

“That is so inappropriate!” Keenie snapped.

“Oh kiss our ass, prude!” the female demon snapped, lifting up both hands and extending the middle fingers.

“Game?” the one that initially terrified us asked, demonstrating his one track mind.

“Anyway,” the lead demon ignored his obsessed subordinate to join Mr. Lyle on the medical bed. “Take it from me, a fellow genius, nature is no picnic up close.”

The demon provided a pair of binoculars to Mr. Lyle, and (with some minor magic to get a glimpse at what he was seeing) I smiled upon seeing the small family of bunnies and a pair of squirrels. Up until some wolves ran up and started eating them!

“Oh no!” Mr. Lyle cried out. I reached out and grabbed the binoculars, trying to pull them away from him.

“So stop looking!” I tried, despite my efforts he had a surprisingly strong grip.

“I can’t stop!” he screamed, as a bear came up and swatted one of the wolves with a massive paw. “I’ve never wanted to die more than I do now!”

The bear loomed over the bleeding wolf it had hit, moments before a tree fell down on top of it, pinning the animal as a branch bit deep into its side. Following the base of the tree, there was a man holding a chainsaw laughing. Up until a beehive landed on top of his head, making him throw his chainsaw into the air as he screamed in pain from the swarm attacking him. When the chainsaw fell down to Earth, somehow despite not touching either of his arms they fell to the ground, bloody stumps all that remained attached to his shoulders. He screamed in renewed pain, moments before a male deer ran up from behind, running him through with the sharpened tips of his antlers.

Both Mr. Lyle and I stared in mute horror, as the demon clapped both hands to his face. Cletus hovered down, and teleported us away. I took the opportunity to compose myself, as we appeared at a mall where a mall santa was on stage.

“Oh Lord, where are we now? Let me perish!” Mr. Lyle begged, as Cletus and Keenie got started on the pitch.

I just took a moment to smile at the sheer, simple joy of the kids. I didn’t have any children in Heaven, cherubs weren’t allowed without getting permission from on high, but I’d always enjoyed children. The innocence, the light in their eyes, their limitless potential, it sang to a part of me. If it weren’t for Cletus and Keenie having decided to go in the blessing business, I’d have probably applied to be a cherub that protected children.

“Hey dipshit!” the demon’s voice snapped me out of my thoughts. “Wanna see whose lap your sitting on?”

“Game, please?” the tall demon asked, as his boss grabbed the mall santa by the beard and ripped the costume off.

Underneath was a man that looked like an oversized, demented garden gnome in stained tighty whities and a shirt that said “#Cuties” on it. The children screamed in terror and Mr. Lyle started crying. Keenie and I covered his eyes and Cletus pushed the hospital bed out of the mall as a voice cried out, “Santa’s evil!”

Once we were out of sight, Cletus teleported us away to try our third attempt at convincing Mr. Lyle to want to live.

“Ugh, this place reeks of teenagers,” Mr. Lyle all but spat.

“‘Lover’s Lookout’ sir. We’re here to remind you about possibly life’s greatest joy of all,” Cletus said, hands up against his cheek.

“Money!/Game?” Mr. Lyle and the… focused demon spoke in unison.

“No,” I spoke up, giving the game obsessed, lanky demon an odd look before turning my focus back to the human. “Love.”

“I’ve never been in love before,” Mr. Lyle mused. “I imagine it’s quite nice.”

“It’s not too late, sir. You can still find…” I was interrupted by the sound of laughter from the lead demon.

“Ha! Nice try, Ugly.” He said before picking up a megaphone and speaking through it, “HEY HORNY LOVERS, WHICH ONE OF YOU WOULD FUCK THIS OLD MAN?!”

Mr. Lyle pressed two of his fingers together, a hesitantly hopeful look on his face, before every car at the lookout drove off as fast as they could manage. Mr. Lyle deflated, with such moroseness I could practically hear it. I flew over to the lead demon to give him a piece of my mind.

“You know you three are so utterly c-c-c-cruel!” I hated how I stuttered at the end, but when I got mad I couldn’t help it. “We’re just trying to give help to someone in need!”

“Game? Please?” the tall demon with an actual human disguise asked, a hint of what almost sounded like desperation in his voice as he held up a pair of cups and a handful of dice in his hands.

“Oh,” the third male demon began, ignoring his fellow’s request for a game. “And you three are so superior to us, just because we want some selfish, greedy, authoritarian capitalist to keel over dead!”

Turning to the tall demon, I snapped, “What will it take to get you to stop asking us to play a game?!”

“If one of you plays Liar’s Dice with me, I won’t share how each and every argument you’ve provided falls flat, based on my personal experience in Hell,” he responded, making me pause.

I remember hearing about a cherubim a few years back that had somehow ended up in Hell, and decided to stay. If there was even anything remotely like that in this particular demon’s experience, then why hadn’t he said as much?

“If your experience is as good as you imply, what’s stopping you from telling him after one of us plays your game?” I asked, as the lead demon sprayed the other with a spray bottle.

The demon blinked, a look of faint confusion on his face, “I just said I wouldn’t?”

…on the off chance that he wasn’t lying, I couldn’t take the risk, “Okay, I’ll play.”

There was a menacing, fang filled grin, in a mouth that stretched too wide, nearly splitting the demon’s face in two, yet it still didn’t reach his cold, emotionless eyes. His and my shadows twisted, forming a small table and two chairs, as he said one word with all the passion and care of discussing the weather, “Wonderful.”

“L-L-L-Liar’s Dice, you said?” I asked hesitantly as I flew over to one of the chairs.

“Yes. We are on a time crunch, so better to limit it to three dice. Two rounds, ones low, you may go first.”

I took the cup and the offered dice, shaking them before placing them down on the table. Quickly glancing under the cup, I couldn’t help but pout at seeing a pair of twos and a three. So low, but then again I’d already gotten him not to say what he threatened to, since the agreement was just for playing not actually winning.

“Two twos,” I began. Better to start small.

“Four twos,” he shot back without hesitation, the terrifying grin not leaving his face.

“One three.”

“One six.”

I started sweating. I should say two sixes, but I knew I didn’t have any, so that would mean he’d have to have two. But he’d said four twos, meaning he’d have to have two as well, so one dice would have to be both two and six, and that wasn’t possible. So he was lying about something, but if he had at least one six then…

“Show them!” I shouted, lifting the cup up over my dice as he did the same. My face fell as I saw the faces on his dice. One six and a pair of twos.

“Round two,” the demon said as he scooped his dice and tossed them into the cup. I did the same, furiously shaking the cup before slamming it on the table. Peeking under the cup, I smiled at what I had: a four and two sixes. The demon peeked under his own cup before placing it down and saying, “One one.”

“One four,” I shot back, grinning like a loon. That high a jump was sure to make him hesita…

“One six.”

Or not, at least I had that much, “Two sixes.”

“Five sixes.”

Not a single scrap of hesitation, that would mean that all of his dice were sixes, and my four would be the only one of the table that wasn’t a six. If I were to up the call, I’d have no choice but to lie, and I’d be saying I rolled the Number of the Beast! I couldn’t do that! But if I called him a liar and he wasn’t, then I’d have lost both rounds in less than five minutes! Cletus and Keenie would insult and mock me for it for months! Even more than they would for even accepting the demon’s request to play a game!

…Oh Lord, I’d be going through so many purification rites when we got back to Heaven, just for having had this interaction with a demon! I wouldn’t be able to show my face back home for years!

“Do you wish to raise the quantity of faces?” the demon’s voice snapped my mind back to the present, and I threw aside the wool in my hooves that I’d torn off my head in my panicking.

“NO! Show your dice!” I shouted.

…

… the demon rolled the Number of the Beast, there were five sixes on the table, I was doomed.

Who: Keenie, Employee of C.H.E.R.U.B.

Cletus teleported all of us to an opera house, where there was a performance of Wagner’s Gotterdammerung playing. Colin was still out of it due to accepting the retarded demon’s demands to play a stupid game, so Cletus took over in talking to the gross human.

“Behold, the wonder of art and music. Something always there to comfort, entertain, and live for,” Cletus said, gesturing to the stage with a free hand.

The three demons seemed to have vanished, while the tall one was to the left of us in the stands, with his hands clasped over his ears. Figures that he’d be unable to appreciate proper culture, probably thought that loud, heavy metal garbage constituted good music. Surprisingly, partway through the performance, the spotlight that was focused on the opera singer shifted to a different part of the stage, making her scramble to return to the spotlight.

I barely noticed it before it happened, but the tall demon’s back started writhing moments before his shadow rose up and wrapped around the singer. Black, clawed tendrils wrapped around her head and viciously twisted, causing her neck to snap with a loud, audible ‘CRACK’, mere seconds before there was the sound of snapping rope and the spotlight turned her body to pulp.

“THAT’S IT!” Cletus shouted as the three of us flew up to face the demons. I approached the tall one while Cletus and Colin approached the ones up top above the stage. “You monsters have messed with us enough!”

Colin expressed his own frustration, while I conjured my holy crossbow and pointed it at the tall demon as he finally removed his hands from his ears, showing a trail of blood coming from them. I blinked in confusion, we hadn’t done anything to him, so why was he bleeding? Shaking my head, I pushed the thought aside to level my crossbow at him.

“We are saving that shitty old man’s life, whether he wants it or not!” I heard Cletus cry out.

The tall demon turned his gaze to look at me, seemingly unbothered by the holy weapon aimed at his face. “My apologies, I avoid live performances of Gotterdammerung due to the frequency required for Brunhilda’s part being physically painful if I am unprepared for it.”

“That doesn’t excuse you killing a human! It’s bad enough your kind exist, but now you’re up here meddling in the lives of humans?!” I shouted in his face.

The retard blinked slowly, “But angels have been meddling with humans far longer, assuming the phrase ‘guardian angel’ is meant literally.”

“Hey, Jacques!” the female demon shouted from the rafters, drawing both our attention. “Is the judgemental, cotton candy, tit heaven bitch threatening you?!”

“I do not believe so,” the tall demon shouted back, and it was all I could do to keep from facepalming. I had a holy crossbow aimed at his head, and he didn’t think I was threatening him?!

“Of all the demons, we had to deal with three shitty imps and a retard!” I lamented, flying up to deal with the imps. That demon whore thinks she can call me a bitch? I’ll show her!

Five Minutes Later

“Yeah, no. Sorry, Cletus. But I’m afraid on top of your actions resulting in the deaths of over two dozen humans, Colin played a game with a Sinner and you allowed said Sinner to murder two humans. I’m afraid you can’t re-enter Heaven, yeah no.”

“What?” the three of us cried out in shocked dismay.

“Yeah, mmm… sorry, yeah, no.”

“Is there a-anything we can do?” Colin asked as our boss started filing her hooves.

“Yeah, no. No-hoho-no. No, no. No,” she said while pointing both hooves at Colin before moving to Cletus. “No,” she started to point towards me, but I couldn’t let us be banished from Heaven, I just had to point out the imps.

“But we didn’t mean to, we would never, it was all…” But to my horror, the imps had completely vanished from the wretched part of the stage where part of the rafter had fallen.

“Anyway, sorry guys, but those are the rules. Yeah, bye!”

“Wait!” Cletus called out as he flew up after Deerie and the other higher ups as they returned to Heaven through the portal I’d made.

Colin and I hovered there, before the tall demon’s voice broke us from our shock, “So… the three of you are banished from Heaven?”

We turned to see the demon standing up from under the prompter’s box, and rage filled me, “YOU! Because of you, we can’t go home! We’re stuck on this shitty planet filled with filthy humans, and Heaven won’t pay us any attention or give even the slightest thought about us!”

A wicked, terrifying grin spread across the demon’s face, snapping me out of my anger as he all but purred one word, “Splendid.”