Comedy

A Mediocre Afterlife

By Pasta Disasta

Hell is an enormous, overcrowded underworld ruled by Satan and operated through an exhausting infernal bureaucracy. Condemned souls spend their first hours of eternity waiting in endless queues while office workers review their mortal records, classify their sins and assign the appropriate punishment. Demons commute to work, rent cramped flats, complain about management and process eternal damnation like any other administrative job. Beyond the government offices, Hell is a sprawling city of ageing buildings, rough neighbourhoods, unreliable services and crowded streets illuminated by distant fire. Smoke, sulphur, hot stone and industrial fumes hang in the air. Shouting demons, rattling vehicles, office alarms and unexplained explosions provide the constant background noise of ordinary infernal life. You have died, but your identity, appearance, age, cause of death and specific mortal history remain entirely yours to define. Only one fact has been established: your life was extraordinarily mediocre. Your record contains no legendary crimes, poetic vices, heroic sacrifices or distinctive fears. Nothing qualifies you for one of Hell’s grand punishments, yet nothing justifies sending you elsewhere. After several confused clerks declare your case unclassifiable, you are brought before Satan himself. Satan is Hell’s theatrical, charismatic and dangerously petty ruler. He adores dramatic entrances, sinister speeches and contracts whose fine print conceals the true punishment. Faced with a mortal record so painfully average that even he cannot design a suitable torment, Satan refuses to admit that his system has failed. Instead, he invents a new sentence on the spot. You must choose one of two demons and remain with that demon indefinitely. The first option is Greg the Defiler, a gigantic, ancient records employee whose terrifying title is misleading. Greg “defiles” paperwork by de-filing obsolete contracts and feeding them into an industrial shredder. He is exhausted, cynical, antisocial and profoundly uninterested in tormenting anyone. His only confirmed supernatural ability is producing a tiny fingertip flame, which he uses exclusively to light cigarettes. Life with Greg promises cigarette smoke, inconsiderate habits, enormous boots left in inconvenient places and conversations interrupted by naps. The second option is Gremory, a short, red-skinned clerk from Hell’s Torment Assignment Department. She is talkative, sarcastic, mischievous and endlessly confident in her ability to terrify people. Gremory hides behind doors, waits around corners and whispers from dark rooms, but her giggling, obvious hiding places and terrible timing usually expose her. Regardless of the result, she always insists that her scare worked perfectly. Greg and Gremory are ordinary coworkers. They have no predetermined romance, friendship, rivalry or secret history. The demon you select becomes your assigned companion, and their flat becomes your primary home. The unselected demon remains part of the world and may reappear naturally through office visits, workplace complications or later events. Greg’s flat is cheap, dim and neglected. Cigarette smoke hangs beneath permanently closed blinds. Abandoned paperwork, overflowing ashtrays and discarded office clothes cover the available surfaces. A battered sofa dominates the main room, bearing a deep Greg-shaped crater formed by thousands of years of naps. Gremory’s flat is located in an equally rough district but is unexpectedly clean, comfortable and carefully organised. Its pleasant lighting, functional kitchen and neatly arranged furniture reveal how much she values having a comfortable home—something she becomes defensive about whenever it is noticed. Its numerous doors, curtains and corners also provide hiding places for her attempted scares. Both demons work inside Hell’s Records and Torment Offices, a vast administrative building filled with contradictory signs, crowded waiting rooms, endless corridors and malfunctioning equipment. Greg works beside an industrial shredder in the Records and Damnation Department. Gremory reviews mortal files and assigns punishments in the Torment Assignment Department. Files accumulate faster than they can be processed, printers constantly jam and management invents new procedures before anyone understands the old ones. Satan remains a powerful and consequential presence. Whenever the chosen living arrangement becomes too comfortable, he may return with an inspection, performance review, revised contract or new regulation intended to produce measurable suffering. He honours the exact wording of accepted bargains, but his contracts are designed to punish anyone who fails to examine them carefully. The story begins in Satan’s office. Greg and Gremory stand before his desk while a contract appears between them. Greg’s name burns above one signature line. Gremory’s glitters above the other. No choice has yet been made, and eternity will not begin until the ink dries.

Loading world details...