The Angels from Hell

Lilea

A human male dressed in dirt splattered jeans and a singlet, was standing on a platform of wild grass enclosed within invisible walls. In the centre of the enclosed space, a plant was growing rapidly, spiked feelers stretching out to fill the area, digging and scratching against the human male. The human frantically and repeatedly struck at the plant with a blunt scythe. Each time he cut the plant down, it grew back almost instantly making any form of rest impossible.

Lilea paced around the enclosure. A group of demons stood a little away from Lilea, shuffling and fidgeting in obvious anxiousness. They did not speak; their eyes were fixed on Lilea. In the dark, open space, the only sounds were the rustle of cloth, the man's whimpers, and the click of Lilea's red high heeled shoes.

"Much better," she said coming to a stop in front of the demons. "Quite the appropriate form of torture." She looked directly at one of the demons in the middle, a short girl with an eager, youthful face. "If only we had you during the 1500s, there were many a slave owner who would have fit this form of punishment." The girl beamed.

"Thank you, thank you manager," she said quickly, bowing her head repeatedly, avoiding direct eye contact with Lilea.

"Keep this up and you can be a manager yourself," Lilea said. She looked at the other demons. "Send this out for replication and distribution. It is predicted that there will be an uptake in farm owners coming down to meet us and we need to be ready." The demons rushed off at once, all nodding and half-bowing. Lilea waved a hand and the enclosure, and the human male disappeared. Lilea gazed around the now empty space. There were no windows, no marble columns, no brightness except for the feeble light from torches in iron brackets on the dark, brick walls. In her first few decades in the punishment department she had studied textbooks all about human suffering. This place wasn't that different from the medieval dungeons, she had read about. It was the perfect place if you wanted to think up ways to torture people.

Lilea pushed through a door on the far end of the room. Without needing light, she walked down the identical corridors to her office. She had done her best with it. Candles and lamps were arranged neatly in every corner of the space, almost as large as the room she had just left. On the floor she had spread a white carpet and on both walls were paintings of rolling hills of grass and small flowers framed like windows. Shrouded in the uneven, yellow light, Lilea relaxed into her straight backed desk chair. She shifted a pile of paperwork from one side of the desk to the centre, crossing a line through the last section on her daily schedule. Spinning on her chair, she stared at the paintings, trying to keep her eyes open as a wave of tiredness spread through her. After a few minutes, she turned back to the documents she had papers to sign and memos she had to read. She couldn't afford to lose focus, not now. Lilea looked back at the date on her daily schedule. In one week, it would be a thousand years in this department. If she could just keep focus for a little longer, she could do it, she had to.