Devil Eyes

Chapter 1: Shower Interrupted

Jezl woke up in a foul mood. Her head felt like someone was trying to pry it apart with a hammer. Her alarm clock rang shrill and loud until she hit it off her bedside table with her hand. She covered her eyes with her hands. Why did she have to get up again? Oh right, work, bills had to be paid. She made some incoherent noise and rolled out of bed. She could feel her hair sticking half up and she was sure the rest was tangled up into an unfixable knot.  First thing on the checklist was a shower and a brush. The water was scalding hot but that was nothing unusual. As the bathroom began to get all steamy she took a peek out the window. The crowded red buildings and screams of Hell looked pleasantly back at her.

Jez always thought that Hell was not that different from an airport. The souls sit in uncomfortable sticky chairs or wander around but never buy anything. The line for the one Starbucks is always full and the mirrors too revealing. The security line to get in is long and never seems to move. There are many background checks, frisks, and unfortunate retelling of your life story to a muscle bound attendant. If you got past that, then some old pointy bearded men determine where you got placed in Hell. Of course that wasn’t a guarantee that you would get there. The flights to different regions were always overbooked and the pilots sometimes crashed just for the fun of it. Once you got where you needed to be, a never ending torture would await you. Have a nice day!

The devils themselves aren’t that much better off. The big dogs at the top wore expensive suits and smoked big cigars and bathed in cash but the average devil sits and deals with the complaints, “I’m not supposed to be here. It was only a little bit of money I stole,” or “He stole my spot in line. Look at him he can’t be telling the truth.” The pay is crappy and the uniforms are always too tight. The only benefit was that she could screw someone over if they really ticked her off.  But in all truthfulness, Jez didn’t really mind being a devil. Her red skin meant that she never got sunburned, though she always felt a bit cold, and her forked tail made multi-tasking so much easier. She had an apartment that somehow didn’t collapse over her head and sometimes decent coffee.

She stepped into the shower, the hot water burning at a comfortable 99 degrees Celsius. As she washed her hair with some shampoo she snatched from a dead lady in a bathrobe, a TV monitor appeared in the shower wall right below the shower head. Jez cursed and grabbed a towel just as the monitor flickered to life showing the red horned face of Mortimer, her coworker.

“Hey sweet cheeks, is this a bad time?” Mortimer twisted his face to look innocent but his eyes gave away that he was well aware she had been taking a shower 5 seconds before his ugly mug appeared in her apartment.

“Very funny, what is it this time?”

“No need to be so grumpy! It’s a level 2, minor spirit, ate part of his cell away to escape, hiding in some human clothing store or something.”

Jez sighed and reached up to check her already drying hair. Nothing was going to save this from being a bad hair day anyway. She stepped out of the shower and slipped into her standard uniform of a black jump suit and black boots. When she went into the bathroom, Mortimer was filing his nails and peeking over his desk to admire the behind of a curvy secretary. Jez rolled her eyes and tapped the screen to get his attention. “Hey, lover boy, are you going to send me through transport or what, I don’t have all day.”

Mortimer snarled at her, showing of his impressive second set of fangs and pushed a big blue button on his control panel. Jez could feel wind in her apartment and could hear a slight humming noise. A light flashed and the far wall of the shower blazed completely white. She stepped through the blinding light and cracked a rare smile, only used for the excitement she felt at the beginning of every new mission. It was time to go demon hunting.