Short Stories

The Problem With Lucifer's Heir

** Before reading: For context, this is based on a comic I plan to create one day. Read if you dare. **

A young man tip-toed silently down a dark, damp corridor. The stone was almost black and the torches of purple flame did not do much to light the hall. He kept close to the wall, not making a sound, sweat dripping down his forehead until finally his eyes betrayed him and his foot clashed with a heavy wooden door.

The sound was not too loud.

With a swift glance behind him, he felt for the heavy iron handle and pulled until a bright gray light slowly filled the hall. Quick as a cat, he slipped out the door and pulled it closed behind him.

Hell had a dull sun, and day and night the skies in Limbo were only shades of gray clouds. Some mornings would be lighter gray, as this one, and nights would be almost black. Most days were darker gray and if it hadn't been for his father's infernal time system, it would be hard to tell the days apart.

The boy wiped the sweat from his brow and the base of the who large horns which protruded from the corners of his hairline. He gazed at the enormous black castle reaching far into the sky behind him, where his annoying father would no doubt be somewhere yelling at someone with papers in his long-fingered hands.

He swiftly turned and made his way down the enormous hill on which the castle sat. Below was a moat of boiling hot blood, which he couldn't swim across. He had been a smart boy, and a boy for a long time, so he had long since build a rickety, unsteady bridge across it with a ladder on the other side. One would think the lack of railings and the bouncing of the bridge was enough to say no, but this was no ordinary young man and he enjoyed the splashing of the blood against his pant legs, singeing and creating holes.

He was across and up the ladder in no time, the bridge swaying with the strong current of the moat. Off into the lower expanse of the first circle he went. Trees rose around him as he went, scarcely at first and eventually they grew so close together he had to stick to the small, dingy gray path down the middle. No mortal could ever survive the journey unmolested. The creatures of the forest knew who the young man was and they knew there would be no mercy so those who dared touch him. It bored the boy, but satisfied his father.

The trees eventually thinned and the true gem of Limbo stood a league away. The lower city seemed like it might be some breath of life into this gloomy place, but such was not true. The people below were docile and lame, so bored in their mediocre simulation of life that they could hardly function. The older they were the more their gloomy faces sagged, miserable in their false heaven. The young man would have liked to visit the enormous castle and its seven gates where the other shades were so miserable they almost could not move, but he needed a shade that could carry its own weight.

The outer buildings in the city were small and plainly colored, they looked as though they could have been elegant on the outside but the architecture was morphed and ugly. The same problem plagued the bigger houses and businesses leading closer to the inner castle. They were even more disgustingly detailed and plain, sandy in feeling. There was never trash, but dust covered everything. It was on city streets, on the seats they sat on, even on the packaging of the flavorless food they ate when they could muster the competence to do so.

He picked a pretty confused girl standing in a park of hot sand, who would be his age if he was human, she had dark hair like he did and dressed as if she had been here an extremely long time. Her skin cast a ghostly blue glow. She couldn't see him, and he took her wrist, leading her out of the city and back into the thick forest.

He'd had to carry the girl down the ladder and across the bridge, since when he coaxed her to do both she merely walked lamely in any direction and would have been lost to the moat had he let her walk herself. Her constant squirming nearly killed him, but his blood was rushing fast and his yellow eyes were alight with life he hadn't felt in a while. Up the hill they trudged, he was out of breath now and his calf muscles burned with the stress of the walk. The sky above had turned a deep gray already, and he pushed the heavy wooden door open once more.