Rebellex Pre-Dominus, Office Manager
Rebellex Pre-Dominus, Office Manager
Damnation Corporation, A Short Story
Rebellex Pre-Dominus
Office Manager
Damnation Corporation
Of course Hell needs a filing system. How else do you think we would keep track of who did what, what their punishment is, and for how long they should be down here?
I’m just kidding, there is no time limit. They’ll be down here forever, but you already knew that, didn’t you? You don’t need me to tell you that.
Oh, who am I? My name is Rebellex Pre-Dominus, Office Manager to Satan, Prince of Darkness, high lord supreme, Yada Yada and all that fun stuff. Let me tell you, you humans all think your boss is the devil, but I work for the actual devil.
No, I’m not joking, he had lunch with Beelzebub last Friday. A picnic in the valley of the forsaken coordinated by — you guessed it — yours truly. Ravens brought them the fresh flesh of rapists who thought they got away with it in life. I know! A delicacy. Do you have any idea how long I had to wait on the phone to secure that little party trick? But his gloriousness likes to impress his top generals, and who’s left making sure their egos are sufficiently propped and fluffed? Yours truly.
Oh well, it’s worth it. I’m making my way to the top. Been around five thousand years and still going. I know I know; I don’t look a day over three thousand six hundred and forty-nine. I take weekly trips to the spa, bathing in the excrement of the damned. There’s never a shortage, of course, what with the techniques of our highly skilled torturers. The important part is the nature of the convicted soul producing the excrement. Our tests have proven that the more deluded the soul in life, or you would say the more hypocritical, the more effective the anti-aging results. It has to do, I believe, with a willingness to ignore reality, and a determination to misperceive the truth. The greater the lack of self-awareness in the patient in life, the younger I look.
Yes, I do that sometimes, the purring. As you can tell, my demonic genome expresses itself with what you would call feline traits. Hence the cat eyes, and my long, lovely claws. But don’t be deceived; all of this takes quite a bit of care and maintenance on my part. To get claws this long and polished, I have a standing appointment with the refinery. The furnace where they forge weapons of destruction and flagellation. The last time I was there, they gave me a private tour of his insidiousness’s baby, the Armageddon Machine. It’s coming along nicely.
I know, it needs a better name than that. Granted he’s got all of human history to devise something catchier, but this working title seems to have stuck. I swear, if I wasn’t around to name things with proper malicious intent, we’d be left with torture devices called “pointy-thingy,” and “smelly bugs” or “stinky-stuff,” rather than “Rectus-Prongus” and “Malodorous-Mites.” I know. You’re welcome for that bullet dodged.
Did you know, that’s one of our torture clinics? A shooting range in which the patients must dodge the bullets. Demons tend to have terrible aim, but it is a rather rigged system, so the bullets nearly always find flesh. This is a particularly favorite torture system for the humans who spent all their time in life playing first-person shooter games instead of pouring back into society and doing the works that the High One prepared in advance for them to do. They chose to sit on their butts and pour their lives into little electric boxes that made not one lick of difference to the course of the world, and so now they get to spend eternity running hither and thither. They’re good sports about it too. Once they’ve bled out and “died,” they get another “life” they just keep running. They’ve played enough video games to understand their role in this one, obliging chaps.
The phone rings.
One moment.
Rebellex picks up the old rotary dial phone on her long desk. Also on her desk is a pile of papers she was sorting through and labeling with a big rubber “DAMNED” stamp, a desk cactus, and a collection of thumb-tacks, freshly chopped. There is also a framed black and white picture of her lord and master, Satan, at a three-quarter profile to perfectly display his horns.
“Hello, offices of his majesty, prince of darkness, this is—”
The voice on the other end of the line cuts her off. She purses her lips in irritation, but dutifully writes on a Post-it note:
“Tornado moved up three years. Call politicians to coordinate.”
The phone clicks off. She sighs and replaces it.
What’s it like to work for his darkness? A pain in my ass, let me tell you. I’ll bet he polishes his horns every morning and grooms his tail in the evening. No, probably he gets someone else to do that for him. Probably the same minions who bring him coffee. I’ll bet he cracks their balls for beans. Would it kill him to say ‘thank you’ every once in a while? How about turning on a little of that ‘morning-star charm’ for me, his most loyal subject? When he first announced his decision to go independent, launching his own venture, I was the first one to follow. It was just like that scene in Jerry Maguire. I’m basically Renée Zellweger.
Anyway, at least I get to sit in and take notes on the Classified Temptation & Destruction Schedule. They were discussing the quarterly statement of souls left in their charge and brainstorming new ways of channeling souls to Hell. “Cell-Phone Highway” came out of one such meeting. A brilliant campaign. The patients hardly noticed a difference once they arrived.
The phone rings. And rings. Rebellex stares at it. It stops.
Speaking of campaigns, the wars started over the latest political intrigue was a stroke of genius. No longer are the pigs interested in the good, the moral, and the upright, but the latest scandal over who was the most disgusting. Either we get them for bigotry, or bigotry. They seem very content to argue with each other all the way down. The best part is that we didn’t even have to invent a torture system for them once they arrived; we just put them in a wide-open space. They scream their heads off at each other, no chains required.
The phone rings again. She sighs and rolls her eyes.
One moment.
She picks it up.
“Hello, offices of his majesty, prince of darkness, this is Rebellex Pre-Dominus speaking, how may I help you?”
As Rebellex listens, we hear the demon on the other end squawking. She selects one of her thumb-tacks and presses it to her chin as she listens, tilting back in her chair.
“Well, have you tried the whips?... Everyone says they’re here by accident.”
She listens and then frowns, sitting up slowly.
“He used the J-word? I’ll send the Matthew 7:21 division down to you immediately.”
She reaches into her desk drawer and pulls out a bright red paper airplane. On it is written in official letters: “J-Alert” and on the wings “Matt 7:21.”
She carries it primly over to a window. She opens it, and the screams rise through the room. Rebellex takes a deep breath of satisfaction, closing her eyes and just taking it in.
Then she expertly throws the red paper airplane through the window.
We really ought to update their phone system, but it’s unlikely a follower of THE WAY made it this far into Hell. Still, you can never be too careful. Mistakes have happened. There was that whole “debacle,” two millennia ago now, when the very gates of Hell were thrown open. It was a free-for-all! Anybody who wanted could just stroll right out, and their mother too. It was a nightmare.
She shivers at the memory.
Three days of sheer chaos, and not the good kind. Souls snug in their torture chambers for hundreds of years, released like that.
She snaps her fingers. She frowns in confusion.
What? You don’t know what I’m talking about?
A cat-like malicious smile crawls over her face.
Don’t worry, dearie, we’ll see you soon, and then we’ll tell you all about it.
She shakes a teacherly finger.
And mind you, don’t you be using His name when you don’t really know Him. Our Matthew 7:21 division spent their cradle years developing techniques during the Roman Empire.
She walks back to her desk and sits.
Anyway, it was a fiasco. All the paperwork out of order. No idea who had gone, who stayed, and what they were in for. We had to invent a whole new dating system After the Debacle. It *might* have been yours truly who floated that idea during one of our initial restructuring meetings. Get it? A.D.? “After Debacle.” You’re welcome. Only the best minds up here at the top of Damnation Corporation.
She shuffles more papers and slaps a “DAMNED” stamp on the top sheet, continuing onto the next as she goes.
I won’t say we have a perfect system. But we’ve managed Satan’s soul torturing since the dawn of the fall, certainly since before you were born. You could say we invented business.
Rebellex puts the papers into a folder marked “Review...Never.”
Yes, alright, fair. We didn’t invent “business,” per se, but we certainly improved on it. Business’s greatest hits: embezzlement, bureaucracy, insider trading, the cubical? All us.
She puts the folder into another drawer with similarly snide labels and slams it shut.
The phone rings again. She answers it.
“Hello, offices of his majesty, prince of darkness, this is Rebellex Pre-Dominus speaking, how may I —” he breaks off and pales. “What? How can that be? How is that possible? No — No — Yes — I understand— ” She glances at the photo of Satan on her desk. “No- I don’t think that’s — well of course he’ll have to be notified if that is the case. But let’s not boil our eggs before we’ve laid them, shall we? Just... bring him up.”
She slams the receiver down and begins digging through her desk drawer, pulling out file after file, making a mess.
No-no-no-no-no-no-no! Not good, not good! It can’t be. Surely we got him on something!
She snatches one of the THUMBS-tacks and devours it.
Don’t look at me that way. I need this.
A loud knocking on her door. She swallows the thumb wolfishly, tosses the pick, and straightens her clothes.
“Enter.”
In walks a demon dragging a damned soul on a chain. He’s shaking, clothes ripped and torn, soot on his face. Belladon styles a cute pair of overalls, with two stubby horns on her head. Her pupils are oblong, like a goat.
“Belladon.”
“Rebellex,” the new demon greets.
Rebellex makes a face, but she can’t help herself. “Nice overalls.”
“Thanks. So who screwed up?”
Belladon shoves the sniveling moaning Jake onto the floor before Rebellex’s desk.
“You, obviously. Since you should be torturing souls instead of taking field trips above your pay grade.”
“I tried. He just keeps claiming the J-word.”
“I sent the Matthew 7:21 division,” Rebellex chides.
“They didn’t do anything. They ran in terror. That means he really is a child of THE WAY. Vis-a-vis: someone screwed up his paperwork. Vis-a-vis: you screwed up.”
Rebellex searches through her paperwork.
“I doubt it, nobody gets this far without belonging here.”
She finds a document with a picture of the soul stapled to the front.
“Ah, look, here he is: Jake Pendon, 22. Guilty of fraud, gossip, taking the Lord’s name in vain— ” She breaks off, tutting at a weeping Jake. “Really, you humans are so foolish. Even we don’t do that.” She continues reading. “Lust and therefore adultery. Hate, and therefore murder. Yep, all the big ones.”
She slaps the page down and notices something. She sighs with huge relief.
“Ah, here’s the problem. Just a processing error.”
She grabs her big red “DAMNED” stamp. With gusto and pleasure, she stamps it down on the page. She lifts it. Nothing is there. She frowns. Tries again. Nothing. She tries again and again. Nothing.
“I repented. I’ve been set free,” Jake says, sobbing. “I claim the blood of the lamb!”
An earthquake rocks the room. An enormous Gong! echoes through the warehouse. Rebellex and Belladon hiss in furry. Belladon yanks the chain and Jake falls back. Too late.
A shadow appears behind a frosted glass door. The title on the door reads, “Satan, Prince of Darkness, Ruler of the Mortal Realm.”
Oh no...
The door cracks open, and Satan walks through. He’s got horns but is surprisingly dashing in a three-piece suit.
“Rebellex, I’m in the middle of some very important work. What is all the noise about?”
Completely cowed, Rebellex grovels. “Nothing your excellency. Just a drill, your gloriousness. Nothing to worry about, my high king. We’ll set it straight. A thousand years apologies for disturbing you, your magnanimousness.”
“I don’t belong here! I am a child of God!” Jake shouts.
A gong echoes and the room shakes.
Rebellex wilts. Belladon takes a big step back, dropping the leash.
Satan walks up to Jake, sneering down at him. He reaches out to touch Jake but snatches his hand back at the last moment. He turns to Rebellex.
“Rebellex. You have made an error.”
“It can’t be!”
Satan’s stare is like a branding iron, but she’s determined not to be left holding the bag.
“Look! I have his permanent record right here. Gluttony, sloth, it’s all there!”
“Turn it over,” Satan orders.
Trembling, Rebellex turns it over.
On the back, in small font at the bottom:
“DEBT PAID. Do not touch.”
Rebellex swallows. A bead of sweat rolls down her temple. She clears her throat.
“It seems... there has been...a clerical error.”
A knock echoes through the room. They all look to another frosted door. On the other side is the glowing shadow of two beings with what appears to be angel wings.
Rebellex pales further.
Shit.
“You,” Satan snaps a finger at Belladon. “Dispose of the trash.”
Belladon eases forward and unlocks the throat manacle. Jake runs to the door, stumbling and crying.
“Oh, thank God! Praise God! Praise His Holy Name!”
The door swings open and brilliant bright light blinds them. Magnificent world-ending glorious music accompanies. Belladon shrieks in terror and, too close to radiance, melts away in a pool of smoke. Rebellex turns away to shield herself against the holy light, cringing at her desk. Her papers go everywhere in the furious windstorm.
Even Satan blinks. Then with a wave of his hand, the door slams shut, and the music ends. A whirlwind of white angel feathers scatter across the floor.
A feather floats innocently near Rebellex’s head. She fans it away in disgust. Then a shadow falls over her. She looks up.
Satan is pissed. Time for damage control.
“Yes sir, I agree, I will personally hold to account whoever is responsible for bringing down a soul that was not ours by rights.”
Wordless, he holds out his hand. She deflates but lifts her hand to his.
He takes one finger, a perfectly polished talon. With both hands, he breaks the talon.
Rebellex screams. But torturous screams are nothing new in this place, even the screams of demons, which are significantly more gruesome, and no one pays her any heed.
Sometime later, Rebellex is once again shuffling papers and typing away with a full set of cracked talons. She focuses on her work, absorbed in her own dark thoughts.
I’ll show you. Just watch and wait. All of us tailing around you, you thankless bastard. Your kingdom would be nothing, nothing without me. Someday, just you wait. I swear you’ll get what’s coming to you.
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