Crowziel

A single ominous bat-like black demonic wing and a radiant dove-white angelic wing would have been glorious for Crowziel, but perhaps not suitable for a human envelope™.

She didn’t know if the process of acquiring such enhancements would be more painful down here or up there. What she knew was that both sides would be torturing her with administration. It had taken them from the mastery of fire to the invention of the wheel just to send her back to Hell. This was due to a misprint of her name and her not responding to the messages sent to the wrong address. And all of this was merely to determine whether the plan was viable and if she, Crowziel, was pure enough to serve as Heaven’s ‘human’ spy. What a great choice! They just sent the perfect candidate. Crowziel’s plan was flawless—of course, she had made it herself. She even crafted her own human envelope™ with what she had under the hood at that time, mostly humans. Not that it needed to be said, but it wasn’t the best material—especially compared to what arrived in Hell in those non-days.

Time down here was not a sinecure. Up there it was boring but down here it was… no, in the end, it was boring too. At first, it was promising—she could experience Hell from the fresh perspective of a tormented soul. Mental torture evolved over time, drawing inspiration mainly from humans. Demons toyed with her, crafting illusions of hope or joy—only to crush her all the more afterwards. It was wonky, Crowziel can’t lie on that. But it was sometimes so complex and elaborate that even she lost track of what she was. She lost track of the time spent in her personal-optimised-for-displeasure-place™. Physical torture quickly became redundant. They slashed, broke, burned, poked, cut, bit, whatever harm they could inflict. Only to do it again, and again. They would pause, look at your reaction and there are three possibilities from there. Either you would react like a brat and they’d continue, or you beg for a relief and they would continue or you don’t react anymore and they continue. Crowziel vaguely recalled an era when they forced her to consume anything—lava, spikes, poison, another person, metal, salmon, sink leftovers, compromising documents, even an entire plane and, of course, real human fermented food in all its dreadful forms. As surprising as it can be, on a being like Crowziel the experience turned out to be extremely painful. It was probably because she had never had to “eat” before that. And it was not only the ingestion of food that was degrading and painful. And so, her body, despite or because of the human envelope™, was in pain. The 300 years of documentation she had to fill by blood to review it was the cherry on top. She had always thought it was something her keeper was supposed to sort out, not her. But according to Form 616-B, her suffering quota was insufficient for an entity of her rank. Consequently, before she was able to finish, she had been transferred. It only required a simple 20 000 pages file processing. Surprisingly, after centuries, the pain in question is still deeply present in everything you do, speaking or thinking included. Nevertheless, the impact of it became dull. You get accustomed to it. In the end, Hell became as boring a Heaven.

And today was a strange non-day, nobody had shown up for ages then they moved her to an Interrogation chamber. The room was a black cube disturbingly without any details. So, it was probably an intensive psychological torture non-day. Interrogation in Hell meant torture. Everything in hell meant torture anyways. Dante was too kind in his journal compared to reality. In Hell Interrogation meant they wanted to check the torture was still necessary. If you were too far gone, you were sent to the place of the damned and vanished after that. It was a solution initiated pretty fast near the beginning of Hell due to the popularity of the place and the limitation of qualified employees. You can try to lie, fake your dullness, but lying here was so deeply inscribed in every smallest molecule that failure was inevitable.

Anyway, Crowziel was installed uncomfortably on a plank, slightly inclined to put her upside down, just hanging by her tied ankles and wrists. It had been hours since the imps had dropped her here.

“Few more hours and your head will be redder than my skin,” the Interrogator remarked coldly.

The Interrogator appeared from nowhere. She was red indeed—red and scaled. But all of that was nothing compared to all the fangs sprouting out of each of her visible orifices. The Interrogator loomed over Crowziel, silent, motionless, unblinking from all five… or was it seven? … of her twitching eyes. A blood stain on the black world of the room. A small shadow-demon perched on her shoulder, its yellow eyes and pointy ears barely visible in the darkness. Its cloying sweetness betrayed its presence. And contrary to its mistress it was moving. The shadow leapt onto Crowziel’s chest. Even through her tattered rags, she felt its tiny claws. The creature shivered. It didn’t roar. Didn’t laugh. Didn’t scream. It just shivered. Using what was probably a tail the demon poked Crowziel on her shoulder. It was aimed at a visible patch of skin torn by all previous torments. The small spike was less sharp than a human nail, not even capable of leaving a mark. The shadow, like a cat, took a few steps and poked her again at the same place. It was so precise it seemed unreal. But the shadow-demon repeated its little trick once more. And once more. And once more. And once more. Every little poke aimed precisely at the same spot of skin even if Crowziel moved. The Interrogator was still over her subject. Her fangs started rotating on themselves. Around her lips, her noses, her eyes, the fangs twisted. They sounded like a bunch of twigs burning or broken wooden toys moving for the first time in ages. But the Interrogator didn’t tremble. And the demon was poking again, non-stop. The longer Crowziel stared, the more the creatures dissolved, distorting into smears of unnatural colours. It was not like she was getting tired or her eyes were affected. The two demons’ outlines got fizzy. The silhouettes became blurry. The red scales floated like small bubbles. When they popped a stain of dark red hovered in their place producing a long sound of old metal gong. Those notes were just a little bit louder than the twisting sound of the rotating fangs. The strident melody was enough to cover any sounds that Crowziel could produce. She tried to protest, to joke about the scene getting ridiculous. But no sound came out of her mouth. She didn’t have a mouth anymore, nor a nose. Every attempt to scream triggered a difficult breathing reflex that couldn’t be satisfied. No air could reach her. She was trying to breathe through an impenetrable piece of cloth. She had to rip it off. But her wrists were tied. The metal of her restraints cut deep. She couldn’t squeeze her hands away. The twisting fangs screamed, ear-splitting. Her eardrums throbbed harder than they should have. The shadow-demon tail was slashing through her skin one millimetre at a time. Every poke lacerated deeper than the previous one. Every poke added a strong melting metallic smell to the already strong stench of the room. It had been a moment now her blood was dropping on the floor, joining a resonating dropping to the unbearable music around Crowziel. She screamed silently, helplessly. Nothing escaped her throat. She was banging her head against the plank she was attached to, but it was not enough to produce a sound. She twisted herself, but was deprived of her liberty. Her bonds tightened more and more. She was not able to move anymore. Her chest was stuck, her head was blocked, her jaw was fixed. The Interrogator, the shadow, and the room melted into a puddle of colours mixed in indistinguishable loud screaming patches of liquid tornados. The stentorian roar of the twisting fangs blurred with the hurtful popping of red bubbles. Her shoulder was reduced to a lint of flesh of puking rotten smell. Ripped off, her arm fell on the floor.

“Okay, she still has enough brain for us,” the Interrogator concluded while she unbent.

The shadow-cat-demon jumped back on her shoulder. Crowziel realized her shoulder was still intact. As if nothing had happened. She was able to talk, breathe, produce sounds and even move, in the limitation of her restraints. Talking to any of her tormentors had always been pointless, except once where the guy talked back for a few non-days before being replaced. Crowziel resigned herself to a simple growl of relief.

Then there was silence for long minutes. It gave her a moment to recover from the ordeal. But then it started becoming concerning. She wanted to ask but asking was what most of the tormentors expected to start again. The Interrogator and his pet were nowhere to be seen. But Crowziel could hear someone writing. They were behind the plank she was attached to. Just outside of her sight. The writing continued, the scratching of a crow feather on processed human skin. Administration—THE true nightmare of Hell. But that was long. Too long for a simple century sanity check. She waited. Then.

“Don’t think about interrupting us now,” the Interrogator voice threatened from behind Crowziel’s feet.

So, she waited even longer. The silence was broken three times. Once by a voice, likely the shadow-demon’s judging by its smug tone, muttering ‘There. And there.’. Once by the rustling of a rolled-up page of skin behind her. The third time by Crowziel’s restraints, or maybe human envelope™, cracking when she wanted to see where the Interrogator was. As soon as she tried to move the irons on her wrists tightened up. It was not an illusion anymore. Once again, she waited.

“What do you know about Heaven?”

That wasn’t the question Crowziel expected. She played along, after all she was a human sent to Hell.

“I… I don’t know. It’s the afterlife where good people are sent to, with the Angels and God.”

Crowziel stopped abruptly. That was not what her persona should have said. When she had arrived in Hell, the trend on Earth had still been animistic, some traces of polytheism at best. The notion of gods as something else than just natural forces, the notion of deities was kind of new. Heaven was fun during the predominance of animism. But it impacted the current management up there, in a direction that made no sense today. Before that, Heaven was only one place for everything. During the animalism era, they decided it would be simpler to have one place by metacast, so one place for animals, one for plants, one for humans, one for rocks and the list continues. Debates remained unresolved on where bacteria, comedians, and even words should be sent. The mushrooms had the choice to be sent to Plants, Humans, Dolphins, or Bacteria Heaven. Some debates are probably still running in forgotten places up there. But this schism was not as chaotic as the idea to re-fuse all Heaven back together in one. The counter-reform was so convoluted that, in the end, some animals were sent directly to Hell. And yes, cats are, obviously, sent to Hell, but they voted for it themselves. The special treatments were countless now. And for some reason mushrooms can still choose between Hell or Heaven. They and masks were the only ones that still had this option last time Crowziel checked. It’s always bothered her. She got it for masks, but why mushrooms? They definitely should be sent to Hell if they are red, annihilated if they are spotted and Heaven otherwise, like humourists. It would make more sense.

“A little bit of Christianity propaganda that I detect but we have the essential,” the Interrogator responded without any emotion.

Still out of sight, they scratched something, searched for another document, and scratched more words. They didn’t seem to be bothered by the incoherence of the knowledge of Crowziel.

“Would you try to escape if you could, even if that means being instantaneously annihilated remotely?”

“That’s… oddly specific,” Crowziel remarked.

The Interrogator, all its fangs and the shadow-demon appeared in the side of Crowziel’s vision. Both creatures were taking notes. They were so focused on their piece of human parchment they didn’t give a look at her. And the Interrogator continued.

“Are you allergic to white, feather, light, gold, cloud, words ending with -ism or -ist, or cacti.”

“Nothing, not as far as I know,” she was only allergic to the jokes that spread for too long, and this one started getting old enough to get its own soul.

“I will fill out a form to make sure we test that you do not explode. Are you against working for literal and littoral Hell if a position is offered to you in exchange for a part of your eternal damnation time even if you have to obey a superior with more teeth, eyes or ugliness than you, hermaphrodites excluded?”

“I guess I am, but if you can repeat it more slowly, I will be able…”

“Do you know how to play basketball?” the Interrogator interrupted her.

“No,” Crowziel responded honestly, as she wasn’t sure what instrument it was.

“Good,” the Interrogator commented as her fangs started clicking.

“Do you know how to play the harp?”

“No,” Crowziel lied, as she perfectly knew what instrument it was. She had principles, even after all those non-days.

“Bad,” the Interrogator commented as her fangs stopped clicking.

Crowziel wasn’t sure when this little game would end. The Interrogator was following the document, but how long was it, nobody knew, probably not the Interrogator herself.

“What do you want from me?” Crowziel asked.

“One more question from our side, but be aware that from now you will have only the right to six yourself.”

“Only six?”

“Yes, you have five left. Do you have all your teeth, or do you need a replacement?”

The questions were so stupid that Crowziel was sure it was a new torture strategy at this point.

“I lost all of them apart from one.”

“So?” the Interrogator asked waiting for a more detailed response apparently.

“So yes, a replacement, but for what?”

“Your teeth apparently, it’s in the question,” the Interrogator responded, sincerely annoyed by the obviously evident answer.

“No, I mean, what are those questions for?”

“We want to employ you as a spy in Heaven,” the Interrogator dropped with two wide smiles disfiguring her face.

“Wait, wait, wait! Are you serious?”

Crowziel looked into the dead eyes of the dubious Interrogator, jumping from one to another. In the silence of the moment, the fangs around them clicked raucously.

“I mean you know that I’m a demon, right?” Crowziel hallucinated, starting to believe it was more than a joke and that this Interrogator was really as dumb as a human. But in front of her, more on her side as she was still a prisoner of this torture plank, the Interrogator was still not reacting.

“I thought it was just a game,” the locked spy added, “that finally you had decide to reachout to me to get my report. I mean it’s been at least a couple of millenas now, maybe more.”

“You know you are a human,” the Interrogator laughed, “look at you.”

“No, I assure you it is just an envelope™.”

“Nice try. No envelopes™ are that good.”

“I assure you it is. It is kind of limiting but that’s what makes it so great. Okay, it seems big, but it’s true.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” the Interrogator refused to accept.

They started scratching some notes in the bottom of the document it was handling. Writing so much was not good news. If they send Crowziel back to her personal-optimised-for-displeasure-place™ multiple centuries would go by before someone with more brain cells than a courgette gets her for a report. This game should end, she won’t spend even more time as a low lifeform. Boredom reached a limit that she couldn’t accept anymore. Some standards had to be re-enacted. She would play one more card before ending all of this.

“I was in Heaven before coming back down here,” the attached demon explained.

“But you said you were a demon, not really Heaven type,” the Interrogator falsely tried to make sense.

“I was sent to Heaven.”

“But you are in Hell now.”

“Yes, but I was sent to Heaven as a spy.”

“But you are in Hell now.”

“Yes, they sent me back here.”

“The Angels sent you to Heaven as a demon?” asked the Interrogator puzzled.

“No, the Demons sent me to Heaven as a human, a spy. The Angels sent me to Hell as a spy.”

If the Interrogator was challenged by the complexity of the situation, they were not the right interlocutor. But it would be a really fun time. Anyway, they would end up annihilated. No, Crowziel could find a more inventive way of taking revenge for this lost time.

“The Demons or the Angels sent you?”

“Both.”

“So, you are a spy?”

“Yes! “

“For the Angels?”

“Yes!”

Crowziel was repressing a smile.

“So, we will annihilate you.”

“No!”

She was thinking, “Try it dummy!” But the envelope™ was restrictive. She needed to get out of it first.

“You just literally admit working for the enemy,” the Interrogator noticed. “It’s definitely stupid, but it is what you said.”

“No, I’m a double agent, double is a euphemism here. But the truth is, I’m a demon. Demons sent me to Heaven as a spy embodying a human THEN Angels sent me back to Hell as a spy thinking I was indeed a human.”

“You are a demon in Hell pretending to be a human that has achieved to reach Heaven pretending to be a human sent to Hell.”

“Exactly.”

Maybe, if she was freed now, she would be less cruel and indeed just annihilate the Interrogator. In this case she would be able to play the spy a little longer.

“Out of all human souls up there they selected you, the demon spy, to be their spy?” the demon questioned.

“Yes,” Crowziel responded, tired.

“And out of all humans tortured down there you were randomly selected to be a potential spy.”

“I guess.”

This point turned out to be the funniest point of this chaotic play. This was a point that even she hadn’t planned, and that meant a lot.

“Okay, so first, you think I’m stupid. It’s a tactic but you’re not the first to try it.

But let’s try to get back to stage one. Why would Hell send you and not someone else to Heaven in the first place? “
 The Interrogator was so fun to play with that Crowziel lost sight of the situation she was in for an instant. The sharp and cold metal that restrained her movement still let her freely use her mouth.

“Simple, because I had this brilliant idea of human envelope™ to trick Angels. And I was sure it would work as they don’t really check deeper than their name registry.”

“So, you already had intel on Heaven from another spy.”

“No, from me, when I worked for them as a spy.”

“But you were sent by Hell, so you were in Hell, no?”

“Yeah, before and after that.”

The Interrogator had to sit. She did so on the edge of the plank next to Crowziel envelope™ hips.

Her fangs clicked multiple times as she was trying to make sense of the story. On her shoulder her shadow-demon was chuckling. This one was cleverer than his mistress but didn’t spoil it.

“But how did they, Heaven, accept to let a demon spy for them,” the Interrogator tried to make sense.

“Because they caught me as a pure soul once and when they sent me as a pure soul to Hell I was ‘spotted’ by Demons who sent me back as a spy on Heaven. But I was ‘spotted’ by Angels who thought I was a pure soul pretending to be a human soul pretending to be a demon. So, it was perfect to send me back to spy on Hell.”

“You understand that makes no sense, it’s stupid.”

“Oh yeah, they are! “Crowziel admitted, she knew that more than anybody.

“That is not what I meant but continue.”

If she wanted more, she would have it. Everything was true and it was a delight.

“I was just saying that’s why they sent me.”

“To Hell as human?”

“No to Hell as a human Soul pretending to be a demon spotted by Angels when Angels, no, when Demons ‘spotted’ me as a soul sent to Heaven sent back to Hell.”

“But you have a human body here!” the Interrogator nearly screamed, exasperated.

“A human envelope™, but this time I have to say it’s just pure randomness, luck if we could say.

“So, to go back, you are in Hell, as a human.”

“Yes”

“You were sent here by Angels, as a human spy.”

“Yes.”

“Because we sent you there, as a demon in a human disguise spy.”

“Yes.”

“Because you knew about Heaven because you were there before as a demon.”

“Yes.”

“Because Heaven thought you were a pure soul there, that they sent to Hell and thought you had been spotted by Demons as a fake demon, and Demons sent you back to Heaven as a soul disguised as a demon, and they faked the fact to spot you to send you back, not caring about your demon form, because they thought it was a soul disguised as a demon.”

“I guess but you confuse me here.”

“I’m confusing you?”

Truly she was. Crowziel wasn’t sure if she missed some part or if the diction of the Interrogator was the issue, but, overall, it was more or less that.

“A little I have to admit,” she simply said.

“And before that you were in Hell as a regular demon.”

“Not exactly,” Crowziel spat, as she didn’t appreciate the insult. “I’ve spent time on Earth using human bodies to pass as a spy of Heaven but for Hell.”

“Okay you jumped a lot but at first you were in Hell.”

“I think I was,” Crowziel responded, irritated.

“You think?”

“I mean there is an episode where I was ‘sent’ to Heaven due to an administration chaos and so sent back to Hell after that, but I’m not sure of the timeline anymore on this.

But, Yes. I fell with the first ones from Heaven.”

“So, you were in Heaven first! You are a traitor!”

“All the originals were there first. Learn your History dipshit!” Crowziel groused to drop the act, finally tired of this. “And open your eyes, you have so many teeth that they apparently took all the place and left nothing for a brain!”

“Tough tongue for a prisoner. Think about where you are,” the Interrogator threatened while tightening the wrists of her prisoner up to the point they started to crack painfully. 

“And think about what you are going to endure, insect! You are just too stupid to not see who YOU are talking to. Your maker, your doom, your nightmare. First of them who crawled in Hell. The one who doubted THE. I’m your birth and your end, demon. I’m your king. I’m He, the Favourite, the Leader of the darkest souls, the One fell from Heaven. I’m Lucifer Morningstar!”

Crowziel-Lucifer was still locked to this mundane table but not for long. This nothing of useless demon would be annihilated, not by mercy but because she didn’t want to have even its smell in Hell anymore. The shadow-demon froze in fear and crumbled a few steps back. The atmosphere was so heavy that Hell was finally silent around them. But the Interrogator laughed.

“You don’t have half of the cognitive capacity to see one of the biggest scams put in place in existence even if I gave you details that some would start wars to have a glimpse of. And you dare laugh at your king! Don’t you have the slightest idea what would happen to you if you don’t free me right now!?” Crowziel-Lucifer yelled, moving so erratically that her envelope™ started being torn apart.

The Interrogator stopped laughing, still two huge smiles slid down her face.

One second after, the room became darker than anything can be. Pikes, blades, fangs and poisons broke Crowziel-Lucifer, piercing her physically and mentally. The cold froze her instantaneously while the deepest flame of Hell burned every millimetre of her. All her bones were reduced to dust in deafening explosions. A presence crumbled her mind, covering each of her existence past present and future, taking over her as one message ripped through.

“You made your last mistake spy as,

I
 AM

LUCIFER!”

The Lucifer-Interrogator made a sharp hand move and Lucifer-Crowziel was sucked back into her old usual personal-optimised-for-displeasure-place™. The cubic black room turned back just to that, a cubic black interrogation room empty of a subject to interrogate.

The Interrogator wrote down more notes. She was visibly furious or maybe more disappointed by the situation. Her hand moved angrily while writing, menacing to slice the human-parchment.

The shadow-demon turned to the Interrogator. It hesitated, knowing it could be the next one. Ultimately with its sighing voice it asked:

“So, are you Lucifer? “

“No,” the Interrogator responded  to its incredulous pet. “It was just a trick. She was really a too-far-gone,” spat the Interrogator still pissed.

“Or a really good Lucifer”

The Interrogator was on the verge of denying firmly. This soul disturbed her deeply, was she really crazy or part of a biggest scam. But after a second thought, she had to play along.

“Maybe,” the angel Ramiel said in his Interrogator disguise, to Lucifer trying to pass as a mundane Co-Interrogator-shadow-demon, not aware about what was really the Angels’ plan here.