I don’t mind the screams or the begging now, or even when they cry for forgiveness. I’m not allowed to feel remorse or empathy, given my position—it makes me weak, and I’ll do anything to make sure the roles are never reversed again.
But after being here for so long, I couldn’t feel anything toward them if I tried.
I was sent to this godless place because of one act of desperation and a curse from an asshole who should be suffering down here instead of me.
I raise my arm and bring the weapon down, deaf to the crack of thunder and the ensuing screams.
The human souls that meet my whip belong here. They’ve all done something in their life to deserve it. Murdered, maimed, raped, trafficked—heinous acts that deserve far worse than what I’m doing.
And yet the man who stabbed me in the chest over a single stolen object cast me into Hell to be tortured like one of the sinners. Because he didn’t just curse me to be stuck here for eternity; he turned me.
I went through years of torture—centuries. I was forced to stand in the same position this sinner is in now and take every snap of leather against my skin. It became a normal day. Pain. Screams that tore open my voice box. Begging. Bleeding. Passing out over and over again. Enduring the mental agony of watching my brother die in far too many ways.
All because that asshole turned me into a fucking demon.
It was unpleasant, to say the least.
Until I was taken down and led to the room I now share with a fellow human turned monster and told I was being trained for my new position as a torturer.
“Open your eyes,” I snap. “Look at me.”
The sinner does not.
He squeals when I grab his face with my large hand and sink my claws into his cheeks. His blue eyes ping open, and I grin through my torment. “There we go.”
That first day, I had the misfortune of thinking I was about to be forced to torture my little brother. Dylan’s eyes had staredback at me from someone else’s face, and before I struck, I’d asked my victim his name.
That was my first and last mistake.
He wasn’t Dylan. But my hesitation came with a price. Even though I’m the one who inflicts pain now, my worst curse is that I have to stare into perfect replicas of Dylan’s blue eyes—mybaby brother’s eyes—every single time.
That’s when my real torture began. My new lifetime of suffering—torturing others who look like the little brother I left behind, with no one to look after him.
I pause when I realize I’ve lashed so hard I accidentally decapitated the asshole, then sigh and wipe the blood from my face, dropping the leather weapon on the ground. He’ll wake up in his room at some point. Hopefully soon. I want to make him suffer a little longer given he killed his own children and then his wife.
Useless, pathetic piece of shit.
Tony, one of the shifting hellhounds, comes to stand beside me, crossing his arms and inspecting my work. His hair flops over his face—long, thick, golden strands he always brushes back with his overlarge hands. He’s shorter than me, which has always pissed him off because I never stop reminding him.
“You aren’t focused today,” my annoying friend says as he looks at the puddle of guts and pulverized organs on the ground. “The big man is going to send you back to the dungeon, and I don’t think I can last that long without you again. Who’s going to hold my hair when I’ve had too much to drink?”
A few years in the dungeons sound delightful. I don’t mind when I’m sent there.
It beats having to cover my ears while Nala, Tony’s little fuck buddy, is in our room and all I can hear is the headboard slamming off the wall and the mixture of roars and cries and whatever other noises they make.
“You say that like we converse further than you talking about yourself or your hound-self ripping me to pieces.”
He chuckles and kicks aside the severed head. “What’s on your mind?”
Everything.
Escaping this place and finding my brother. Sleeping. Passing to somewhere less evil and more peaceful and ending this curse.
Hiding from the demoness I fucked, who’s decided that we should do more than just sleep together.
Revenge on the family who put me down here for eternity—revenge on their entire fucking bloodline.
“I’m fine.”
