Ineffable

The Eighth Circle of Hell

Crowley rented the fastest speedboat he could find. He took it out into the bay off Grand Bahama Island. He pressed down on the throttle, pushing the boat to maximum speed, wind in his face, circling back to catch the waves. He looked quite fetching he knew, bare chested, wearing only white shorts and a jaunty cap. And his sunglasses, of course.

It was meant to be fun, but Crowley wasn't having fun.

After a few hours of non-fun fun he anchored the boat off West End Point. He sat and had a think.

Crowley had a big problem. It isn't in a demon's nature to fall in love.

But he couldn't let it go, couldn't deny it any longer. He had, against his better judgement, against his very nature, fallen in love.

The realization had been coming to him gradually, very gradually, over the past 500 years or so. Not so very long, in the greater scheme of things. It had started with that blasted poet, who became such a big deal later, that William Shakespeare. Aziraphale had really been in love with him, though he wouldn't admit it. Aziraphale had been taken with his sweeping intellect, his nimble wit. And of course, his handsome face. But Crowley had known. Crowley always knew, pretty much, what Aziraphale was feeling. He wasn't that hard to read. He wore his heart on his sleeve, as the saying went. If nothing else, the subtle changes of light in the room gave his emotions away.

But - here was the thing - Crowley had minded. Crowley had been jealous. Which, in a demon, is probably as close to love as you can get.

Crowley had a bottle of scotch stowed in the boat. He got it out and watched the sun set and had a drink. Then he had another. The waves lapped gently at the boat. The trade winds blew softly. A school of dolphins swam past, jumping and frolicking in the calm water. The moon rose. The stars wheeled across the sky. The level in the bottle steadily declined. By dawn Crowley was properly pissed. But it hadn't solved a thing.

He waved his hand, drawing the alcohol out of his body and back into the bottle. Weary but sober he headed the boat back to port. He had a meeting in Hell in a few hours. No point in being late for that.

********

There is a special place in Hell for creative people. The artists and actors, the singers and comedians, the jugglers and jesters. It is an endless room, with a low ceiling, cluttered and airless, receding into the mists of time. The room is filled with desks, and at each desk sits a human soul, working away at a keyboard. The task is data entry, and the data never stops coming. The room echoes with the tapping of many keys.

This room has evolved over the ages. Three thousand years ago, it was filled with the sound of hundreds and hundreds of quill pens, scratching on parchment, tallying heads of cattle and bushels of wheat. But the stuffy and joyless nature of the place has remained unchanged.

Crowley knew that he could never be a proper demon, because he hated this room. Always had. Certain places in Hell, the fiery pits, the torture chambers, the endless mountains where boulders were endlessly pushed upwards, before rolling to the bottom once again - these places had, he felt, a certain medieval charm, a certain style, that he could appreciate, if not actually enjoy. But this airless room, that smelled eternally of farts and hopelessness, had alway given him the heebie jeebies.

He walked through, looking neither right nor left, feeling that uncomfortable tinge of guilt that he always got in this place, because his ideas had contributed to its making. Computers, data entry, menial jobs within low pay and no hope of advancement, these things were his inventions, and the demons of Hell had taken enormous, fiendish delight in twisting them to their ends.