Chapter 1: Translate Hell to Me

What the hell?

It was a place of the worst nightmares a man could dream of.

Spikes, traps, devices that cut into the flesh as if eating a piece of pudding.

Matthew knew it was a bad idea to wake up on a Sunday; he would usually sleep in.

Getting run over by a truck was just the start of his disastrous morning.

The sky was bright, the streets were clean, and Matt's body lay mangled in a pile of blood, run over by a trucker.

He hadn’t even seen it coming, but as he faded into unconsciousness he heard a voice.

“He should go to heaven.”

“No, no sloth of sin, that's not your task at all.”

“You need to be more discerning, just look at him, quite a pathetic worm and not calm at all”

“I refuse to play your word games, demon, tell me what I must do.”

“Hehekeke I just want one of your wings!” The voice suddenly shifted tones, an extreme and abrupt change.

“Preposterous! Ask for something else!”

“If the life of a human is not worth the life of an angel then.”

“Such a hypocrite, such a shame, such a shame.”

“YOU!”

“Well… it's my cue to say bye then!” Another cackle. And perhaps the gritting of teeth.

Matthew was now falling, but he was firmly in something’s hands. It burned.

“Matt, Matt. I have a deal for you. You have nothing but time now, so become one of my subordinates and you’ll not suffer so much.”

Matt could do nothing but groan, he was in no state to respond.

“You see this? This is a contract. Just mentally agree and wipe some blood onto it. Ready? Here we go!”

Matt couldn’t think, let alone agree to anything.

“Tsk. A lame then eh? You know that you’ll just be in more pain if you don’t manage to agree. Let's try this again.”

The demon seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in shoving the piece of paper into Matt’s wounds, making him scream in agony each time. Matt hadn’t even seen the contract yet.

The pair began to accelerate, and Matt burned up in agony.

“Ah, there’s no way you’ll agree now. Waste of time.”

The demon vanished as Matt fell into a red hellscape, the hole he arrived in already disappearing, shrinking into nothingness.

Matt’s mind sharpened, allowing him to experience the pain more thoroughly.

He now had enough sense through the pain to panic as the ground fast approached him.

Shutting his eyes while his body was erupting was pain, he hoped for a cleaner death.

Perhaps it was a dream, the pain a consequence of animals or acid, or bones or whatever else?

A stroke of luck, or a stroke of fate, Matt landed feet first into lava.

His legs broke at the impact, bones jutting through burned flesh.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

Soon enough the pain consumed all of his thoughts, all he could do was flail about until he removed it all from him, then crawled, limping out of the pool of lava.

A group of red-blue blurs appeared.

Snickering, one poked Matt with a brown stick. Despite the burned nerves and the ruined flesh, it still hurt.

Matt screamed once again, somehow finding the strength to express his pain.

The creatures, long-tailed and short, scurried away at the sudden sound.

‘W-what is happening?’

‘This… can’t be hell.’

Shakily, Matt moved.

While he wasn’t able to move an inch when he got run over, nor was he able to call for help, in hell he found strength. Strength is given to allow for greater pain.

Pools of lava brought with them immense amounts of heat.

Matt’s legs were crushed, melted, and still a source of pain.

Even moving for an instant felt awful.

So he mostly laid there, moving only to feel slightly less pain by avoiding the ever-encroaching lava.

The magma had other bodies in them, some held up on spikes as if roasted and to be eaten. Other victims barely kept their heads aloft, their screams drowned out in the din of the ground and flame.

Creatures of all sorts and shapes flew by.

Dolls the size of trucks, crushing bones and bodies together. The maw of an octopus, entirely filled with sharp teeth and placed onto a shark as if ahead. Numerous skulls are connected by a long spine.

An orb pulsing with veins, the screaming victims lathered all around it. A man slicing up pieces of himself and corpses to feed a big gross rat.

The place was full of creatures, many of which took great pleasure in abuse.

Bodies rained from the sky, some falling into the lava, some right into mouths, or quickly caught and readied to be dissolved by a red-green plant the color of puke and blood.

So shocked Matt was with these sights that he took a deep breath.

That turned out to be a mistake as smoke clogged his lungs, whereas before he had no need to breathe it was now all he could struggle with or think about.

Something picked him off of the ground, winding him.

It wasn’t a tight grip, something Matt was thankful for.

Demonic screeches all around, clouds of ash, rain of blood, disgusting fluids pouring from whatever “buildings” he could see.

Why could he think? Why wasn't he dead? Where was he?

“I’ll be frank with you, you don’t look like you can sell well.” The demon said.

“But if you don’t sell well, you become feed for Rata, a shame for a determined soul.”

The place Matt was carried was a bit quieter, through a crack in the wall into a pulsing room, covered with sharp impediments and containers half-filled with blood.

“Get working, or face punishment. They better look blood-filled when I’m back.”

The cuts on the walls made it obvious the task Matt was asked to do, but instead, he fell asleep, finally succumbing to exhaustion.

~~~

“Oh dammit, you’re feed then.”

“Nooe” A desperate cry.

“And why not?”

“I’ll sell all welk” Matt’s wounds were somehow stitching back together.

The demon seemed to grin then, before lashing out with a kick, the same kick he had used to wake him up before.

It hurt.

“I’ll sell well…”

A punch this time.

“I’ll…”

“Wow, still think you’ll sell well, you dumbass?”

“I would call you a retard for being in such a state, but come on, I’m thinking I’ll enjoy this a bit more.”

Matt stayed silent, staring at the red horns, the slitted eyes, the circular cheeks, and the disproportionate humanoid body with red patches all over. The fur this thing wore was dirty, grimy, and blood-soaked.

The start of his suffering, was it? Matt would prove that wrong, he thought.