Writing Prompt: With Kindness (Patreon)

While we're between books, I'll be posting a few short stories I did for Reddit Writing Prompts. Some of these could expand, others are one and one, like With Kindness. 

Original Prompt: 

[WP] An angel is getting really tired of being a goodie-two-shoes and wants to try being bad for once. They go to Satan for some advice and after a bit of training, it's becoming pretty clear they suck at being bad. 

 https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/dn5jef/wp_an_angel_is_getting_really_tired_of_being_a/ 

**************

"So, cousin, finally looking to defect," asked Satan as he poured a cup of coffee. 

"W-w-w-well, not exactly," said Angel Third Class Distazo. The shivering woman glanced around the throne room of Hell, trying to rub feeling back into her arms. Her sleeveless white tunic wasn't doing anything to fight the chill. "I g-g-g-gotta say, it's much c-c-colder here than I was expecting."

Satan sighed as he zipped up his parka a bit higher. "You need to read more Dante. We're at the very furthest place in the universe from You-Know-Who and His smothering light." He noticed the misery of his guest. "I suppose you'd like a cup too?"

She nodded emphatically, setting her blonde curls bouncing. "P-please!"

"Good to know," he said, casually sitting down at his desk. Since the last wave of modernization, the throne room had been converted into a setup more akin to a CEO's office. He'd kept the chair made of skulls, though. "If you aren't looking to join the Horde Infernal, then are you here?"

Distazo frowned once she realized she wasn't going to be offered any of the warm drink. She sat down in a smaller chair of bone with a shiver, and not entirely from the cold. "Well, I've been feeling a little dissatisfied with my work lately, and you did offer me a job once."

"I offered everyone a job, back when Adam as a glint in His damned eyes. It's the nature of a rebellion, and you backed Him. However," he said, a grin exposing his cruel fangs, "I'd love to hear what's wrong in Paradise."

"Well, there's just so much misery in the world, and I can only nudge people to try and fix it. I get assigned a patient, and then I have to spend decades trying to make them half decent. I can't think of the last time I didn't... well, the last time I didn't lose a patient to your side."

Satan laughed. "Yes, mass media has been wonderful for that. So you want to get on the winning team?"

Distazo sighed. "I guess I want to weigh my options. You've seen what it's like up there. I feel like I'm tired of respecting Man's free will, and I kinda just want to do my own thing. Would you be willing to let me in on a trial basis?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Trial basis? I can't see Him taking you back."

"I did actually ask permission. He said he wasn't worried about me."

That gave Satan pause. It was the consequence of fighting an omnipotent and omniscient being; things tended to go His way in the end. He couldn't be sure if the best path to spiting his eternal enemy was to reject the girl and be done with it, or to try and corrupt her. 

In the end, his curiosity ran out. "Well, I don't have anything better to do this afternoon. Come along."

***********

"Are these really necessary?" Distazo struggled to keep the fake ram's horns in place as their weight kept making them go this way and that. She had changed into a black corset and a set of thigh high boots that absolutely did not suit her. Ruining the effect further was the large badge labelled trainee pinned above her right breast. 

"It's the uniform," said Satan. "If you do switch, you'll have to get used to having horns."

"Fair enough. So, erm, boss? What's my first lesson?" She looked around nervously. Far from the frozen seventh layer this was more the lake of sulfur and fire she'd been lead to expect. The wailing of the damned was a dull, distant roar that still unsettled her. 

"We're going to test your instincts." He snapped his fingers, and a wispy soul was dragged from a nearby pit. It was laid out in front of them prostrate, still smoking as it experienced its first moments out of the flames in an eternity. "Meet Robert Thompson, soul #435825-B."

"I don't belong here! I'm a good man!"

Satan chuckled. These moments were one of the highlights of his day. "Oh ho? Really? The dog you kicked every morning for the fun of it would say otherwise. So would your partner at the law firm after you screwed him out of his share of the practice!"

Distazo gasped, daintily covering her mouth. "Oh no, you didn't!" 

"It wasn't like that, really," said Robert.

Satan cleared his throat. "We're not here to debate your delusions. Distazo, your mission is to enhance his suffering at least 30% compared to his normal time in the sulfur pits.” The Lord of Hell snapped his fingers again, causing a variety of torture implements to appear out of midair. 

Distazo gulped. “Is this really necessary? I was more hoping to get a middle management position…”

“Snap to it,” Satan bellowed, causing Distazo and Robert to flinch. 

The devil in training reluctant grabbed a cat o’ nine tails, which she judged to be the least horrific tool on offer. She walked over shakily, since she wasn’t used to the high heeled boots yet, and loomed over her target.

“Please, don’t!”

“Well, Robert, the thing is, you have been very naughty. I think that you might deserve this. And I do want this job. So…” Distazo raised the whip, ready to let fly. However, she hesitated when the damned soul began to sob piteously. She knelt down next to him and put a hand on his shoulder. 

“Please, please,” he wailed.

“There, there,” Distazo said, patting him gently. “Look, I know you did some things that you aren’t proud of.”

“I didn’t!”

“Oh, there’s no sense lying now, is there? But I promise, I won’t hit you,” she said, tossing aside the whip. “Would you like a hug?” The damned soul nodded solemnly, so she obliged. 

“Oh, Miss,” said Robert, “you can’t imagine what it’s like in there. This is the first bit of kindness anyone has shown me in so long.”

Satan snapped his fingers again. “Failure! That was the worst torture I’ve ever seen!” Robert was ripped from Distazo’s comforting embrace and flung back into the pit, screaming the whole way down. “What was the idea of that?”

“Well, he already seemed so sad. I didn’t see any reason to add to it.”

Satan massaged his temples. “You’d ask for a job at McDonald’s and refuse to make burgers.” He pulled out an iPad and pulled up Robert’s file. “Look, his misery levels are… wait, 70% higher?”

Distazo’s eyes widened. “Come again?”

Satan read through the file and started cackling. “Oh, I see. That little bit of sympathy made the pit seem all that much worse by comparison. That would almost be clever, if you meant it on purpose.”

“Does that mean I passed?”

“Technically,” conceded Satan. “But you’re on thin ice. You’d never make it as a torturer. However, I might have another position more your speed…”

***************

The pair soon stood in the middle of a modern looking laboratory mixed with a brewery. The sounds of whirring machines and pumping liquids meant they had to shout to be heard over each other. 

Distazo struggled to keep both the false horns and her yellow hard hat on her head. “I’m sorry, what?”

Satan shouted, “This is the biomedical wing! We hand out disease and pestilence here!” He came to a stop in front of a computerized console with an enormous display. He tapped a few pictures, bringing up images of a village in South America. “This farming community is going to have twenty-five babies next year. We’ve managed to get a good swamp set up right next door with enough mosquitos to drain an army dry. Choose which twenty are going to succumb to malaria.” The image shifted to images of the sixty infants.

Distazo gasped. “Twenty?”

“Twenty,” said Satan. “Remember, our mission statement: maximize human misery! Choose the twenty!” He stood aside, letting Distazo have access to the controls.

She stepped over cautiously, looking fearfully at the console. She started going through the profiles. “W-well… I suppose this one has a cruel face… oh, his mother is so nice, though. She doesn’t deserve that…”

She poured over all of the babies before walking away with her shoulders slumped. “I can’t, Satan! They’re just all so cute!”

If Satan had possessed hair, he’d have been pulling it out. “Alright, cousin, it’s time to end this farce. You’re too damned kindhearted. Do you know what would happen if you let them all survive?”

She shook her head. 

Satan paused. “I suppose I don’t either, technically.” He snapped his fingers, and one of the lab workers came over. “You, Mubgub! Run some projections on what happens if we stop killing them off with malaria!”

The rotund demon went to work and handed a printout over to Satan. He didn’t linger, though, since he knew it was less likely to get him a reward than a good smack. 

Satan held up the paper triumphantly. “See, your kindhearted approach would… destroy the village in a generation?” He looked over it again, before his face contorted into a wicked grin. “Oh, I see. They’re slash and burn farmers, and they would deplete the forest quickly if they had all those extra mouths to feed. Once they get to the big city, the only jobs they can get are in petty crime and prostitution, since there’s almost no schooling in that district.”

Distazo’s face turned even whiter. “Oh dear.”

Satan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Distazo, I’d like to offer you a consulting job. Your reflexive kindness pays enormous long term dividends. What do you…”

Distazo had already vanished, returned to her heavenly abode, her corset and uniform left in her wake. That would lead to an awkward conversation with St. Peter about proper work attire. 

“Blasted omnipotent know it all,” he muttered. “Well, at least I’ve learned a few new tricks.” He called out, “Boys, you’re on furlough! We’re gonna kill ‘em with kindness from now on!”

End