The Devils Advocate

Cast me down to the pits of Hades
This Sin is in my flesh

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1

They bent his wings back, tight and uncomfortable, they bound them in leather belts. And they cuffed his wrists with burning shackles of stone, knowing he wouldn’t even try to break through them.
The walls were made of concrete. The ceiling and the stairs and the doors. They were all grey, they were all wet, sweating the stench of Sulfur and Sin. Mostly that. The intoxicating seduction of Sin.
They pushed him through the door. The sudden heat suffocated him, thick and murky and wet. He’d tasted this before, just once. But it wasn’t the same.
They were lined up, all the sinners in chains wrapped about their necks. And he was last, not a resistant bone in his body for what would come.
What was that?
They through the last rope of chains over his neck, and a black sheet over his face.
“they move, you move,” the sweaty worker said.
And he nodded, his eyes to the ground.
And they started walking. He stumbled over the first step of the stairs. They sneered back at him.
And the blistering heat grew hotter.
The staircase was endless. A swirl, endlessly descending into the pit of hell. His punishment for Sin. She plagued him.
They walked so tiredly. Grudgingly sliding each foot off the step, stomping it down on the next. They never ended. They walked down, and they kept walking, descending, descending, descending.
And then the faint echo of his laugh chilled their spines. Along with two others, in soprano voice.

The Devil’s Advocate lounged in wait as they lined up there before him. His crooked crown of razor blades and diamonds and all things that shined, glistened in the fire light. Two mimes grinned on either side of him. Fans in their hands.
“Finally,” he laughed, “let‘s see them.”
He jumped from his throne, stood before the first fallen angel, and ripped the black sackcloth from his head.
He had brown hair.
“oh fiddle, you can do better.”
The next was burgundy. As was the next, and the fourth. One by one he ripped off their cloths finding brown, red, black even.
“what the hell is this? What kind of angles are you?”
The last one, finally, was white.
“Ahh! Yes, now this is something to play with. Front of the line.”
The angle did as he was told and the advocate sat back on his throne.
“right, now. What‘s your name?”
“I am undeserving of title, leave me nameless in shame.”
“nonsense, tell me your name.”
“sinful, and grotesque, call me the fornicator, the Judas.”
“for Christ sake, it‘s just a name.”
“I am the foul-”
“okay never mind, I don‘t care. It‘s probably something boring like… Peter, or something.”