cupid clearly hates me.

[ 2 ]

Your head felt completely blank for several seconds. Alastor watched you all the while, his attentive eyes unblinking, observing you.

"Wait, I- uh, what?" you stuttered, looking again from Alastor to the city to the trees. More cars were on the road now, you could see them crossing through an intersection nearby, but none of them turned your way. You and Alastor were still standing in the center of the road, where the dirt part of it came to meet the cement. "I'm in... hell?"

"Why, yes. Is that not something you believed in? The heaven and hell controversy? I've heard sooo many ignorant people tell me about how they used to think the afterlife was a lie because there's no scientific evidence to prove it." Alastor slid a grey tongue across his upper row of fangs. "And they ended up here. But you know better than that, don't you?" He said the last question like a statement, like he knew what you would say before you even answered.

You cleared your throat and felt the fog in your head begin to fade. The more you blinked, the faster the dazed feeling washed away. "Yes, I believe hell exists, but-"

"Great! Why don't I show you around?" Alastor sang before wrapping one thin arm around your waist. He kept the other tucked behind his back. That weird, mysterious formal air hung about him like a pungent stench.

Before you could utter a word of protest, Alastor began to walk down the street, pulling you along with him.

The city lights illuminated the path before you as the two of you walked down the sidewalk. Alastor pointed at a few buildings, a club, a bar, another club. Your eyes were drawn to almost everything you saw. One sign above the second club Alastor pointed at—the one he said was great if you planned on taking drugs until you fell into a coma—had a neon pink sign above it with a skull logo and everything. Although you loved a good party, the thought of entering that building made you sick to the stomach. You were sure it was full of more... creatures.

"And over there-" Alastor pointed one thin finger at a tall, slightly tilted to the side building. It had a large stone awning over the massive doors at the center, and somehow, it looked different from all of the other places, but you couldn't pinpoint why. "-is the Happy Hotel. It was made to rehabilitate demons, if you can believe that," he said. You looked at him, just for a second, but in that moment you saw the way his face changed. His eyes seemed to gloss over, and his smile darkened in what you thought was a threatening way as he stared at the Happy Hotel. You felt the arm that was wrapped around your hips tighten.

"Why would demons need to be rehabilitated?" you asked, just because you felt like it was the question he wanted to hear.

Sure enough, your words seemed to snap him out of his odd state and the light in his eyes renewed. "Well, that's a long story." Alastor slid his arm out from under yours and replaced it behind his back. "Hell has been burdened with the problem of overpopulation. Too many people just waste their lives being bad people, I guess," he commented with a low laugh that shivered from deep within his chest and seemed to vibrate the air around you. "Aaaanyway, the beautiful glowing Gods up in heaven decided that it would be a fantastic idea to host yearly exterminations to help lower our dreaded population issue."

He paused, so you began to ask for details, only to be cut off. "Extermi-"

"During each extermination, a set of angels are sent down from heaven to kill off a certain percentage of us, so the population can remain at a stable level. The last one, well, wasn't so fantastic... so Lucifer's daughter, the beloved princess of hell, set up a rehabilitation center so demons could be changed for the better, thus providing heaven with a valid reason to stop the exterminations," he explained. "I do see quite a bit of potential in the place. And that's why I'm helping Charlie."