"The demon Jackle come to the head office immediately" *ttch*
Hell was a lot like school, ironic but very accurate. There was a head office, halls, heck even a cafeteria. No one actually needed to eat, but those demons responsible for gluttony sure as hell wanted one. Everyone and everything smelled horrific, as showers did not exist in hell, much to Jackle's poor nose. He was pretty sure it came from the mould and un-cleaned floors of the cafeteria, but he wasn't exactly too keen on finding out. He didn't like walking around here, and going through to the head office was just as terrible. It was like trying to climb up a down escalator at rush hour.
Head office was a little cleaner, well, as clean as you expect hell could be.
"Ah, The demon Jackle, finally."
"That's the name don't ware it out."
"Jackle. I've been receiving quite good news from higher office—"
"There's a higher office?"
"Jackle, if you could just be quiet unlike the nuisance you are, you could get an answer and we could get this over with," the head demon snarled.
Jackle's smile dropped from his face. "My apologies."
"As I was saying, I've been receiving quite positive news. We're reassigning you."
A rank 3 demon was a hard bargain, getting all the perks of a slightly better promotion. However, that's pretty well ranked in the tier of demons, so why was he getting reassigned?
"Come again," he said with a puzzled look molded onto his face.
"You're getting reassigned. We've seen your progress and we're giving you a raise. You should be very grateful."
"Oh," his hands shot up defensively, "oh yes I am, honoured even. But if I may ask, being assigned as what?"
"A guardian demon. Well, 'guardian' demon, we haven't come up with a better name." The other demon chuckled, in sort of a boss trying to be friendly with his workers kind of way. "This is still in progress, so we're sending you to test it."
Guardian? Guardian? He was sceptical of what this meant.
"We've assigned you a human to follow and pursue bad deeds. He's at an age where peer pressure is at its pinnacle, so get him to hell and come back to be assigned another. This shouldn't take too long."
"Wait hold on—"
Without a chance to finish, just like that, he was on Earth. Fortunately, he liked earth quite a bit more than hell, it was cleaner.
He seemed to be in an apartment, and to his disappointment, this apartment was a mess. Loose clothes, trash hadn't been taken out, completely horrendous. But that's not important! He was here to pursue a boy into hell! That is all, that is simple! Right?
A familiar jingling came from the front door, followed with the sound of shoes clunking onto the floor. As the footsteps reached closer, he remembered,"oh right, I shouldn't be seen." How convenient demons can shape shift, ain't it? Out of all options, he chose a black cat for one, it was just enough of an 'evil' stereotype it just felt right and two, he seemed to already have a ginger one. You wouldn't expect someone to have a cat in such filth but he digressed. The ginger feline raced to see the person who came in, as cooing sounds followed soon after.
The boy walked over to drop off his travel backpack as he exhaustingly toppled onto the cushion covered couch, face first. He had on an old navy hoodie, ripped denim jeans that were cuffed at the bottom, and a fire orange-red beanie. After about five minutes, he decided to get up to make sense of the world he's living in. It took him a solid ten seconds to notice there were one to many cats on his coffee table.
"Oh! Hello there," he half-whispered to the black feline, followed by some clicking sounds he did with his tongue. Jackle let him touch him, he didn't appear to be all that threatening.
"Well I guess we still have space in here for one more." That was most definitely a lie.
"So I guess welcome to the family. Think I'll name you..babe! Babe the black cat!" This was going to be fun.
Around 3 months since Jackle was assigned this scuffle of a man, and boy have they been, how do I say this, infuriating. He didn't know to much about this boy. He assumed it wasn't all around necessary to know anything about him, just pursue him to sin and all would be done. But he was a little more difficult than imagined, so it would need to get into personal faults, right then. His name, from what he eavesdropped was Brick, a 16 year old who worked as a barista at the Starbucks around the corner. 'Eavesdropped', it was more couldn't help but overhear because Jackle needed to follow him everywhere. It was basically part of the imaginary contract. Every now and then, he would whisper a few words of scumminess to convince him. He would whisper things like, "You should spit in her drink, she won't notice," or, "They're allergy can't be that bad, some pumps of almond won't do anything." Nothing worked. Brick went out to lunch with some co-worker friends later that afternoon, casually saying, "It won't hurt to litter just a little bit. It won't do anything," y'know, the single basic sin. Still didn't work. Despite the state of his room he wasn't all about the sin sloth. He even tried inputting as intrusive thoughts. He didn't budge. I mean he still did the occasional slip up, but it was never anything that could get him into the basement below. It was almost annoying how good he did at being a decent human being. Throughout generations among generations, humans have been notoriously good at being terrible. They always thought of things no angel nor devil could ever imagine of, they were pretty twisted. But this one, this one decided not to be. He wasn't a ray of sunshine but he always did his best to be positive. Desperation only grew inside his gut, what hell would do if they found out Jackle had failed. He was the first one do this sort of stuff, he was almost sure of it. He had to make an impact, be an example. All fingers pointed to showing him his physical body, and he was going to, but there was a feeling of restraint. Not now, not yet, So until then, he'd continue being his cat, babe.
Months passed since, and Jackle had spent them being his cat. Not all the time, just whenever Brick was around. He had this aura that made anyone near him comfortable, warm, which was completely contrasted to hell's damp and crowded feel. It was different to say the least. Demons aren't supposed to like things, that was their thing. But Jackle could help but..enjoy staying on Earth. He enjoyed Earths sky, it's vivid blues and yellows at sunset. Appreciating how Brick would give him his full attention, as cats need. Relished in the feeling of smelling the potent sting of Brick's morning coffee. And he didn't like it. He didn't like how he enjoyed so many things he was told not to like. It wasn't important to what he was supposed to be doing, but it was fun. This didn't mean he'd start being nice to Brick, of course not. He's a demon and that's exactly what demons don't do. But he really didn't care for what hell thought for anymore. It wasn't an exact click in his brain, but Jackle considered it, he thought it was about time.
Brick had just come home from work. He always had the enthusiasm of someone who drank coffee mixed with 5hour energy, which was very coincidentally what Brick did. When he arrived, he would always call out to his darling felines in the sweetest voice a cat lover could do. This time, Jackle didn't strut up to him as he would usually. Brick noticed, he took to notice a lot of things. Like how he knew this girl at work liked Michael. He dropped of his work bag on the coffee table, only to find babe under it, almost as he was hiding from him.
"Come up from under there you rascal, are y'scared of me now hm?" To his surprise, he didn't come out, it was strange as he'd always come to greet him. He knew he wasn't a shy cat, he'd knock over things, but still would be quite more annoying than most cats. But he didn't mind.
"Aw c'mon, you actin shy on me? I won't bite," Brick tried again with a little more resilience. It took quite some time for babe to come out from under the table, and even when he did, it was with a bit of hesitation. Brick sat back on the couch and put on his favourite midday show, expecting babe to get on the couch with him. Instead, it jumped onto the table, looking like it was preparing something. Strange, but he dismissed it.
"You wanna watch a show with da—"
And before he could finish what he was saying, 'babe' had started contorting and bending, it looked straight from a horror movie, it was starting to look more..human?
It was a series of sounds, crunches of what he assumed was bone and the leather sound of skin moving, pretty gross to say the least, and he had his eyes closed for the most part. When he opened them, there was this man standing on his coffee table, stretching.
"Ah," he sighed. "It's good to be back to normal," saying while cracking his back.
They had choppy black hair that had green patches around the roots and tips. He donned on a green shirt accented underneath a purple vest, which he wore a darker purple tux over. Yet the most eye catching part of his appearance was the mouths. He had two mouths on either side of his face which curled up to his ears, as big sharp yellow teeth protruded through the gapes. They looked so sharp that it would slice through flesh like a warm knife to butter.
"You're quite the bugger y'know that?" Jackle said with a tone of annoyance.
"Hope you weren't to attached to babe, cause unfortunately he wasn't, y'know," he gestured, "real."
He was floating all around his living room, but decided to mostly pester around Brick.
"You're so lucky you're not a Christian, or this'd be awkward," said Jackle.
"W-who are you? What are you doing in my house? What did you do to my cat?" Brick was distraught, you could never be prepared for something that has never been experienced before.
All Jackle's reply was a chuckle. "Now, mind doing a favour for me hm? Can you please clean up around here? It was quite annoying as a cat and will be while living with you," Jackle joked, kind of.
Brick was backing against the couch, hands clenched the cushions so hard his knuckles has turned white. He didn't dare to move closer to it.
"No! Get out of my apartment you ghost man!"
"Demon but close enough."
"I don't care! Now go away! please," he didn't know why he said please, he just figured it was worth a try.
"Hm, pushy. But just for you, I'll leave you alone for a bit." Jackle said in a low voice, mearly a few inches away from his face.
"But just remember," he said whispering, "I'm always watching dear."
And like that, he was gone.
Brick was scared half to death in that moment, but later on, his mind started to differ.
He didn't sleep for the first two days, knowing that he could be watching him any second. Relying on whatever energy drinks he could buy to keep him awake. He would hear random whispers at night or even in public, like an inner voice was talking to him, and his friends wouldn't believe him when he said there was a demon following him. He had thoughts before, but now they were louder, screaming even. It was unbearable.
Until around the end of the month, where he was slaying up late doing school work, when he heard a loud shatter in the kitchen. Obviously shaken, but curiosity got the better of him and he had to see what he'd have to replace with his hard earned minimum wage money. He found the demon man, on the ground face first. They had slipped on some spilled water that Brick had forgotten to clean, and knocked over a dirty plate he had left out. The man had bounced up immediately from falling and straightened himself out, dusting off the plate crumbs that lingered on his suit.
"Just," The man spoke, averting eye contact as fast as he could. "Pretend you didn't see that, alright," he said with a red face, floating as fast as he could away.
Jackle had been practicing to walk normally again, and he couldn't miracle Brick to forget that, he had already used his full month miracle subscription. That was the day Brick started to stop taking him seriously.
It has been now a year since Jackle had been assigned to persuade this human, and both of them promptly stopped caring about whatever they where supposed to be doing. Brick had stopped caring that he was in fact, a scary demon with probable demon powers, while Jackle forgot his whole job entirely.
Still, no one believes that Brick was telling the truth, but Brick knew that it was real, still is, and he was pretty sure his cat knew too. Jackle stopped being scary to Brick, he was just hugely frustrating to him now, he was like his cat version; pestering, bugging him every day, but now this time he could talk. Though, it had been quite an eventful year, and still they were finding out new things about each other. It was truly very domestic, and he didn't mind his new life, much was stranger than before.