Page 21 of A Match Made in Hell

One of these days, it would be nice to get some advance warning about a task.

Sath is gracious enough to let me change first, telling me the task of sloth is next and that I should wear something warm , which isn’t much of a clue as to what it might entail.

After examining the faint scratches on my chin and chest – they’re sore, although Aric didn’t draw blood – I settle for a thick black jumper.

Sath leads me to, of all places, the Sorter’s morgue.

‘My task’s in here?’ I witnessed enough dead bodies on my first day to satisfy a lifetime’s curiosity. ‘Will the Sorter be there?’

She may have appeared less violent than some of the other demons I’ve come across, but she’s still a demon , and therefore, by definition, dangerous.

‘Don’t worry about her,’ Sath says, gesturing for me to enter first. ‘Unlike Aric, her bark is worse than her bite.’

This doesn’t fill me with confidence. The morgue is colder than I remember, and there’s a strong smell of bleach that burns the insides of my nostrils.

The slabs are empty. Something in my gut clenches; what if one of those slabs is for me ?

What if I’m going to be forced to lie there, while the Sorter cuts me open and shows Sath all my sins, all my deepest, darkest thoughts, what if –

Sath’s hand wraps around my elbow. ‘Are you okay? You’re breathing heavily.’

‘Fine.’ I shudder. ‘What am I doing, exactly?’

‘She’ll explain.’ Sath jerks his head down the row of slabs. The squeak of her trolley indicates she’s close by. ‘I’ll be back later.’

‘You’re leaving ?’ The last thing I want is to be left alone with a bunch of corpses and a demon with a scalpel collection.

‘I’ll return when the time’s right.’ He bends to murmur in my ear, ‘Don’t worry. It’s only me who gets to tempt you.’

I go to jab him in the stomach, but he dodges my elbow with ease. Bastard. He winks before sauntering from the room, hands in his pockets. I resist the urge to throw something at the door, if only because I know he has Aric to deal with.

My pulse kicks up a notch. What if this supposed leverage isn’t enough?

‘Are you going to stand there all day?’ the Sorter’s voice calls from down the room. ‘There’s work to be done.’

Her trolley squeaks closer. Hopefully my work will involve oiling those wheels, because if I have to listen to them much longer my ears will bleed. She’s finally visible, her white hair bobbing behind her cart, like the moon peeking over the top of a mountain.

Every inch of me is on high alert. She stood right by Aric’s side the night that man in Dionysus died, and she acted like she enjoyed every second. She’s probably on team open gates. Also, I’ve just stabbed her friend with a pool cue. I suspect this will not endear me to her if she finds out.

‘What work, exactly?’ I fold my arms. I hope I don’t have to cut anyone up – the one time I tried to dice a raw chicken breast there was a lot of squealing involved. Shouldn’t sloth be relaxing? I suppose a nap is out of the question.

‘Sorting.’ She clicks her fingers, and the slabs are immediately full of naked bodies, their modesty preserved by thin paper towels.

My heart sinks. ‘Clipboards are on the end of the bed. Read ’em, make a decision.

Lever goes up for Elysium, to the right for Asphodel, and down for Tartarus.

Get to the end of the row, and you’re done. ’

Sounds easy, apart from I can’t see where said row ends. I could be here all night. I could be here forever .

I stare at the nearest clipboard. More to the point, why should I decide someone’s afterlife? I couldn’t get my own life right. I shouldn’t have that kind of power over judging someone else’s. My fingers hover near the paper, afraid to touch it.

The Sorter clucks her tongue. ‘Don’t dally; there’s more where this lot came from.

’ She grabs the clipboard I’m dithering over and touches the body until the page is full of words.

‘Look. No crimes, but a predisposition for selfish behaviour. Ooh, and they got their sibling cut out of their parents’ will. Naughty, naughty.’

‘Maybe the sibling deserved it.’

‘Maybe.’ She shrugs and tilts the lever to the right. ‘Anyway. Asphodel it is.’ The slab tilts, and the body is thrown down the chute.

‘That’s it? That’s all he gets? And what about me? You said you saw –’

‘A river of blood,’ she finishes my sentence. ‘I remember. I stand by it. It was on your chart.’

‘Well, how do you know these charts aren’t fiction?’

She ignores my perfectly legitimate question and taps the next clipboard. ‘You’re supposed to be working.’

My hands tremble as I reach for it. The body I’m assessing is a girl, barely older than me.

A rose is tattooed on the inside of her forearm, but the red is tinged blue now, like the rest of her skin.

The paper is blank. Nausea rises in my throat when I realise what I’m going to have to do, every instinct I have trying to stop me from placing a finger to her skin – as soon as I do, a rush of something hot and powerful flows through me.

I get a brief glimpse of a life that’s not mine: a hand strumming a guitar, feet pounding a racetrack, a test paper being plucked from a filing cabinet in the dead of night.

It lasts barely more than a few seconds, but when I glance at the clipboard, the paper’s full. It doesn’t tell me how she died though. Whether it was a mistake. How many things she’s going to miss out on now she’s here.

I don’t want to subject her to this.

Studying the sheet of paper intently, I try to find words such as good and perfect and deserving of peace . They’re notably absent. Should I send her to Elysium anyway? The Sorter’s not watching. My hand hovers over the lever.

Push it up. All I have to do is push it up, and I won’t feel any guilt.

Unless this is part of the task. Maybe if I sort somebody wrong, I won’t make it to the end. I can’t fuck this up. The text in front of me may as well be written in neon lights: liar . . . fraud . . . cheat.

Fuck’s sake. I close my eyes, turn the lever to the right, and hope she doesn’t hate this place as much as I do.

Everything sounds too loud: my breathing, my feet scuffing the floor, the sound of the chute opening.

The way her body thuds as it drops. I bite my lip, refusing to cry in front of the Sorter.

The next one is marginally easier. And the next. On and on I go, hating myself every second, but I turn that lever to the right time and time again. Nobody here is good. Maybe Elysium is a myth. Perfection is impossible; the very nature of humanity is to do what we want and screw the consequences.

For me, that consequence was death. I ram the next lever so hard it rattles.

Ahead of me, the Sorter is practically chipper as she condemns people to this place, whistling a jaunty tune and flicking her tail.

‘How did you get this job, anyway?’ I ask, desperate to take my mind off the task at hand. ‘Did you appear at the dawn of time and start sorting?’

‘Not exactly.’ She grins at her clipboard, revealing a set of pointed incisors, and shoves the lever down. My blood runs cold despite the heat blasting from the chute when it opens, black smoke pluming within. The body sizzles as it descends.

I can’t stop my eyes welling with tears this time. Wiping them away in violent strokes, I mutter, ‘I cannot wait to get out of this place.’

‘Hm,’ the Sorter hums. Sending someone to Tartarus has given her a bounce in her step, making the clop of her hooves sound like a vigorous tap-dance. ‘You’re welcome, by the way.’

‘For what, you letting it slip about the tasks?’

‘Maybe I didn’t let it slip. Maybe it was my good deed for the century.’

I roll my eyes. ‘Yeah, you’re all heart.’

‘Well, now, that would be difficult,’ she muses. ‘We demons don’t have hearts.’

‘You don’t?’ I blink. My next question follows almost immediately, like I’d snatch the answer from her mouth if I could. ‘Does Sath?’

What if he’s as heartless as the rest of them? The thought stings, and I’m not sure why.

The Sorter smiles. ‘You sound worried. Afraid those sad eyes of his are just for show?’

I shove the lever on my next corpse with barely a glance at the paperwork. ‘Of course I’m not worried.’ I add a shrug for good measure.‘He seems almost human compared to the rest of you, but he has to be in charge for a reason, right? I was curious, that’s all.’

‘If I were you, I’d spend a little less time being curious about Sath and a little more time focusing on passing these tasks.’

‘Because you care so much about me getting to leave this place.’

‘I care as much as he does,’ she says sweetly.

My fists clench. Riddles upon riddles upon lies.

Sath doesn’t care about me leaving, not really, he just wants his concession when I pass – whatever it is.

I can’t see any way their visions could be aligned – Sath says he wants Asphodel to be safe, whereas the Sorter is friends with Aric who wants to tear this place apart.

My stomach twists. Unless Sath is lying to me.

Unless he is a demon, soulless and empty inside, and he’s only pretending to worry about the humans here because he knows I want him to.

I thought it the day I met him: he’s temptation itself.

What if he’s moulded himself into someone good and decent because he’s realised that’s what will tempt me ?

We work the next few hours in silence. I have more questions, about a million of them, but I can’t trust the answers she’ll give. Besides, as time passes, I’m struggling to remember what they were. My eyelids droop. My wrist aches from the endless shoving of levers. I want to stop.