Page 4 of A Match Made in Hell

He vacates the chamber without another word.

Despite the empty space around me, I may as well be stuffed inside a box.

My legs won’t work. For all I know the third door on the right leads to a very specific torture chamber for those who ask questions.

I’ll be strapped to a wooden board and my tongue ripped out while a demon shrieks that this is what happens to those who cause trouble.

I used to think having an overactive imagination was a good thing. It allowed me to daydream about all the places I’d never get to see. Now I think that imagination might be the cause of every nightmare I’ve ever had or will have.

But imagining the worst isn’t going to help me find a way home, away from the threat of violent demons or ending up in a Void where I’ll undoubtedly be forced to relive a night I’ve tried very hard to forget.

Finally, I enter the gold-painted corridor, squinting as I adjust to the new-found light. Vines climb the walls. They don’t have roots, they’re just there , and the flowers twining around the stems glow brighter than any bulb.

If I pretend hard enough, I could imagine this is one long hotel lobby. There’ll be a smiling receptionist waiting for me at the other end, ready to hand over a key to my deluxe suite complete with infinity pool. Perhaps this is what the Devil meant by pleasantries.

Is that what I am? Sathanas’s words ring in my ears.

Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps I’m not where I thought and he isn’t the Devil after all. But then there’s the demons, the boat, the man in the river . . .

I don’t get it. I don’t get any of it.

The other boat passengers linger in the hall, taking in their surroundings, pointing at the walls like they’re in a gallery, but there’s only one thing I’m interested in.

I pass one door. A second.

I reach the third.

There’s nothing about it to distinguish it from all the others. Mahogany wood. Brass knob. I don’t knock. Twisting the handle, I let it swing fully open and step inside. And freeze.

Bodies.

The room is filled with them, all lying on metal slabs that line the far wall, slab after slab, body after body, stretching down the length of the room with no visible end.

I gag. Clasp a hand to my mouth. The sight of all that bare, dead flesh has me swallowing bile, shaking from head to toe as I risk another step inside, not wanting to go any further but equally unwilling to give up on finding answers.

Up ahead, something squeaks.

My pulse skyrockets. In the distance, a cart wielding another corpse comes into view, the wheels whining loudly as they roll over the terrazzo floor.

The demon pushing it is small, under five foot, with cropped white hair.

Although her features are feminine, she’s decidedly not human; her ears are pointed, and there’s a tail swishing behind legs that end in cloven hooves.

Bright red eyes lock on mine.

‘Are you the Sorter?’

‘Might be,’ she says. ‘Depends who’s asking.’

She lifts the body with one arm, like it weighs no more than a feather – which is baffling when her arms are like twigs – and shoves it on to a slab.

‘I’m asking,’ I say. ‘Sathanas, I mean, King Sathanas –’ What is the etiquette here? ‘Anyway, he said . . .’

‘Sath spoke to you?’ She wrinkles her nose.

Huh. Sath. Sounds like there’s no etiquette required at all.

Or maybe they’re friends and I need to be careful what I say next in case it’s deemed to be complaining , and she reports back to him.

Or decides to punish me herself. The way she handled that body tells me everything I need to know: like Sathanas, with his human form and human expressions, she is something more under the surface.

‘Briefly,’ I answer. ‘He said you . . . make decisions. About who . . .’

‘Ends up here?’ She folds her arms. ‘And let me guess, you’re not happy with your lot. Newsflash, darling, no one ever is.’

The Sorter moves to go past me, dismissing me like I’m nothing. To her, I probably am. Just another number among thousands whose life – or death, I suppose – she’s ruined.

I block her path. ‘I have to go back.’

‘Go back?’ She chuckles. ‘You say that like it’s an option.’

‘ Is it?’ If I could just get confirmation that it’s not, maybe I could find some kind of peace. Or as much peace as it’s possible to get in Hell. But I can’t give up before I know for sure.

Otherwise I’ll never hit ‘send’ on that job application and become some high-flying businesswoman who complains about budgets until four in the morning.

I’ll never marry Noah and pop out a bunch of children with hair as red as mine.

I’ll never visit Mum’s grave and say I did it.

I did all the things you wanted me to, and I’m sorry I’m the reason you didn’t see me do them.

‘Please,’ I say. ‘I need to fix this.’

‘Oh, there’s no fixing you.’ She picks up a blank clipboard at the end of a slab and waves it at me. ‘I probably have yours somewhere.’ She cocks her head. ‘Or maybe I remember you. Yes, I think I do. I looked into your soul and saw a river of blood.’

I freeze. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘You tell me. Could have been your past, could have been your future, who you would have been if you’d lived. Hard to tell sometimes. But all that blood, death, potential for chaos . . .’ Her smile turns feral. ‘You’ll fit right in here.’

‘But – that’s not –’ My mind races. Maybe there has been a mistake, because I’ve no idea what she’s talking about. The most blood I’ve come across was the time I almost sliced off half a finger rushing to make Noah his lunch. ‘You’re wrong.’

‘I’m never wrong.’ Her gaze drops to my hands, at the way they’re balled into fists, nails digging deep into my palms. ‘You seem upset.’

‘Of course I’m upset. I’m not supposed to be dead.’

‘Your presence here would beg to differ.’

A rush of familiar heat spreads through me, and my whole body trembles. ‘I’m here because of an accident . I was too close to the edge; I must have lost my footing.’

‘An accident.’ Her smile grows. ‘Aw. Poor you.’

‘That’s why I have to go back, don’t you see? I can’t be dead because of one misstep; I can’t have thrown it all away because I . . . because I . . .’

The Sorter’s grin is so wide I think her face might split in two, and I grow hotter still, because she’s not listening; no one ever listens and I can’t stand it.

‘Stop laughing at me.’ Tears cloud my vision. She laughs harder. ‘Stop it.’

She doesn’t stop. Her cackles echo and bounce between the metal walls, the sound drilling into my skull until I can’t think.

I step forward, overwhelmed with an urge to grab her hair, rip it from her head, make her as cold and lifeless as the bodies on the slabs, and see how much she likes being here when she’s as miserable as the rest of us.

I hate her, I hate this, I hate –

Something clatters at my feet. I jump, startled, to find a tray full of surgical instruments knocked to the ground. They’d been on a table to my left, out of reach of the Sorter, which means – I glance at my finger to find it’s bleeding. A drop of red glimmers on a pair of scissors on the floor.

‘Oh dear,’ the Sorter says. ‘Look at that. Another accident.’

Tantrums will get you nowhere, Willow . I take a deep breath.

Another. Anger thrashes inside me but I ignore it, swallowing sharp words until they lie in the pit of my stomach with all the other things I’ve left unsaid over the years.

Arguing my case isn’t going to get me anywhere here, either – not when the Sorter is clearly going to mock everything I say.

I steel my expression into one of practised calm, the transformation into Demure Willow almost perfect apart from the slight shake in my hand when I wipe the wet from my cheeks.

‘Don’t cry in public,’ she tells me. ‘The demons don’t like it.’

‘I know. Sathanas sent someone to . . . Gla . . . something.’

‘Glacantrum.’ Her face hardens. ‘Of course he did.’

Her annoyance piques my interest. ‘What’s Glacantrum?’

‘The Ice Prison.’ She taps the nearest corpse’s ankle and black ink spreads across the clipboard, looping letters presumably telling their life’s tale.

The words have barely had time to dry before she yanks a lever at the end of the slab, causing it to tip backwards.

The body slides down the chute, thudding as it hits the sides.

‘Very cold, very solitary. But there are no demons there, so it’s not bad as punishments go.

’ Her hands curl around the clipboard. ‘He has worse options at his disposal.’

A chill creeps down my neck. ‘Like the Void?’

‘Hm.’ Another body gets dumped. This time, black smoke puffs from the chute when it opens, filling the room with the acrid stench of rotten meat mixed with iron.

‘I suppose. You can be released from Glacantrum any time, but the Void will keep you trapped for thousands of years, forcing you to relive all your worst moments. By the time it spits you back out there’s not a whole lot left of the person you used to be. ’

‘That sounds worse to me.’

She shrugs. ‘Either way, we demons don’t get to take part in any of the fun if you go there.

The torture chambers in the Old Tunnels, though, they ’ re a real treat, when he allows us to use them.

And then, of course, there’s Tartarus.’ She lets out a dreamy sigh, like she’s just sipped a cool cocktail on a hot day.

‘The lowest level of the afterlife. Probably closer to what you pictured, when you mortals talk about it on Earth. Fire, brimstone, lots of demons scurrying around prodding you with things. People used to be sent there for fucking up here in Asphodel, if they weren’t awful enough to be sorted there immediately. ’

I suppose I should count myself lucky I wasn’t deemed really awful. Lucky old me, falling off a cliff, stuck in a dimension where only some of the demons want to prod you with sticks. I hope she’s not expecting a thank you.

‘And these chutes, do they lead to wherever you . . . sort them?’

‘You ask a lot of questions.’ Her eyes barely flick over whatever’s on her clipboard. Is that all I got too? A momentary glance at a piece of paper, and my whole afterlife decided.

‘I’m trying to understand,’ I say. ‘Once you’ve made a decision . . .’

‘It can’t be reversed.’

‘But –’

‘No buts.’ Her trolley squeaks as she rolls it onwards. ‘You belong here, Willow White.’

I don’t bother to ask how she knew my name. It was probably on her clipboard where she ticked the box ‘bad seed’ and threw my body away.

‘I can’t stay here,’ I say. ‘ Please .’

The Sorter rolls her eyes. ‘You’re not the first person to say that.

You won’t be the last. Do you know what you all have in common?

A misplaced sense of self-importance. The notion that you’re too good to be here.

Too proud to admit you have faults –’ She breaks off, looking me up and down while making a humming noise at the back of her throat.

I clench my jaw. I’m well aware I have faults, thanks.

The Sorter moves along to the next body. ‘Thief. This one’s easy.’ Down the chute they go. It didn’t take her any less time to determine that one as easy as it did any of the others. She cocks her head in my direction. ‘You said Sath spoke to you?’

‘Briefly.’

She hums again, dropping a clipboard into its slot, but this time, she doesn’t take another. Her finger taps against the slab. Every beat is a second wasted. A second I’m here when I could be at home, making things right.

‘There has to be something you can do,’ I say.

‘Nope.’ She emphasises the word with a sharp pop, but I can tell she’s barely listening. Her finger taps, and taps, and taps, her lips twitch, and then she’s moving again, wheeling her cart down the room.

I stalk her steps. I didn’t come here to leave without answers. ‘What if I lay on a slab and you pulled a lever that says Earth ?’

‘Difficult, considering one doesn’t exist.’

My heart sinks. I sneak a closer look at one of the levers in the vain hope she’s lying, but the only things scratched on to the knob are three arrows: up , right , down .

With no further information, my best guess is that up is better than here.

Maybe if there’s no way out I could at least angle for an upgrade, ideally one that comes with fluffy clouds and cherubs playing harps.

‘Ugh.’ The Sorter lifts a corpse by its foot, grimacing at whatever she’s spotted on the underside of its heel. ‘Hand me a scalpel.’

I don’t remember signing up to be a surgical assistant, but I comply in an attempt to prove how nice and worthy of help I am. She whips it from my outstretched hand and begins to scrape dead skin from the soles of its feet, her nose inches away from a set of hairy toes.

Gross. ‘How do the bodies get here anyway?’

Absorbed in her task, her tone is absent-minded when she answers, ‘Not the same way you can get out.’

Aha . I grin. ‘So there is a way out?’

‘I –’ The foot is dropped with a loud clang. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘Of course you didn’t,’ I console her. If they were less disgusting, I’d kiss those toes for providing such a helpful distraction. ‘But let’s pretend you did. When you say out . . . do you mean to somewhere nicer? Or out of the afterlife entirely?’

Her gaze is scattered, like she’s trying to concoct a lie to cover her tracks, and her tail swishes with agitation. The longer the silence stretches between us, the surer I am.

There’s a way out. Like, really out .

Hope unfurls in my stomach like a flower blooming in spring. I can leave. I can go home; I can do all the things I promised I’d do.

I can live.

‘Tell me how,’ I demand. ‘Tell me the way.’

She hesitates.

‘Think of it like this. You can either tell me now, or after I’ve worn you down with a million more questions. Because I’m not leaving this room until I know.’

Despite the exasperated sigh she emits, it takes her several more tail swishes and a heavy bob of her throat before she relents and says, ‘You didn’t hear this from me.’

I mime zipping my lips and throwing away the key.

There’s another beat of silence. I spend it imagining blood surging through my veins in preparation for my inevitable return to life.

Finally, she utters the answer I’ve been waiting for. ‘There’s one way back to the mortal realm. But there’s only one person who can help you get there.’