Crowley and The Wifelet - Chapter One
Chapter One:
Hell: Crowley’s Office
”Morons, I’m surrounded by morons.” Crowley thought. He breathed deeply and looked up at the demon duo before him. “Get back up there and find me the bitch, unless you want be on my personal list of torture candidates.”
“Yes, Boss.” The demons left. Not yet a century into his reign as King of Hell, Crowley was already beginning to wonder whether the constant dealing with idiot demons was worth the power of ruling Hell.
“That’s it! Enough of this micro-management bollocks, there must be somebody here in Hell intelligent enough to handle the day to day details.” Crowley fumed silently, and getting up from his desk, walked out of his office and through Hell to find himself a personal assistant.
“What I need is somebody reasonably intelligent with a strong sense of self-preservation, but not overly ambitious. A Poodle would probably be best, unfortunately, I don’t speak dog,” Crowley mused as he perused the endless line of souls.
As he stood to the side of Hell’s front desk, cloaked from all prying eyes and ears, Crowley congratulated himself on this new form of torture. The demon receptionist would take the ticket from the soul standing in front of her, hand them back a new ticket, and they would return to stand in line. An eternity of standing in line! Crowley still found it surprising that so few souls snapped and turned demonic.
When they did turn, the demonic black smoke disappeared into the pits of greater hell to battle with other demons for the chance to go topside and serve their King. Watching the condemned just queue in a perpetual state of boredom, Crowley wondered briefly if Hell hadn’t been conquered by the entire population of the United Kingdom, or perhaps Sweden. They were the only two nations he could think of off-hand that enjoyed standing in line.
“How about Zombie Hamsters as pets? You must have some mad scientists or even competent scientists here, don’t you? If you gave everybody a pet that they could learn to love while waiting, then, when they get here, you could take them away and watch people’s faces fall in sorrow. What about that idea?”
Crowley shook himself from his reverie to look at the speaker. A middle-aged woman stood in front of the receptionist’s desk. She handed an A4 piece of paper to the receptionist, who put it to the
side without looking at it. She handed the woman her new ticket. The woman looked at the receptionist, then at her ticket, then back to the receptionist.
The woman launched herself across the desk and onto the demon receptionist before either she or Crowley could register what was happening. With a rage that only comes from years of frustration and bottled up anger, the woman clawed at the receptionist. The demon tried to smoke out, but the woman shoved the demon smoke back down the receptionist’s throat. She let loose a vitriolic rant that made Crowley feel something vaguely akin to genuine amusement.
“Listen, you peroxided prune, I do not stand patiently in line dreaming up new divisions of Hell for my own amusement. I do so to occupy my allotted time here until Judgment Day comes and God sees fit to either let my soul be peacefully obliterated or burn it to a crisp along with those other Hell unfortunates. That is MY job!
Your job may be the eternal receiving and returning of tickets --but you are incompetent at it. Obviously you are not required to wish us a ‘happy or pleasant day’, but would it reduce you to a quivering blob to insincerely do so once every thousand souls or something? You are the welcoming face of Hell, and if you aren’t going to put the effort into driving us demonic, then I wonder what you are doing here.
Now, this ticket says that I will be standing in front of you again after the 6,611,527,124th soul. I shall give you my suggestions, and I expect an insincere smile followed by something along the lines of, say, ‘Yes, I will pass on your inane suggestion to the King of Hell. Have a nice day.’ delivered with equal insincerity or I shall beat you up again. Got it? Good, you have a nice day.”
With a patronizing pat to the receptionist’s cheek, the woman got up and took her place at the back of the queue. The receptionist returned to her desk and continued blindly taking and giving tickets to the souls lined up in front of her. Crowley moved from the receptionist’s desk to back of the queue where the woman now stood.
She was deep in concentration. Crowley observed how she conjured the paper she was writing upon. There was no witchcraft involved. There was nothing demonic about her soul and there didn’t appear to be any other supernatural explanation. He watched as she discarded one sheet of paper before conjuring another. The discarded paper vanished as soon as it left her hands. Crowley was intrigued.
The business of ruling Hell kept him away, and when he returned to observe the woman, she was once again standing in front of the receptionist’s desk.
Crowley watched with increasing amusement as the women and demon replayed the exact scene as previously observed. Once the condemned woman returned to the end of the queue, Crowley approached the receptionist’s desk.
“Let me see those suggestions.” Crowley said, and the receptionist jumped six inches in the air in surprise and anxiety. Looking from her master to the shredded paper on the desk, she scooped them up and presented them with a look of terror on her face. Crowley raised an eyebrow, looked the demon up and down, then turned and walked away. He could hear the demon panic all the way back to his office. It bought a smile to his lips.
Once inside and seated, he dropped shredded paper on the desktop, muttered something, and a pile of neatly written A4 sized pages appeared in front of him. He scanned through them quickly, putting
aside one or two that were of interest, and another couple that had possibility. The rest he threw in the waste paper bin and reduced to ash.
Making his way back to the line, Crowley wondered whether or not this particular soul might be the answer to his predicament. It appeared from her pop culture references that she had an awareness of the Winchesters through the writing of Carver Edlund. However, whether that meant she actually believed any of it, or indeed knew of himself was hard to determine.
She seemed completely oblivious to her surroundings. Finding her again and taking her he forcibly by the arm, he marched her down to his office. Once seated opposite him, he passed a paper of suggestions over to her.
“Did you write these suggestions?” he asked.
“Yes, yes I did.” The woman answered, re-reading them as she spoke. There was hesitation in her voice, like she wasn’t completely convinced that she had in fact written them.
“Explain them to me. Why exactly does Hell need a Demonic Merit System or A Sports and Recreational Centre?” Crowley asked then leaned back in his chair to await her answer.
“Well, it’s like this…or maybe more like this…oh, stuff it, not like I’m not used to waiting by now,” She closed her eyes, breathed deeply in and exhaled slowly, and then meeting Crowley’s eyes began again. “From what I’ve seen while waiting in line, when a soul snaps and disappears in a cloud of smoke, they just go into a big pit. Is that correct?”
Crowley inclined his head slightly to the affirmative, and the woman continued. “Right. Well I’m sure that endless fighting reduces what’s left of a person’s soul in no time and that the pit encourages fight skills , but I wondered if perhaps there wasn’t a better way of choosing the right demons for a task, rather than the first one to line up for said task.” The woman stopped speaking and looked down at her lap.
“I don’t recall saying you could stop talking, did I?” Crowley said. After a few non-verbal gaffs, the woman spoke again, this time with a little more confidence.
“It occurred to me the first time I received a new ticket and found myself back in line. If Hell was just to be an endless queue. What would make me so frustrated and angry that I would flip and prefer being demon spawn rather than a hopeless case? So, for the remainder of the time I waited, I thought about that and wrote it down. Of course, by the time I got to the front of the queue again and handed it in, I hadn’t really finished. For the next duration of queuing I continued to write down my Demonic Merit System ideas. The receptionist didn’t bother to listen to my suggestions, though, but that was all right because by then I’d thought of another thing that might work.”
“I can see some merit in such a system-- but why the domestic slant?” Crowley asked sitting up, striking a school principal- type pose. The woman opposite squirmed a little in her seat and then spoke.
“Because in life, at least at the time of my supposed death... are you sure I am dead by the way?” Crowley raised an eyebrow and glared at the woman, “Okay, just checking, because I don’t remember actually doing so - anyway, when that happened I was house-bound, isolated, depressed, unemployed and lost in translation. Basically a lot of time to let one’s mind drift over all the things one hates in life. How you’d love to see those who wronged you cope with the day to day crap of household duties and mothering. So I came up with a sorting process that relied on what your average man or woman was least likely to enjoy doing for all eternity. If I remember correctly, there were queues for courses in Cooking, Cleaning, Ironing, Washing, Car-pooling, Sport 'Support', Gym & Health, Entertaining, Household Budgeting, Sibling Peace-Keeping, Spousal Arousal, Mechanics, Carpentry & Painting, Hissy-Fitting, Sewing, Plumbing-- or at least Hell's variation of those duties.”
Crowley studied the woman opposite while she spoke, and when she stopped, he spoke. “Actually, those suggestions are part of a later paper proposing the re-distributing of souls waiting in line. I was referring to your Demon Merit System, or Demerit System, based upon how much frustration you apparently have standing in line at the Supermarket and an ongoing war with check-out conveyors. You are correct, by the way, that particular inventor is either already in Hell, or soon to be collected. As well as other, shall we say, interesting degrees of frustrated housewife imaginings.”
“Well I am a frustrated housewife, aren’t I?” the woman huffed. Crowley arched an eyebrow and glared at her impertinence. She held his gaze. Crowley was curious to say the least. Apart from an
abortion, the soul sitting opposite him was not particularly evil. Slothful, vain and prideful, yes, but quite frankly, who wasn’t, in this century?
Crowley didn’t like unanswered questions, and this soul was an unanswered question. However, she could potentially be an untapped resource of considerable value. Ever the opportunist, Crowley felt
that employing someone to sort through the daily mess of Hell, leaving him free to consolidate his power, would be worth the risk.
Meg was still at large, and while she was free, any remaining Lucifer supporters had a beacon of hope. He’d shoot himself with the bloody Colt before he let that bitch reign over Hell.
Heaven was a shambles. His sources informed him that things were going the way towards a second civil war. Which was fine by him, the only question was, which side to back. Given that Crowley liked being King of Hell and Raphael wanted to re-open Lucifer’s cage, it looked like Castiel would be the angel to approach.
Crowley had a plan. Purgatory and all its untapped monster souls, with that power he’d be omnipotent. Yet he lacked the resources to find the doorway or gate to it on his own. If he could convince Castiel to join him looking for Purgatory, with the promise of splitting the power, then his position would be irrefutable. Sure, he’d make the angel think they’d split equally, but Crowley firmly intended to keep the power for himself. Why only rule Hell when you could rule Heaven as well? Crowley rubbed his hands together with glee and opening a draw, pulled out a parchment, ink and quill.
“I have a business proposition for you. I want you to come up with a Demonic Merit System. No more than ten, with one being cannon-fodder demons or muscle, and ten being my personal staff criteria. I like the ideas; you will be my personal assistant. I don’t like them, you will be my personal torture subject until the end of time. Do you understand? Fabulous. Well, I’ve places to be, good luck.”
Crowley left the office and the left the woman alone, shaking with the terror of having to actually work for the first time in her life, or death as the case may be.
Chapter Two