#blame my muse | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

xfilesinamajor · 2 months

Text

Just Another Day in Paradise

He’s cornered—beaten—finished—and he knows it. That’s why he’s so angry, why he can’t shut up. It isn’t fair that this group of degenerates can be him. It isn’t right! They’re sinners, failures, losers. Nobodies! He’s almost blind with fury at the injustice of it all, unsteady on his feet and surrounded. He’s Adam. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, damn it!

And then there’s the disgusting sensation of being penetrated, something sliding straight through his stomach so fast and easy that the shock of it hits before the pain. A wave of nausea washes over him as his legs give out. His body’s not responding to him anymore. He can’t even put out his hands to catch himself when he falls. Fucking pathetic. This body is supposed to be perfection, and it’s crapping out on him?

He's vaguely aware of sounds, voices. More penetration, more pain, that he can’t do anything to prevent. Can’t even turn his fucking head, let alone fight back. Darkness is closing in around him, dimming his senses as well as his vision so that even the pain starts to fade. It should be a relief, but it’s humiliating. He’s dying. He should know, he’s done it before. But this time is different. This time he won’t be coming back.

It's just..gray. The sound’s fading. Even the anger is. There’s…Lute. For a moment, he sees Lute, mask off, splattered in blood. And he thinks, good, at least someone’s going to make sure those sinners get fucked. Lute will burn the whole place to the fucking ground. It’s the last thought he has as he dies.

When he wakes up, he’s still in Hell.

⛧ ⛧ ⛧

Pentagram City didn’t have any trees. That was the first thing I—well, not the FIRST thing I noticed when I opened my eyes there, but damn close. The FIRST thing I noticed was the eldritch horror leering down at me.

That might be unfair of me, actually. Maybe it hadn’t been leering. It was just hard to tell with all those lidless eyeballs, and I didn’t stick around long enough to figure out its intentions. Instead, I picked myself up and ran.

I ran so hard that I nearly crashed headfirst into several other beings without really seeing them. It slowed me down enough that I gave up on running, coming to a breathless stop outside of a sex dungeon. I knew it was a sex dungeon because of the neon sign over my head claiming to have the Dirtiest Sluts in Hell! Though I probably would have figured it out even without that. The nude feminine figure kneeling in the display window with a ball gag behind her pointed teeth and chains trapping all four of her clawed hands behind her back was a pretty solid clue.

So that was the second thing I noticed.

After that I noticed a curb, which I sank down onto, putting my head in my hands and trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. None of this made the slightest bit of sense when I held it up against my memories. You’d think maybe I’d have thought to look at myself at that point—at least down at my feet or something, you know? But everything around me was just so completely unhinged that it didn’t even occur to me.

Shock was making me a little slow, but I wasn’t stupid. The people walking around—and occasionally into—me looked like a bizarre mixture of Cronenbergian beings, furries, devils, and things that had walked off the pages of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. That glowing sign behind me was bragging about its sluts being the dirtiest in Hell. I was lost, disoriented, and judging by the number of times I’d been told to “Move, bitch” since sitting down, no one was interested in helping me.

So yeah, this was probably Hell. Possibly a hallucination. With an outside chance of it being Los Angeles.

Operating on the assumption that it really was Hell, that begged the question: why was I in Hell? For starters, it must mean I was dead. I didn’t remember dying. That’s the sort of thing you’d expect to remember. That’s a very defining moment in your life. What was the last thing I did remember?

It came quickly enough. I remembered hiking in the woods with Jake. Heat. Pointing out the pretty pattern the sun made on the path as it filtered between the leaves. Wet. Hot. Him asking me if I could hear that woodpecker. All over my hands. Everywhere. His palm fitting against my cheek as he backed me gently up against a tree and kissed me. But had something felt off about the kiss. No air. I’d pulled back, looking up at him and asking if everything was okay. Wet hands.

I shook my head, annoyed by the flashes of sensations that kept popping into what was otherwise a coherent memory. They were making it hard to concentrate. I held my hands out in front of me, intending to prove to myself that they weren’t actually wet. They were white. Not white like Caucasian, white like a ghost, the snow, a sheet of paper. And the fingers were longer than they should have been.

Trembling then, scared of what I’d see, I let my gaze extend further. My forearms were slender, white with sporadic black stripes, a rough texture. My feet…my feet weren’t there. They’d been replaced by seven footless appendages with the same coloring as my arms. Like an octopus, only nothing at all like an octopus. I tried wiggling one experimentally, and it responded. That made sense. I’d already run down the street without noticing anything was amiss, so obviously these weird legs got the job done.

Roots. It hit me suddenly. They weren’t legs, they were roots. And the pattern on my skin, that matched the bark of the birch trees that had been all around me when—

When my husband slit my throat.

The thought completely blindsided me, slamming into me out of nowhere and almost sending me over into the gutter with its force. My husband slit my throat. Yes. That’s what had happened. It all came back with horrible clarity, sitting on my brain with a crushing weight. My shock at the sharp, unexpected pain. My hands coming up to my throat, unable to accept what was happening even as my gasps for air yielded nothing but blood. The panic as it leaked out around my hands, like a faulty faucet that wouldn’t shut off. My knees giving out and my vision going fuzzy.

“That fucker,” I spat vehemently, righteous outrage driving the shock back out of me. “He fucking killed me, and I’m the one in Hell? What the actual fuck?” If I’d had the vaguest familiarity with the area, I would have stalked off furiously. My instincts told me there must be someone I could complain to. There had to be!

It dawned on me slowly that no, there wasn’t. Because this was Hell. All these freaks around me? We were all in the same boat. Dead. That’s why none of us looked human—our human lives were over. I could scream about my murdering asshole husband all I wanted, but it wouldn’t make me any more alive or him any more dead. It was unfair, and worse, it was supposed to be unfair. No wonder no one had stopped to offer me assistance.

I looked at the street around me with fresh eyes. There were no trees. That’s when I noticed that. But there was dirt. And garbage. And something wet and unidentifiable congealing near my feet. A creature covered in some sort of needles or quills appeared to be defecating by the street post over there.

Was I sure it wasn’t Los Angeles?

Yes, sadly, I was.

I sat back down on the curb, this time deliberately ignoring the dirty looks and rude comments from passersby. I didn’t have anywhere else to sit, so they could deal. Alright, I was really in Hell. Next question: why was I in Hell? I wasn’t—hadn’t been—a terrible person. No murders or sexual assault under my belt. No petty criminal acts, no embezzlement, no torturing of small animals or destruction of the rain forests. Shit, I hadn’t even majored in politics at school!

Then again, I’d never been spiritual. I’d never read the Bible. The closest I’d ever come to a religious experience was getting eaten out while flying on some truly amazing sativa. Maybe the asshole Evangelists had been right after all, and lack of faith was all it took to put me down here. Though it could just as easily be some transgression I didn’t know counted as a transgression because I hadn’t really believed in God. It could be that I’d married money and enjoyed the lifestyle. It could be running that stop sign when no one was looking. It could be the BLT burger I had last weekend.

Who knew, who cared, and what did it matter anyway? Puzzling over it wasn’t going to help me. Better to deal with the here and now. I was, to quote someone or other, a stranger in a strange land. I had no idea how this society worked. I had no money, no friends, no home, no clothes. That didn’t seem like as big an issue as it could have been, given my current body and current low standard of company, but most of the various beings around me did seem to be dressed. I didn’t have any desire to spend my first day in Hell getting raped by some kind of amorphous blob because I’d been sitting on a street corner naked.

In fact, now that I stopped to think about it…if Hell was real and this was it, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d been led to believe. I wasn’t stretched out on a torture rack while demons played with my intestines. My skin wasn’t getting slowly burned off by lava or flames. Nothing was chasing me or tearing me limb from limb (yet). The temperature wasn’t even all that hot, no worse than a vacation to Florida. It was just a dirty, unwelcoming city of freaks.

Deciding that sitting naked on the curb directly in front of a sex dungeon wasn’t the best way to start out my life down here, I stood up once more and worked on convincing my roots to move me down the street. I’d been doing it just fine earlier when I wasn’t thinking about it, but now I was thinking about it, and controlling seven short, kneeless legs to work in tandem was complicated. I swayed and staggered gracelessly for half a block before losing my balance completely and hitting the pavement hard next to an overturned trashcan.

“Drunk?” asked a giant cockroach slumped against the bottom of said trashcan. His voice was masculine and listless, but it was the closest thing I’d had to a conversation so far down here. “Don’t puke on my feet.”

“I’m not drunk,” I replied with as much dignity as I could muster, twisting myself around so that I wasn’t lying on my face. I could still bend where my knees should have been, and I hugged them to me rather than getting up. Some of my hair had fallen into my face, and at this point I wasn’t surprised to discover it was no longer hair, but a curtain of green leaves. “I’m a tree,” I stated dully, more to myself than the roach.

He answered anyway, glaring at me sideways. “Is that supposed to be some kind of joke? No, I don’t want your fucking fruit, bitch.”

There was no reason that a rude rejection from a cockroach I hadn’t even been coming onto should hurt my feelings, but it kind of did. “I wasn’t offering,” I snapped. “And anyway I don’t have any fruit, stupid. I’m birch.”

“Well, birch,” he said, subsiding back into listlessness, “you’re still a cunt.”

“Thanks,” I responded sarcastically. “Just what I needed right now.” Rather than look at him, I glared at the limo speeding down the street.

“Know how I know?” I didn’t give him an answer, but that didn’t stop him from continuing. “’Cause you’re here.”

“You’re here, too,” I pointed out coolly, and he snarled at me. If he hadn’t been half my size, I might have been worried, but I shrugged off his anger. So neither of us was happy to be here, hardly a revelation. I assumed the conversation was over and was just readying myself to get back up when he spoke again.

“You’re really not drunk?”

��No.”

“Why not?”

I laughed bitterly. “No opportunity. I’ve only been here ten minutes.”

“Shut the fuck up.” He turned to me with a note of genuine interest in his voice, looking me over properly for the first time. “Oh shit, you are! You don’t have a clue, do you. You wouldn’t even be any fun to kill, you’d just stand there with those big eyes and stare at us.”

“Us?” I shifted uneasily, ready to give running another try. “You have some friends hanging around waiting for someone to group murder?”

For some reason, this seemed to sap all interest and energy out of the roach. “No,” he muttered, sounding a lot like a sulky teenager, and slumped further down the overturned trashcan. “Fuck off already.”

Encouraged by the fact that he didn’t have a gang of associates lurking around the next corner, I ignored his comment. Yes, he was clearly an asshole, but he clearly knew a lot more about things down here than I did. I could use any information I could get. “What do you mean anyway, kill? I’m already dead, right? I’m here for eternity, isn’t that how it works?”

“Didn’t I say fuck off?” he complained, but he went on to answer the question anyway. “No. It just takes more to kill you down here.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “What, like a slit throat won’t do it?”

“Not unless an angel did it.”

“Why would an angel want to kill me?”

“Oh, babe.” He actually laughed at me. “You are really clueless. It’s almost funny. Anyway, these sinners kill each other on the reg. And they have to really work at it, too. Getting shot or losing a limb? That’s not gonna do shit. Well it’ll set you back a little bit, but you’ll still be around afterward. The sort of stuff you think of as lethal usually isn’t. Which means you can take a lot of punishment.”

“Fun,” I said sarcastically, trying to cover up the rush of fear churning in my stomach.

“It is,” responded my companion almost wistfully. “At least, for some people.”

I repressed my shudder, since I suspected showing weakness was a bad idea. “Cool. Got any hot tips on how to avoid getting tortured?”

“You want advice?” He hauled himself back up a little from the pathetic slouch. “I don’t give shit away for free.”

I attempted to pin him with what I hoped was a massively unimpressed stare. “You already know I just got here. I have literally nothing. Extorting me is a waste of time.”

“You could get things, though.”

“Not without some advice I can’t. Stalemate.”

“You’re killing me, bitch.”

“It’s pronounced birch,” I shot back, pleased with myself over that response, and stood up. “And I don’t think you actually have any useful information. Bye.”

“Wait!” He caught one of my roots with a skinny arm, and I stayed because I didn’t want to risk falling on my face a second time. He looked pathetically small to me now that I was fully upright, a sheen flashing over his bright black eyes as he blinked and worked his face into a smile. “Don’t go to Cannibal Town.”

“Doesn’t sound very inviting,” I agreed smoothly, suppressing another nervous heave of my stomach. “How do I avoid it?”

“It’s that way.” The cockroach actually got up, putting his head almost at level with my waist. “They’re all thin and pale like you, with black empty eyes, and they smile too much.”

“Thanks,” I said sincerely. He might be a rude little asshole, but that was genuinely useful information. A sudden explosion somewhere behind us blasted me with hot air that made the leaves that used to be my hair whip around my face. I flinched and ducked down hastily, covering my head with my hands, but the roach didn’t even react except to laugh at me. Which destroyed what little goodwill he’d been cultivating.

“That’s fucking pathetic!” He slapped his knee, cackling so hard he almost ran out of breath. “Oh shit. Thanks bitch,” he gasped in amusement, “I needed that!”

I silently debated whether I could control my roots well enough to punt the little fucker over the horizon.

Judging from the way he wiped tears from the corners of his eyes and grabbed back onto me, he made a pretty good guess about what I was thinking. “You really do need my help. Listen, tell you what, I’m feeling generous. Sit down and I’ll give you a few more tips.”

I didn’t sit. “I thought you didn’t give shit away for free?”

He flapped a hand casually, as if that could dismiss my suspicion. “We’ll work something out later. You wanna live? Sit down.”

“Come with me if you want to live?” I quoted sarcastically, but this time I sat back down. It made him almost the same height as me.

“Totally, babe.” He looked smug. I noticed that I’d been upgraded from bitch to babe, but it didn’t feel like an improvement. It made my skin crawl.

“Ugh. Don’t call me that.”

“Sorry babe. So listen. Number one priority is looking like someone no one wants to fuck with. You’re a big girl, and I’m kind of loving the whole naked thing, very Amazon warrior chick—”

“You mean chic?” I cut him off. Pretty much every word out of his mouth was insulting, but mispronouncing fashion terms was more than I could tolerate.

“What?” He blinked again, not getting it and not giving the impression that he cared. “No, like an Amazon warrior chick. Don’t interrupt.”

“Oh my god.” I put my face in my hands.

The roach ignored that. “Anyway what I’m saying is, you look pretty fierce—until you trip over your own feet or jump at someone getting blown up way on the other end of the block.”

I scowled. “Like that’s so easy? How long have you been down here?”

“I’ve been around forever,” he informed me, puffing up his little chest.

“Oh yeah? That’s why you’re sitting all alone in garbage?”

His features turned into a sudden snarl. “Shut the fuck up, bitch. You don’t know anything.”

“It’s Birch,” I said again, starting to like the sound of that as a comeback, even if it was a weak one. “And that’s what you’re supposed to be helping me with. So? How am I going to practice moving gracefully and confidently in a street full of potential killers?”

“You don’t have to practice. You’re just overthinking it.”

“Oh, thanks,” I exclaimed in blatantly fake enthusiasm. “Really, I’m just overthinking it? That’s all there is to it? All I have to do is not try? Thank you so much!”

I don’t know why I bothered. The sarcasm rolled right off his winged back. He even managed to point one fingerless hand at me in what was unmistakably a finger-gun. “You’re welcome.”

I ground my teeth and counted to ten, since sarcasm and obvious annoyance clearly had no effect on him. “Alright,” I said when I released the breath. “Can you tell me what percent of the people in this area of town are likely to try to kill me?”

He considered that. “Since you just got here, you probably haven’t pissed anyone off, so not too many. There’s a handful that’d try to mug you or beat the shit out of you just for fun. But most of the violence around here is personal vendettas or related to sex.” Why did he sound vaguely disappointed about that?

Oh well, he was the only mentor I had. “So don’t make any enemies and don’t go into the sex dungeon. Got it.”

“And don’t go into Cannibal Town.”

“And don’t go into Cannibal Town,” I repeated dutifully. “How do I go about getting food? Clothes? Shelter?”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “Steal ‘em.”

I scowled. “That sounds like a great way to make enemies.”

“Don’t get caught, duh. You need me to spell everything out for you?”

Was Hell seriously going to be just sitting here getting mansplained to by a cockroach? “I’m not a pickpocket, and there’s no way I can steal someone’s clothes without them noticing. Besides, what are the chances of finding something that fits this body?”

He groaned in contempt for my apparent stupidity. “You don’t steal the clothes. You steal fucking money.”

“Well excuse me for not automatically knowing what kind of currency you use in Hell.”

He adopted a sad, mocking voice. “What, like you thought capitalism wouldn’t make it down here?”

I shot him a dirty look but didn’t take the bait. “I never gave it much thought. But if I had, I wouldn’t have imagined…anything like this. Is all of it real, then? Heaven? God? Eternity?”

He laughed and slapped my trunk. “Damn! You ask the big questions, don’t you! You know, I think I might like you, babe. You’re not too bad for a sinner.”

“And you give excellent backhanded compliments.” I shrugged his hand away with a twitch of my hip. He was right about motion coming easily when I wasn’t thinking about it, I’d give him that much credit. “Do you even know you’re doing it?”

“Doing what, babe?”

“Being gross, insufferable, and generally unpleasant.”

He tilted his head to the side, studying me with those bright, pupilless black eyes again. “Don’t see you going anywhere.”

“Maybe that’s because the last time I tried, you grabbed onto my root.”

“No it’s not,” he said, confidence seemingly unaffected. “It’s cuz you need me.”

“Do I, though?” I drummed my fingers on my chin, feigning deep thought. “If this is a capitalist society, all I have to do is get a job.”

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

“It can’t be that hard,” I argued, trying to convince myself.

“Only a couple places around here do interviews in the nude, sweetie. And from I’m seeing you’ve only got the one hole, which means you’d better give really good head if you want that kinda job.”

I pulled my knees up to my chest again, feeling far more exposed than I had a moment ago. Was it comment, or the way his eyes had seemed to linger on my mouth and chest? “I thought you said walking around like this makes me look tough.”

“It does.” The cockroach shrugged. “Doesn’t mean it’ll get you hired for a sales gig.”

“Oh.” It was, admittedly, a long time since I’d had to apply for a job the normal way. Running Jake’s non-profit wasn’t going to be very useful in terms of job experience down here. Charitable organizations didn’t strike me as something that’d be big in Hell. “Is that why you’re still naked, too?”

“You checking me out?” He grinned. “Sorry babe, I don’t fuck sinners.”

“Because you don’t have a dick?” I asked mildly.

“Wha—oh you dumb cunt, it’s not—” He growled in annoyance, and I smirked at actually leaving him inarticulate for a few seconds. “I have a dick. You just can’t see it.”

“Because it’s so tiny?” I knew I shouldn’t antagonize my only potential ally, but he made it so hard not to.

“Because it’s—fuck you, I don’t have to explain myself! I’ve got one and it’s fucking huge, okay?”

I held up my hands in surrender, though I was still struggling to wipe the smirk off my face. “Okay, fine, whatever. Not like I want it.”

He eyed me suspiciously. “You a rug muncher?”

“No, you fucking homophobe.” I rolled my eyes. “I like men. Just not bugs. Can we move on from this? You were telling me how to get a job.”

“I was telling you that’s not gonna happen, but okay, whatever.”

“It is going to happen,” I said in a tone that hopefully brokered no argument. “Because you’re going to help me.”

“And why would I do that? You already owe me just for giving you enough advice to keep you alive.”

I studied him seriously. A cockroach the size of a large dog, unclothed, unarmed, and alone in the street—yet brimming with confidence, self-righteousness, and chauvinism. How much of it was genuine? Who was he really? Surely not the sort of person I wanted to risk somehow tying myself to.

Then again, I’d eagerly tied myself to Jake, who had seemed like the perfect catch. Rich, charming, handsome, dedicated, supportive. Always saying all the right things up until the moment that he pulled out a knife and sent me down here. No. After that, I’d take my chances with someone who didn’t try to hide what a piece of shit he was.

“Because,” I said after a deep breath, “you need an ally just as much as I do. So—if you keep helping me, I’ll keep helping you. Keep me alive, I’ll try to return the favor. Help me find a job that pays, and I’ll share the money from it.”

“How much of the money?” he asked shrewdly. But there was a moment before he spoke, just a split second, when I saw excitement, surprise, and disbelief in his face.

That was an important question. I didn’t want to saddle myself with a permanent leech in my new life. But I always wanted to know somebody had my back, even if it was for no other reason than for their own personal benefit. Right now, what mattered was being worth more alive than dead to someone. “Fifty-fifty,” I said rashly. At least until we’re both off the street.”

“You’re asking me to make a deal,” he said slowly, a look of faint disgust settling on his features. “With you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you had so many better offers.”

“It’s just—” Whatever he was going to say, he stopped himself and shook his head decisively. “Yeah. Fine. Done.” He spat into one of his hands and stuck it out toward me.

“Is the spit really necessary?” I asked unhappily.

He shrugged. “I don’t have power to seal the deal anymore, so yeah.”

I made a face, spat into my own hand, and grasped his. The little appendage felt small in my palm, especially when I closed my long, thin fingers around it. The mingled saliva squished unpleasantly, and only when I was wiping it off on my trunk did my mind process that he’d said anymore. And by then the deal was already made…not that it would have changed my mind anyway.

It didn’t stop me asking, though. “What do you mean, anymore?”

“What do you think it means?” He wiped his hand off on my trunk, too. “I used to have power. And I’m gonna find a way to get it back. Good choice hitching your wagon to this star, babe. I’m taking us places.”

“Birch,” I corrected him, the response already almost automatic. “It’s Birch. What do you want me to call you? Roach?”

“Fuck no! I’m Adam!” He didn’t quite slap a hand over his mouth, but he did snap it shut pretty quickly. I watched quietly as his face contorted in anger, antennae trembling with fury, then just as abruptly collapsed into fear and depression. “Don’t call me that. Forget I said that.”

Thinking I knew what he was going through, I smiled sympathetically. “My name used to be Bridget.” That already felt like a lifetime ago. Almost like Bridget was someone else altogether. How strange.

“No, no, forget I said anything. No real names.” He sounded almost scared, which honestly made him a lot more likable than when he was being cocky. “I’m. Uh. Wings. Call me Wings.”

“Okay.” I nodded, committing it to memory. “Got it. Wings. Now—what do we do now?”

⛧ ⛧ ⛧

The past four days have been shit. It had taken at least a day to wrap his head around the fact that this was real. There were no bad dreams in Heaven but still, he wanted it to be a bad dream. He knew where he was. He’d recognize this depressing shithole anywhere, how many times had he passed through here for an extermination? At first he thought he hadn’t died after all, and it was just a matter of getting back home.

That was before he’d gotten a look at his body. He looked—he looked like one of them. One of those loser freaks that populated Hell. Ugly. Hideous. And worst of all, small. He still had wings, but they were practically worthless. His angelic powers had abandoned him. This body was worse than useless.

And he’s a sinner. Thinking about that still gives him a fucking headache. It makes him tired in ways he can’t describe. Heaven and Hell were supposed to be forever. He’d lived his life, he’d gone to Heaven, he’d been an angel. So what the fuck was this shit? Getting beaten by the chirpy little hellborn bitch and her loser friends wasn’t bad enough, now he’s supposed to live among them? It’s bullshit. Bullshit of the highest order.

He’s refused to ask for help. He tells himself that it’s because all these losers are beneath him, or because sinners are assholes who wouldn’t help anyway. Deep down he knows it’s because he’s scared they’ll recognize him, and he hates himself for that fear. And he’d rather die in a gutter in his own piss than let anyone upstairs know that he’s here.

Then, out of nowhere, this tree chick lands at his feet. Yeah she’s a sinner, and he hates resorting to associating with one of them. But she’s brand-spanking-new. No clue who he is—or was. Never heard of the goddamn Hazbin Hotel or Charlie fucking Morningstar. No idea how to even make it through a day down here, practically begging for his help. Physically imposing and not too dumb. If he has to work with a demon down here, he could do a lot worse.

#hazbin hotel fanfiction #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel spoilers #Hazbin Hotel Adam #hazbin hotel adam fanart #hazbin hotel adam/OC #I know OCs aren't popular but bear with me people #multi part fic #I didn't mean to write this #blame my muse

5 notes · View notes