Azazel remembered what Hell was like. It smelled like fear, sweat, blood and death. Tangy and metallic, heated over a roaring fire and set to serve whenever. It tasted that way too, when his mouth wasn't filled with blood. The angel had been subjugated to horrendous tortures. The feeling of a million knives cutting into his skin, hooks lodged in his flesh, brands burning into him until there was nothing left. In those brief moments of lost consciousness, the smell was gone and replaced by better memories. The salty smell of the crashing waves, or clean and freshly showered skin would drift through his subconscious before the smell started to shift. Waking from torture-induced unconsciousness was nothing like waking from sleep. It was sudden, painful and full of fear just to be awake again.
He imagined most other damned souls felt this way. Sick of the smell, tired of the torture and prayed to be let go. Azazel knew he wasn't going anywhere, he fell and the Devil took him like Azazel knew he would. After the first hundred years, his prayers had melted from daily into weekly. After weekly, and another century, they became monthly.
And then one day, it got particularly nasty. The Torturer was doing everything to keep Azazel conscious through the whole ordeal. His resolve finally cracked, agreeing to be protégé to the Torturer just to stop the torture. As years passed, Azazel found himself marveling at the wealth of damage a simple blade could do to human flesh. He had always known that it could kill, but stabbing someone was completely different from picking them apart, sinew by sinew. He found himself enjoying perks, if there even was such a thing in Hell. All he knew was he wasn't in a dirty, stinking cell anymore.
Snapping himself out of his thoughts, Azazel started to make for the exit. "Well, I gotta go before anyone else gets here," he explained, "You might not try to kill me but they sure as hell will."
"So I'm just gonna leave and let you explain this mess, okay?" Then Azazel flew out of the train station with a few flaps of his wings.



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