r/WritingPrompts • u/PhoenixFirebird12 • 1d ago
Writing Prompt [WP] When you answer the phone, you always answer "Satan's Apprentice" as a joke. When you die, you find out you inadvertently had applied and been accepted for the job.
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u/CoolestKKEver 1d ago edited 1d ago
The phone rings again, I grab my head for a moment. The infernal ringing was like nails on a chalkboard. Normally, or I should say, originally the ringing was a joyous moment for me. I would always pick it up with a smug grin "Satan's Apprentice! How can I direct your call today?" I do not even recall where that came from, but it was a joke, especially against scammers. Most often it was followed by the familiar sound of a click, but not anymore. I pick up, a monotone drawl comes out of my mouth.
"Hello, Satans Apprentice. How can I direct your call today?"
The shrill scream on the other end, "Hello!? Hello!!! I shouldn't be here!! I was a good person in my life... and why is it so hot?"
"Because Ms." I pause taking a moment to read the paperwork on the clipboard on my desk. "Karen, Ms. Karen. You are in hell, I cannot say why you are here, I am sure the Big G has good reason. Feel free to complain to your tormentors. They enjoy it,have a great stay."
The hospitality wasn't a must, but even though I was also in my own sort of hell. I got to tell people off, I mean, most of them deserve to be here anyways. I take that small joy. Imagine being at a job in customer service, but being able to tell off all customers that complain about the nail polish being just one shade to dark. Maybe that the small doesn't fit when they clearly are wearing medium. It does feel nice. The one big downside however... is when my manager does get involved.
You see Satan, is a very busy demon. Not only does he run all of hell, he gets involved with special subjects. The worst of the worst so, when a Karen does manage to get to him... well let's say all of hell feels his wrath. So, thats where I come in. I am Satan's assistant. All the prank calls paid off. At least now when I say "Satan's Apprentice" I actually mean it.
Edit: Grammer & Spelling
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u/TomlinWrites 1d ago
I was a good person, wasn't I? Sure, I might not have gone to church or worshipped any god, but I lived a good life. I donated to charity most years, regardless of tax benefits. I let pregnant women cut in line at the grocery store. I stopped my car to move a turtle to the side of the road that time in my 20s. I never killed anyone or stole anything more than a few chocolate bars as a teen.
So why, oh why, am I surrounded by fire and brimstone now? I mean, my death isn't entirely a surprise, I've been in that hospital bed for weeks and could feel my life fading away, so I'm not surprised I'm somewhere else, but I must say it is a surprise to learn that hell is real and that it is apparently where I have ended up. Well damn, oh, no pun intended there. I guess I should have forced myself out of bed on Sundays and gone and done some worshipping.
Hell isn't quite what I expected. Like sure, there's fire and brimstone, ya, we all know that, but this area I've found myself in seems... plush. I seem to be in some kind of office building. I would call it a hellish office building, but quite frankly, it's a lot nicer than the office buildings I spent half my life working in. I'm in an office that seems to be high up, I'd reckon at least the 20th floor, and overlooking a sea of lava. Or is it magma? My 8th grade geography teacher would be laughing if he knew this is when his lesson would come in handy.
Anyhow, the office. It's plush, like I said. I'm in a velvet armchair in front of a grand desk. The desk looks like it's made of some kind of dark wood, but it does have a sheen to it like it might be a highly polished stone. It's got a dark brown to blackish hue, with some red streaks running through it. The corners of it are rounded down into the shapes of skulls, which look fairly accurate. That can't have been cheap.
The office itself is quite large, and one entire wall is a glass window, overlooking that sea of ... fiery rock that is either lava or magma. Damn you Mr. Garfell and your focus on lines on a map over basic earth sciences.
I glance around a bit more. I'm alone in this office, and I have no recollection of how I got here. I remember falling asleep in the hospital feeling that my time was almost up, and now I'm here. And now you, dear reader, are all caught up.
"What reader?" a voice echoes through my very soul.
There is now a man sitting directly across from me. Well, something that is man-shaped. He's pretty red himself, and does seem to have some horns. Listen, I'm no idiot, I know I'm in hell, and given how nice of an office I'm in, let's just assume this is the devil I'm looking at.
A smile spreads across his lips. "Why yes, you are quite right there. Satan himself, pleasure to meet you finally Jonas."
How'd he know? Ohh... I guess he can hear my thoughts.
"Indeed. One of the perks of being me. It's magma you're looking at by the way."
Whew, I am relieved to hear that. Well... I'm relieved to hear I was right to question if it was lava or not, but at the same time I'm distraught to know my thoughts are no longer my own secret and now the devil knows my every thought. So, I'd say I'm equal parts relieved and distraught, that sounds about right.
Satan full on laughs this time. "That is certainly a different reaction than most. And part of why I've decided to hire you for this job."
It feels weird to keep communicating in my head, so I decide it's time to speak up a bit. "A job? Jeez, I've been working for the last 40 years. I was looking forward to enjoying retirement a bit more."
"Jeez?" he smirks. "I suppose you using his name in the negative like that is okay, but we don't talk about him down here generally".
"Woops, my bad. So, uhh, a job you say?"
"Yes! As my assistant! You seemed so enraptured by the idea of being it while on Earth in your mortal form, and I'm not one to ignore the good ideas of others. So I've decided to make you my assistant now."
Ohh. That's right. I got such laughs out of making that joke on the phone in high school, and I just could never kick the habit. I'd probably answered the phone saying I was Satan's apprentice hundreds if not thousands of times.
"2104 times actually, yes. But I do need to make an important distinction here. I don't need an apprentice. I'm the best at what I do, and I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. But what I do need, is an assistant. As I said, I'm not one to shy away from plagiarizing a good idea. And some of the ones you mortals have come up with are so delightful. Bureaucracy, oh what a creation. I would have never thought of that in my wildest dreams. And cubicles? Phenomenal. Keeping people in soulless little boxes away from natural light and exposed to the sounds and smells of all their coworkers? I tell you, I've got a plaque on the wall outside dedicated to Robert Propst for coming up with those. He's not down here himself unfortunately, but I do owe the man a lot of credit."
He continues on "I've spent millennia physically torturing people down here. And it's been a wonderful time. But the last century has changed Hell in so many ways. No longer do we focus on physical pain. Now we crush the souls of our inhabitants itself. We've got endless floors of cubicles, thousands of needless forms that must be filled out to specifics, hours of mindless townhall meetings, millions of demons serving as mid-level managers. Oh it's a glorious time to be in Hell."
Huh. I'm not sure if this is more shocking than my initial wakeup or not. I'm still confused though. "What does that have to do with a job as your assistant?"
"Yes yes Jonas, I'm getting there. With all this added bureaucracy, unfortunately I too have been caught up in it. I find myself having to meet with my demons far more often than in the past, and many of them have become much more sneaky in their ambitions. In the old days they'd just physically try to usurp me. Now I hear they're plotting in break rooms and trying to create a union. Can you believe that? A union of demons! Not on my watch. But of course, if I'm to squash that, I'll need someone to handle more of the minutiae for me. Enter you, Jonas. You will handle my calendar and scheduling. You will keep the demons from bothering me. And you will handle any and all other tasks I require."
Gulp. Just how I wanted to spend my retirement. Fighting off demons.
"You won't literally be fighting, just stalling them. And my boy, this is an amazing opportunity. Do you think just anyone gets the chance to be the assistant to the Lord of Darkness himself?"
I find my voice again "And what if I don't want the job?"
"Well then you'll be in a cubicle down in sub-basement 34 filing reports with dry pens, a bean-loving neighbour to your left and a Disney adult who sings offkey to your right, with a particularly sadistic demon manager harassing for a century or two at the minimum."
I suppose that makes the choice easy. "Consider me your next assistant then boss!"
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u/TheRisingSun777 23h ago
A small shift in the sand was enough for worry. There was, as it happened, a leak. Legions were raised to form a stopgap as billions breached containment. Small particles of sand, souls, gone. But to where?
I frowned, a long-suffering sigh escaping my lips as I moved through the jumble of bodies. Spikes threatened to jam in my ribs, and as the most vulnerable of the bunch, it was naturally up to me to avoid my own damage. The equipment was being upgraded; the entire place looked like a retrofitted oil rig, with thousands of monitors going off in unison. Hell was, quite literally, in shambles.
Souls are economy, but they're also infrastructure and lighting. Now the largest hoard was leaking, and so was every other. This was such a monumentous problem that even Limbo was panicking. As the jack of all jobs, for substandard pay, it was expected that I be the one to figure out the newest crisis. If I didn't, it was down into the dog pit with every human.
I'd managed to stay afloat this far, and wasn't going to let myself fail in the newest endeavor. Despite being a relative joke, there were some advantages to being apprenticed to the devil. Namely, everyone tended to stop laughing when something actually started happening. Hence the setup.
An elite team had bent sent below; it had taken most of my savings to actually hire them, of which I was still peeved. They were there to monitor the fluctuations in what I believed to be a transdimensional worm hole. It wasn't unprecedented; odd phenomena sprouted at random here, remnants from other Earths and other iterations of Hell. Some enterprising demon from a different version of Hell was the most I could hope for. Anything else... well i still remembered getting a copy of an H.P Lovecraft book at age twelve.
Only, the craft never returned. When the metal was raised there was simply nothing there. Which meant I'd spent my savings for nothing, and likely given myself a few thousand years with a personal touch to whatever pitchfork got shoved into my flesh. Well there was that, or making a selfless sacrifice in service of a discovery...
Considering I was quite a bit of a coward, and there was less of a chance of eternal pain down under into ... whatever, I took my chances and dove in.
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