Down-loaded
“Dis-co’s greatest hit coming at you again,” the disembodied voice shrieked.
After some brooding, Malabec finally spoke his mind. “I’m thinking about transferring out.”
“Why this time?” replied Coldstinger.
Celine Dion crooned on in the background. “Near…Far…wherever you are…”
“I’m just not happy here anymore,” he sighed.
Malabec the Skinsealer’s zeal for his job tapered off earlier this millennium when Hell’s Deejay changed the workday mix. Everyday, all day, it had been “Battle Won Under Thincorn’s Bridge” composed by a small powerful Norwegian lord in 988 A.D. Horrible as it was, that dirge had found a place in Malabec’s heart though even the forgotten Norwegian’s constituents hated him and it, because it got stuck in their crawl for days without end. Like any demon, Malabec was a creature of habit: he would punch in, grab his bottomless pail of burning liquid flesh, and seal skin on the damned before their torture sessions for the full eight hours. As it cooled he would hum the song that played in hell’s heavens on a continuous loop:
“…and we crush the heads of our enemies
And now, seven years into the new millennium, they had a six minute music video streaming in of those two star-crossed, fleshy humans in love with only a singular redeeming characteristic. His heart leapt as the male, frozen and waterlogged, sank to the frigid depths of the black ocean’s heart. He’d clap if it was for the other 356 seconds of human emotion.
“Is it the new food service?” Coldstinger inquired. The daily feast of fresh entrails he’d been enjoying for two hundred years now hung around his waist in an life-preserver of fatty scales. Thin and bony, Malabec was not a fan of entrails though he had found local hellacious delicacies quite scrumptious. As Malabec moved to the next recipient the newly painted soul screamed, Coldstinger heaped fire-ice on it to enhance the pain.
“No, it’s this song. It gets under my skin.”
Coldstinger laughed at the apparent joke while tapping his friend’s exposed bones. “Yes, I never thought I’d miss “Thuncorn’s Bridge” either, Bal.” He thought about the music for a minute then laughed. “Life here in the eighth ring isn’t what it used to be.”
“Amen, brother.”
“But you know what?”
“Eh?” said Malabec over the screaming of the soul he painted hot flesh on.
“Could be worse. I hear that ring five just signed a deal for Mmm Bop!”
Malabec dropped his brush in the pail and looked at the screen planted directly in front of the condemned’s cages. Celine hugged herself in the breeze singing her song.
“You’re right, Coldstinger,” he enthusiastically lathered up the brush and poured it on a music executive. “After all, what’s a millennium.”