The Professor

The trick to fighting a gigantic homicidal lion-man with a tree trunk for a weapon.

I know a cracker of a first line for any Podcast.

The trick to fighting a gigantic homicidal lion-man with a tree trunk for a weapon.

Is to avoid standing where the tree trunk currently is… or, more importantly, where it is enthusiastically planning to be in approximately half a second.

You may wonder how I know these specialised techniques.

Well, the painful truth, and I highlight ‘the painful’ part of the prior sentence, is that I've been made into a bloody smear by a number of clubs. 

A number of clubs, a number of times, and have improved my technique a little each time on my return.

Hopefully, you remember that I am normally immortal, so when I make a, let's say, mistake, normally, I can learn from it. 

Not so this time. 

No mistakes could be made.

I would be utterly dead.

I am not immortal here.

So complicated

This means I cannot get it wrong at all this time. 

Makes my focus on the whole giant tree thing a little more important and imperative.

I know the idea of not being in the way of the club sounds sensible.

I mean, it sounds utterly obvious, really.

Many things sound obvious right before they cave your skull in.

But you do have to even realise the obvious at times.

There are some weapons in life you can parry. 

A sword, for example. 

A dagger.

Possibly even a mace if you are feeling athletic and have not recently consumed several pounds of trench bread and battlefield gin.

Another story of learning right there.

But there is no blocking a simply shaped oak tree swung by something with shoulders the size of confession booths and enough muscle mass to alter local gravity. 

Permanently.

The tree thing came swinging around in enormous looping arcs, figure-eights of death that made the air howl and the mud tremble. 

As did my various sphincters.

Every swing felt less like an attack and more like an end of sorts.

I knew that each swing should have tired my foe, but bitter experience had taught me that giant, lion-headed, supernatural entities do not tire of swinging their clubs.

So waiting for him to get weary was… Well… out.

My only… yet impossible goal was to stop the movement by grounding the club. 

Anchoring it for a moment. 

Force all that monstrous momentum into the mud long enough for me to do something educational to its owner with my sword.

Simple in theory.

Many of the stupidest ideas in history have been simple in theory.

Unfortunately, several things complicated the matter.

Firstly, I had not practised my swordsmanship skills for some time.

Modernity has ruined us all. 

Guns have a dreadful tendency to make one lazy about edged weapons. 

A pistol, in my humble opinion, requires no poetry, no spiritual commitment. 

You simply point and ruin somebody’s afternoon from a what is often polite distance.

I know some of you will raise a lip in irritation at my downplaying of the need for technique in gun play. 

But believe me, as an expert in firearms, not an expert self-declared but an expert by those who know this vulgar art well.

The sword is much more complicated to master.

And as a result, a much harder skill set to maintain. 

The second complication in staying away from the clubbing blows here was trying to do so while wearing leather-soled handmade dress shoes in what was essentially a soup made from mud, blood, intestines, and dead regrets.

My footwear, as you can imagine, had the traction of drunken penguins on polished marble.

And through all these complicated thoughts, the Balkalavian roared and swung again.

I narrowly avoided another decapitation through what I shall generously describe as instinct and less generously describe as blind screaming luck.

Me, being blind and screaming, not the goddess herself.

I must thank the lovely lady later.

Which, weirdly, I knew I would be able to.

If she wanted me to, that is.

If she continued to… erm… bless me.

Are you blessed by luck?

Anyway…

Back to the big bastard swinging the big bastarding club past my face.

Strange the things you notice in moments of stress.

I noticed in great detail that the bottom of said club was encrusted with mud, gore, and at least one identifiable, probably human rib, as it whipped past my face close enough to spray me with wet filth at the apex of its arc.

Wonderful.

A mouth full of… better not think about it.

Battlefields are always described romantically by people who have never been on one, or who have been on one and are made mad by it, or by poetic ponces safely elsewhere.

Nobody ever writes:

“The hero smelled faintly of opened bowels and damp socks as he attempted not to die”

The great beast, untiring as previously said, continued the endless pattern of swings as it moved slowly towards me. 

Left. 

Right.

Up.

Down. 

Like a metronome designed by MC Escher.

I needed him to commit to a downward strike.

To do that, I would have to move to his flank while the club was on its upward swing and remain still enough that his instinct would drive the next blow directly downward toward me.

Unfortunately, this meant that the target offered would be my much-valued head.

Another swing came.

I threw myself ungracefully clear. 

This time, I lost my footing entirely and collapsed backwards into the mud with all the dignity of a bishop falling downstairs drunk on communion wine.

The mud accepted me lovingly.

Now, this was not technically part of the strategy, but combat training teaches adaptability.

Or, more accurately, to
panic efficiently.

The Balkalavian did what all oversized monsters eventually do when they think they are winning.

He laughed at my predicament.

Villains adore evil laughter; at times, they should just get on with it. 

They cannot resist it. 

Somewhere deep in the dark heart of depravity is the absolute certainty that everybody nearby desperately wants to hear a speech.

So he made his witty cinematic quip.

‘The Balkalavian takes another soul!’ he bellowed to absolutely nobody who cared as he looked camera left.

I did not have the heart to tell him that our podcast’s budget only allowed the audio side of storytelling.

Not the visual.

It did give me a moment to ask a question, though.

‘Can we discuss this old chap?’ I politely requested, which he rudely ignored as he raised the club higher overhead for the killing blow.

Higher.

And higher.

Dear God.

This was going to hurt.

Higher.

No, now from there this was not going to hurt at all because I was about to become a thin biological paste spread artistically across wherever the fuck this was, instantly.

I scrabbled uselessly at the mud.

Tried to rise.

Slipped immediately and landed flat on my back once more.

‘Ah bollocks.’ I managed.

The monster now moved to loom over me.

He was rather good at looming whilst holding the enormous trunk aloft with terrifying ease.

I was in the moment, impressed with the quality of the loom.

Muscles writhed beneath striped fur. 

His lion-like face split into a grin.

He said nothing.

He did not need to.

The smile said:

“Observe, tiny scholar. I am about to turn your skeleton into abstract art.”

I wanted to close my eyes.

But that seemed, under the circumstances, a bit melodramatic.

Then came the grunt of effort as he committed fully to the downward strike, like a lumberjack attempting to split the world with a blunt axe.

The club descended.

And I moved.

Now, I would love to tell you that what followed was a refined evasive technique passed down through generations of master swordsmen.

It was not.

What I actually employed was a manoeuvre I would later record in my own combat writings as:

The Sausage Roll.

I curled my arms tightly to my body and my legs tightly together and rolled sideways through the mud with a desperate velocity and all the elegance of a dog turd rolling down a steep concrete embankment.

The impact where I had been was colossal.

I did not see it because my face was submerged in mud at the time of its impact, but I felt it. 

The ground convulsed. 

Dirt, blood, and chunks of things unpleasant rained over me in a warm shower.

There was no plan now.

Only opportunity.

The giant strained for a moment to wrench the embedded club free from the sucking mud.

The earth held it for a precious instant.

Muscle would “eventually” win.

But “eventually” is a very useful word in combat.

Before the creature could recover, I rolled back toward him, sword gripped awkwardly, hilt in my right hand, blade in my left for control, and I hacked downward at the creature’s wrists.

Now, my swordsmanship may have become somewhat rusty over recent years…

…but my weapon maintenance had not.

The blade sheared through flesh beautifully.

It slowed its movement for a moment as it struck bone, slowed only slightly, yes.

But then punched through the radius and ulna of the creature with a wet, and I must add, very mentally rewarding crunch or three.

Ah.

Now I got to beam a genuine smile.

The next few moments were magnificent.

The Balkalavian screamed.

Not in pain.

No.

In feral outrage.

That is an important distinction.

Pain is human.

Wild outrage is divine.

All the force he had committed to pulling the grounded club free suddenly had nowhere to go but upwards at great speed.

His gigantic paws still held the weapon.

As his handless arms flew upward violently.

Blood erupted skyward in pulsing arterial fountains.

For one glorious instant, he looked less like a warrior and more like an extremely surprised decorative fountain.

Blood spattered into the mud around us.

I smiled.

The Sausage Roll had now proven itself as a legitimate martial technique.

Future generations would be made aware of its use and the precise detailed technique.

Unfortunately, while I was privately congratulating myself, the monster neglected to die in a timely fashion.

I had assumed losing both hands would dampen the mud and his enthusiasm.

A lack of blood kills most things pretty damn quick.

Instead, he stared angrily at the gouting stumps.

What would Wil comment on this?

‘He looked proper pissed off with them.’

What followed should not, in theory, have happened.

His gaze went from pumping stumps to the grounded, muddy me.

‘Ah shit…’ 

As you can probably imagine, this made my smile of victory somewhat fade.

‘This is somewhat unexpected.’ I told him.

The giant slowly somehow stood, letting out a roar of rage to the sky as he did so.

‘Ah shit…’

He slowly, but with a resolute decision, raised one enormous clawed foot above me.

And then the utter fucker…

…stamped.

I was not prepared, but fortunately for me, the Sausage Roll technique had applications across multiple combat scenarios.

This time, I mixed it up a little and rolled to my right instead of my tried-and-trusted left.

Interestingly, I noted mid-roll that techniques rarely transfer equally well across both sides of the body due to lateral dominance. 

One side is generally stronger or more coordinated.

Apparently not the Sausage Roll.

A truly democratic art form.

The giant foot smashed into the ground where I had been moments earlier. 

Again, the shockwave of the impact rippled through the mud and into my ribs.

I did not see the foot land due to an important part of this sausage roll strategy.

My face, being once more, in the mud.

I was beginning to resent this battlefield personally.

The instant the foot landed, I rolled back toward it and slashed hard at the rear of the ankle.

Or where I hoped the Achilles tendon would be.

One never entirely knows with lion men.

Thankfully, anatomy remained reasonably consistent across nightmares.

The tendon parted.

The Balkalavian collapsed with a howl that shook mud from broken walls.

Not hamstrung exactly.

Achilles-strung perhaps.

The creature crashed to its knees, roaring in fury while blood poured into the mire around it from its still pumping wrists.

At this point, I elected to employ another highly advanced combat manoeuvre known technically as:

Scrabbling Away on Hands and Knees Like a Terrified Badger.

Once I reached what I considered a safe distance, I turned.

The creature glared at me with naked hatred.

‘Finish me,’ he growled.

‘I am beaten.’

I nodded, only falling over twice before managing to get to my knees in the slippery stuff.

I prepared.

My sword's hilt leaned against my shoulder, its point sunk into the mud as I tried unsuccessfully to wipe my filthy hands clean on already-ruined trousers.

The Balkalavian was finished.

We both knew it.

I approached carefully.

He knelt upon ruined limbs and bloody stumps.

Blood pooled steadily from his points of amputation. 

His breathing became ragged.

His eyes closed.

I raised my blade to prepare my downward swing to remove his head.

Then paused.

His neck was the width of an oak tree.

I would be hacking at the thing until winter.

So instead I lowered the blade and brought the edge gently against his throat.

His eyes opened again immediately, and he turned that magnificent bestial head toward me.

‘It’s the quickest way, old chap,’ I explained softly.

For a moment, we simply looked at one another.

A great many things passed silently between us in that glance.

Respect.

Hatred.

Relief.

Understanding.

You would not understand it unless you have stood knee-deep in mud preparing to kill something ancient.

That language belongs only to survivors.

Finally, he turned his gaze back toward the mud and closed his eyes.

Two slow breaths.

A nod and he lifted his magnificent chin.

I cut deep with a well-honed scalpel-like edge.

The throat opened to reveal a wet crimson smile. 

Thick arteries burst hot across my hands, and the venerable waterfall of blood was greedily drunk by the mud.

He tried to laugh.

Only a fluid-filled gurgle

His windpipe no longer agreed with the idea of a laugh.

Then the great creature collapsed face-first into the mire with all the ceremony of a toppled statue.

You would think killing something like that would feel triumphant.

It did not.

The thrill comes later.

The thrill is survival.

The horrible delayed understanding that you are still alive.

I stood there breathing hard, leaning against, I suppose in an undignified manner, the corpse of something older than nations.

Then, slowly, the sounds of battle returned around me.

Screaming.

Steel.

Gunfire even

The wet sounds of dying.

And somewhere nearby…

…the fucking fairy giggled and clapped.

Lucifer

For several long moments after the killing, nobody in the drawing room moved.

The room itself needed time  to recoil from such an efficient yet beautifully brutal evisceration.

The grandfather clock in the corner ticked once with the nervous hesitation of something wondering if it still wished to exist.

On the far side of the enormous leather sofa, what remained of Belphastus lay in pieces sufficiently distributed so that one could no longer confidently describe him as occupying a single location.

The mist of blood that clouded the air settled as steam rose gently from the ruin.

Something wet slid slowly down the wallpaper.

The smell was… extraordinary.

Copper-rich blood. 

Opened bowels. 

Burned flesh. 

Expensive aftershave. 

And, faintly beneath it all, the ghost of cigar smoke and old velvet.

Then the werecat stood from the task she had undertaken hidden from me by the couch.

She rose from that carnage with all the lazy indifference of a housecat getting up from a windowsill after disembowelling a songbird.

Beautiful, yes.

But absolutely horrifying even for one such as me.

Her Victorian maid’s dress had once been immaculate Gothic perfection. 

Now it looked like somebody had dragged a dominatrix through an abattoir during a hurricane.

The tiny black lace skirt hung in shredded ribbons, soaked so heavily in blood that the fabric clung obscenely to the lines of her hips and thighs. 

Gore painted the once white frills dark crimson. 

A loop of something unpleasant, I suspect intestine, but chose not to investigate further, hung briefly from the hem before dropping wetly onto the Professor's prize Persian rug.

The ivory lace pinafore was no longer remotely ivory.

It had become a masterpiece in arterial spray.

Fan-shaped bursts painted across her breasts and stomach gave the impression of some deranged avant-garde artist attempting to recreate the Sistine Chapel using only internal organs. 

One handprint was smeared diagonally across the fabric where she had casually wiped claws slick with Belphastus’s insides.

Her tattooed skin emerged between tears in the outfit like dark artwork beneath shattered stained glass.

Black ink spiralled over pale flesh, occult sigils, roses, serpents, crescent moons, tiny skeletal saints. 

Blood had settled in the grooves of the tattoos, making them seem alive somehow.

Her heavy goth makeup had smudged magnificently.

Black mascara streaked beneath golden feline eyes.

Her lipstick was mostly gone now, replaced by blood smeared across her mouth and sharp white teeth.

One fang still held a tiny...

No.

The thigh-high black Doc Martens, laced impossibly tight, dripped onto the carpet with a patient little tap.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

She looked like the physical manifestation of every bad decision a Victorian gentleman ever made after midnight.

And somehow…

still impossibly beautiful.

I stared at her in silence.

Not really frightened.

Thrillingly frightened, maybe a little.

I had existed too long to be frightened easily.

But impressed?

Oh yes.

Profoundly impressed.

There was artistry in what Vaughnt had done to Belphastus. 

Savage artistry. 

The sort of excessive violence that crossed the line into creative expression.

The werecat looked down at herself with mild irritation.

Then, delicately, absurdly delicately considering the massacre surrounding her, she attempted to tidy herself up.

She straightened the little lace collar.

Brushed a chunk of something off her shoulder.

Licked blood from the back of one hand with a rough pink tongue.

Then she glanced toward me and signed with graceful, still clawed fingers:

‘Need to change.’

I blinked slowly.

I initially wished to give a witty quip as a response.

Something about her changing her physical form already.

I thought better of it, and to be honest, it would have been a poor jest as I was still processing the fact that Belphastus had gone from feared infernal entity to abstract meat arrangement in under thirty seconds.

I nodded to her once.

Apparently, my permission needed to be granted.

Bizarre.

Vaughnt, in reply, gave a small appreciative incline of the head and padded elegantly toward the door, leaving faint bloody footprints behind her.

As she passed, the little black demon cat sitting on the armchair watched her with interest in those enormous glowing eyes.

I looked at the little black horror.

She looked at me and shrugged a tiny feline shrug.

‘She is a cat,’ it said simply, going back to cleaning a clean paw.

Her tone suggested this “cat statement” explained….Well, everything.

I considered this.

Then nodded.

‘Yes,’ Lucifer admitted quietly. ‘That does explain rather a lot.’

Because all cats, regardless of size, species, or infernal alignment, are fundamentally furry serial killers.

Across the room, Father McKenzie suddenly made a choking noise.

He turned violently and vomited into a coal scuttle.

The sound was upsettingly wet.

‘Oh dear Lord,’ he gasped between heaves. ‘His spine came out…’

Nobody comforted him.

Astaroth pointed to where the said spine had landed, somewhat artistically.

Meanwhile, Fate calmly refilled his teacup as though catastrophic demonologist disembowelment was merely an interruption to a pleasant afternoon.

He selected another custard cream with scholarly precision.

Opened his Reader’s Digest, which had not been present a moment ago.

Adjusted his glasses, which he had not been wearing, on his now once again eyeless face.

And smiled in a fateful manner.

Crunch.

The biscuit echoed loudly in the ruined silence.

I finally exhaled.

The drawing room looked less like a place where one entertained guests and more like the aftermath of a lion attack inside a butcher’s shop.

Bits of Belphastus decorated the furniture.

One eyeball stared accusingly from beneath a side table.

The fire crackled politely.

‘Oh for…’ I muttered.

After a moment of patting cushions and moving viscera aside with visible annoyance, I managed to locate the television remote buried beneath a severed hand.

I tried to hold it up between two fingers, not allowing the wet, bloody thing to touch much of me. 

Paused.

Looked at a hand.

Then casually tossed it into the fireplace.

The flames flared green.

‘Pretty.’ I announced to the room.

Father McKenzie whimpered.

I pointed the remote toward the enormous television mounted above the mantle and began flicking through the infernal channels.

Static.

Screaming.

A cooking programme involving damned souls and béchamel sauce.

A war in three dimensions.

An advert for cursed annuities.

Finally, the screen stabilised.

Lucifer leaned forward slightly.

‘Well then, let us see where Belphastus ended up.’ I murmured.

Belphastus.

I became aware of two things simultaneously.

Firstly, I was dead.

Secondly, death had apparently been designed by an absolute cunt.

There was no glorious inferno. 

No screaming choir of the damned. 

No obsidian throne. 

No rivers of blood or mountains of skulls.

Frankly, if one had spent several millennia committing atrocities in the service of Hell, one expected a little theatre.

Instead, there was darkness.

Not poetic darkness either. Not the velvet dark of midnight forests or candlelit crypts.

No. This was administrative darkness.

The sort of darkness you found behind your eyelids during a migraine.

And in the middle of it hung a door.

Just… a door.

I stared at it.

It floated in the nothingness ahead of me with all the grandeur of a cheap landlord’s bathroom replacement. 

Beige wood.

Brass handle. 

Slightly warped near the bottom as though somebody had once kicked it repeatedly during an argument about rent.

I was still very confused.

Something had happened.

There had been a room…

Lucifer.

The professor.

Tea.

The cat.

Oh.

Oh no.

The cat.

Memory returned in wet flashes.

Claws.

Teeth.

Lace soaked crimson.

The terrible sound of my organs being redistributed across expansive, expensive upholstery.

I slowly touched my chest.

Whole again, sort of.

Dead, certainly, but structurally intact.

‘Well,’ came a voice beside him, smooth as poisoned silk, ‘you died again.’

I turned towards the voice somewhat sharply.

Astaroth stood beside me in a form almost painful to perceive properly. 

Again, as always, in another exquisite form.

It was beautiful in the way storms are beautiful. 

Tall, androgynous, elegant beyond human standards, dressed in black so perfect it seemed to consume the concept of light itself. 

Its smile held the warmth of winter surgery.

‘It was,’ Astaroth continued with obvious delight whilst taking a sip from an ever-present glass of something red and bubbling, ‘spectacularly unpleasant.’

I stared.

It’s what you kind of do when meeting this particular duke of hell.

‘I sort of  remember the cat woman thing.’ I told them, scratching my head.

‘Oh yes,’ Astaroth laughed.

‘Everyone remembers the Vaughnt. She is…’ Another sip, giving the creature blood red lips. ‘particularly memorable.’

I sighed deeply and somewhat with acceptance and regret.

At this point, I noticed the ring was gone. 

The ring of summoning that I had banked on to get me what…?

‘I really died.’ I laughed, seeing the cosmic joke for what it actually was.

‘No, not just died. It was… much more than that…You exploded into several emotional and nutritional pieces, yes.’

A pause.

The demon was happy with this description.

‘In fact,’ Astaroth added thoughtfully, ' at one point your spine was on the chandelier.’

It pointed above our heads now, and there it was.

A blood-spattered chandelier with what I assume was my spine incorporated into its fine detail.

I looked back at the demon, who was rocking back and forth with delight as it gazed at the grotesque piece of… erm art with a smile that was too wide. 

I closed my eyes to clear my thoughts.

I had served Hell for a literal few lifetimes.

I had orchestrated massacres for its divinity.

Had driven the innocent to sin.

I had coded at least three computer viruses that damaged more people than any of the great plagues and created one massively unfair tax system.

And had been murdered by what looked like a Victorian goth maid with anger issues.

Which she was.

‘The little demon cat said she was a cat,’ Astaroth said with a shrug, as though this clarified everything. 

‘Yes, she was a particular lot of a cat.’

Frankly, I felt that explained the matter completely.’

I looked back at the floating door.

‘Where the very fuck am I?’

Astaroth’s grin widened.

‘You’re in your Hell.’ Oh, how the thing’s eyes glittered and changed hues. 

It was enjoying this sort of torture so much.

I did not like that.

Or it just now.

Not at all.

The judgment-filled eyes narrowed at the door.

‘That’s it?’

‘Oh no,’ Astaroth said softly. ‘That’s merely the entrance.’

Something old and cold shifted inside, squirmed in my guts.

For the first time in centuries, I felt genuine unease.

Not fear exactly.

But the sort of dreadful anticipation one feels before opening a letter from Human Resources.

Slowly, I approached the door.

The brass handle was slightly sticky.

That disturbed me more than any endless void…

And…

I hesitated.

Behind me, Astaroth smiled with the patient excitement of someone waiting for fireworks.

I opened the door to the demon’s crazy laughter.

Reality vanished.

One moment, there was darkness.

The next…

Fluorescent lighting.

The lights buzzed overhead with the exact tone required to trigger despair in the soul.

A break room?

A warehouse break room?

Possibly.

Not a modern one with trendy coffee machines and motivational posters.

No.

This was old… filled with an old misery.

An industrial misery.

The air smelled faintly of burnt toast, damp cardboard, microwave curry and the exhausted ghosts of cigarettes smoked outside loading bays during unpaid breaks.

The ceiling tiles sagged slightly with long, unconsidered brown water stains.

A vending machine hummed in the corner like an asthmatic robot awaiting death.

Every button displayed SOLD OUT except one labelled ‘Egg Mayo Triangle.’

The machine wanted £14.80 for it.

A microwave sat on a counter nearby.

Inside was something that had exploded in approximately 2007 and been left as a warning to others.

Probably sardines, judging by the stench.

A kettle wheezed quietly beside a mountain of mismatched mugs.

One read:

WORLD’S BEST DEAD

Another simply said:

DON’T TALK TO ME UNTIL YOUR SECOND COMING.

The implication being that after tea, talking remained unwelcome.

P’raps

I took this all in slowly.

A dilapidated and stained sofa occupied one corner of the room. 

It's, never nice, floral pattern had faded into colours found only in nicotine, old bodily fluids and despair.

Above it, at an angle that would make an OCD sufferer need to claw their eyes out, hung a calendar.

Not sports cars.

Not glamour models.

Well, they might have been once glamour models, I suppose.

Dead women.

Semi-nude corpses posed in disturbingly cheerful positions beneath months of the year.

MISS FEBRUARY appeared to have drowned in a wheelie bin.

‘Good God,’ I whispered.

‘No,’ said Astaroth from somewhere behind him. ‘I’m just middle management.’

I ignored this shite attempt at humour.

There was a fridge.

A handwritten sign attached read:

WHOEVER KEEPS STEALING MY YOGHURTS WILL BE REPORTED TO BERT

Another note beneath it read:

FUCK OFF BERT NO ONE WANTS YOUR FUCKING YOGHURTS

I explored a little more, approaching the tiny plastic table in the centre of the room.

There were forms on it.

Thousands of forms.

Stacks and stacks and stacks.

Printed in grey ink.

Each one demanded signatures.

Approvals.

Incident reports.

Requests for authorisation.

One sheet near the top read:

REQUEST FOR ETERNAL TORMENT REVIEW
Estimated Processing Time: 6–8 MILLENNIA

I felt something break mentally inside me.

Not physically.

Spiritually.

‘No…’ I begged.

Astaroth suddenly appeared in a red sequin ball gown on the top of the fridge, cross-legged and showing too much thigh, filing their nails… maybe claws. Hand pointy things’

‘Oh yes, little darling.’

‘No torture?’

‘Oh, there’ll be torture.’

Astaroth gestured around the room.

‘This is merely orientation.’

The other door into the room burst open, and in walked. 

Oh Fuck no.

Oh fuck this…

this…

Is…

A zombie in an AM A ZOMBIE boiler suit, a flat cap, and a clipboard.

‘How do, welcome to your first day at AMAZOMBIE’

‘Dya ger it?’

‘Am a Zombie and I work at Amazombie.’

‘My name's Bert.’

The walking dead said.

Before drawing out the battered plastic chair from beneath the plastic table and sitting down.

‘You’ll love it ere. We does have a laugh.’

‘Honestly, you’ll love it ere so much you will want to stay forever.’

He cracked up at this.

I assume this was meant to be a joke.

‘Ya ger it?’ He asked.

I shook my head.

‘Oh well, we will work on that sense of humour of yours because the joke is you better love it because you are here FOREVER.’