My mother’s face never showed anything but glee and apathy. She could hear about a real tragedy befalling humanity and laugh the next second. Oh 9/11 happened? Oh. Waddya want to eat? She smoked and drank and fucked like she didn’t care about tomorrow and nothing got to her, the most horrid insults sliding off, yet when I was four years old, not a day before, she took me to a room I didn’t know we had and stared at me hard enough for me to sit straight and feel anxious.

“We’re going to learn about pain,” she said, her voice dark and serious as if she was speaking of her life’s art.

“What?”

“Give me your hand,” she said, and I complied. It wasn’t as if I had a choice in the matter. Suddenly, there was a nail in her hand. I had no clue where it came from. She pressed it down on the lower side of the palm.

“Does this hurt?”

“A little.”

She moved the nail slightly upwards.

“How about this?”

“The same.”

She shifted it slightly upwards.

“Now?”

“No but it’s tingling.”

She pressed, just slightly, and a shriek forced itself out of me. She leaned back satisfied with herself and I inspected my hand. There wasn’t even a sign of hurt, no blood seeping out. I looked at my mother as if she was a witch. What had she done?

“Every other day we’ll come down here and practice for two hours. I’ll teach you everything I know.”

The rest of the year she walked me through the basics. Taught my what pain was, made me read books. I asked her about emotional pain and told me that was for the suckers on the second circle, not that I knew what that meant.

When I was five years old she brought a hand. It looked so real, and made me practice on it. When I was six we worked up to the wrists and forearms. When I was seven to ten we worked only on the shoulders. So many nerve points there. So much to be done.

She’d bring objects to aid with my learning. Arms that looked and felt just like the real thing except it was apparent that they’d never been a part of human. She brought eyes in cubes that still twitched and reacted. They looked so cold.

And then on my sixteenth birthday my mother disappeared. Never heard from her again, and all she left was a letter on the table.

The Seventh Circle of Hell,
05-02-1989 Past Christ’s Death

Hello dear,

Unlike my father, I offer a choice. I want you to come work for me on the Third Circle. You may disagree and live out your life like a human. You’ll never go to heaven. Perks of being a hellspawn.

The pay is generous and you only have to work every other year.

Call on me for the formal contract.

Yours truly,

Lucifer