I think everyone should post something in the horror section, just to say that they’ve done it. Even if it’s crap. Horror is notoriously difficult to write: except for masterminds like Stephen King and Clive Barker. Wow.

Please review- this is a short story and one-shot so it won’t take but five minutes. Constructive criticism allowed. Hell, flames are allowed too… it adds flavour.

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The autumn months are ones of despair, depression, illness and solitude, and it is because of this that it is Hell’s favourite time. In London the wintry air bit and nipped at the faces of nameless commuters, snarled angrily around the bare parks and bus stops, stirring up leaves as it breathed icy breath.

And, below the ground’s surface, nowhere was the air more foul then in the London Underground. Out of the tunnels it roared, warm, stale, and electric, snuffling around the people’s legs as they boarded the Circle line. The warm air crowded eagerly into the compartments, pressing itself against numerous bodies, causing them to sweat. Moving along the train, past the sullen commuters, it swept into the sixth car.

There the air froze. At the next stop when the doors opened, it rushed out in terror, seeking darker, safer tunnels.

At Embankment station, Hell alighted from the sixth car, and went up into the world.

---

Jack Morrow eyed the newcomer as he glided into the pub. Tall, lean, saturnine, he certainly wasn’t dressed for cold weather; all he wore was a light grey suit. Older as well, he had grey hair, but nothing about his posture suggested tiredness or frailty. If anything, Jack thought, the way his eyes swept around the room was almost predatory. The pub’s warm, mellow light did nothing to soften the man’s face: the features were stark, angular, and hard. When the eyes alighted on him, they stopped.

Smiling, the man walked towards Jack’s table, and extended an elegant hand. "Hello," he said softly, his voice accent-less; "You look like you could use some company."

Jack grunted, took the proffered hand, and almost immediately yanked it back. The flesh was ice-cold. He could feel pinpricks on his palms.

"Do you want another drink?"

"No thanks."

The stranger leaned back in his chair, still smiling that comfortable smile. Jack’s nostrils caught a whiff of something: a faint, goatish smell. The other smiled, revealing yellow teeth. Jack tried not to show his distaste.

"Troubles at home?"

Jack stiffened. "That’s none of your business."

"No?"

Silence.

"Perhaps I could help."

"Who are you?" Jack said rudely, "I don’t even know your name."

"Names," announced the other, "are unimportant. What is essential, Mr. Morrow –"

"How do you know my name?" Jack barked. Inebriation made him on edge. A few people turned to stare.

"As I said, that is unimportant. Please don’t interrupt me again." Jack caught the subtle edge of steal in his voice and fell silent.

"It seems as if you’ve been focusing too much on yourself lately –what with your wife leaving you and your sudden addiction to alcohol- the world seems black and cruel and this morning that silent barrel did look awfully tempting, didn’t it?" The older man lowered his voice to a whisper.

"I’ve been watching you, Jack William Morrow…"

During this time, a small seed of panic had sprouted in his chest, and despite the buzzing alcohol in his brain Jack had enough sense to reel back, way from the mocking voice.

"You don’t know anything," he slurred, struggling to rise, "Nothing about my life, or me. You don’t know a bloody thing: not about my feelings, my pain, nothing!"

"Your pain, Mr. Morrow?"

Jack spun away from him. He could taste the sickly bile and alcohol in his throat, but what burned most was the inexplicable rage he felt, not towards the man but himself. Jack pushed his way to the door and staggered out into cold, grey London.

The gentleman clicked his tongue, gazing after Morrow. He might’ve been civil. If it was one thing he despised, it was stupidity. Ignorance was one matter, but if it could’ve been avoided, that was unforgivable. This man was not showing him acknowledgement or respect. It was time to end the masquerade.

No one noticed when the tall, shadowy stranger left the pub and followed in Jack’s wake.

---

Jack Morrow swayed slightly as he turned down a grimy sidestreet. Damn that old fool, damn his wife, damn them all to Hell. Yet he couldn’t stop himself from shivering, or ignore the uneven rash of goosebumps that had spread on his arms. For no fathomable reason he was afraid: not paranoid fear but some feeling far more primal and deeper then he’d ever known. Looking into that face had conjured up images of things both familiar and strange: dead fields under a grey sky, desolate wastelands, the lashes of a thousand whips.

His stomach churned.

Aware he was half-crying, Jack gasped when he felt a breath on his cheek. It was hot and acidic. He clapped a hand over the reddened flesh and looked around wildly. He was alone, except for the wind. Already the traffic was muted and distant, it was not a part of this atmosphere. Another breath seared his cheek.

“Why do you run from me?”

Jack stopped dead. He could feel a powerful, ancient presence, and was terrified. Animal fear came flooding back and he instinctively crouched, raising his arms to ward off the threat. The rank smell of goats was strong; it pricked his nostrils like thousands of little needles.

“I can show you things…” the voice continued kindly, and this time it came from behind.

The elderly gentleman he’d met in the pub was standing two feet behind him. He reached down, took the man by the arm and pulled him up. Though he was smiling, the smile never reached his eyes.

“All I want is to liberate you. Mankind is trapped in a state of imprisonment- through me you can obey your flesh, your mind, your will -”

“Who are you?” Jack blurted out.

The other laughed. Jack quivered in terror. The elder’s mouth was a gaping maw, it was endless, and his breath stank of decay and ash.

“I represent indulgence, not abstinence. I am not a spiritual pipe dream, Mr. Morrow, I am vital existence! I am undefiled wisdom, not hypocritical self-deceit, nor do I waste my love on ingrates…”

His gaze raked over the other’s face.

“…I only extend my kindness to those who deserve it. I am the personification of Vengeance. I am all of the so-called ‘sins’ because they all lead to mental, physical, and emotional gratification! I represent you: mankind, the animal, with all his flaws and whims!

“I do not ask for ‘worship’ –pitiful grovelling and self-abasement. I ask only for love, adoration, respect…acknowledgement. You ask who I am?”

A fly crawled out of that grinning maw. And another, dozens. They settled on his face. Joined in congregation, they buzzed and seethed on that inhuman face, iridescent bodies fat and rotten.

Jack began to weep. He knew, oh God, how he knew.

“I am Cabal, the Goat. I am Apollyon, Beelzebub. The Lord of the Rats. I am Lucifer, the Fallen One.

“Everything I stand for is greedily sucked up by humanity, Mr. Morrow –oh, now what have we here?” Jack raised his head at the maliciously triumphant voice.

A wounded dove lay splayed, flapping helplessly against the dirty concrete. It fixed both man and Beast with one beady, pleading eye. Lucifer stared at the bird with undisguised feral hunger. He licked his lips.

“I can show you the vitality of life.”

So saying, he slowly, exquisitely, brought his foot down upon the dove. Jack heard the soft crackle of its fragile bones snapping, and closed his eyes. Lucifer smiled: he could imagine its tiny heart beating against his sole before it ceased. He turned his heel back and forth, back and forth, until the final spasms stopped, his heel red and sticky, the pitiful bird unrecognisable. His eyes were vast and cold.

“You’re a monster,” Jack whispered.

“I am your teacher. I’m showing you lessons in experience you never learned despite years of schooling. Your sin was stupidity: you refused to see me for what I was before your eyes. Only now you recognise life’s fleeting existence, because I took it away from a smaller, lesser creature. Are you really so blind you can see nothing but your own selfish perceptions?”

“I…no! Please, I don’t want you to show me this. I’ve learned, I’ve seen the error of my ways…” He babbled like a confesser to his priest. Lucifer listened patiently, hands behind his back.

“Blessed are those who find wisdom and seek knowledge, Mr. Morrow, for these are more precious then gold, and the gain thereof shall be the immortal universe itself.”

His words were lost on Jack Morrow. Having been touched by Darkness, the man was now clinging onto the last few threads of sanity. He simply gazed with dimming eyes. Lucifer smiled at his newfound Cain.

“If you wish to be blind…so be it.”

Jack gazed in despair as his own hands moved slowly towards his face by no power of his own. He watched as the fingers curled themselves into hooks. Instinctively he jerked back, but it was too late. The nails tore at his flesh. His head thrashed, trying to evade them. No use.

Lucifer watched as the human before him sank to his knees, tearing at his eye sockets. His high, thin screams echoed in the sidestreet, but no one heard. He'd made sure of that.

Let there be suffering.

Blood spurted thick as wine from Jack’s eyes, the coppery smell mingling with salty tears. He clawed and ravaged his face until strips of skin hung loosely from the skull. Blind and helpless, he lifted his ruined face to Cabal and opened his mouth in one last plea. But he couldn’t. Blood had clotted his throat.

Lucifer’s human face began to change.

“Knowledge is a painful thing, for it always bears a price. Accept the risk and pain, for life without risk or pain is not life.”

Jack wept: for the ruin of the world, for the dove, for Christ. He could feel sticky warmth on his cheeks and smell the blood in his nostrils. He knelt, the pitiful creature that he was, on the cold cement and cried from his sightless eyes until tears failed him.

"You couldn’t have saved them. No more then you can save yourself or all of humanity."

He tried to crawl away, groping blindly at the pavement. Lucifer’s voice persisted in his ear.

"Look at me," he said kindly.

"No."

"Please?"

"I can’t." Jack’s voice was a broken whisper.

"Look at me."

He crawled on, head bent, trying to ignore the ceaseless whispers in his head…and his searching fingers found cold concrete. He’d run into a wall. There was no escape. Jack whimpered, feeling the cold, massive presence at his back.

“Look at me.”

“No…”

“I said look at me.”

Jack obeyed. His head that is, not his body. His kneeling form stayed where it was. Jack’s neck rotated on its spinal axis, clockwise. His vertebrae snapped; his tongue lolled, his ears popped, and he died gazing on that terrible, sunless face with empty sockets.

“Look upon death, for it comes, bidden or unbidden,” Lucifer said softly. He blew and Jack’s corpse disintegrated into dust, carried away by the wind.

You know what? This was my English coursework piece, but I thought I should inflict it on everyone else. At least until I write something worthwhile.