........Paved with good intentions

Red brooding skies blanket over you as intermittent flashes of bright light blink out from behind the clouds. Hacking out a cough a familiar taste of blood appears in your mouth along with a not so familiar pain scattered across your body. It feels as though you've been stabbed over and over with an icepick, though your head feels the worst. Everything your eyes pick up isn't clear, outlines of the dark plateaus and desert fauna in the  distance appear in triplicate. your ears are humming in a mix of tinnitus and an empty white noise, you can't even hear the distant thunder of the rolling storm before you. Shuddering out a pained breath you grasp at the ground in your left, Sandy dirt in your right a large revolver, your revolver. Even though you can't remember anything, you know it's yours

Gingerly patting yourself down it's apparent something is very very wrong,your grubby navy coveralls and leather jacket are flecked with blood,it doesn't however appear to be yours either. Alarming as that may be though the skin isn't broken over these icepick pains there are divots above them, most notable off center of your temple. Staggering to your feet you grasp your head, knocked off balance by a blurry flashback, work, co-workers, supervisor, ball-pien hammer, blood, lots of blood.
Though your vision still spins amongst the dusky light you can make out lumps, PEOPLE shaped lumps scattered around the plains. A few seem to be stirring, some standing just as you are. The shadows don't look right, some distorted, sporting wings and horns, others look like caricatures and Halloween costumes. Scanning along the distance a city, bright lights, neon of all colors poking through the stormy skies. But your thoughts are cut short by two piercing yellow eyes atop a cactus glaring at you. A short cackling laugh is followed by a fairly annoyingly high pitched voice "WELCOME TO HELL SHITHEAD"

      "Am I really being accosted by a cactus" you groan
"Are you blind asshole? I'm an imp for your information" the sharpening figure replied
"And I'm the fucking pope, where am I and what are those things out there!" You sweep your hogleg in it's direction
"Are you deaf or do I have to repeat myself?" The figure's eyes looked gleeful "you really are a fresh one, and they're just like you, a mortal sinner" it said the word mockingly as it hopped down from it's thorny perch." This place bares your ugliness to outside, it hasn't started with you yet but it will" the short red demon sauntered into your view "it'll begin with those pains of dying fading away along with the associated dings and dents,then you start to change as you walk to pentagram city, usually the closer you get the faster".

  "Now if you'll kindly fuck off I have unwitting twats to loot before they come to" it turned on it's heel and marched into the brush. Barely stammering out a reply you drop it, he had been helpful and you can't chase him in your condition. Its hard to move through the scrub brush, though with each dragging step you can feel the pain of the spikes shrink, its like when you walked through tag alders and blackberry brambles with your grandfather, a large man of 70 he looked like a 1970's cop movie extra in a checkered orange wool shirt. Cupping your hands around your eyes you can barely make out the city Danny devito's sunburnt cousin was talking about, "pentagram city"
"Couldn't have been a bit more clever with the name could they" wiping your brow your hand doesn't feel right, fingernails now pointed black claws, palms subtly turning black, along with a velveteen fuzz creeping under your natural body hair. Standing under the swirling clouds on the outskirts of Hades  It wasn't a shock to find out tubby was right about what would happen, it's just that you remember why you're here now

  like Ravens on a scarecrow
Too old to beat them off
the guilt ferments
familiarity BREEDS CONTEMPT
Neil Fallon howls through your headphones, it's hard to keep working a good co-worker friend got killed yesterday due to faulty equipment. Faults we were told to ignore, bad luck of the draw. This is hitting you harder than you thought it would, your hangover does nothing to stem mist in your eyes. Push through Felix, you can handle this you tell yourself hoisting another tire onto yet another car along the assembly line. "Keep it moving people we have to make up for all the shutdown from that accident" a voice crowed among the din, your boss that rat FUCK, that penny pinching RAT FUCK was a lot easier to criticize when you weren't the one making the decisions. A balding man of 53, the skeeviest managerial fuckwit one could ask for stood behind your shoulder "hey keep it moving kid, but watch what you're doing eh".

I
I can't hold it together,
I don't want to be the empathetic person I am, this is not how people are supposed to live

I couldn't hold it together, I yelled at him it was his doing, the blood was on his hands, chasing production at the expense of his underlings even though it was us or him . He wouldn't accept it, the verbal fight became physical. I struck him mercilessly, again and again, I never even noticed the hammer,weightless in my hands. The blind rage consumed me like an unleashed fire, I shouldn't have had that gun in my glovebox. The barking of that fourty four speaking like a mad god, how could I have done such a thing, managerial officeworkers falling like knocked over chess pieces until the police came, turns out hardcast wadcutters are more than some of their vests can take. I feel nothing
Only regret now.


 Trudging through desert the regret faded away to simpler thoughts, I don't have to be good anymore, noone to dissapoint, no society to shame me into doing their perception of what is right, I can do whatever I want. Conquest, a simple existance, getting shitfaced on bourbon nightly, my future is finally my own. I smiled, but stopped short when my tongue prodded pointed teeth, I hadn't noticed the muzzle sprouting either. I wasn't too perturbed, this was hell after all and "when in rome do as Romans do"

So I kept walking, I'm going to need whatever form of currency they use down here if I'm going to survive down here. If I'm still dressed like this and still have some of my possessions it's likely others will too. arriving  at the top of a hill you survey the landscape, and the scenery was actually pretty beautiful the cacti glowing in the neon , and more people shaped lumps. Most of the sinners lying there didn't have much to loot, kinda depressing dying with 12$ in your wallet but hey not like they were going to fret about it, present circumstances given. After picking through the pockets of at least 20 dead you've managed to collect 7 iPhones, two hip flasks, assorted jewelry and about 58.60 USD in assorted bills and change. No wonder that imp was out here doing this

 By the time you reached the outskirts of pentagram city you were a full blown fox, and you had to ditch your steeltoe boots since they no longer fit. The city streets looked like fucking Syria, wrecked overstyled cars and barrel fires abounded, the cracked pavement bathed in buzzing neon. Several seemingly abandoned brick buildings flanked your sides, each marked with Xs like the ones used after hurricanes. On the left quadrant they were marked PCR, right quadrant no hazard,
The bottom told a different story, each no survivors/ multiple bodies that is if you're reading this right

This place smelled of rot like that rotting rabbit your parents chose to  have you move with a shovel, the rotting sweetness is something that you cannot really explain, sure other people can say some horrible shit and it sort of fits, but beyond the smell of cooked sweet potatoes and festering toe jam you can't really explain how horrible it is, and the scenery left nothing to the imagination each block you walked, more destruction and katrina crosses, bloated demonic bodies of all shapes rotting in the sun. Each dilapidated building was different from the last, some mid century, some craftsman, some victorian, others downright modern. This place looked like a timetraveling shanty town, trash and fliers gathered at your feet. stopping to crack open one of the scavenged flasks (hmm, brandy) you pick up one the more important looking fliers, one not about drugs, porno, or title loan businesses.  It read, !EXTERMINATION! by decree of your ruler Lucifer (the name seemed to glow a metallic red ) this message is sent out to all of the denizens of hell. Due to overpopulation of Hell our lord who hath forsaken us will once again attempt to snuff out as many of us as possible. Surviving this yearly disaster, requires you to barricade all windows and doors, do not make sound, body armor is recommended etc. etc. though one sentence catches your eye, "angelic weapons will erase your soul permanently, dispose of them properly, or don't I'm not your fucking mother". Though the statement was alarming it made sense, "geese this tastes like fucking paint thinner" you remark, finally noticing the obnoxiously buzzing off color neon sign advertising a pawn shop parallel to you, "Harold's Stolen Goods Pawn". Starting across the street you're nearly run down by a white limousine covered in gold chrome, the fake teeth of the bumper nearly catching your tail.

  Collecting yourself you enter the shop, the air thick with cigarette smoke. rows of assorted weapons pile to your right,while assorted goods demand the space of the left side of the shop, a row of various modern and downright outdated televisions show a news program, 666 news. At the desk sat an old balding red imp with short horns chain-smoking while he watched the program, the show replaying a brawl between some blond and the female announcer.  They appeared to be mocking the smaller blond but the thought was cut short with a cough from the desk who you assumed was Harold. "you got business here bucko?"  the imp, coughing out a tar scented query, you laid your scavenged goods on the armored windowsill "I suppose, what can I get for these". Through some impressive bartering you manage to acquire, a fairly Blood pitted WWII 1911 .45 automatic with 3 magazines, 150rds of ammunition, a hellphone (a modified cellphone for hell), and 1.75l of a fairly cheap whiskey though you weren't one to argue. through some finagling you managed to pry some information out of the spindly little shit. He's been here for a while, each year to cut down on the population god sends down angels of death to kill off sinners, their weapons are beyond ones posessed by the ones sinners posses which only temporarily kill themselves. otherwise they still operate on a currency based system, dollars of each country redeemed at a merchant for an equal amount of currency brought down by the dead. Buildings abandoned by the erased dead are also free to be claimed. Thanking him for the information you leave it seems the concept of finders keepers is still well and alive.

   Exiting the nicotine stained concrete walls of the pawn shop you scanned the area, multiple businesses dotted the street, perhaps you could make a living down here, you were a laborer after all. Not much really piqued your interest of the artificially empty buildings, hardware stores, appliance outlets, even grocers were considered. Travelling the shattered empty streets though you finally found something you could deal with, a rickety old garage dressed in an adobe style. Entering the place it was decorated in a fairly retro (for you a soul born in the 90's) fashion, though the previous occupants that were spattered across the walls it certainly didn't add to the decor. exiting the lobby the actual shop wasn't much better, one  demonic person lay dead speared against a late 1950s styled red and white, impressively finned Tudor hardtop, the others lay mortally stabbed against toolboxes and oil drums. what you presume to be an angel lie in an embrace with one of the dead, its spear punctured into the sinner, yet it held to it fast, stuck to it with its own spear. it didn't appear to be a killing blow even, half of the spear's shank broken off and rammed through the demon's eye. Perhaps you could use this to your advantage ?. Tools are scattered across the building and it takes you quite a while to organize them all. Though you can't help yourself from experiment, taking the broken off bar from the dead you modify your ammunition with the shop's lathe, cutting an an insert in the copper slug for a specialty round. you can't imagine that it wouldn't be the lord's blessing instead of the material behind it that kills a sinner. though you weren't convinced enough to take the chance to test it

The previous occupants weren't treated to a very sanctimonious burial, piled into a nearby dumpster and doused in kerosene with a heavy helping of used motor oil for a more complete burn. Nearly losing a few whiskers made you reconsider playing with fire, and turned your attention to the abandoned car sitting in the first garage bay. It was purely american in design, menacing chrome,
 razor pointed fins and whitewall tires abounded, certainly somebody's pride and joy at one point, the keys still sat in the ignition untouched. The red and white tuck and roll interior stank of heavy cologne, this car really reminded you of your great grandfather's plymouth fury though the badging declared this car to be an "Archangel Custom" in a gold cursive script across the dash. Perhaps it would behoove you to take a break from cleaning house and get something to eat? it couldn't hurt, though you can't figure out if you still actually have to eat down here or everybody is just too geeked out on drugs to be hungry. After raising the glass garage door you slide into your Detroit casket, sinking into the overstuffed bench seat you fumble for the pentagram headed ignition key and find its mate. It took a few pumps of the pedal before the beast awoke, clearly this car had a very healthy sized engine and little exhaust.  "Lets motorvate" you muttered to yourself as you pulled onto the cracked and bloodstained asphalt, the lopeing engine happily puttering as you surveyed the wrecked city.

There wasn't much for radio stations in hell, the most prominent being one run by a disk jockey named alastor. He kinda sounded like an old timey mister rodgers type who would happily feed you your own teeth, among other things. Though you couldn't get into the 30's type music the station was playing, not in this car at least so, you turned it off. Dull buzzing streetlights reflected off the cherry red hood as you motored through the city, not much for diners in this part of town it seems, narry a gas station either. Stopping at a seemingly out of place stop sign you relight a stubbed out cigar left in the ashtray, "Oh Damn", you cough and hack, not being a smoker since you had asthma when you were alive.shelving the idea you huck the stogie out of the window at a nearby trash pile. While you cough your sensitive lungs out a sign catches your eye, Cliff's bar and grill 2 Blocks ahead on the left, it seems as good an option as any right now. Pulling your nearly gaudy with chrome coupe into the nearest parking spot you gaze upon the saloon, cladded in weathered wooden slats in a traditional western style. "At least they don't have to worry about winter down here," you remark locking your car, nevermind how futile it is

The patrons were hardly hospitable, big red fuckers in motorcycle gear of different eras, denim and kraut helmets, hell's angels(now literally)vests coated with patches, and even folks of your time wearing full leather suits abraded down to their skin, some even look haphazardly sewn together even entire helmets ground flat on a side or two, "must be some gxxr owner" you grumble to yourself.This looks like an old racing saloon that you used to work for in your youth, flags and signed license plates coat the walls, along with liquor signage, its almost like those comfortable years of your adolescence flying around pitch black sharp corners coming back from work, weak headlights from an early 90's sedan ripping through the night after a long shift cleaning dishes. The bartender looks like a blazing saddles reject, and its somewhat hard to understand his drawl but you manage to order a rare cheeseburger and a fith of some fairly decent vodka.

finding a nice barstool coated with aging red vinyl you set down for your meal, for something you can't be sure that its even real this is a pretty damn nice burger, just the right amount of lawry's, a proper piece of real cheddar, even a few mushrooms and while you could describe what the bun was in your mind, you were cut short by a gruff voice " you're in my seat boy" came from a gruff looking denim clad demon, they were clearly a child of the 40's who'd stopped breathing in the 60's biker movement. "Sure doesn't look like assigned seating here, frei-" you were cut short by the red fool shoving you off your stool. That deserves a response in turn, we are in hell after all. drawing that old kraut killin' .45 you plant 3 230 grain fmj's in his back and a fourth painting the hanging glasses and dollar bills hanging off the ceiling counter with a coat of grey matter and dark red blood, nice how it still looks like real blood, not horror movie shit you muse, dusting yourself off. To a stunned audience you grab your  food and leave. somebody tries to push you as you leave, but without even thinking you put two in his brainpan