The Demon and the Tree

Sarah Brown

“Look, Argog. All I’m saying is that it’s tiresome. I’m tired, ok? I mean, there are only so many ways to use a whip, ya know?”

Argog stares at me for so long one of his bulbous eyes makes a squelching PLINK! sound as it falls out of his head. He pops it back in without a moment’s hesitation and continues to stare. I frown.

“I mean, don’t you want something else? Don’t you have dreams? Aspirations? Anything?”

The demon across the breakroom table looks down into his Starbucks coffee cup and takes a sip as if pondering. He grunts.

“No, why would I have anything like that? We’re demons. This is what we do. This is our job, Taz.  You keep talking this way, you’ll be stuck in the Seventh Circle until Freedom Day.”

Freedom Day. That’s all anyone ever talked about. Humans on the surface call it Judgment Day, but people, sorry demons, don’t like the word judgment. It makes them itchy, like they’re allergic.

Instead, they call it Freedom Day. The day when they get back up to the surface and … I guess do the same thing they’ve been doing their entire existence? Torture people, wreak havoc, go spelunking in the fjords, maybe kick a puppy, I don’t know.

But just thinking about continuing this job of mine, for Satan knows how long, makes me itchy, and I stick a hand into my pocket. The item there calms me, like a worry stone. I shake my second head. My first one just continues to eat our lunch of peanut butter and mayo sandwiches. At least one of us is doing what they’re supposed to.

“Maybe, and maybe not. I mean, there’s more we could be doing, right?”

“What, like reading them a bedtime story? Maybe get some finger puppets or… oh, I just thought of an idea for finger puppet torture.”

I huff in frustration and sit back in my chair. The back rest digs into my spine, one of those chairs they used to have in elementary school cafeterias. If you sat wrong, you’d slide off it completely. I’d learned just last year how to make that not happen. Expert chair sitter, here.

“No, just ...UGH!”

“Well, what do you want me to say, Taz? Demon. Torture. Whips. Boiling pitch. Ikea furniture. Fire. This is what we do! Is this about Julie again? Devil damn it. You need to get her out of your head. Sorry. Heads.”

Argog gets up from the breakroom table, finally having had enough of my blathering. He throws my Crystal Pepsi bottle into the non-recycling bin and storms off. I continue to sit, dejected.

So dejected, in fact, that I don’t notice myself slipping farther and farther down the seat until I fall off. Cloven hooves don’t provide much traction, really. The impact makes my first head burp. So much for being an expert sitter.

A few minutes later, I walk out of the breakroom, rubbing my bruised rear. The smoky haze of the office used to fill me with cheer and even a little bit of giddiness. A dark shiny new day to inflict all sorts of nastiness onto the inhabitants of the Seventh Circle of Hell. All sorts of activities abound. We tend to keep eyes on the humans’ world, and it was always a favorite pastime of mine to keep tabs on who we might get when their time was up.

We get some of our best ideas from you guys, really. DMV lines are a perennial favorite here. The damned see a grumpy old lady and a queue, and they start crying. We don’t have to do anything else. Oh! Two and a Half Men and the Star Wars Holiday Special are played on repeat in one room. At the same time. Our insanity quota is always in top shape with those fellas.

Level Seven got some prime examples of humanity’s most horrific. My friend Azelbael got Charles Manson. He had to have pulled some strings. Maybe he blackmailed one of the execs. Maybe Azel once saw him cuddle a kitten or something.

Anyway, we got some real interesting people here. This level is for violent folk. Murderers, tyrants, blasphemers (we had a real run during the Reformation), and usurers. A lot of Cash Advance managers are gonna have a real nasty surprise when they shuffle off the mortal coil.

And then there are the suicides. I never felt comfortable doing anything to those sorts, really. It always felt dirty. Even on my happiest days, when the agonized screams of Attila the Hun or Alexander the Great filled the profane brimstone-infused halls of our offices, it was still a downer to look at my work assignment for the day and see someone whose crime was violence against themselves.

That’s how I met Julie.

Day after day, I got Julie as my work assignment. And day after day, I broke branches off her tree because…ok. Hold on, I know that sounds weird.  You’re not from around here, so you might not know how this works. A suicide’s punishment is being denied a human form. So, they get turned into a tree.

Make sense? Yeah, it doesn’t to me either, but I don’t make the rules. Apparently some Italian guy wrote a book about us, and the Big Wigs thought he had such great ideas that they revamped a lot of our procedures. Probably just trying to earn points with the Big Boss even though everything was fine and absolutely nothing needed changing. It’s the same in Corporate America, I hear. Wonder who got the idea first.

Anyway, as I was saying, I was assigned to Julie for a while. Honestly, it was awkward. I’d stand there, break a twig, blood would drip out, the tree would whimper, and … that’s it. That’s the whole thing. Twig. Blood. Whimper. Rinse and repeat. It was tedious, so one time I decided to start talking.

I mean, you’re really not supposed to talk to the damned. You’re not supposed to have a reason for it. It’s not like we have shared life experiences or anything. And how would it start anyway? Like in-between rounds of poking someone with hot irons, “Hey, do you have any craft hobbies? I’m big into crochet myself. If you are, we have a JOANN’s here.” It just doesn’t work. So it started with me talking to myself just to break the monotony.

“I’m not sure how I wound up here. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the benefits are great. You get to meet new people every day. Frequent breaks and all. But I’ve been here for many many years, and I can’t help but think there’s more I should be doing. Or even, could be doing. Not with you, though. This is pretty much it as far as you go.” I broke off another stick. Blood dripped down, but the tree did not whimper.

What?

I broke off another one. Blood, but no whimper. I narrowed all four eyes and crouched down.

“Uh, Tree Thing. You’re supposed to have a verbal and by extension audible reaction to me d—”

“I’m not a thing,” the tree whispered. Or, at least, something inside the tree whispered.

All four eyes blinked simultaneously. None of the trees had actually spoken before. I didn’t know what to do, except answer back. “Ok then, what are y—?”

“I’m still a person.” It was a bit hard to hear over the sounds of distant screams, so I crept closer. The tree continued to speak.

“And my name is Julie.”

Well, what was I supposed to do, huh?? Someone introduces themselves to you, you answer back! I’m a demon, not a barbarian.

“I’m Taz’ren. Uh, most call me Taz though.”

“Nice to meet you, Taz,” the tree responded and said nothing more. I looked around me. There was no one else in the Woods of the Suicides on this shift. No one else could see what was going on.

“So, uh. How’re you doing?” I winced. It sounded like a bad pick-up line. Thankfully, Julie must not have noticed.

“I’m ok, I suppose. All things considered. Just miss some things. My cat, Charlie. He’d love it right now, being able to climb me. He used to try, just to cuddle with me when I felt down, but I always stopped him. I wish he were here now. He could climb and sleep in my branches.”

“Oh yeah? We got some cats here. It’s mostly the creepy ones with no fur though. And they like to eat people, but I don’t think they like bark … ha ha, get it? Bark? Cat?”

The tr—sorry, Julie shook her branches. I took that as a laugh somehow.

We talked for I don’t know how long, exactly. Time works a little wonky here, so it’s hard to say. But I sat down next to Julie’s trunk, and we chatted about everything. Julie had been a med student in college, starting her first year of residency. She always liked helping people, and so being a doctor seemed a natural fit. But the long hours, much as people tend to warn others, took their toll. She could never sleep, so she took some sleeping pills—unfortunately, one too many.

“You’d think as a med student I’d know better. But when you’d been awake for three days straight, your mind starts to do funny things. Every time I would take a pill, I’d forget a minute later and take another one. Then another, and another. Maybe on some level it wasn’t an accident, which I guess is why I ended up here. I just wanted the exhaustion to end. I just wanted to sleep. For eternity, as it turns out. But even that didn’t end up happening.”

I listened. I mean, you might not think it, but demons are really good listeners. We pay attention to things. And I paid attention to Julie as she told her tale. At the end of it, a surprising question came out of me. “Does it hurt when I break a branch?”

“Yes, isn’t it supposed to?”

At that moment, I felt something I’m not sure any other demon in history had felt: guilt.

I’m gonna get fired. Maybe literally.

The next work shift I had in the Woods of the Suicides, I strolled up to Julie like I was strolling up to a suburban neighbor’s yard. Hey, how are the rose bushes coming along? Yeah? Mine too. June beetles, am I right?? Cue mutual laughter.

“Hey Julie. Long time no talk.” I walked around her trunk, as if choosing a particularly nice twig to break off in case someone was watching. I took note of the small pile of twigs nearby but didn’t think much of it.

“Hey, Taz.”

I frowned twice. While her voice wasn’t usually what I’d call chipper, her tone seemed especially off.

“Uh, something bothering you?”

I realized immediately that asking a question like that while in her current situation would seem utterly ridiculous. But I still listened for the answer.

It took a while to hear an answer. “I’ll be honest. Yeah, something is. The one who was here on the previous shift. He was a little rough with my branches is all. I’m better now that you’re here, though.”

I looked back to the pile of branches. I don’t know what, but something flared in me. Both cold and hot at the same time.

“I’ll be right back.”

I went back to the office and looked through the assignment sheets until I saw the shift prior to mine. The hot disappeared. The cold remained.

Argog.

I turned right around barely managing to not trip over the blob wearing a construction hat.

“Oh. My bad, Squeet.”

He gurgled a reply that I did not understand and oozed up to the sheets I had just put down.

I paused, trying to figure out where Argog might be after his shift ended, and decided to try his apartment.

I pounded on the door so hard that the knocker flew up on its hinge. After a minute of “hold your horses” and other muttering, Argog answered. His eyes widened in surprise. “Taz? What are you doing here?”

I barged in and turned to face him as he closed the door. “Argog, you had that new suicide tree last, right?”

Argog put down the latest edition of the End Times newspaper in his hand and looked at me warily. “Yeah… why?”

I should have anticipated his response. I really should have. But when I opened my main mouth, nothing came out. I realized I didn’t have an answer for him. No plan. Nothing. Well, I didn’t, but my dumb second head did.

“Hee hee hee, Taz no like when you hurt the Julie Tree!” It giggled manically.

I froze. Argog froze. The dumb second head just kept cackling. I briefly wondered if they did therapeutic lobotomies in Hell.

Argog recovered first. “Taz. You need to get back on your shift. I’m going to pretend like this never happened. Understand?”

All I could do was nod and walk out.

A few days later, I was called into the office of our manager, Mr. Bubbles. We obviously did not call that to his face. His real name is Bub’lezel, but he’s covered in these enormous boils that honestly look like soap bubbles. I hope he didn’t give himself that name because he chose very poorly.

“Taz, come in here and sit down.” I took a seat in the swivel chair in his dark and dank office. Mr. Bubbles had all sorts of pictures on the wall that he was proud of. There’s one of him shaking Satan’s hand during a company party. All of our parties are on the Ninth Circle since the Big Boss is stuck in ice and can’t move, so we go to him. It’s always a big shindig, but the only drink they serve is Malort.

I stare at those pictures as Mr. Bubbles starts yammering on. I barely listen until I catch the word “tree.”

My heads swivel towards him. “What, what? What tree?”

Mr. Bubbles folds his hands in front of his enormous red belly and frowns. “Weren’t you listening? I said, you’re being taken off tree duty. Someone of your talents is being watched very closely! And so …”

I gulped.

“… we’re putting you in charge of tyrants! Isn’t that wonderful news?”

I opened my mouth but stopped from what I was going to say as a knee-jerk reaction. No. No, it was not wonderful news. It was, frankly, terrible news. But I did not say that.

“Yes, sir. That is great to hear. Thank you for the promotion.”

Mr. Bubbles slapped me on the back and went to open his office door. “You’ll start there on your next shift. Good luck. We’re counting on you!”

I headed out the door and heard it close behind me. Without a word to the secretaries, coworkers, and other office staff, I began to walk. Eventually, I found myself in the Woods of the Suicides. I turned, and there was Julie. I crept closer, acting as though I was going to break a branch off for old times’ sake in case someone really was watching, and whispered. “I’m shifting jobs, so … I probably won’t ever see you again.”

For a few moments, the tree said nothing. And then, eventually, whispered back, “It was nice to meet you, Taz.”

I looked down at the ground. The hundreds of little branches and twigs I had plucked from her littered the area around her trunk. I picked one up, no bigger than my index finger, and slipped it into my jumpsuit’s pockets. I muttered, “You too, Julie,” and walked away.