[Writing Prompt] The entire tavern has gone silent. The piano music has stopped, poker cards have been dropped, alcohol is being dribbled inches away from the drinker’s gaping mouths, and every single inhabitant is staring right at you. The Living, non-skeletal human who has just fallen through the ceiling
Just Another Day In Hell
Immersed in detritus and flotsam from the shattered roof, covered in fine dust, the prostrate form lay there without moving, blood oozing from its gaping, broken mouth.
The barkeep, his sockets glowing nervously, slowly came up from behind the bar, leaned over and peered down into the small crater where the flesh and blood body had landed. Slower still, he craned his skull up and looked through the new skylight at the distant sky and the far away crimson glimmer of the portal barrier.
Frustrated he began to say, “Satan be damned if I’m gonna pay for that fuc…” before being interrupted when another body smashed through the establishment’s ceiling at top speed and fell on top of the barkeep, crushing him into silence.
There was another brief pause before someone had the wherewithal to scream “DELIVERY! TAKE COVER!” All at once every skeleton in the place made for the exits. Right then the bodies began to fall in earnest.
A fat man smashed through a load bearing wall, bringing a quarter of the building down on top of a group of panicking drinkers. His corpse implanted itself deep into the wooden slats of the floor. The broken legs and arms of skinnier people began popping through what remained of the ceiling as the rest of the patrons leaped out windows or pushed through the front door.
Outside the whole hellscape was racing around looking for cover, everyone trying to get to their delivery shelter, or to sneak or bash there way into someone else’s. All the while thousands, tens of thousands of bodies fell from the crimson portal, gathering momentum in free-fall and impacting with terrible violence on the ground.
No one was spared during a delivery, from the lowliest imp to the Lord of the Damned himself. Rumor had it Satan was knocked unconscious once by a falling entrant and didn’t appear in public for two weeks so no one saw the bruise.
The chaos continued for nearly three full minutes. Then the downpour of bodies began to lighten up into a drizzle and finally stopped entirely.
All over the hellscape demons and succubi, skeletons and giant spiders left their hiding spots and assessed the damage. It was a big delivery, that was for sure.
The skeleton patrons slowly returned to the bar and robbed the barkeep blind until one of them declared the place belonged to him now and kicked the others out during “renovations”.
One by one, the freshly delivered newcomers woke up, horrendously disfigured and in extraordinary pain of course, their horrible surprise compounded when they were immediately consigned to rebuilding everything they’d just inadvertently torn down.
Soon everything returned to normal. The blood-bats loosed from their caves and the screaming Baby-faced Owls – owls with the sharp toothed faces of babies – swooped down from the pain trees to swallow whole the eyeballs of the damned.
Just another day in hell.
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