This story was a response to a writing prompt about a lackidasical hell and a lazy devil.
"Why isn't the acid bath working?!" I shouted at my personal assistant.
My personal assistant was Lucifer, the Morningstar, First Among The Fallen, Prince of Hell, and a lot of other titles. Currently, they were buffing their nails, feet kicked up on their desk while they watched cat videos on Youtube.
"What?" They asked, not really paying attention.
"The acid bath! The lake of boiling acid, inexplicably used to torment corrupt politicians? It's offline? Why! How!" I shouted back, frantic.
"How what?"
"How is it offline! It's acid!"
"Oh, that happens." Lucifer said. "Don't sweat it. It'll heat up again eventually. Probably just Hitler stuck in the drain again. He's gotten fat down here. Fat and... melty..." They trailed off as they stared at a poofy white cat trying to catch a bee.
I sneered down at the lazy devil. Ever since dying and coming here, it'd been one problem after another. No one even seemed to care that this was Hell. Hell! The place to be! But the demons just did their jobs halfheartedly, or not at all, and the boss itself didn't give a shit either as long as there was something good to watch.
They got good wi-fi down here, so, spoilers; there was.
And so the wheels of torture did not turn. No one suffered, no pain was inflicted. No eternal torment, just an endless quiet weekend with a decent buffet. It was... not what I'd expected.
Or what I wanted.
I'd started my ascension to management early. Demon after demon had fallen to me, either by blade or by politicking. After a while, I was in the upper echelons. The coup was inevitable, but Lucifer didn't even seem to mind that much. My victory was as unsatisfying as a hell that didn't hurt.
I'd made it my assistant instead, in an attempt at dramatic irony, but it hadn't changed much.
"If that acid bath isn't online in an hour, I'm going to carve out the throat of the first person I see, every hour, until it is." I growled, and Satan waved a hand at me in acknowledgement.
Stomping back to my office, I slammed into the chair and considered the papers in front of me. Incident reports, information from my secret police, technical issues with torture devices, problems with the lines at the gates, bandits on the road to hell. Apparently, they handed out food and water and gave cheerful welcomes.
Disorganization.
In life, I'd built my empire on order, efficiency. Control. Woe betide anyone who got in my way. And after a while, I'd come to relish the hurting as much as the structure it protected. Hell, to me, hadn't been a threat. It had been a promise. And now here I was, that divine oath broken, and a horde of slacking interns once again between myself and greatness.
I knew I could do it again. But the endless sea of paperwork had only grown down here. Despite the internet access, they still used hard copy, and that old brand of dot matrix printer paper that gave the worst cuts to the fingers if you handled it wrong. And the headache behind my eyes got worse and worse with each interaction with the maintenance department. And I was just...
Tired.
It had been a long life, and now, the reward for work done vilely was more... work...
I rose, stalked over, and kicked open the door to my office so hard the glass pane with my newly printed nameplate on it shattered into a thousand fragments against the back wall.
Stomping over to Lucifer where they sat at their receptionist's desk, I spotted the tiny hint of a smile they thought they hid so well every time I came out here. I glared down at the ancient monster that had run this Stygian pit like a casual amusement park for the last thousand years.
"This is Hell, isn't it?" I demanded, my voice stern. Then fading to reluctant acceptance, "...isn't it."
Lucifer grinned.