Mania and the Hopeful Celestial

Twenty-five years have passed since the war ended. Fortunately, only two nukes were launched, and the world was spared from a bright and violent end.

A man in a suit walks down a quiet street in a rundown neighborhood at the outskirts of a city. Walking, he fishes for a key in his pocket. He unlocks the door to a narrow three-story building and then goes up to the second floor. Walking through the apartment, he enters a child's bedroom, where a young girl is lying in bed. She hasn't left the bed in weeks.

A woman with cat ears and a halo stands in the corner, unseen by both the man and his daughter.

Maddie senses that the child's life is burning out, like a candle in the breeze. With this moment at hand, she disappears from the room, reappearing next to Mania. She gently takes her hand.

"Hey, I think we should check on Aaron. Come with me."

She teleports them both back into the apartment, concealing the two of them from the mortals' vision.

"She's about to die. All that work, for nothing. Every day, six days a week, he's been working ten hours. And it's barely been enough to cover the medical expenses."

Mania leans against the wall, and she crosses her arms. It's just been back to normal afterlife with her CEO work and Maddie these years. It's too early to even stir some more shit up in world politics.

"Hello again, Aaron," She says tiredly. "I'm not sure why Maddie insists you're worth my time. You're obviously just some guy who couldn't handle some pressure."

The man buckles his knees against the bed frame and leans forward. He runs his hands through his daughter's light hair. He's tearing up and saying nothing, drawn by remorse.

Mania looks away. "What do you want, Maddie?"

"You know he can't hear you. As I was going to say, you value hard work as the route to success. Which for some, is true. But this man has been working long hours, as hard as he can, to keep his daughter alive. And it's all going to be pointless. Is that really a good system? Where you can work so hard you nearly collapse each day, but fail anyways? Doesn't something seem wrong with that?"

Maddie stares into Mania's eyes, looking more serious than she ever has in the time they've been together.

"Won't you let go of this fantasy you live in, where you think that money and success truly goes to those who deserve it?"

"Don't tell me what I fucking value."

Mania avoids Maddie's gaze, irritated in some remarkably shy way. She taps her fingernails together slowly. Aaron's daughter has only tilted her head and moved three fingers.

"You don't live in my fucking head. He applied for dozens of better-paying positions and none of them hired him. He worked hard in the meantime but his work wasn't good enough. He must suck at his job, to be frank, so he's not worth much. That's the way it is. If you do bad jobs, it doesn't matter if you try. I'm great at what I do, and that's why I'm the richest on the damn planet. So give it up."

She frowns. "So, yes, if he works this hard and fails, he never deserved success. It's that simple. I bet if we did a background check we'd find this guy is an asshole."

"So you think that some people can work hard and still fail? You blame it on luck. And that same luck is where you got to where you are. You didn't simply work hard and magically get rich. You got lucky. I had an archangel in heaven perform a calculation of the chances that someone would get even a single percent of your wealth, and it was close to one in one hundred million. People don't just 'work hard' and succeed. They. Get. Lucky. Like how this man got extraordinarily unlucky, and his daughter caught a fatal disease."

Maddie speaks the words like knives cutting into Mania, some semblance of anger and frustration starting to show.

"I don't blame it on luck. Are you even listening to me? Isn't that your whole damn job?"

But she stops retorting. The space between Maddie and her becomes something foggy and distant, and Mania's innate demonic aura slightly ripples. Their frequent escapades in Heaven would disrupt it all the time, but it's never been disrupted before without the angelic cream. But Mania shivers all the same.

"How dare you insinuate that I'm only here because of some dumb fucking luck. I deserve every fucking penny. I earned every penny. Keep me out of your fucking argument. I'd like to talk to this fucking archangel and clarify I mean people who actually work their ass off, okay? Don't bullshit statistics on me. It's not luck..."

Seeing this moment of vulnerability, Maddie presses the attack.

"This is why you can't let go. You're a spoiled brat. Just because you got lucky and got filthy rich, you blame the hard work you put in for getting you there. Sure, you worked hard. And I commend you for that. But not everyone who works hard reaps the rewards. And you can't seem to get it through your horned skull that that's the case. You think you're so much better than everyone else because you lucked out and succeeded and they didn't."

Maddie glances over towards the sick child and then grits her teeth. Tears well in her eyes.

"She's dead."

The demon's eyes glow brighter. She trades glances with the corpse of Aaron's daughter. She sees the failure of a man who worked as hard as he physically could without dying of exhaustion himself. A failure that Maddie is pinning to the worst concept Mania can ever think to attribute to anything earnest—unaccountable whim and chance. It's evil beyond anything she would ever stand for as well as a direct threat to her. She shivers a lot more. She punches Maddie's jaw.

Maddie challenged her.

"I fucking hate you! I'm never letting you fucking relax again, you piece of garbage. Leave me alone, I really mean it. I'm going to figure out a way to make you feel pain otherwise. Nobody tells me I'm a brat and a fraud."

She darts out of the room so energized that three of the lights on the way out of the building flicker from her mere presence. She also topples a trashcan outside.

Maddie stands there for a moment, speechless. Then she sees the soul of the girl, staring at her. She steps up and hugs the poor child, crying. Still crying, she lifts her up, and brings her up to heaven.

Aaron died the next morning, struck fatally by a car. At least he got reunited with his daughter.

Maddie teleports back to her apartment, crying for a full hour. She's scared, scared that Mania truly cannot be saved. But eventually, she wipes her eyes, and strengthens her resolve. She saw the flicker in Mania's form. She was getting to her. All she had to do was keep trying. She warps back to Mania's home.

"You know I won't give up, right? I'm not letting you continue to suffer."

The demoness turns the computer monitor off at the cubicle she's squatting inside, and she rubs both of her eyes as if she lodged something inside both.

"Look who decided to show up. Can we have a round of applause, imps?"

None of the imps do that, though. Some of them are playing with a basketball by the empty water cooler, and three are gossiping in a cubicle in the corner. Mania plants her chin on the desk.

"I've been doing some... Independent research. So you're right: luck probably is a factor after all. That just means I've been blessed by something to be more lucky because I deserve it more for all my hard work. The world is very mysterious like that."

She balls her hands into fists under the desk, squeezing her fingers hard.

Maddie closes her eyes and puts a hand on her forehead, clearly somewhat annoyed at the demon.

"Really? All that, and you conclude that you're 'magically blessed'? Do you even realize just how absurd it is to say that you're 'blessed'? You're literally in hell! The opposite of being blessed! You're just coping with the fact that you aren't simply successful because you worked hard, but because you lucked out. You were so close to figuring it out. So close... please, just let go already."

Maddie walks up, and awkwardly hugs the demon due to the fact that Mania is squatting down.

"Come on. You're so close to realizing."

Mania closes her eyes and sighs deeply.

"I'm not usually wrong. I don't want to really believe you. Could we just move on—let me have this one—please?"

She pats Maddie's shoulder and then pushes her away from the cubicle. And she follows this with leaving the cubicle herself and rag dolling onto the nearest couch on the ceiling.

"Nevermind. I know what you're going to tell me next. How about you win? Are you happy? You've ruined my fucking month. You're an angel and you've managed to make me feel worse. I'm giving you a bad review on the customer support page. Zero stars. So go on then, gloat as much as your little ego can."

Maddie walks over to the couch without a word. She bends down and, without warning, gives Mania a kiss on the cheek.

"I don't want you to feel bad. This is just a step in getting over your pain. To get out of here. I promise that once I get you out of hell I'll stop bothering you if you want me to. Maybe you'll never have to see me again! Wouldn't that be great? But for now, I have a job to do. My job is to get you out of hell, purified and free of sin. And I'm working very hard to do that. I really do hope my hard work pays off."

Maddie looks down at the demon, smiling faintly at her own mention of 'hard work.'

"Sorry, if nobody else gets to be rewarded off of their pure hard work, then neither do you. You'll need a miracle to get me to actually agree with you about leaving my awesome role here. Even if I got a little lucky to begin with."

She drags a blanket over her head. She groans. She's a touch weaker. Her aura is thinner—almost as thin as the blanket.

"Couple of questions, Maddie. Humor me. What the Hell do you mean you'll purify me of sin, again? I'm pretty sure there'd be nothing left. Pretty sure I've got all seven of them."

"Oh, stop it. Every time you falter, every time you question your current situation—that's the human soul that's been trapped as a demon. The real person. You're like a husk of your former, too drowned in your own misery to see it. My job is to dive down there and bring you to the surface. To pull you from your sin. And once you're free, you'll realize how ridiculous you're being. And you'll have no trouble moving on."

Without skipping a beat, Maddie catches the basketball, which an imp failed to catch and bounced across the room. It collapses and fizzles away into yellow light. It was a distraction.

"Your demonic aura is so, so weak. You're as weak as a demon fresh from the grave."

The imp who missed the catch curses Maddie out and jogs out of the room with his little lumpy friend. It's second nature to receive such insults. Mania turns the television on for a listless news broadcast, and she pinches the bridge of her nose.

"I don't see how being an angel is so damn different. If my reasoning is so clouded, so is yours! How are you so sure you're not completely washed sterile of any fucking personality, huh? Ever heard of the seven virtues? You're not sure—we should just both live our great afterlives, alright?"

She mutes the television and coughs.

"Question two. Why are you so fucking confident they'd let a lowly lady like you steal me out of here? Don't you realize how important I am to Hell, lucky or not? You see any other 'weak' demons with big-ass towers, warping human fate?"

Maddie sits down next to Mania. She leans against her, looking at the muted television.

"I... really don't know if I experience emotions the way a human does. I'll never know and never will know. But I exist to have sympathy for humans and help them."

She leans closer in, a soft cat ear brushing against Mania's cheek.

"You really seem to value your importance in Hell. Why are you so attached to your prison? You're just another cog in their machine. There's so so many souls that pass on each day. They'll have you replaced within minutes, I'm certain of it. And besides..."

Maddie looks like she was about to say something, but she then stops herself and blushes slightly.

"I... uh... just really think you'll like not being in hell."

"At least you're honest with your bad opinions," Mania sighs. She watches the newsreader's pupils flicker in the glow of the teleprompter. She pushes Maddie further from her on the couch.

"Like, you definitely don't act like a damn human being. Nobody acts like you. People lie and hurt each other and try to get on top of things and assert their power. That's what it's like, you know. I have more experience in that little department, alright? Anyway, no, they wouldn't ever want to replace me at all. Nobody running this show actually wants fuck all to change. That's Hell, and I'm the CEO of Hell... I'm giving you no more than a minute and then I'm going straight back to work. I'm behind."

Maddie pushes up to Mania, gently shoving her onto her side. She scoots up to her and then flops over her, purring softly. Wordlessly, she stays on top of Mania, snuggling her and for all the world as heavy as a sack of hammers.

Even reversing her gravity fails to make Maddie pry.

"You know that's not what I fucking meant!"

--------------------

The demon lies on her face on the cold, pearly floor. Classical music plays from the gramophone on the shelf.

"Oh, Offenbach, you died too young. Think he's around here somewhere?"

"Oh, Offenbach? He loves music so much he sometimes performs up here in Heaven. I've gone once, about 50 years ago. Wonderful stuff. I admire his dedication to the craft, even in retirement."

Maddie sits on the floor next to Mania, watching her plant her face on the ground.

"You really seem to like this gramophone I got you. Wouldn't a radio or a computer have done a better job?"

"I'd say you could have invited me, but that's a crock of shit—ah, good, the holy cream is finally giving up again. I've already overstayed my welcome. But it's been interesting as always."

She smirks with the slow return of the healthy red aura. She rubs her forehead and sits up.

"Yes, of course those would have been more convenient. But I felt kind of nostalgic. You can hear the scratches on the vinyl. I'm telling you that not even an AI can do that. And they damn well do everything."

Maddie tilts her head quizzically, one ear down flat and the other pointing up.

"Huh? What's an... 'Ayy Eye'? Is this something like Jeremy? He's an eye."

Maddie notices the aura return and gives Mania a concerned look.

"Oh dear. Is it really already time to go? Do you want to stay a little longer? I can reapply the cream if you like."

"Nope. AI is artificial intelligence... Speaking of which, are you familiar with the concept of the technological singularity? Humanity may be finally getting close to being responsible for sin greater than any of us could ever imagine. I think—"

Mania clutches her forehead tightly, and she gawks at Maddie like she's devil's food cake. She slides her ass over to her. And her tone is terribly wispy, shaky, and warm. She grabs Maddie's shoulders.

"Fuck. I don't need this shit to happen. I knew I should have fucked someone yesterday!"

Maddie gazes into Mania's eyes, seeing the lust in them.

"Oh... uhh... you could do it with me? I'm pretty sure demons can safely have sex with angels. I-I wouldn't mind it, you know."

Maddie breaks free from Mania's grasp and sinks onto the couch, giving her a pleading look. The desire is visible in her eyes and expression.

"You're such a horny loser—just once. You're getting this once. Pervert."

Mania kicks off the stylus from the record player and then jumps the cat girl. She kisses her with a fiery dispassion. Maddie's casual top and leggings fall to the floor. And her arms are pressed flat and firm to the cushion. Mania hasn't even changed into her red lace.

Maddie returns the kiss and then makes an indecipherable noise as she seemingly melts into the couch. She hugs Mania tight, kissing her once again.

Mania enters into a cycle of this sloppy, hard kissing and deep breathing. Their white hairs blur together, and Mania's long fingers reach under Maddie's panties. Bonewagon knew nothing of pleasuring a woman, after all...

...

Maddie lies on the couch next to Mania, exhausted and stained with her and Mania's fluids. She purrs softly, her naked body pressed up against Mania's. She wishes the moment could last forever.

"T-thanks for that. That was really wonderful."

She gently strokes the demon's hair, giving her a soft kiss on the cheek.

"It wasn't for you, Maddie."

The demon dabs her horns with a damp paper towel. She's already cleaned her face, nipples, and crotch. She's as drowsy as possible.

"I don't understand Heaven, honestly. If you were pretty much created to care about me, your Assumer apparently, I don't see why you're also a whore. I'm just saying."

"Well, maybe there's a bit of you in me, you know. Some flickers of actual passion and love from when you were a human."

With that profound and insightful comment, Maddie begins to lick herself clean like a cat. She even licks Mania a couple of times in an affectionate gesture.

"Would you like to nap on the couch before you go back home? I'd say you have another hour before someone notices your presence."

She steps away from Maddie, and she collects her purse from the coffee table. She saunters to the front door, and she leans on it. She pushes her chin up.

"I don't fucking nap. And I would rather not delay anything else any further. I'm sure you understand at least that by now... By the way, can you stop acting like I was better off a damn human? I didn't make an empire while I was alive even worth purchasing stocks in. Hell, I wasn't even really called Mania."

"Why did you change your name to Mania? It's a bit... on the nose, don't you think?"

Maddie turns away from Mania and scoops something off the couch, stuffing it in her pocket.

"Oh well. I'll see you later. Have a safe trip back home!"

Maddie gives her a quick smooch on the cheek and then goes back to her room.

"I didn't choose it. I was gifted it by Kuma."

Her voice lowers as if this ancient Demon of Fate could hear them otherwise.

"It suits me much better. And I enjoy how direct it is. Thank you. But stop kissing me: you're really getting on my nerves."

She slips away into the hallway. She hopes Maddie gets over her annoying infatuation...