Zac clenched his fists. An old, familiar feeling began to build, a hot, prickly pressure behind his eyes and a tight, aching lump in his throat. He looked around the empty, stretching corridor, his eyes landing on the closest door.
"If I knew this was going to happen, I would have opted for generic poor people Hell," Zac muttered, his voice trembling. His mind flashed back to the chaotic descent into the Pit with Skarg on their lunch date. "There were so many damned souls getting railed by minotaurs down there. So many screaming while getting gang-banged by goat demons..."
He marched up to the heavy wooden door. "I'll just die again. And then I'll tell that bitch leopard the contract is void. I'll jump into the void leech pit and get my do-over."
He squeezed his eyes shut, threw the door open, and ran into the room blindly, expecting to plummet into a bottomless shaft of toothy worms.
Instead, he just kept running. He ran for much longer than he thought he would before his slippered foot caught on an uneven flagstone. He tripped, flailing wildly, and crashed hard onto a floor covered in dry, scratchy hay.
The heavy, pungent smell of sulfur, damp earth, and raw animal dung hit his nose.
Zac groaned, rolling onto his back and peeling his eyes open. He wasn't in a bottomless pit. He was in the infernal stables.
He pushed himself up onto his elbows and looked around. The massive cavern was cast in deep shadows, but he could see the inhabitants in their reinforced iron stalls. And they were all looking at him.
But it wasn't with the predatory hunger they usually displayed. It was with fear. And disgust.
The Bicorns whinnied nervously, stomping their hooves and backing into the furthest corners of their pens. The Giant Vespers shuffled higher into the rafters, wrapping their leathery wings tightly around themselves to block him from sight. The terrifying Arachne-Strider spider skittered backward, retreating behind the thick wall of silk it had spun to keep him away.
"Well, fuck you too!" Zac yelled, his throat feeling unbearably tight.
Tears finally spilled over his lashes. "I didn't want to be here either! I should be alive on Earth still! Living my best life... going to my shitty job... and avoiding cleaning my shitty apartment... eating shitty processed food..." His voice cracked, trailing off into a choked, wet cough.
He scrambled to his feet, angrily wiping his face with the fleece sleeves of his onesie. He sniffed loudly, his chest heaving as he breathed in the dusty stable air, and glared around at the cowering monsters with accusing eyes.
"At least you all get groomed!" Zac shouted through clenched teeth. "I was in a pen too, and I didn't even have anyone to scrub my fucking back!"
The demonic beasts all aggressively avoided his eyes, looking at the floor, the walls, anywhere but the crying human in the leopard pajamas.
Zac looked around furiously, his vision blurred with tears, until his gaze finally fell on the low-walled pen near the back.
Leonardo, the Pygmy Aspidochelone, was sitting exactly where Zac had left him. The massive, jagged snapping turtle was looking back at Zac with ancient, unblinking, pitch-black eyes.
"And you, slow ass!" Zac shouted, pointing a shaking finger at the reptile. "I thought I was going to get some badass Ferrari to ride! And you're just a fucking joke!"
Leonardo didn't move. He didn't blink. He just stared.
"YOU SUCK!" Zac raged, his voice echoing off the vaulted ceiling. "I DON'T WANT A MOUNT WITH TRAINING WHEELS!"
Despite Zac's screaming, the Aspidochelone still did not react. It was a literal stone wall.
That pushed Zac over the edge. He rushed over to the paddock, grabbed the top of the iron gate, and clumsily vaulted over it, landing heavily in the dirt right in front of the beast.
He marched right up to the dangerous, razor-sharp beak that Bune had warned him could snap a sailor in half.
"Come on then! Eat me, stupid turtle!" Zac sobbed, throwing his arms wide open. "I know you're probably dying to eat something that isn't tossed to you! You're a wild animal! Use those demonic instincts and just end me so this fucking nightmare of being blue-balled can end!"
Leonardo slowly blinked at Zac.
"ARGHHH!" Zac wailed in a fit of absolute, unrestrained rage.
He began kicking at the hay, sending clouds of dust and straw flying into the air. He grabbed the empty feed buckets hanging from the low iron fence and hurled them across the stable. He marched over to the heavy stone water trough and, with a scream of adrenaline-fueled effort, managed to flip it over. Hundreds of gallons of stagnant, sulfur-smelling water flooded the paddock, soaking the hay and splashing up to his knees.
"I HATE HELL! I HATE HELL! I HATE HELL!"
Zac rushed around the pen, throwing a full-blown, category-five temper tantrum, stomping in the puddles and kicking the fallen buckets again for good measure.
Through it all, Leonardo remained completely motionless, a jagged boulder ignoring the frustrated chaos swirling around him.
Zac's emotional breakdown eventually ran out of steam, the fiery rage cooling into a cold, heavy despair. He slumped down onto the floor, sitting directly in the puddle of muddy, wet hay, no longer caring about his onesie or his dignity.
"All I wanted was hot demon dick," Zac sobbed into his hands, his shoulders shaking. "And I got sent off to demonic conversion therapy camp instead. Why did you do this to me, God?"
There was a slow, grinding sound of stone on stone.
Zac lifted his head. Leonardo had finally moved. The massive Pygmy Aspidochelone was slowly, methodically walking up to where Zac was sitting.
Zac looked up into the turtle's pitch-black, ancient eyes. He sniffed, trying to blink away his own tears, but they kept coming.
"Good," Zac whimpered, tipping his chin up and exposing his throat. "Just bite my fucking head off. Be a good boy and eat me. I'm done with this bullshit."
Leonardo stopped right in front of him. The massive turtle slowly opened his jagged, razor-sharp beak wide, revealing a dark, fleshy gullet.
Zac squeezed his eyes shut. "Just do it right," he whispered, bracing himself. "I don't want to wake up needing a face transplant."
He waited. His heart pounded a slow, resigned rhythm against his ribs.
He heard the terrifying, bone-crushing SNAP of the turtle's beak.
But he didn't feel anything.
Zac peeked one eye open.
Leonardo wasn't looking at him. The massive turtle was happily munching on a small pile of assorted, bloody meat chunks that were resting on the floor right between Zac's splayed legs. They must have spilled there when Zac had tossed the feed buckets in his rage.
Crunch. Squelch. Crunch.
Zac blinked a few times, staring at the turtle. Then, a fresh wave of heat bloomed in his chest, rising up into his throat until it finally overwhelmed him.
The dam broke.
Zac started to cry. It wasn't a delicate, single-tear-rolling-down-the-cheek kind of cry. It was an ugly, gasping, full-body sob, right there in the middle of a muddy puddle mixed with minced paladin meat.
He lunged forward and threw his arms around Leonardo's thick, scaly neck, burying his face against the cool reptile skin. He coughed, choking on his own snot as his suppressed emotions crashed over him like a tidal wave against a poorly constructed levee.
"I'm the youngest one here!" he sobbed, his voice raw and broken. "I should be the one having an emotional crisis, not the demons! I'm the one who died! And now I'm expected to be their tool! A cure for addiction! A spy! Someone to boost their fragile fucking egos!"
He wailed, the sound echoing mournfully in the cavernous stable. "Oh yeah, I totally won't get mad that they have been lying about who they are and dressing up in a mech suit of pigeons! I totally won't be pissed that they act like assholes who are too cool to be honest! We are all in Hell! So why the fuck are they hiding?!"
He could feel Leonardo's throat working as the turtle continued to methodically munch on the spilled scraps, completely unbothered by the human clinging to him. Zac hugged the massive beast even tighter, finding a strange comfort in the creature's solid, indifferent presence.
"I'm the one who never got my first kiss," Zac gasped, his voice hitching as the deepest, most painful truth tore its way out of him. "I never got my first date. I never got to feel young love. If I was honest when I was alive... I would have been beat up. I would have been fired. My family would have disowned me."
His fingers dug into the thick folds of Leonardo's skin. "So I hid it. I jerked off so much in secret just to keep my hormones under control so I wouldn't accidentally get worked up and hit on a coworker! So I wouldn't stare at the guys at work! There was no way I could be honest! But Nock? Or Halphas? Who the fuck cares if they don't look beautiful, they're fucking demons! Rich, royal, fucking demons! They can be whoever the hell they want to be!"
Zac pushed his face harder into the Aspidochelone's leathery neck, feeling his own tears and snot smearing against the scales.
"I didn't even want to find human guys hot," he confessed, the shame burning hot in his chest. "I didn't want to slip up and get outed. But after so many years of consuming hot monster-men smut... I realized I couldn't even get off to human porn anymore."
Zac let out a pathetic whimper as a fresh wave of choking tears poured out of him. "I'm a fucking freak. And I couldn't even escape it, either! Everywhere I went, I had to be online! I couldn't get rid of my computer or my phone! I couldn't block the sites where I could find it because a new one would pop up the next day!"
He took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to force air into his burning lungs.
"And now it's a thousand times worse," he sobbed. "I'm in Hell. I'm surrounded by my deepest sexual shame... and I'm still getting turned down. I'm still alone."
Zac cried until he couldn't breathe, his wails slowly subsiding into quiet, exhausted hiccups. The silence in the stables felt heavy, pressing in on him from the shadows.
Then, he felt a shift.
Leonardo had finished eating the meat scraps. The massive Pygmy Aspidochelone slowly lowered his body, his plastron settling into the mud. He tucked his legs slightly inward, and with a slow, grinding sound, he extended his neck and rested his heavy, jagged head directly into Zac's lap.
Leonardo didn't blink. He just sat there, looking up at Zac with his beady, pitch-black eyes, a solid, unmoving anchor in a sea of emotional wreckage.
Zac leaned forward, resting his forehead against the turtle's jagged shell, and closed his eyes. The surface was coarse and unyielding, like resting his head on a rough-hewn cinderblock, but right now, it felt grounding.
"I miss my family. I miss Earth," Zac whimpered, his voice muffled against the stone-like carapace. "I should have just come out when I realized I was gay. Even if it was against their religion. Even if they disowned me... even if they hated me. I could have been true to myself. I could have had my same shitty life, but I wouldn't have felt so alone."
He let out a shaky breath, the cold air of the stable biting at his damp cheeks.
"By the time I was in my mid-twenties, I didn't even know how to talk to someone else about sex. I didn't even know what a relationship was supposed to be like." Zac's voice grew faint, cracking under the weight of his own regrets. "No matter how people roleplayed online on chatboards, or how they sexted over dating apps... when we tried to connect in real life, I just felt like I was a broken loser."
Leonardo shifted slightly, his massive, rocky head nuzzling deeper into Zac's lap with a slow, deliberate pressure.
"And now I'm in March's therapy office," Zac whispered, his tears finally running dry. "And everyone here is just as fucked up as I am."
Zac's voice faded off into the quiet hum of the infernal stables. The adrenaline and the emotional purge had drained whatever energy he had left. He went limp, his breathing evening out as he fell asleep right there in the mud, using his demonic, man-eating turtle mount as a very uncomfortable, very steady pillow.