Chapter Text
The neon sign above the entrance to the Inferno Apartments flickered in the sulfurous air, its jagged letters casting an eerie green glow across the cracked pavement. “Vacancies Available (Souls Preferred)”
Virgil adjusted his toga and sighed. “This is a mistake.”
Dante, ever the optimist, clapped him on the shoulder. "Come on, it can’t be that bad!"
The door creaked open before Virgil could argue, revealing a demonic realtor with too many teeth and a name tag that read:
"Hi I’m Ugolino!”
"Welcome, welcome!" Ugolino grinned, ushering them inside. "You must be our new tenants! Let me just say, we love poets here. Especially dead ones."
Virgil pinched the bridge of his nose. The things he did for love.
Ugolino smiled like a used chariot salesman as they entered the leasing office, which smelled like burnt parchment and regret. Vergil stood in the cramped office, arms crossed as Ugolino slid a contract across the desk, the ink still glistening like fresh blood.
“Standard lease includes eternal damnation, eternal suffering, mandatory wailing hours from 9 PM to 5 AM, and no refunds on damned souls or torment," Ugolino recited, tapping the parchment with a clawed finger. "Also, no pets. Unless you count the previous tenants."
Dante barely gave the contract a glance before he grabbed the quill. "Sounds great!"
Vergil snatched it from him. "Dante, the last time you signed something without looking, you ended up in a timeshare with a demon named Piero."
"But it was a really good deal on lakefront property and only cost three easy payments of my dignity!"
Vergil ignored him and scanned the contract. "This says we’re responsible for ‘acts of divine wrath.’"
Ugolino shrugged. "Landlord’s policy."
With a resigned sigh, Vergil initialed the clause that read: "Tenant agrees not to pet Cerberus," regretting every life and afterlife choice that had led him there.
Beatrice, watching from Heaven via divine surveillance orb, facepalms so hard it echoes across Paradise.
—
The apartment was exactly what one would expect from a budget afterlife housing option: peeling "Abandon All Hope" wallpaper that revealed screaming faces, a suspiciously sentient stain on the ceiling that muttered Bible verses and whispered "repent" every time someone walked by, there was a pile of unwashed robes in the corner, and a fridge that occasionally wept blood.
Vergil dropped his bag on the floor, which let out a pained groan. "This is worse than Limbo."
Dante, meanwhile, was already poking at the stain. "Hey, do you think if we feed it, it’ll stop judging us?"
Before Vergil could answer, the front door burst open, revealing their third roommate.
Lucifer stood in the doorway; three faces locked in varying expressions. His left head was scowling, the middle was mid-yawn, and the right was humming "Never Gonna Give You Up." He was holding a half-melted microwave tray and wearing an apron that said, "Kiss the Damned."
"You’re my new roommates then?" he huffed before pointing at Dante, "you are banned from my wing of the apartment."
Dante blinked. "We have wings?"
Lucifer’s middle face sighed. "No. But you still can’t come in my room.”
“What is with the microwave tray?” Vergil asked, regretting the question immediately after seeing the looks on Lucifer’s faces. “These STUPID HUMAN INVENTIONS are useless in hell. Why does it say ‘Press Start’ when NOTHING IN HELL EVER STARTS! This was the third exploded microwave this week and Minos, our superintendent, has been on my ass about it.”