Work Text:
I feel like my head is going to explode. I’m here at the Hazbin Hotel library, grading essays that Charlie made everyone write on how to apologize. Motherfucking Alastor is sitting right across from me, and he’s been talking my head off for the past three hours. Started off just telling me about how he worked at a radio station back when he was alive; fine by me, who doesn’t want a little backstory on the Radio Demon? Guy’s infamous and scary as fuck. Yeah, I wanna know how he got started. But then, he keeps going. And going. And going.
He tells me about some random baseball game he covered live, and not just an overview. No, he gives me a play-by-play of the entire game, reciting everything from memory that he said on the radio that day. I have no idea why.
Then he tells me about a joke he told on the air once, and then he explains the joke, for the next fifteen minutes.
I’d rather be reading what the hotel maid wrote about apologizing to the children of a bug she killed.
This place is insane.
Every time I try to get back to work or at least tune him out so I can daydream about yanking out Vox's power cord, Alastor starts blasting game show music and shooting trivia questions at me that I have to answer, and if I get any wrong, he plays a loud buzzer and sad trombone sound effect, then calls me rude for not paying enough attention when he was speaking. He even plays booing sounds at me from a pre-recorded audience.
I’m a relatively small demon, dark curved horns, matching dark clothes, short legs swinging back and forth since they don’t reach the ground, and I’m just barely tall enough to see Alastor’s face over the top of my laptop screen as he leans back in his chair, legs crossed with his feet on the table, not just babbling on for hours, but playing music and sound effects too, such that there’s absolutely no dead air, not a second of silence. Just endless overlapping noise.
Finally, the endless barrage of sound slows down a little. His eyes are closed now as he describes some lady with a beautiful singing voice who he met at work, and he sounds almost serene, like he’s recounting a cherished memory. I take the opportunity to look just a few inches down at my laptop screen. Maybe I can get something done so I don’t have to work on this again tomorrow.
Suddenly, my laptop screen closes without warning, and I barely pull my fingers back in time so they don’t get caught between the screen and the keyboard. Alastor’s feet are on the ground now, he’s leaning forward, his thin clawed hand spread out on top of my closed laptop. For a moment, I think he startled me so bad I hallucinated something, but then I realize he’s causing an audio-visual disturbance in the air and my bones feel like they’re vibrating and it feels like my internal organs are disintegrating into static. I feel nauseous, but it only lasts two seconds and suddenly everything’s normal again.
I still feel like puking though, because the fucking Radio Demon is pissed at me and he’s staring at me with glowing red radio dials where his eyes are supposed to be and I’m afraid that something unimaginably horrible is going to happen to me for the rest of eternity and then broadcasted live so all of hell can hear my screams.
“Am I not entertaining enough for you?” Alastor says slowly, leaning in closer. I can feel his static aura penetrating through my skin. His breath smells awful but I’m afraid I’ll offend him if I puke.
“Oh no, you're definitely very entertaining!” I try to say without trembling too much. I hold all four of my limbs close to my body, a fear response I learned from years of working at VoxTek. I don’t see any grabby cables lying around, but I know this guy is hiding some gnarly tentacles. “It's just… I have a lot of work I needed to get done for Charlie.”
Shift blame to someone else, another VoxTek habit.
“After reflecting on my behavior, I've come to recognize the error in my ways,” I continue, plagiarizing one of the essays I somehow managed to grade. “I'm very, very, very sorry.”
Alastor pauses, and for a second everything is quiet and still aside from his ambient static. I'm scared he's about to eat me. He does have close ties to Cannibal Town after all, but then he just opens his mouth to burst out laughing.
I'd be relieved, but he still could decide to eat me.
“You plagiarized my essay? To apologize to me?” he says, barely holding back laughter long enough to talk. “You couldn't be bothered to look at the name at the top of the page and choose anyone else's? How embarrassing!”
He continues laughing, and my cheeks are burning for embarrassment, but I'm also pissed, because no, I couldn't have just plagiarized any other essay; this motherfucker wouldn't let me get through more than a couple of them with his incessant chatter!
I cross my arms and glare at him.
“Oh, how adorable!” he says, laughing condescendingly between sentences.
“Is Alastor bothering you?” I hear a voice say from the library doorway. Oh, it's Vaggie. I don't know whether to be relieved or whether I should just let Alastor kill me now.
“We were just having a riveting conversation!” Alastor replies cheerfully, giving Vaggie an innocent grin. He looks at me out of the corner of his eye, his grin widening just slightly.
Scary.
“Yeah, riveting,” I say, too exhausted to pretend I mean it. My head falls forward, hitting the table with a mildly painful thump. At least I’m short enough that the table was already pretty close.
“Poor little thing,” Alastor says with feigned sympathy. “They've been working so hard helping Charlie with one of her many misguided redemption activities!”
“Oh… then, maybe you should take a break?” Vaggie offers.
That's something I've never heard while working at VoxTek.
I wish I could take a break, but-
“What a lovely idea!” Alastor butts in. “They were just finishing up… weren't you?”
How the fuck was I supposed to get anything done? I'm not even close, and I'd lie for now and finish later, but then Vaggie might ask me to send the finished work to Charlie before I’m actually done.
Suddenly, Alastor reaches out with a shadowy tentacle and opens up my laptop. I reach for it out of some protective instinct, but he opens it and turns it around to look at the screen.
“Ah, you did finish! Good work!”
Huh?
Alastor turns the laptop around, and Vaggie walks over. We both look at the screen, and next to each name on the spreadsheet is a letter grade, along with the score broken down by the rubric’s criteria. Did Alastor just finish my work for me in an instant? It must be a trick, he couldn't have gone through each essay, but I'm too exhausted to care.
“Nice work,” Vaggie says, then gives Alastor one last suspicious glance before leaving.
“Now, where were we?” Alastor says, leaning back in his chair and putting his feet back up on the table. “Ah! I was about to explain the plot of a soap opera that I did sound effects for, all 47 episodes that aired while I was alive, plus the twenty or so more that ran after my death. There will be a quiz at the end, so do make sure to pay attention this time!”
No.
Please, no.
I fucking can't.
“It first opens with a jingle for the cigarette company that sponsored the show. I sang it myself– oh, have you heard my singing voice yet?”
I'm about to rip my hair out. Anything but this.
“I'm a VoxTek spy!” I blurt out, before I can stop myself. I quickly slap my hands over my mouth, but the damage is done.
Alastor's ambient static intensifies, buzzing in my ears and prickling my skin. Shadowy tentacles shoot out from behind him and fly at me. They wrap around my body, pinning me tightly to my chair.
“I must ask you once again to remain silent while I am speaking!” Alastor says, raising his voice until it distorts. In an instant, his normal chipper voice is back. “Hmm… yes, I do believe they changed the jingle after episode five… no, six! Please share what you think– which one makes you crave a cigarette more?”
I expected my little slip-up to result in violent retaliation, probably an interrogation, but instead, Alastor stands up and starts to sing an old cigarette commercial jingle. Then he sings another version.
I'm too stunned to speak.
“Hmm… I agree, they're both horrendous, but the cigarettes were delightfully addicting, and it was well worth the show! Episode one begins with a newlywed couple arguing about what to have for dinner…”
I'm trapped for the next two hours, Alastor's dark tentacles coming out to swat my hands every time he pauses for canned applause, and eventually I get the hint and figure out when I'm supposed to clap or laugh along. Once I start playing along as his unwilling audience, he pulls his tentacles back, out of sight.
“...and then she says, ‘but I never flushed it!’”
Alastor's laugh track starts to play. By this point, he's got me fully trained, and I quickly start laughing out loud before he decides to remind me why I'm playing along. I'm no actor, but Alastor doesn't seem to care that I sound fake, as long as I participate. Alastor laughs too. It sounds real to me, but he knows how to act, so how would I know what's going on inside his crazy furry head?
Alastor finally releases me after finishing up describing episode 17, which ends in a cliffhanger.
“Wait, what was he doing in the office this whole time?” I ask.
“Ah, ah, ah! You’ll have to tune in tomorrow to listen to the continuation!” Alastor says with an evil grin.
I nearly scream in frustration. This is the worst place to end things!
“But it was just getting good!” I complain, slamming my hands on the table.
Alastor narrows his eyes at me.
“Are you saying you didn’t appreciate the previous sixteen episodes?”
“N-no! Those were good too!” I say, just to appease him. Truthfully, I did not enjoy the past two hours, not one bit. But I need to know what happens next, its like an itch that needs to be scratched, whether I like it or not!
“Well then!” Alastor says, standing up and clapping his hands together. “I’m afraid we’ll have to save our little quiz for tomorrow, its getting quite late! You’ll just have to behave yourself until then, at which point I’ll consider resuming the story for you!”
Alastor strolls out of the library, whistling the second version of the cigarette company jingle. I’m left here, confused as to whether he caught the part about me being a spy and whether all the papers are actually graded, but I’m too tired to really think about it. I guess I’ll have to figure all that out plus the resolution to that cliffhanger on the next episode of Working with Alastor!