Blackness arose suddenly, out of a corner of the room nobody would have suspected, because no one had bothered to look in that corner before. Little Robby had assumed his Terrible aspect, and the once meek schoolboy now unfolded wings which shadowed out all of the light availiable.
"Why have you wakened me?" boomed out a voice which sounded strange and sepulchral, ever more so coming from a boy of twelve.
Tommy, the bravest of the four cowering the in room, was the first to speak. "Really, Robby, we weren't aware that you were a member of the Dark Kingdom . . ."
"--From the seventh circle of Hell!" came the proud rejoinder.
"Yeah, well . . ." Tommy dusted himself off. Yellow sulphur was clinging to the folds and weave of his schoolboy uniform. "Now that we know that, I guess we're sorry for tearing up your homework after class yesterday."
He was drowned out by a tremendous howling which split into many voices and seemed to come out of every corner of the room, the whole room, before it was finished. Robby lowered his head and regarded the frightened four, who only then had enough nerve to unstop their ears.
"Yes! Yes! It weighed on me heavily, this maltreatment by those who were to be my peers!"
A chorus of apologies followed, which Robby silenced with a gesture of his wings.
"No need for that! Because I thank you. For many long years in the underworld I have endured the torments of the damned. For centuries, aeons, longer than any of you can imagine, tortures beyond belief. Now, brought up to earth and forced to adopt the disguise of a little boy, I can no longer taste the pain to which I have become accustomed! That is, until I met you four. You, in your limited ways, are the supreme sadists, torturing without compunction, without guilt, because in your limited life spans you have never known any other emotions besides the pleasure that comes with another's pain. I salute you! You have given me Hell on earth!"
The four boys looked at one another, barely able to believe their luck at not being struck with fire immediately. Tommy was again emboldened, and spoke to Robby:
"Well, if we have pleased you so much, what's going to be our reward?"
Robby laughed a long Hellfire laugh. "Why, you are to come with me, and be my playfriends forever! In Hell!
With that, he enfolded them with his wings, and screaming, they were swallowed up in fire and smoke, sucked down to the depths below.
(c) Jack Ruttan, 1998