The first time, he appeared as I was screaming helplessly and said, “You know, you’ve got it all wrong.”

I didn’t answer, being too busy spitting out blood and bile.

“You see, Heaven has you suckered. They’re not against what we do—they ordered us to do it. We’re the official alternative. We’re as much a part of God’s system as the guards who work in a prison.”

I spat again, and mustered a single, “Bite me.”

“No, really. You might as well hold a grudge against the factory that makes judges’ gavels. We’re doing our job, same as you.”

Another time he popped in to say, “Actually, I lied when I told you we’re doing Heaven’s work. Because there’s really no such thing as Heaven.”

I wasn’t going to respond this time. Something had pulled my tongue out a few hours earlier and hadn’t bothered to reattach it yet.

“It’s kind of like a science fiction story, really,” the grand duke explained. “Hell, Heaven—it’s all nonsense. Earth was conquered a long time ago by invaders from space, but humans don’t realize it yet. The aliens lifted all this stuff right out of our subconscious to keep us docile, toeing the line and behaving like a good little captive populace. Do you see how it all makes sense now?”

Later on, when I had my tongue back, Eligor had a new explanation. “Actually, it wasn’t aliens. I lied about that. It was humans from the future, when they mastered time-travel. They realized that the kindest gift they could give their benighted ancestors was to create the kind of universe the primitives already believed in. So they did. All this stuff, me, you, the Highest, everything, was invented by mankind’s own descendants. Kind of like being humored by your grandchildren, huh? ‘Yes, Grandpa, that’s right, a loving God watches over you and punishes all the wicked people. Now finish your nap.’”

The grand duke seemed to love doing this, and kept reappearing with some new explanation of how the universe was ordered, many of them possibilities I had considered myself. Maybe one of them was true. Maybe more than one. Maybe none. I’m pretty sure that he was just shitting on everything that might explain things, everything that might mean anything at all, so that I was left with the belief that nothing made sense.

A bit like modern political advertising, when you think about it.

Anyway, even Eligor got tired of that game after what seemed a few centuries, and left me to the serious physical torture, which went on and on despite the fact that I had no secrets left. Or perhaps because of that. It’s hard to know with Hell. You can’t even be sure about death and taxes there. The only certain things are pain and sorrow and then more pain.