“What is he accused of having done that got him sent here?” Linda asked. She had felt bad at one time for what she basically viewed as torture of people for their crimes but it had been explained to her again and again how important they were and she was willing to judge trails fairly at this point. At one point she would have shown more mercy then justice but she had been told that things always come back to haunt you no matter what so they might as well punish the spirits before they went on to the next life where they would be punished instead. She had asked what about murderers who have been caught and are put into jail in the human world, did they get punished in hell as well. Dante had very patiently explained to her that their time spent in a human jail and being punished by humans was taken into account in hell, just like all things were taken into account in heaven. Nothing ever went unpunished or unrewarded, in either place. If the person was considered to have been punished enough for their crime then it was wiped off of the books and he would be allowed to start over. That conversation had comforted Linda a lot and made her a lot more comfortable about doing her job. No one else was going to do it after all, there could only be one devil.
Dante took the folder from the old woman and handed it to Linda to look over. She read the name Matthias Roscoe on the front, before opening it up. She had at one time felt uncomfortable reading in front of so many people, waiting for her to finish but she had grown used to it. It wasn’t like they could do anything without her and her judgment suffered if she didn’t read all of the details.
“Send him into the throne room in half an hour,” she told Dante without even looking up, she was already totally immersed in the man’s life.
The throne room of hell was decorated as you would expect of the devil’s throne room. It was yet another place where traditionalists had clearly had a lot of say in how things were going to be. The armrests on the throne had skulls on them and the room was in general red and black themed with bone decorations. Linda thought it was tasteless but she did have to admit that it was appropriate and therefore left it alone. The one addition she had made to the room was a chair for the condemned to sit while she was going over the case. It might have been considered disrespectful and she had to admit that it seemed a little silly to worry about the comfort of a damned soul but she had always believed in innocence unless proven guilty and if they were appealing they weren’t guilty for sure. She wouldn’t punish them unless they were proven guilty for sure.
The man sitting in the chair today was a young man of about twenty-three or twenty-four who was looking distinctly uncomfortable. He had obviously tried his best to look nice but that wasn’t easy with no comb, change of clothing, or shower. With the heat, outside of Linda’s temperature controlled offices, it was difficult to stay nice looking for long. Linda wondered absent mindedly how much of Mathias’s sweat was from the heat he had come from and how much of it was from the fact that he had a lot staked on the next few hours. Hell did not encourage appeals and therefore they didn’t happen very often, they were a gamble and if you were proven guilty after appealing your sentence went up. Linda had figured out early on that the only people who appealed were the truly innocent and the psychotic who though they could get away with anything.
“Stand up,” ordered the demon guard by Mathias’s side as Linda walked into the room. Mathias obediently stood and even managed a vague attempt at a bow, though Linda suspected that he had probably only ever seen one before in the movies.
To be continued...
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