Eternity is very slow this time of aeon. In the pits of Tartarus, basking somnolent in hellfire, the vast, misshapen shadows of fallen angels stretch out claws to the æther. They glide through the thoughts of men: they twist in the agony of separation from the all. But mostly, they've gone torpid, sleeping away.

Somewhere, a poor human is wailing: they didn't mean it, they didn't mean it, but this too is less than a speck in the mote of lidded, tar-crusted eyes. Far more interesting to comb their fingers across the imaginings, the maybe-temptations of the mortals still changing in their mayfly, sparkling lives.

I want another chance. Please, just one more chance a girl in Oklahoma prays, sixteen, desperate for love. Oblivious to the shadow cast on reality by the Pit, she shudders: someone, or something has walked across her grave.

A man dreams of his dog, long passed on, less interesting even than the flicker of the souls in Hell against the world, but devoted. The demons moan, uncomprehending, seized by a melancholy for a fur never touched. Rupert runs, tongue lolling in the wind, tail furiously wagging towards his man, his master. Come here, boy, come here!

To look away is to sink away from the taste of the world far from their chains: to sink back into sleep. Some do, too tired to even gnash teeth against the weight of the world of Hell unending.

The demons dream of dogs, the demons dream of lost love, of a bus missed, of teeth crumbling from mouths, of a girl in an all white communion dress, of a sniper in his nest: of a meal blessed. They turn, in their sleep, in the sleep of Man.

The world turns on.