Authors note: this story is a little side thing that ties into Blackpaw's Descent. I recommend reading that first. There are two reasons for me writing this. The first was to help me vent a bit cause I'm feeling kinda down, and the second is to practice my third person writing./
A cub of a German Shepherd walks into a bar, and the bartender sees his face. Normally this bartender would have said something snappy to punchline the joke but he has been tending bar for over a thousand years and he can tell by the kids face that now is not the time. In this paticular bar a couple ceiling fans circle lazily and there are a hand full of tables scattered around the room. The bar is a well polished wood so dark it might as well be black. Behind the bar is a grizzled old wolf, whose nametag reads louie, is polishing a shot glass with a rag so dirty it cant have been helping, and behind him are various bottle with muticolored labels and contents in an assortment of shapes and sizes.
The pup walks up to the bar and sits in his usual place, this not being his first visit to the bar. The barkeep places something in front of the down pup and the pup pounds it back and gives a small shudder, much to the astonishment of the handful of other patrons. The other regulars smirk at the disbelief.
Kyle, as the pup was known, was having one of his down days. He had been agnostic leaning towards atheist his entire life, and now that he was dead and in turns-out-its-not-bad-if-your-a-good-person Hell. His entire form malleable because everything around him was soul and spirit and there fore mostly malleable to the will and spirit of the various souls residing on this particular plane. He had gotten himself killed due to his stupidity and impulsiveness. After he died and reconciled with the fact that everything he had believed (or actually not believed in this particular case) was completely wrong, which was no easy feat. Life beliefs are not something one gives up easily, even when the truth is shoved in one's face. In fact he still on some level wondered if this wasn't some giant hallucination and he was just unconscious in a hospital somewhere. Another thing he didn't get was why he was still the way he had been in life for the most part. Yeah sure, he had learned to come out of his shell and made some friends, but he still got his random as hell mood swings, stressed over the little things, he found that while his need for order was still there it was easier to manage, and he still had impulse control issues out the wazoo. In life he had been told that it was all genetic. Now that he was dead and didn't actually have a genetic anymore shouldn't the issues gone away leaving behind his personality and will.
All these thoughts circled round and round in Kyle's head perpetuating and feeding his current down mood. This was why he had been here before and this is why he came here now. He briefly came out of his thoughts to look down at the bar and find another fusion reactor in front of him. The fusion reactor was this bars specialty. Actually that's not true. This was the only bar in all of Hell that served the hellish drink. There just wasn't enough demand to warrant any other bars having the ingredients, which were exclusive to Hell anyway, because to make it on earth would require substitution certain things in to replace the materials only available in hell, except the substitute options were for the most part, lethal when ingested. Although not lethal in Hell, the drink was so bitter and acidic that most furs went into convulsions and then passed out when they took a sip. Those who didn't still often hated the taste. A rare few bothed to slowly build up resistance to the drink so they could drink it. Kyle however just chugged em. He didn't understand it and neither did anyone else, except maybe some of Hell's higher ups who had read his file, but they wouldn't say. Whatever the reason tho Kyle could just tear though them if he felt like it, which most of the time he didn't. Just when he got really down and started to question the existence of souls and hell and everything around him, as well as questioning his own worth and where he played into everything did he start in on them.
Leaning back to down a third shot of the potent mixture with no more than a bit of a twitch, even tho most would have completely melted their teeth at this point he lost his train of thought, the drinks potent flavor temporarily completely wiping out his thoughts, just like he had known it would. But as sure as death followed life, a new sea of thoughts came flooding in to fill the hole. His thoughts circled meaninglessly for a few seconds for before settling back on his personality flaws. The vast majority seemed fine down here. What he had discussed with his friends seemed to hold this up. Most left the mental imperfections forced by a miswired brain behind. But he hadn't. Why? Nothing he could come up with would explain it. Someone had suggested that it was because he was holding on to habits, patterns, and similar such items from life. The pup didn't buy it. He didn't want to be an impulsive all over the place random downer. Why would he cling to it.
He shook his head and downed a fourth reactor, this time reeling for a couple seconds under the impact. When the drink induced blankness filled this time his thoughts turned to the sight. His gift from Hell itself. You see Hell had its own spirit and it worked in mysterious ways that no one (except Satan... Probably) understood. It guided events with a light as a feather touch. But on his entry it had zapped kyle with a latent ability to see people's souls, and on one occasion that nobody actually knew what the fuck happened to cause it, go into and explore that persons entire soul and psyche. The only ones who could do this other than Kyle were those of Hellish origin or build. Those who elected to become demons and help run the place could do it, as could the fallen/castout angels and demons who were born of Hell, aka the succubusses and incubusses (or is it succubi and incubi) and those like them.
The name "the sight" was a bit of a misnomer anyway, because it wasn't so much seeing the persons soul as having the impressions of the soul imprinted directly into ones mind. Each soul gave off impressions and feelings, which can be faintly sensed by all other souls, and essentially what the sight is, is a way to attune one's senses and directly take in those signals which reveal bare and naked a persons soul. It was just called the sight because it had to be called something and the vast majority of the time it was simplest to explain what was learned by comparing it to a visual representation. Furthermore any impressions gained from this ability were forever burned into the memory of the recipient. Kyle had learned this the hard way by accidentally opening it up on the demon who had welcomed him to hell, and although the demon had been wearing a pleasant form and was a nice guy, all demons also had a flipside to them, a side so dark and malicious that it is impossible to convey through words. This side came out to varying degrees depending on what that demon needed to do. The farther down in hell the demon went to punish those who actually deserved it, the more it came to sthe surface. Kyle saw it and could recall it whenever he felt like it or even by accident, which was how he had discovered the fusion reactor in the first place, looking for something to help bury and lock away the memory of that horrible moment.
Why had he been given this ability? What made him such a special snowflake that all the rules seemed to change when they applied to him? He didn't know, and staring into his empty glass wasn't giving him any answers. So he motioned for Louie to give him a fifth, which he knocks back. This time the drink has some kick to it and the pup is seeing stars for a couple seconds, but considering that others who have tried this are dead of sensory overload its not surprising.
This time the desired result is achieved and the thoughts that fill his head are light fluff like I wonder what class will be about tomorrow and wonder whats on TV. Kyle flashes a quick grin at the bar keep and thanks him quietly before heading back out into Hell, this portion of which is frozen over due to it being winter.
The bar keep watches him leave and wonders to himself what goes through a young persons head that he would need to cleanse his mind with the liquid equivalent of an atomic weapon. He knows that he isn't actually a little kid, but rather a young adult only a few months dead, who chooses to take that form, but in his thousands of years since his own death he couldn't recall anyone else like that. He just hoped the kid found that answers he was looking for.
With a sigh, Louie goes back to polishing a glass with a dirty rag and serving drinks to people who are either drinking socially or looking to get drunk for more normal reasons, like to get up to drunk shenanigans, to get the nerve up to do something, or to stopping missing those who haven't died. Fortunately that last one wasn't a very popular one, the vast majority finding more constructive ways to deal with it. But for those who need it, he thought to himself, my nameless little hole int the wall is always open.
