Agnes

"NEXT!" Agnes shouted as the dot-matrix printer on her desk began printing another page. She ripped out the page before it was done printing, scanning the text with her green lizard eyes. She wore pale orange cat-eye glasses, one lens cracked in the center.

"Johnathan Smith, is that you?" She did not look up from the printer page as a man appeared at the glass window in front of her desk.

"Yes, that's me. Um, where am I?" He glanced around the room, not recognizing where he was, and unsure as to how he got here.

"You're in the right place, doll, you fell through a 16 story window. You're dead. Welcome to Hell." She stamped his paper with a big rubber stamp that read "Approved". As she slid the page under the glass, she glanced up at Johnathan's face. He didn't have a face anymore. Or a head, for that matter. He had been decapitated when he fell out the 16th floor of his office building.

"Wait, Hell? As in, not Heaven? How the fuck did I get here?" Agnes could hear the panic rising in his voice. She nudged the paper closer to him, urging him to take it.

"It's all right here, doll, you did some shady dealings while you were alive, and you've been fast-tracked straight to Hell. Now get out of my line." She grabbed at the microphone on the left side of her desk and shouted "NEXT!".

She watch Johnathan stumble away down the hall as another page began printing next to her. The lights flickered, as they always did, and another person stepped up to the window.

"Carrie Solomon, is that you?" She asked in the exact same monotone voice. When you do this job for an eternity, it can get a bit monotonous over time. Agnes ripped the page out of the printer and scanned it quickly. She reached for her big rubber stamp.

"Yeah, that's me. Where the Hell am I?" She asked, looking through the glass at Agnes' large frame. The neon orange cardigan did little to hide the scales that covered her entire body. Carrie's eyes scanned upward, catching the pentagram earrings that hung from the little holes on each side of her head, and finally landing on the blond beehive hair that appeared to be the home of several large cockroaches.

"That's exactly right, dear, you're in Hell. It looks like you were involved in some human trafficking. That would certainly do it." Agnes slammed the paper down on the counter, and hit it hard with her rubber stamp. "Now get out of my line. NEXT!".

Carrie turned and glanced around the room. It appeared to be some type of DMV situation. There was several windows behind glass along one wall. Agnes' window was the very last one on the right. It appeared that all the other windows were closed, and Agnes was working alone. The lights flickered again, and she could hear a scream coming from somewhere distant. As she turned to head down the hallway Agnes had indicated, she spotted a poster on the back wall.

"THE BOSS IS ALWAYS WATCHING." it said at the top, with a picture underneath of what Carrie assumed was Satan himself. Lucifer. The Devil. Whatever you wanted to call him. She noted immediately that the eyes of the poster were following her. Not in the way that a picture's eyes would follow you back in the Land of the Living. This poster was watching her. Tracking her. She felt an immediate chill come over her body, which she thought to be strange, as the air was so thick and humid here. The whole place smelled of rotten eggs.

"Victoria Prado, is that you?" Agnes began her spiel. She ripped the paper from the printer, but did not get a response. She glanced up at the glass, expecting to find a trembling woman who didn't know where she was or how she got here. Instead, she saw no one. 

She planted her hands firmly on the desk to help herself up and out of the chair, a thick ooze adhering her bottom and the chair she had been seated in. She looked out through the glass at the registration area, still empty.

"Kitty!" shouted a tiny voice. Agnes looked around once more, still seeing nothing.

She got closer to the window, putting her slimy hands up against the glass to get a better look.

"Kitty!" Shouted the tiny voice again, as a small figure jumped into view from below the desk.

"Oh! Hello there, where did you come from?" Agnes asked, bewildered. They don't get small children down here. Well, almost never. There was that kid that killed his parents and both his siblings because he didn't want mashed potatoes for dinner. He was most definitely down here somewhere. But there were protocols for this! They don't come through the regular line, how could this be happening?  

"Hi there, dear, what is your name?" Agnes put on the sweetest voice she could muster, which was tricky, given her low raspy smokers voice.

"Kitty" said the little girl. She donned a tattered pink polka dot dress. Agnes noted that her ginger pig tails were uneven, and she had mismatched socks. Agnes hadn't been on the Land of the Living for quite some time, perhaps centuries. But she knew, this kid was no more than three or four years old. She was clearly in the wrong place.

"Hi, Kitty, I'm Agnes. Do you know how you got here?" Agnes shuffled all the papers on her desk, looking for some indication of where this tiny thing could possibly have come from. As she looked up, the girl was gone from sight. Agnes scanned the registration room, no sign of the girl. How could she have disappeared? How did she appear in the first place? This was not good. Not good at all.

Agnes picked up the old rotary phone at her desk and began dialing. 

"It's me. We've got a problem." Agnes spoke into the receiver.

"What do you mean, a problem?" said the low rumbling voice on the other end.

"There's a kid here. A small girl. Couldn't be more than four years old, I'd guess." She was still scanning the room for signs of the girl.

"That's not right, kids don't come through your department." Said the low voice.

"Yeah, no shit, that's why I'm calling you. You need to handle this before the Boss finds out." Agnes pulled a cigarette out of her desk drawer, snapping her fingers to make the index finger catch fire. As she lit her smoke and took a long drag, she waited for Abaddon to speak again.

"Has she said anything to you?" She could hear the stress in his voice now. 

"No, the only thing she said was 'Kitty'. I looked down for a second and when I looked up, she was gone." Agnes ashed her cigarette into her coffee cup.

"What do you mean, gone?" Abaddon's voice was getting louder.

"I mean, she was here one minute, and now she's gone. You need to find her before she turns up somewhere she shouldn't." Agnes was growing weary of this conversation.

"Perfect. This is just what I needed today, Agnes. Thanks a lot." He hung up before she could say anything else.

"I'm getting too old for this shit." She reached for her coffee cup, taking a long swig.

"NEXT!"