"Hey! Hey, you down there! Looking to earn some easy coin?!" The knight peered upwards from atop his steed, trying to make out the cloaked figure standing on the precipice of the mountain. He thought about moving on with his travels, but then the mystery man called out again and the knight's sense of curiosity got the better of him. The shouts carried down the mountain, spurring the call to adventure. "I could really use some help up here!"

Within a short time, the knight found that he had to abandon his horse owing to the increasingly steep terrain he now faced, and so he hitched it to a small tree jutting from the cragged rock face, continuing up as the man's voice became clearer and clearer, until, finally, the two were face to face. Behind the stranger lay a great cave, the interior shrouded by impenetrable darkness. Something about the environment rattled the knight, as though he knew things were not quite right.

"It's the damnedest thing, you know..." The stranger began, hobbling over to greet the knight as he stood with his hand firmly on the hilt of his sword, eying the cave with suspicion. "I lost a sack of coin beyond the entrance to that cave there. I would go and fetch it myself, but these old eyes are no longer up to the task. Perhaps you, a brave man of adept sight, can go in search for it and then afterwards we can surely split the value!"

"Remove your hood, sir. Allow me to look upon your face, so that I may know you are of noble intent."

Hesitantly, the strange man pulled down his hood, revealing a leathery, aged complexion. The skin on him betrayed an almost scaly appearance, but still it did little to dissuade the valiant knight from his newest pursuit and he cautiously made his way into the cave mouth, sword drawn and ready to strike. 

After a while, when the hooded man on the mountain heard the screams crying out from within the cave, followed by a victorious roar of delectation, he made his way back over to the precipice. There he spied another traveler walking the road below. Grinning, he called down to him, requesting assistance and offering an opportunity for some easy coin. 

"I'd like to join the workforce, please. Can I be one of those big guys with the whips? Pitchforks are cool, but I'm really more of a whip man myself."

"You do realize that there's no working off your damnation down here, right?" The devil said, casting a scrutinizing eye down on the new arrival.

"Oh, yeah, that's totally fine. I want to volunteer." The eager young man seemed unafraid in these surroundings which often broke the damned within moments. Something about him made Satan's crimson prick perk up.

"Volunteer? Really? I mean, I've got demons for that kind of stuff..."

"C'mon... Please? I'm a great torturer! That's actually why I'm here."

"Hmm," the devil pondered the vicious little creature, aware that sadists were generally harder to destroy, the will of their ego being stronger than your average petty blasphemer. "Okay, I'm going to give you a shot..."

The devil motioned for the man to speak his name, and he excitedly did. It was Dave.

"Dave, you're gonna work for me," Dave the torturer began jumping up and down in celebration, yelling Satan's praises. The devil waved a hand and suddenly Dave was unable to speak, his mouth sealing over. "Don't blow your load quite yet… You're going to have to work your way up to it. I know you want to be a demonic torturer, but I need my staff to prove themselves worthy first…"

"I will do whatever you ask of me, my Dark Lord…" Dave whispered reverently, bowing before the throne. 

"Alright, alright... take it down a notch, will you? First things first. Go scrub all the latrines in the demon barracks. That should take a while. Do not return until it is done…"

That was 14000 years ago, and Dave is still in the demon barracks, scrubbing away in the vain hope that one day the job will be done, and that he'll finally be allowed to whip some people…

"Hey, fuckin' watch this!" I yelled after finishing the rest of my 40oz, barreling full-tilt into the convenience store's outer wall. I'd spent the preceding morning hours binging the Harry Potter movies and tripping on things I probably shouldn't have been, and the urge to break into a new, better, reality was one that I couldn't possibly ignore.

All my friends laughed, but I'll bet they stopped after I disappeared. Beyond the wall was a land of pure gray, disrupted only by a vast tab of icons along the left of my vision, and as soon as I'd imagined it, I was in my back garden, clutching a fat flaming doobski. As I blinked through my confusion, a tiny elf presented itself before me on the patio.

"Hallo, traveller! I be yer magic helper!"

I swiped at the creature, its bobbly little hat jostling as it ducked beneath my slap.

"Ay, oh! There ain't no need for that and-"

I raised my Nike sneaker-clad foot and I crushed the tiny creature beneath the sole of my 95's, extinguishing it's life-force with a twitch as I ground the little soul away into the earth in a way that conjoined the creature's bones with the paving stones of my back garden.

Since then, I have never left my back garden. That was 11000 years ago, and I spend my days toking dank ganj and reliving the time I acquired my immense power; when I murdered that creepy tutorial gnome whom I so gleefully killed.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" I yelled loudly as I walked into my bedroom for the first time following a lengthy leave from the estate. I hoped Calvin would hear me, although I knew that even if he did he probably wouldn't bother to emerge from his slumber regardless of the stink that I made above him. "It's everywhere, Calvin! That won't just come out of the ceiling like any other stain, you know!"

Predictably, no stirring was heard from within the subterranean chamber beneath the mansion's ground floor. It was then that I knew for certain that my roommate was in fact a total dickhead.

Even though he was a hundred years my senior, I'd thought that we'd acquired a certain intimate bond as semi-solitary vampires living in a mostly mortal region, however it seems that he thinks so little of me that I am now relegated to the one-man maid cleanup crew of my own godforsaken bedroom! Oh, how he riles me so! I would never sully his coffin room with such an assorted spattering of blood and entrails like he has me!

Still… my rent has already been paid up for the next eight centuries, and I am determined to make this work… I just need to find some common ground... Perhaps Calvin enjoys Lego also!

Time guarantees all sorts of troublesome issues, even more so when it is without end. Centuries have passed since I lost my humanity, my very capacity for decay, and across the countless years I've made more enemies than I have friends. So many enemies, in fact, that much of their animosity has become lost on me. Take my oldest still-living adversary, for example. A pompous family line of aristocratic fools, hellbent on writing wrongs committed so long ago that I can hardly recall what those wrongs were to begin with. Which is unfortunate, as possessing such information could perhaps help me heal this, likely petty, grudge which they insist on upholding.

I mean, did I purloin a rare collection of priceless jewelry during my first visit to the French coast in 1640? Sure. Did I spread a particularly nasty brand of syphilis to a number of settlements throughout Europe and Eastern Asia in the 19th Century? Yes, I did that. Was I partly responsible for inciting an insurrection which resulted in the deaths of a few thousand people? Guilty. But still, you'd think the bitterness would subside after so long, however I'm beginning to think that may never be the case.

Just last week an assassin interrupted a rather exciting game of online chess that I was playing in which I was very much on top. Unfortunately, it was ultimately ruined as a result. I just wish that they wouldn't be so rude in their attempts to murder me. Whatever happened to good manners?