(Not exactly based on prompt)

Lucifer's Assurance

Moonlight guiding my way, brisk autumn wind on my face, drifting from shadow to light and from corner to corner. While my feet were gliding on the ground, my eyes gazed at the stars in their place. The very same place they were the night before, oh how they always returned. I wished others were like that, although I was a lost soul in the world, I always came back to my friends but their doors were always shut, and seemed to be a little harder and colder each time I knocked. I wonder if they forgot me or if they don't care or if they too are lost in the world. But pleasantries aside, I had made a deal with a man, a man who introduced himself as Lucifer. He knew what I needed, money, and he knew what he needed, a murder with no confederates. At the time, I had completed my mandatory military training. How did this man know? I could not tell how, but what I knew was that this man had lucre. So I accepted the offer. He had given me the names, equipment, addresses, and necessary numbers. I was to perform the deed before the sun had risen but before I proceeded, I needed to clear my mind and soul, empty it for this man's pain to be echoed into my body. For this, I turned to the stars. I had killed only one man before, a man better not killed.

As I strode down Patria Lane, a sudden resolve sparked in me. In a definitive move, I ducked into an alley and, while briskly progressing my way towards the resting place of the victim, opened the satchel bestowed upon me by that man. Inspecting the contents, I saw the gun was good, the scope precise, and I had no worries. I then stopped behind the building and equipped myself. Once equipped, my heart disturbingly sound, I began my ascent up the back of the house. Employing knives in my hands and spikes on the shoes, I made my way towards the balcony. Upon my step on the cedarwood balcony, a creak escaped the wood, a testament to the fine stature of the balcony, as it must have seen many users and many days. Almost immediately upon the creak, there was a startling sound as an unknown item, a body I later found, fell in the room with a groan. Knowing the longer I waited the more likely I was to be caught in the act, I immediately put the gun to my shoulder, poked it through the window, and into the room and looking through the sight, I saw the body slowly getting up.

BANG!

I pulled the trigger, releasing an ultimate punishment upon this soul. The next thing I did, in an almost instinctive fashion, was drop the gun and run.

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"Lucifer?" I called into the empty shop.

"Fidus Achates, is the deed ione?" inquired Lucifer as he appeared from behind one of his statues.

Oh, his statues were something, beasts of uncanny design, displayed with no artistic intent, pure accuracy and horror. All of their colors and textures were that of a descendant of the devil himself, a servant to the ultimate evils. And their eyes of fire, oh eyes of burning fire, but not a passionate affair of romance, no, a hard fire, cold to the touch, but burning to the skin.

"Of course. I did the deed with no witnesses other than the stars," I replied.

"Excellent. The payment is this way, if you will."

"I assume I will be paid in full?" I asked, wary of a double crossing from such a disturbing man taking a bit too long to pay.

"Indubitably," Lucifer reassured.

He led me through his endless maze of demon statues, until he stopped in a small clearing. He then gave a malicious little chuckle. And then the demons surged at me, eyes wide in joy, seizing me with their talons and claws. Then despite my shrieking, thrashing anger, threw me to the floor before Lucifer.

"My friend," he pronounced, "Those who follow my path receive my reward."

But Lucifer promised! His black eyes, those obsidian diamonds, sparkled as I was held. A sort of cruel amusement glittered in his diamonds, his creatures pulling me down straight through the cobblestone pavement of the shop. And suddenly, with a shriek of utter terror, I was completely submerged under the street, lost in an endless blackness. Then with a dramatic fade, the blackness gave way to a rolling fireland, populated by creatures each one more horrid than the next. Small, slimy, green, and batlike, these creatures hung from the stalactites protruding from the cavernous ceiling of this vast cave, only it was endless to all my sides; there was a ground and a ceiling but no walls. I could not see any end, wall, or barrier except the castle and beside it a plateau. But oh, the castle. It was sprawling across the land, a burning edifice, an encompassing forest, greater the world's entirety itself. Then the burning started. A sensation I live with to this day, it's an internal fire, eating at my intestines and muscles and bones with no end. I could taste the burning flames in my mouth. I lost myself then and there, screaming, pulling my hair out, suffocating myself, trying to die. But nothing worked. Being carried by the goons, I remember nothing more of that time other than the excruciating agony, so much so that I could never find peace again, not in heaven nor in hell, the place I seemingly was in.

Many days later, it seemed, I.found myself back to my senses, a painful thing though, and saw I was in a galley, men in torn clothes all around me slaving at the oars, to my surprise, I was instinctively doing the same. I attempted to get up, yet as soon as my movement deviated from the rowing motion a different beast pulled back his iron whip and crashed it down upon me, blood now pouring out of my back, I resigned to my fate for now. And I did the same for as long as my life would allow.

-------------------------------------------

Thirty-two years later, I walked from my labors and came to to a cedarwood door, one that gave me the strange sense of deja vu due to its resemblance to the balcony from all those years ago. Lucifer stood alone by the door, hand on the knob. I had barely the strength to stand after my trials in the galleys.

"We have a gift, an old face you might remember. A young trailblazer, you knew him well and you'll be happy to meet him again," Lucifer began to my unsure and narrowing eyes.

Signaling to his demons, he opened the door in a swift movement and the demons threw me in before I could see anything. I was thrown into the room, landing with a thud on a surprisingly soft and cushiony surface, then letting out groan. I stayed still resting for a second, and then slowly began to rise. I began looking around, scanning my surroundings. Then looking up, I glanced at the barrel of a gun slowly poking through the window, then everything went black.