Disclaimer: Good Omens is the property of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. I am merely borrowing the characters for my own nefarious fangirl purposes.
A/N: After consuming more cough medicine than is probably healthy, this little ficlet popped into my head.
Hastur plodded despondently along Brimstone Boulevard. Even the piercing screams and desperate wails of the damned were not enough to lift his foul mood. His existence really wasn't up to much at the moment. He hadn't managed any decent tempting for months, and was frequently assailed by the feeling that the rest of hell's nobility were still laughing about the answer-phone incident behind his back.
It had really all started to go downhill after Ligur's post-traumatic holy water dowsing disorder had set in nine years ago. Since then, the short squat Duke of Hell had refused to so much as set foot - or for that matter claw - outside the foetid well he was now sharing with some demi-demonic bitch going by the name of Sadako; who apparently shared his pain when it came to watery deaths. It wouldn't have been so bad if the bastard snake responsible for it all had been properly punished, but the boss's little upstart son had seen to it that the little creep had got away scot-free.
He'd tried to get on with his un-life; even going so far as to start replying to the lonely black-hearts column in the Transdimesional Times. It hadn't worked though: the Balrog turned out to have a weird fixation with hardcore flame-whip S the dementor hadn't been much of a conversationalist, and the Queen of Fairyland had just been looking for yet another way to make her estranged husband jealous.
Two exhausted looking incubi were walking towards him. They didn't even bother to bow to the senior demon. Hastur was too dispirited to even bother chastising them.
"… and then she asked me if I had any interest in classic cars," said the taller of the two sex demons.
His companion shook his head. "Think that's bad. Last man I visited asked me to wait while he put his tartan scarf on. Said that if he was going to go for role-play then he needed the ambiance to be right."
It was then that he started to feel it: the strangely prickly sensation that meant that somebody up there was invoking an infernal presence. There was not much he could do about it. If no valid 'invocation addressed to' tag was present, then hell's call centre operatives would – in an unprecedented spirit of diabolic democracy - allocate all such non-specific summonings on a completely random basis; and your average semi-skilled demonology hacker had about the same chance of getting a fully fledged Duke of Hell as they did one of the trainee imps. Still, at least it might give him the opportunity to get some real hands on temptation and corruption done.
For a several seconds everything went black.
When the nothingness dissipated, the first thing that Hastur noticed about his new surroundings were the people. In his experience, most demonologists, on having Hastur materialise in their bedroom, cellar or secret lair, tended to display either: total insanity, deranged triumph, utter terror, or a combination of all three. They did not, as a general rule, tend to react with vague disappointment and/or mild irritation. The second thing Hastur noticed about his new surroundings was the distinct lack of oversized dribbly candles, mystic amulets, grimoires bound in human skin, or any of the other paraphernalia, which one would usually associate with your average practitioner of the dark arts. There were candles present, of course; they just looked suspiciously like they'd come from the homeware department of the local garden centre.
There were a few minutes of uncomfortable silence.
"Cower brief mortals," he eventually shouted; deciding, in the absence of any original grand entrance ideas, to temporarily co-opt Azrael's best line. This did not have the intended effect. None of the fifteen people standing around the chalk circle - which appeared to be situated in the middle of a homely wooden-floored sitting room - made any move to cower in terror.
"Well, we could try again," said a petite blonde-haired woman, after a protracted pause. She really didn't look like the sort of person whom one usually found dabbling around in the deep end of the occult swimming pool.
"That'll make it the third time tonight," said a bored looking redhead. "I don't see why we couldn't have kept the incubus. He was quite good looking. And we could have asked him to wear sunglasses or something."
"It just wouldn't be the same though. I thought we were supposed to be dedicated fangirls," protested the blonde.
"Hey," said a distinctly masculine, and rather indignant, voice coming from the back of the room.
"Sorry, fangirls and one fanboy."
"Look," said the redhead. "I'm twenty-seven years old I don't think the word 'girl' is really very appropriate."
The blonde rolled her eyes. "Fine. Fan persons then. What I'm trying to say is that if we just wanted to find any old bloke with good cheekbones and designer sunglasses, then we could just go out and find one in town."
"Not in this one we couldn't," muttered the redhead.
Whilst Hastur was by no means Mensa material, he was occasionally capable of putting two and two together, and making four. "You've been trying to call up... Crawly," he said, spitting out the name.
A collective sigh emanated from the group.
"Do you know him then?" said the redhead, hopefully.
"What do you want that angel shagging bastard for?" he demanded, now utterly seething. It was bad enough being called up by a bunch of rank amateurs, but being rejected in favour of that... that... bloody snake was just too much humiliation for any self-respecting Duke of Hell to take.
"So it's true then," squealed an excitable teenage girl, who was standing precariously close to one of the sandalwood scented candles bordering the circle.
Hastur was confused. Calling another demon an angel shagging bastard/bitch/other was one of the gravest of insults one could throw about in the pit. The general murmurs of utter delight that this epithet seemed to induce amongst the assembled humans however, suggested that they were positively enamoured with the idea. Perverts, he thought, viciously.
"Could you get us pictures?" asked the blonde.
He was about curse the lot of them with some sort of flesh eating plague, when he spotted an opportunity. "Might be able to," he said. "Course, I'd need something in return like."
"What?" demanded the redhead; her previously impassive face suddenly the very picture of deranged fanaticism. "We'll do anything. Give you anything."
Hastur grinned horribly. "Anything? Well, in that case, I fink we can negotiate."
—
Two hours later and the formerly depressed Duke of Hell was, once again, skulking around central Pandemonium. This time however, he was humming a cheerful tune about death, despair and mutilation to himself as he did so. Fifteen souls secured for hell wasn't a poor days work, and he was going to have a great time telling Crowley that his side of the bargain involved making fifteen personal visitations, in the nude, to those – frankly very disturbing - humans. Of course, not being particularly au fait with modern technology he was rather unsure how he was going to go about obtaining the two-hour DVD of 'hot demon on angel action, with bonus twenty-minute post-coital snuggling feature, and Making Of documentary' stipulated in clause six of the contract.