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Now this was hell. This was truly, undoubtedly hell.
And he was losing his shit again. Not Alastor, no. He was having a grand old time. Blowing bubbles, blubbering and lazily paddling about. No, it was the man outside of his fish tank. Remarkably, not an uncommon sight for the little guppy nor for the soul residing within it, Alastor.
Becoming part deer in his after-life was certainly one animal too much for one soul’s existence. Now he was a fish. Great. A colorless, exhausted little tail fin moved him slowly in circles as the man – his owner – ran himself ragged across the apartment. From within the measly 5 gallon tank, everything had a wobbly hue to it. The glass uncleaned, grimed with algae and waste, provided a 180-degree outlook into this man’s home.
What a home. A Murphy bed, a depressing armchair. Alastor couldn’t see further into the flat on account of the green sludge but he didn’t need to. There wasn’t much else to see. He recognized it from his own meager living back from when he was alive – a long, long, long time… now? He was back in time but not. An alternate timeline, or something other.
Faint memories paddle towards the forefront of his guppy mind…
“Live the life of the lives you squandered. Live without power, prove your tenacity, prove your worth.”
… Or something like that. Alastor was too busy being forced into the body of a small aquatic animal to remember exactly what the divinely voice said.
Enough of that. He was a fish. He just kept swimming. Circles, lazily, around and around. Not for lack of stimulation, the man provided plenty.
Three paces. Back and forth. Three paces. Slam. He hits his shin on an armchair and then… Pause. A long, shuddering pause. Shoulders racked high, body strung with tension and –
BANG.
A ceramic ashtray hit the wall with a slam but only shattered into pieces when it hit the floor – the little guppy felt the vibrations through his glass home. The man, with his coifed hair and staggering posture, proceeded to throw a tantrum.
And now wasn’t that recognizable? It became clear just who’s home Alastor found himself in. He had thought he recognized the voice, the face, but couldn’t place a fin on it…
The man – Vox, clear as it was now – turned to his tank. He stepped towards it. Crouched down. For a moment, Alastor thought he was going to shatter the glass and let him fall to the floor, blubbering and flopping about, before being squashed beneath his cheap shoe. He wouldn’t be surprised. Some part of him, briefly, wondered if Vox knew Alastor was within the fish, was watching his every move. Every breakdown.
"You have it easy,” Vox began, voice muffled through the water and glass, “No expectations. No ambitions. Just... swimming in circles until you die."
Well, at the end of the day he should have expected this. There was no chance of him knowing Alastor the radio-demon was now the radio-fish. Maybe he could have been put out of his filthy existence early but Vox wouldn’t go so far as to hurt his own pets.
Now that was a thought that spurred Alastor to action. With all his might, he turned tail and swam away from Vox. His pet? Incognizant. Painfully true, still. Turning, he saw the man press his forehead to glass, as if praying for something to smite him, before he jolted backwards and turned to his front door.
He remained crouched by the tank long enough for Alastor to think about swimming up and jumping out the tank himself to die. Whatever meager self-preservation Alastor had stopped him from doing so, though he was sure the guppy conscience would had it been given the chance.
After piecing himself together, Vox stared at Alastor’s tank for long enough for Alastor to consider if he knew he was in there, in his fish.
Falling asleep in the armchair had Alastor thinking otherwise.
He hadn’t eaten in a week.
Fish don’t experience hunger in the violent, bloody and vile way that Alastor did in hell, so it wasn’t too horrible of an ordeal – but his body sent signals either way and in his little fishy body he felt pathetic pangs of pain to fill his stomach up.
Vox had come home, irritated and peaky, and sat down to do his work without further trepidation. Truthfully, Alastor didn’t care very much for what Vox did and he had quickly made acceptance of his fishy existence. Not without reluctance of course, hitting and slamming his small body against the glass and swimming to the closed-top of the tank to see if he could flip out.
Through negligence, Alastor found his hope in the idea that Vox would forget to feed him and he could finally turn stomach-up and die, returning to… wherever he was going to go next.
Which was the root of the issue now. He couldn’t die now. He needed to eat. He was certain he would go to hell, but as far as he was concerned, this fish had done nothing impure it’s whole life to deserve eternal damnation. Suicide by starvation isn’t something that gets a man to Hell – what use would it do to bring a fish to Hell?
No. So he had to live longer, for now, to be the worst pet fish on Earth so he can go the fuck back to Hell. He’d be able to be the radio demon once more – though maybe not. Maybe whatever force brought him here would scoop him back up and place him right back. He didn’t know. But he had to try.
So he bumped himself into the glass, wordlessly asking for food. Vox remained sat in his armchair in the dark, staring numbly. Alastor wished fish could smile.
"You're the lucky one," Vox began, voice muffled by glass and water.
"No ambitions–” Wrong.
“–No memories of being something better–” Absolutely incorrect.
“–Just this." For now? Yes.
Keyword: now. As in, right now. As in: This very second, he is a fish. Just this. He wants food.
So fucking feed me. He projects through whatever brainwaves he has.
Vox just watched him until he fell asleep.
Alastor had begun formulating a plan.
Rudimentary, and unlikely to work, but he was going to set the building on fire and pray that the old insulation would end the lives of any of Vox’s neighbors so he could get a one-way(?) ticket to hell. If he can just get there, that would mean something.
… But something else had happened.
Vox had begun listening to his broadcast.
His broadcast. His radio show, from when he was alive. He didn’t even know they existed at the same time and he has no memory of ever meeting the man in his living life – but Vox was listening to his broadcast, commenting on his voice and his topics with vitriol. Talking to Alastor about himself! Insane!
So, maybe he did hear of Alastor and did hate him prior to coming to hell… which certainly put a different perspective on his enamourment with the man post-death. Whatever amounts to a shiver ran down Alastor’s fishy spine.
Vox stayed for the whole broadcast.
“– Get a load of this asshole…” He commentated, feet crossed at the ankle as he laid back in his armchair – or what the guppy could see through the muggy glass.
Yeah, tell me about it. Alastor replied in his mind.
As Alastor swam in circles, his plan re-formulated.
The apartment had evolved and transformed into something that even Alastor, in all his life of being a serial killer and overlord in Hell, was a little creeped out by.
It wasn’t the fact it was Alastor that creeped him out. It was the fact it was him, as a human, that creeped him out. Through the murky glass, he could see endless newspapers and red pins marking a corkboard – with the side-crate’s lamp (because Vox didn’t have a side table in all his months of being here) casting orange all over (which his guppy mind quite liked!), and at it’s epicenter, a picture of Alastor from a magazine.
Vox went through his three meager kills in this city with the professional analysis befitting of if he was presenting the weather.
Something seemed to have stumped him. Vox turns to his tank.
“He was on air. We both heard him,” Alastor didn’t reply, on account of being a fish. “He took a caller at ten fifteen. I remember because the woman asked about the weather and he made that joke about checking with the meteorologists.”
That’s what you remember?
Vox began pacing again, continuing his verbal thought tracks. Admittedly, it was… entertaining, even muffled through the glass as it was.
Alastor knew exactly how he did his murders. He knew how and when and why, though he lost exactly how after number four. He had gotten the methodology down by then. Seeing Vox, a character he’s come to know as inherently violating in his demeanor towards Alastor, always trying to intrude and take more than what was given, try to figure him out… It was more power than Alastor had in a long time as a fish – even if it wasn’t the current him that had the power.
“Recording. It has to be a recording. Pre-recorded segments, edited together, played back while he's out doing...”
Well, if only Vox could read his mind. Not only would he realize that the man he’s been looking for is sitting right in his living room but he has all the answers he needs. As if Alastor would give them, even then.
He has to give Vox his credit. He did do his homework.
Vox huffs and puffs in the middle of his living room like some kind of raging bull then proceeds to kick over a stack of newspapers. After a moment, he begins gathering them up again like a tattled child. Alastor wishes more than anything that he could laugh, but his guppy lungs refuse him the luxury.
Strikingly, he misses his hellish radio demon form.
He's going to do it. He's going to blow up the building.
Or, more accurately, set fire to it. He hoped somewhere in all the insulation and in any of the walls there existed some form of gunpowder from back during the war efforts or in someone’s secret closet. Maybe it’d take him with it, and he’d get there straight away. Regardless.
He had been practicing, during the time that Vox was away. Back and forth across the small 5 gallon tank, testing the water. Seeing how strong his tiny guppy body was. Water rocked up the edges of the glass, and spilled over. He could do it.
But he needed the perfect time to do it. He needed Vox to be gone, so he wouldn’t take the fall – not that he cared or anything, he was a fucking fish – but he didn’t want some holy divine justice to come raining down and decide that it was actually Vox’s fault for the death of his neighbors, not Alastor’s actions as his pet fish.
He couldn’t do it while Vox was watching: He didn’t want to act too strangely in front of the man – just in the fear that maybe he’d take enough pity and flush Alastor down the drain… which wasn’t a bad idea, but as far as he was aware, the sparking plug that attached the side-crate’s lamp light to the wall was his way in to Hell. If all else failed, he’ll pretend to die and see where the toilet plumbing takes him.
He spent a lot of time in the apartment, and during the work week Alastor knew there was barely anyone in the apartment complex at all – it was remarkably quiet. So he waited.
His moment came when Vox was late home one foggy Wednesday evening.
Alastor heard the rest of the apartment tenants entering their homes but Vox was yet to appear. He watched the light from outside turn to a pitch-dark and felt resolution settle into him. It was time.
Swimming up to the top of the water, Alastor paddled to one end of the tank at a leisurely pace. Turning, he swam to the other end slightly faster. He turned again, and tried to gain speed. He went faster. Just beneath the water, he went faster and faster. Side to side. Swimming like he was in an Olympic pool, Alastor paddled. The water rocked, the edges hitting the sides as he began to make a current beneath the still tide.
Faster. Fast as his weak, pathetic fins could go, Alastor swam. He rocked the water, rocked it and rocked it and rocked it until –
Spill. Spittle. Fizzle.
A large wave came up and over the edge of the tank and came down the side of the glass, down onto the floor and the wall where a meager lamp connected to a hole in the wall. The sparks exploded, fizzled into bright shining lights that reflected in Alastor’s guppy eyes.
Yes. Yes!
Then they went out, a dramatic POP! and a bright flash of light to match before the lamp simply flickered and a black mark grew on the wall.
Smoke came out of it. Disappointment racked Alastor’s fish body, though he hoped that the smoke could perhaps ignite a fire in the thin, paper-thin, walls.
BANG.
Alastor swam back around, the water spilling and clearing some of the external grime on his tank allowing him to see –
Vox. He had returned. He looked fucked up. He began talking to Alastor.
“No, this… This is actually perfect,” He said, deranged, as he walked to the center of his living room. He began pacing. It always vibrated Alastor’s tank in the most irritating way possible.
“You don't understand.” Vox said, waving him off, pacing. “You think this was a failure? This was strategic.”
Alastor had no clue what he was on about. He wanted to dismiss Vox’s words but he knew better. Though he had his own devious plans, whatever Vox was up to was infinitely more corporeal and consequential.
Alastor’s eye caught on his own image plastered to the wall. Whatever Vox was up to had gone wrong, and this was one of his self-realizing tantrums.
“This was a calculated pivot based on new information. Why would I get my own hands dirty?”
His wet coat. His stalking of Alastor. His obsessive listening to his radio show – Did Vox try to kill him?
“I'm a professional. I'm an executive. Executives delegate. They don't do the grunt work themselves, that's what middle management is for!”
He waffled on a bit longer as Alastor thought to himself. If Vox killed Alastor, what would that mean for him? In this tank? He didn’t have any sort of preservational feelings towards his past-self – he was infinitely better than that classic human, regardless, but this was new territory.
He stopped in front of his tank, jabbing a finger at Alastor.
“And what’s a serial killer if not the ultimate middle-management? He's already doing the job! He's already proven he's competent! I just need to... to provide direction. Quality control. Strategic oversight.”
So he didn’t kill him. He wants to use him to kill.
Hah! Typical!
Even as a fish, Alastor has more initiative in his body than Vox does – thinking he can use Alastor whatsoever. This is funnier than the tantrums. This is funnier than the monumental breakdowns in hell. This is funnier than when he said No to him, so so long ago now.
Alastor, as a fucking guppy, has already done more to get himself out of this situation than Vox has done for himself! The parasite that he is, he’s going to try and use Alastor! Again Alastor laughs in his mind. He swims past Vox’s finger.
Vox leaves to his kitchenette. It’s a long, strenuous moment, where Alastor considers trying to jump out his tank once more before Vox returns with a glass in hand. The man slouches against the wall, mopey and angry. Eyes staring into the bottom of his glass, legs all splayed out. Sopping wet, still.
“I fucked up.” Alastor can barely hear the words, swimming in circles. “There. Happy? I completely, catastrophically fucked up.”
It wasn’t something Alastor heard often. That was a lie. It was something Alastor had effectively never heard from him before, ever. Strange, how he only admitted it in a room to no one but himself. Apologies are normally said to other people.
“I had her. She was right there. And I couldn't even...”
Oh?
So, Alastor was wrong. Vox hadn’t met with him and tried to kill him – there was something else. Someone else. A woman. He had tried to kill a woman and something had stopped him – it was certainly not a strategic move based on prior information. He planned everything out, stalked Alastor. Whatever happened tonight, it wasn’t meant to.
Alastor related. He wondered if there was water on the floor from his failed murder attempt.
“And you know what the worst part is? It's not even my fault. It's not incompetence or bad planning or getting caught.” Alastor listens keenly, fins flapping in the water. “It's just... a rule. A stupid, arbitrary, divine bullshit rule that says I'm not allowed to be what I am anymore.”
Interesting.
New information had been provided and now Alastor had to decide what to do with it. Not that he could do much but information was worth more than people cared to consider – and he had just gotten a trove of it.
Vox had tried to kill a woman. It didn’t work out. He got away with his attempt, but he can’t kill people for some divine reason. He was now planning to use Alastor as a sort of gun.
Alastor continued his movement around the glass, looking at Vox through his tank as he thought. Something relatable settled into him. They were both in a horrible situation. Alastor much worse-off than Vox is, comparatively, but with Vox sitting beside his tank like this, he almost felt they were in this together.
A ridiculous thought, but he and him alone knew it, so maybe it wouldn’t hurt for some honesty.
“–not even that. More like push someone in front of an active shooter!”
He bumps into the glass, lost in his thoughts. Vox’s eyes draw up to him – to him. Blue and green, even through the stained glass. Alastor suddenly feels like he could be eaten whole. It’s the magnification, he’s sure of it, but he’s suddenly aware of his size compared to Vox and he wonders briefly if this is what that divine voice meant by ‘Live the life of the lives you squandered’.
“Hey. Are you even listening to me?”
Yes. Yes, I am, you blundering fool.
“Right. Fish don't have the brain capacity for active listening–” Alastor almost feels insulted.
“–Or any capacity, really. You're basically a biological mechanism for converting food into waste.” Alastor feels insulted. In the weeks he’s come to own this body, he has hated it – but dare anyone try to insult him, who is he to not feel slighted by that? By the form he’s stuck in? It’s his!
A large, swarming white pillar comes and pokes him in the face – or he thinks it does, because he darts away instinctively and finds that it’s only Vox’s finger that was poking the glass.
Vox puts his finger down, answering:
“Sorry.”
Alastor doesn’t forgive him.
“You know, I had a shark back home.”
The meaning of Back home doesn’t elude Alastor this time. Home. Strange concept, thinking of biblical Hell as you’re home. But that’s what it was. He had a lot of time to think about Hell, his past. How to get back there, what he’s missed. What this will mean now.
It was one thing to come to Hell after his death, power locked-and-loaded courtesy of Rosie. It was another to wake up in the bloody streets, incognizant screaming in every direction as acid rain pounded the concrete, hoofs instead of human feet – a permanent smile plastered onto his face as he scrambled through gore and drugs and whatever else on the floor, trying to force his new body to work, a good three feet taller than he’s used to.
It was another thing after that to wake up as a fish. Vox swirls the whiskey in his glass.
“Huge thing. Kept it in a tank in my office. Very cute. But the guests found it intimidating.”
He hated that blasted thing.
“Everything was way better in hell. My office was the size of this entire building. I had screens everywhere, thousands of them, all connected to my nervous system. I could watch the whole city at once.”
Alastor had never put much thought into Vox’s abilities. There was nothing interesting about them. The man had the same tricks, the same routine over and over again. Once he learnt one thing, there wouldn’t be anything deeper. The reason was still the same – End Alastor. Kill. Fight. Battle. Gnash, claw and scrabble across the city. Through the airwaves. Through bitten static. It’s nothing new, it’s just Vox bragging.
But the words weigh differently when he can see his own fin swaying behind him as he turns, with Vox – not as a TV, but purely as a human, sitting by his tank.
Alastor swam in circles, paying little attention to Vox now.
“–I’m going to climb back up. And when I do, I’ll remember everyone who underestimated me. Everyone who thought I was harmless.”
The words barely come through his water, his mind running at a thousand miles.
“…And I’ll take you to the top with me. Better food, bigger tank, the works.”
He raised his glass, the liquid so close to the glass that Alastor could almost taste it.
“To upward mobility.”
Being acknowledged, though not in the way he needed to be, settled something in his guppy heart. Vox fell asleep at some point. It left Alastor with time to think.
He was planning. Vox was planning, scheming and building something. He was going to take the fish with him.
Right now, at his disposal, Alastor had little to do to make sure this fish was going to Hell. He had tried to plug socket and it had clearly not worked out. Now, Vox was here, and he was going to try and manipulate Alastor – the human one – into being his weapon. He hadn’t succeeded so far, at all, and he was fumbling and stumbling through this new chance at life like… like a fish. But wherever he went, he was going to bring the guppy with him.
Ah.
There it was.
Clever.
He was a fish. He had been reincarnated, full Buddhist style, into Vox’s guppy, and he now knew what he needed to do.
Live without power, prove your tenacity, your worth.
He needed to kill Vox - as his pet fish. He needed to find the perfect opportunity, wrangle his way into ensuring he won't be flushed down the drain, and kill him. He needed to do it. Maybe it won't neccessarily be his ticket to hell, but if they're both in this horrible situation and Alastor knows he did nothing wrong - then the one at fault is surely Vox. He was going to make sure Vox succeeded in whatever he wanted to do, so long as he can ensure the perfect opportunity to execute the man as succinctly as possible. He will do this, one way or another.
Just as long as Vox remembers to feed him again...