I sighed again for the umpteenth time. "This job wasn't all they cracked it up to be" I thought. Gazing around my work room, nothing caught my attentions the way it used to. My blades and hooks lay scattered on the floor and tables, unused for I didn't know how long. The skin I so painstakingly wallpapered over the stonework was faded, cracking and splitting in places. I didn't feel like doing another touch up job, I mean, 'why bother?'.

A half dozen victims hung from the walls and the ceiling, body parts removed, faces mutilated, writing in quiet agony, all the jobs half finished. Frankly, I didn't have the energy to finish the work. Over in the far corner, a stockbroker I acquired a few months ago, the top half of him at least, began to moan a little louder, breaking my sullen stupor. I ignored him until he started to wail in agony.

"Will you please shut up!" I screamed at him. Ten years ago I would have taken his agony as a sure sign to gleefully inflict some more, but these days...

I scratched at the hole where my right eye once resided, now it was just a seeping pit of puss, held open my three hooks connected to my chin and forehead. I gazed down where my navel used to be, now an open wound where my intestines were tied in a Boy Scout certified bowline knot. The last time I got bored, I mutilated my penis into a third leg, though I didn't get the foot quite right. "I could try to fix that now, that's something to do." But I didn't do it after all. Who cares about appearances in Hell? I sure didn't.

The stockbroker screamed again, causing his tongue to fall to the floor with a disgusting splat. I picked up a small knife laying by my deformed third foot and threw it across the room, the blade sticking in his one good eye.

"I said shut the Hell up!" as I rose from my chair. My behind felt numb, I must have been sulking for quite awhile. "I'm going to the movies for a while. I don't want to hear from anyone that you've been screwing around while I've been gone. Got it?"

No one said a thing, but then again, I didn't expect them to. I left the workshop looking for distraction.

Movies in Hell were all rated NC-1700. Love stories ended in blood, comedies, began and ended in blood, and action movies didn't even have actors, just two hours of blood and screams... BORING!

Afterwards, I went to Leviathan Mall, maybe run across a few bargains or some hard to find items. As usual, every store held the widest variety of cutting tools and pain infliction devices in the universe. Clothing shops had a plethora of leather goods, with accessory hooks and blades. After thumbing through rack after rack, I realized that I what I really wanted was a paisley tie. A green one would be nice, with yellow paisley swirls. I approached the sales clerk and asked him if they carried any in stock, maybe in the stockroom. I assumed it was a he, it was really just a pulsating blob of bloody flesh with a mouth, but it laughed at me anyway.

"Could you recommend another store then that carries paisley ties?" I asked. He just laughed even harder. "Go to Heaven" I cursed at him and stalked out of the boutique.

I tried fashioning my own paisley ties of the skin of the now tongue-less stockbroker, but I couldn't get the colors right. It's hard to get the right shade of green out of blood. So, I put aside my desire for a fashion makeover and turned to a new hobby, gardening.

I doubt if anyone's told you before, but gardening in Hell is a hard task. For one thing, no one's ever tried it before. I waited patiently for someone to open the Box in the real world. It was a small time dictator from a country that didn't exist last week. Nevertheless, I was obliged to take him back with me. First I made him take me shopping though. I ran up his American Express card to the limit buying vegetable and flower seeds, fertilizer, sod, and a wide array of fashionable neckties.

I hung him up on the wall, promising to torture him later, then got straight to my gardening. Tilling the soil, planting the seeds, diligently watering the new sprouts, it took my breath away. For the first time in my death I felt contented. Many of my former friends thought me quite the mad Cenobite, watching lettuce grow, wearing loud neckties that never truly matched with my leather S&M body suit. Still, I was happy, even though they were whispering behind my back.

Finally on the day my flower petals were due to open, everything fell apart. Every bud opened dripping trails of blood.

"Blood!!!" I screamed. Why does everything in Hell have to have blood! They're flowers for Leviathans sake! Would it hurt to have a nice little corner of the abyss to come and relax, one little nook that didn't look like the end of a slaughterhouse line?! I was so incensed that I stomped on every bleeding flower, every gore filled tomato. That's when the Boss showed up.

I looked up from my devastated country garden, the light from my sun lamps glistening off his grid of nails. He was a hard Cenobite to read on a normal day, he was the Boss after all, but today, he looked, well... concerned.

"Walk with me, Phil" he said as he motioned me with a bony hand.

"Yes, Sir" I replied, brushing the dirt off my knees, trying to look as dignified as possible in front of the Chief.

He put an arm around my shoulders and led my down one of the long labyrinth hallways to nowhere in particular. He didn't say anything for quite a while, I was getting a bit nervous.

"I worried about you, Phil" Pinhead said with a touch of compassion. He did care about his employees, that was never a question.

"You shouldn't be, Sir. Things just didn't go as I planned with my garden. I won't act up like that again."

"No, that's not what I mean. Do you like your job?"

"Of course!" I blurted out, though the hollowness of my reply was obvious to both of us.

"I see..."

"It's just that..."

"Yes?"

"It all seems... redundant."

Pinhead raised a nail impaled eyebrow at me quizzically. "Redundant? In what way?"

I thought of a gentle way to put it. "The whole... life, the torture, the pain, the blood... it's always the same. The victim calls you, you drag him or her to Hell, hook them to a wall, or a pole, or whatever, cut them up, heal them, cut them up again, scare them, torture them, rip apart their souls and throw them into the trash pile... Sir, don't you ever get bored?"

"Hmmm...." Pinhead rubbed his chin like a psychiatrist. "Please, go on..."

"Just look around, dreary tunnels that lead to nowhere, grime, shadows, hooks, this whole labyrinth, it's dreary!"

"It was designed to be dreary, this is Hell, you know."

"I know, I know. But does it all have to be dreary? Wouldn't the dreariness be, well... drearier if sometimes when you turn a corner you came across a nice sunlit park, or sandy beach. I'm talking about a little contrast, light and dark, a nice fountain here and there, ones that don't drip blood."

"You're a very unusual Cenobite, Phil. I don't think anyone's ever brought up these points with me before. So, you want to plant more gardens, is that it?"

"Gardens that don't drip blood, that would be nice. Maybe knock down a few of these walls and put in some track lighting, use some different building materials, maybe some stucco here and there, a few pastels to lighten up the place."

Pinhead thought for a long while. I thought I he might be supremely pissed at my suggestions, they did border on the blasphemous after all. The longer he contemplated in silence, the more I was sure of my doom. I kicked myself inside my head over and over, "Stupid, I'm so damn stupid, pastels in Hell? What the Heaven was I thinking?"

Finally he stopped and held me out at arms length by my shoulders. "Here come the hooks" I thought. "Maybe bees were going to fly out of his mouth or something now." Instead he smiled.

"Brilliant suggestion, Phil!"

I gasped! "Really, Sir?"

"Frankly, I've been thinking that something needed to be done around here, but I had no idea where to start. What a better way to make Hell worse than by sprucing it up with a little bit of Heaven. Absolutely marvelous, by Leviathan!"

"Uhh, thank you, Sir."

He continued his stroll down the passageway, hands clasped behind his back. "Of course, everything will have to go by me first."

"Yes, of course!"

"I'll need building plans, cost estimates, material lists... etc., etc."

"I can do that!" I blurted excitedly.

"Phil, you are going to be Hell's first and foremost interior decorator from now on. Don't disappoint me."