Perdition Condition

This is part one of my "365" Project. The other part is in its usual place at the bottom.

Wendell, the weary fiend, having a cigarette with Potash, the miserable cullion, at Hell's Brink.

"Looks like rain." Wendell muttered, gesturing to the expansive firescape over his head with a noncommittal shrug.
"Yeah." Potash gingerly passed his cigarette over to Wendell. "The Daily Omen said something about a maelstrom rolling in about mid-afternoon."
Wendell took a contemplative drag while some poor wretch howled in agony in the distance.
 "You watch last night's Dungeon Makeover?" Potash asked, picking at his needle-sharp incisors.
"Nah."
"It was another chain job. Studded manacles. Wall to wall razor wire. It was really something." Potash kicked a pumice stone over the edge of the Brink. He knew better than to wait for a sound.
Wendell just took another drag of the cigarette, eyes deader than usual.
Potash adjusted his stance and turned to Wendell.
"Can we talk about what happened yesterday?" Potash gave Wendell the hard look, the one he gave his victims to make them feel at ease before evisceration.
Wendell just stared at the abyss.
"Come on, Delly." Potash pleaded with a glint in his eye. "I haven't told the other demons, if that'd what you think."
Wendell put the cigarette out on his forehead and flicked it down the abyss.
"I don't care who you tell," he fixed his gaze upward. "It's not like I prayed or something."
"No." Potash grinned. "Thank badness for that."
A moment lingered between them as the air sizzled and crackled in the heat.
"But," Potash persisted. "You know what'll happen if they find out, right?"
Wendell's already stony face stiffened.
"Yeah. I know. But they won't find out."
"How can you be so-" Potash's thought was clipped short by a billowing of flame from Wendell's unhinged jaw. In a swift kick, the blackened corpse that once was Potash plummeted down the Brink.
Wendell yawned, spread his wings, and took off, just as the first drops of magma began to fall.

Haiku of the Day:

Anticipating
a sudden jolt of lightning
to strike the system

Today's Drawing (inspired by the word "Hempy" from Dictionary.com's word of the day. It's a Scottish term in origin for mischievous.)

Today's "365" Project (Turn to a page of a book and do something with the first sentence you come across. I found a copy of Paradise Lost and turned to a page, laid down a finger, and discovered there aren't really sentences. So I picked a phrase: "Into the wild abyss this weary fiend stood on the brink of hell, and look'd a while" Then I wrote the story above and took some pictures of Wendell by abysses {Emily herself is not an abyss, she just made an "abyssesque" face.})