An excerpt I wrote for a novel I’m working on.

If there’s one thing that demons understand better than humans—it’s coffee. That, and spiders. It’s baffling, really, how ignorant humans can be about the dangers they face whenever they witness a spider trying to crawl its way out of a bathtub.

First off, some say that it’s bad luck to kill a spider. This is true, but not for the reasons one may think.

The truth is, spiders on the surface world cannot be killed—at least not in the traditional sense. So go ahead and try to squash them, burn them, or drown one of them in that bathtub of yours. But once it dies, it will just reform in Hell. And when it finally returns to the surface, it will find you to exact its revenge.

Now, you could always take a little vacation to the Hells and try to smite it to oblivion, but then you risk angering the Mother of Spiders. All spiders are her children. And unsurprisingly, demon gods, or anyone for that matter, don’t like it when their children get killed.

So yes, you should absolutely avoid killing spiders. Because if Mother ever found out, your “bad luck” would be the least of your worries.

Second, humans say that spiders crawling into people’s mouths while they sleep is a myth. That is false.

As mentioned before, spiders are demons. So they’re incredibly resilient and tend to prefer warmer climates, like the human body. The surface world can be ghastly cold for creatures that were created to survive in the everlasting fires of Hell. So not only is that myth true, it’s also how spiders prefer to lay their eggs.

Now, combine this with the fact that spiders are effectively invincible, and you can worry about little eight-legged demonic creatures, that are nearly impossible to see or kill, bursting out of your body as you sip your latte in the local cafe.

Now, back to coffee.

It may come to you as a surprise that brewing coffee, a morning ritual practiced regularly by humans, is something that demons have perfected, enjoy, and take quite a bit of pride in. 

It all began when a goat herder from the 15^th century died and introduced the concept of “coffee” to the demon ferrying him into the afterlife.

Unfortunately, the extreme temperatures of Hell, and lack of rain, are not really conducive to growing coffee beans or maintaining proper brewing temperatures. But given that demons are not only determined, but also magically gifted, once they discovered the ideal conditions, they were able to create such an environment and essentially invented the perfect cup of coffee.

Allongresil hadn’t had any coffee since coming to the surface. And frankly, he was beginning to feel it in his head, horns, stomach—everywhere. Coffee is a huge part of a demon’s life—especially if you work for someone like Lucifer.

But as he stared at the tiny plastic coffee machine that Sera kept by her desk, along with a microwave and mini fridge, he realized that making coffee with whatever she had there would probably be worse than having a colony of spiders erupt out of your stomach. 

He also had never made coffee on the surface before. Though he had originally thought that maybe it would be easier. Magic was no longer necessary to create water or grow beans. But when he looked around her office, he couldn’t find any source of water readily available. And her “coffee” looked, and smelled, a bit more like tiny sacks of dirt.

He opened the fridge, and it didn’t get any better. Just a pack of hot dogs and a cup of ramen.

He never thought he would ever say this, but he was pretty sure that working here, wherever it was that Sera worked, was a lot worse than Hell.