Chapter Text
Vox was always a creature of hunger.
Fame, attention, love, affection. Money, power, wealth, control.
In life he strived relentlessly; a comet taking over the night, bright and furious. He clawed his way through stages and people, drinking greedily the praise of others as he clambered higher and higher to the top. Every step was a new baseline for desire, proof that he deserved more. He raked through positions faster than he could learn them, never pausing to savor, always chasing the next high.
Until he died of course.
Pity, that.
Vox has made the most of it. In many ways, hell is even preferable to the world before! A wider audience? Less moral hang ups? Power in ways he’d have never thought of? God, the day he found out electricity followed his command…
His ambition was, in many ways, his strength. And it reflected in his death. His head took getting used to, but his choice of medium was never more his to claim. The volts that stopped his heart now made him feel more alive than ever before. His figure was sleek, all angled and efficiency. He looked cutting-edge and razor-sharp like the sharks he so adored.
He came into hell hot and fast, shedding his old blood-soaked skin for a vest and bow-tie and he worked his way up again. He took his lessons from life and went ablaze through the scenes of Pride. He kept what worked. He discarded what did not. Hell was an improvement, really! No need for blades, he could use his own raw power to cut out the rough without spilling a drop of blood. He had a voice that captured crowds with only a word. A presence that could be felt through the air itself.
He was greed, and he was given a form well-suited for taking what was his.
But he was a creature of greed given serrated teeth to fill his smile. He had claws with sickle-sharp edges that could grip a bone through wet gristle and blood.
In ways, he would’ve preferred to have been entirely mechanical. To be above the needs that every sinner could feel. To lack that bit of connection, to have that bit of control.
But hell is hell and it pays in irony, and Vox is a greedy creature with teeth and claws and hunger.
And Vox is a very, very insatiable man.
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It wasn’t something he advertised, obviously. It may have been hell, but there were certain acts more palatable to the general public than others. Sex, murder, scandal—yes, those brought in the views. It was hell. People accepted hate and feasted on fear. They thrived on chaos and violence and substance. These things are what brought them downstairs to stay.
Cannibalism wasn’t always as… popular an endeavor, in comparison. Not as familiar to the newer crowds. It wasn’t a sin people typically fell for. It was something people eventually turned their curious minds to during their eternity in hell. It wasn’t as if it was hard. Perhaps it was even inevitable. Actual meat wasn’t exactly easy to obtain, and sketchiness was the name of the game down here. If a vendor could lower the cost of production by picking up a couple limbs here and there, well, nobody was going to bat an eye.
Still. People got squeamish over the strangest things. Vox did host cannibal cooking shows on his channels to appeal to the crowds, but for the sake of his own image, partaking directly in it would be a blemish to his reputation. He was above that. He was a living snapshot of perfection, the evolving definition found right in the dictionary. Cannibalism was messy, and he was nothing but pristine.
He found his ways around it though.
The lowest earners of the month—the fuckups, the incapable, the lazy. The detrimental. They were, in a way, just as crucial as their actually efficient counterparts. They simply filled… different roles.
Velvette needed test subjects for her latest works. Valentino needed a chew toy to let loose some stress. And Vox needed to feed the sharks something that squirmed.
He never mentioned that one of those sharks was him.
It was thrilling to hunt them down. A little message while they’re working, a little bit of suggestion to “come downstairs” somewhere darker and less traveled. They complied. They always did. They’d shuffle their way down the building one by one every few weeks. They’d become lost in the tunnels below the ground and unable to catch their bearings.
And he’d follow right behind.
He couldn’t describe the deliciousness of pinning them to the ground where they reeked of true fear. It made shivers rock his spine, drool pooling in his mouth at the prospect of something fun. They’d plead, but the words never truly made it through the giddy haze that overtook his mind. He took it slow, letting their pulses rocket beneath his grip. It thumped against his skin. He tracked it with precision. A metronome of terror and anticipation, right before the music.
He’d dig a thumb into a forearm, easing it through the flesh upwards in a lazy, laxed fashion. Oh, the scent of blood was intoxicating. But they lasted longer if he didn’t rush it. Screamed louder if they still had the throat to do so. Instead, he lowered his mouth down and burrowed his tongue into the wound, moaning as red gushed down his throat with every squirm and press. So much iron coated his senses. Tangy, strong, still thin and so fresh and hot. His tongue was long enough to lap at the streaks escaping the flush cut while he probed further deeper. Electrical pulses danced around his tongue. If he focused, he could feel the other sinner’s nerves as he messily pushed them around. So hot and so delicious. Oh, they’d never understand the service they were doing for him…
He’d eventually have to pull up to gasp for air. His vents forgot how to work when he was so engrossed. His vision would distort under a film of red spray coagulating on his screen, but it didn’t inconvenience him. No, it was exciting.
He descended again around the sluggish wound, fitting his teeth around the arm. It hit in an instant. It tickled at his face as he bit down into soft, soft flesh. It took everything he had not to clamp down and start tearing it out then and there. It was so alive, still breathing and gushing, so utterly rich and overwhelming. He couldn’t help but shudder with the need for it all.
He gnawed at the muscle, moving just slightly so to weasel more noise out of his meal. It was a game to find out who’d last longer—the begging, or his own restraint. It was never him.
Because with such an exquisite feast resting between his jaws, he was never going to be able to resist.
And the screams would start for real.
He’d rip his chunk from the bone with an obscene squelch and snap down as drool mixed with hot, hot meat. Hell, it felt like it was still squirming as he felt it slide down his gullet with every teasing swallow. It was euphoric in its texture, grisly and natural and so, so needed. He was starved for something good, and it was so, so, so good.
Never enough, never is any bite enough. He stripped flesh from its chest and plunged his claws through its ribcage to make room for more teeth. He guzzled at its source as he cleaved through intestine by the mouthful. Bone snapped and swallowed down in aching ease as his static whined. It stroked his hunger further, but never quenched his want. Always more, needed more, more meat into his stomach that never rang satisfied, no food nor thirst nor attention that could fill it as well as this ever felt it could. And yet, and yet, yet, yet—
He’d be left licking every scrap from the floor, from his claws, the screen. Wringing every aftertaste from the mangled remains of the uniform left behind in his flurry. The meal sat whole inside him, still warm, twitching. But he felt cavernous and still so hungry.
He wanted another.
People would start to notice if he had another.
He swallowed down his want.
Another, another, another. You’re still so hungry, you want another. One more, and you’ll feel better. A few more, and maybe you’ll even feel satisfied…
A chuckle rasped from his throat.. Yeah. Right.
There is no satisfaction in hell.