Last Updated: 2025 Dec 29

Group Therapy

“So, Charlie, we have an injured guest that needs extra accommodations? —!

“WOAH. HEY. What in the EVER-LOVING FUCK is HE doing HERE?”

Vaggi walked with Charlie to the hotel room. She opened the door to find Vox contently laying on a pillow at the hotel bed.

The back of Vox’s vents heated the fluffy pillows to a cozy warm temperature. His head sank just perfectly, and his morning started with an entertaining reaction from the fallen angel.

“Now that isn’t anyway to talk about a guest of the hotel, is it Naggie?” he said.

“It’s Va… Nevermind.

“Charlie, what the FUCK is Vox doing here? Last time, he virtually RUINED the hotel’s reputation.

“Then he almost wiped out the ENTIRE city!”

“Look, I know he’s bad but that’s the point of the hotel. He can’t be too much of a threat without his body now, and he doesn’t seem? to be the CEO of VoxTek anymore, whatever they changed their name to.

“I told him I believe anyone can be redeemed. I can’t say ‘no’ to him staying here.

“We’ll be fine, Vaggi. Alastor even said he’ll swat any camera drones that show up.”

Vaggi still glared at Vox.

And Vox knew but his smile dropped when Charlie continued.

“And besides, his stay here isn’t just us pampering him. We’re going to include him in one group therapy session today just to know him a little better.”

“Ah… heh!” Vox interjected. “Group therapy with who?”

“Um, us, who else?” Charlie said.

“Hah. No. A private session if you will, princess…” I am NOT doing this with all of her friends. “I…

“After, what I’ve done… I should keep the audience very small and work my way up later. Still need to settle in.”

Husk… Cherri, Baxter, Nifty, Vaggi, sometimes Lucifer, sometimes Alastor, then Charlie including…

“It’s only going to be nine of us,” Charlie raised a brow.

“Make that four!” Vox pitched. “Including myself.”

“A group therapy session with three others?”

“Perfect! Let’s get this over with as soon as possible!”

---

Later in the day, Charlie brought Vox into a room of two other people. Lucifer and Alastor waited in the room at the edge of their seats with wide grins bearing teeth as sharp as daggers.

Vox sighed.

“You really had to pick those two, did you?”

“We volunteered,” Lucifer said.

“I see. You volunteered to turn therapy into a humiliation ritual! At least this is private—”

“No, no,” Charlie tried to reassure. “My dad and Alastor are amazing. They’ve helped so much with the hotel.

“Your path to redemption is going to be much smoother sailing if you can overcome your… err… history? with them.”

Alastor grinned wider.

“Well she knows why Lucifer wouldn’t like me,” Vox thought. “But it’s obvious enough she doesn’t know anything about Alastor.”

Charlie gave Vox a seat and then took her own.

“I’ll start!”

My name is Charlie!
I like to sing!
and when we talk about our feelings,
it’s the greatest thing!

“Dad, how about you give it a try!”

“Oh golly,” Lucifer heartily laughed.

My name is Lucifer.
I have a daughter.
and because of her
I see Sinners in a light much better.

“Ta da!

“You two still have a long ways to go,” he glared at Alastor and Vox.

“Alright Vox, how about your turn,” Charlie said.

“I don’t have hands to clap with.”

“That’s fine I’ll do it for you!”

Vox took a deep breath and sighed.

“My name is Vox.”

*clap clap*

What’s something everyone already knows about me?

“I like sharks…”

*clap clap*

It’s obvious enough I don’t have my body anymore…

“I could go for a walk in a park.”

*clap clap*

Vox heard an extra clap from Alastor the smiling freak.

“Ha ha, Vox,” Alastor slowly applauded after Charlie had stopped. “You are absolutely pathetic without the help of others to produce content for you.”

“Oh yeah? Let’s see you do any better.”

Well my beheaded friend
there is a hotel to which I attend.
Themed after our tacky ringmaster
and —

Vox modulated his voice to match Alastor’s radio filter.

Ha. Ha. Ha. My name is Alastor
I have a wound that doesn’t mend.
It’s covered in a green stitch
and makes me a total bitch.

Vox,
you obnoxious picture box
if you weren’t checked into this hotel
Now would be past your death knell.

Oh I know.
I have to thank the Princess of Hell.
So my hated foe,
the host of the hotel
better serve me well!

Charlie and Lucifer watched the two mortal souls squabble.

“No…” Charlie whispered. “This was supposed to bring us together…”

Lucifer was bored. He knew how petty mortals can be. Souls forced to experience mortality and granted free will, humans could have been Creation’s best work but turned out to be disappointments.

“Charlie,” Lucifer softly chuckled. “All mortals cast taller shadows in Hell.

“We can bring them together with something they have in common!” the goofy dad proudly announced.

“Say what?” Alastor noticed.

“Two birds with one stone!” Lucifer cheered. “Wait. Three?

“You’ve been calling me short, bellhop, but I’m quite normal-sized compared to humans.”

Three what? Piss me off. Piss Alastor off. Have your daughter watch?

“We were humans. What does it matter now?” Vox said.

“Ha ha, hold on, you don’t think I can see you two for what you ‘used to be’ this entire time?”

Vox frowned.

“I’m proud of who I was! I was accomplished. I had people calling me a god!”

“Vincent…” Alastor whispered with a smile.

Vox’s lower eyelid twitched.

“You first then TV guy!” Lucifer conjured divine dust and threw it into the air.

Normally, the king of Hell did this to open portals, or as Alastor could expect, draw ridiculous projections of rubber ducks. But the dust settled like rippling water forming a clear reflection.

A man standing before a camera in front of a set…

A man of a similar stature to Lucifer with a fake smile and an unmistakable voice: Vincent.

“And that’s it for today, and remember to TRUST US with your weather!”

The weatherman twirled his cane, but that same cane had a concealed blade that later drew the blood of those around him.

Alastor chuckled. “Well I never thought someone so reliant on others in Hell would be the one to kill his own colleagues.

“You really would’ve been stuck as a weatherman otherwise, would you?”

Vox got pissed.

“I MADE CONNECTIONS. I made friends! partnerships! a network! Isn’t that redeeming of me now compared to then.”

“Oh… but where are your friends now?”

“FUCK YOU—!”

Charlie nervously intervened.

“Okay, uh, Alastor’s turn?”

As she said that, she started to have doubts whether this was appropriate.

Lucifer snapped his fingers.

“What are we going to have here,” Vox snidely commented. “Some pompous twink from New England that talked shit and got hit—!?”

Lucifer’s window to the past settled on the oppressive heat and sunlight of the Deep South.

French-derived architecture.

New Orleans, Louisiana.

A colored man from the 1920s that socialized in middle and upper class circles.

He laughed, sang, played the piano, and practiced some occultism that involved too much blood to be his own.

“Alastor? What the fuck? You were—?”

Vox wasn’t the one who could comment on that. Alastor had been in the sunless pit of Hell for decades by the time Vox died, and in his afterlife, Vox was now blue-colored. But he still had to reconcile what he heard of that part of the country and what he saw.

“Quite the outlier, if I do say so myself,” Alastor forced his smile.

“Wait. W-wait,” Vox stammered and laughed.

Vox didn’t know specifics of the circle the human had drawn, but he recognized the gist and the intent.

“You’re THIS powerful because of a DEAL back when you were human.

“Who was it with? It must be someone,” Vox caught his breath, “at our fucking overlord meetings.

“Who is it, Al? The one you’re always sitting next to?”

Charlie sensed they were going to fight again.

“Okay! That’s enough for now. I hope we all know each other a lot better and can get along.”

“Yes! Princess!” Vox laughed. “I can feel this redemption thing working already!

“I don’t have any reason to be getting hung up over Alastor this entire. fucking. time.”

“Oh, you still did for seventy years,” Alastor smiled.

“That isn’t going to work on me anymore,” Vox hissed.

“Alright, who’s up for pancakes?” Lucifer rubbed his hands. “Linner? Brunch? Hard to tell sometimes down here.”

Lucifer was the only one happy about the therapy session.