"Hello again, folks. Another day in purgatory, another video."

The Lockpicking Lawyer glanced back at the imp holding the video camera, and made a gesture that told it to keep the camera on the lock and off his face.

"I've been blown away by the response to my last few videos. I thought I would take the opportunity to answer a few questions that kept on coming up in the comments."

While he talked, the Lockpicking Lawyer took a mental inventory of the tools that he'd been able to acquire in the afterlife. Item 1: a surprisingly good set of lockpicks, and even though he shuddered every time he touched the soul-dark metal, he had the odd sensation that the picks seemed to find the lock pins of their own accord...

"Johnny69 - thanks for the kind words. As for how I've been able to get my tools, I was able to fashion the first lockpick out of one of my toe nails. Once I'd broken out of the hell-loop they were holding me in, I managed to find the cell where they were holding Leonardo de Vinci and he made me some extra kit."

Item 2: A stethoscope, made of bone and something red and fleshy that he tried not to think about. Since there had only been one safe that he'd had to crack while making his escape, he'd been able to keep it sealed in its case for the rest of the time.

"Many of you asked how I was able to record these videos. Well, Hell has wifi. I have to admit that the coverage is patchy, and they have a pretty strict firewall, but we managed to get around that to upload these videos to Youtube. As for the recording equipment... let's just say that I was fortunate enough to find a friend in the most unlikely of places."

The Lockpicking Lawyer cast another glance at this friend, the imp that called itself Kreffing, who was teetering under the weight of a large camcorder that had survived from the earliest days of digital recording technology. A doubt had been nagging at the back of his mind ever since he had first bumped into Kreffing, when he'd first broken out of his own hell-loop. The imp had been nothing but helpful - leading the Lawyer first to da Vinci, then to the hidden safe at the back of the office of one Asmodeus, Duke of Hell, and even sharing its own wifi password so that the Lawyer could engage with his followers on social media.

No, the Lockpicking Lawyer could find no fault with the imp Kreffing, and as a man who always found the loophole or flaw or vulnerability, it troubled him that Kreffing seemed to have none.

No fault except an annoying tendency to drift the camera away from the lock and towards the Lockpicking Lawyer's face instead. He spent his life keeping his face out of his videos, and he didn't propose to change that in death.

"Back on the lock, Kreffing," he reminded the imp (they would edit that line out in post), and then continued, "But today, folks, we have the lock you've all been waiting for. This lock was allegedly made by an omnipotent locksmith. It has apparently kept these pearly gates safe for millennia. They say that no unworthy soul has never made it past these gates."

He tapped the lock that was built into the gate itself.

"Unfortunately, it does not live up to its reputation. Frankly, I've bought better locks on AliExpress for a quarter. Technology has advanced a lot in the last few thousand years. All we need to do is take our lockpicks, adjust them a little to find the first pin... yes... then the second... and there, open.

"Only two pins, hardly adequate security for these modern times-"

He broke off, as the gates swung in and he saw what was inside.

Until that moment, the Lockpicking Lawyer had not realized just how badly he had wanted to get here. To be out of Hell. To be in Heaven. It had been a desire he had not dared to express, but a hope that had sustained him through the endless misery that was Hell.

A chuckle, inhuman and malicious, made the Lawyer spin around. As he did so, Kreffing panned the camera from the gates back to the Lawyer's face, capturing the moment that hope died. The moment that despair found the Lawyer, the true despair of Hell that made all the previous dread seem like happy memories.

"But this was where I started," he said to Kreffing, pleading even though he knew the answer. "This was my first hell loop."

The imp was still laughing. Its mirth racked its little frame, and the camcorder wobbled violently enough to make even the iron-stomached viewer feel nauseous.

Just before the hell-loop ended (and just before the hell-loop started) there was enough time for the Lockpicking Lawyer to wonder if any of the views and comments had been real, or whether that, too, was part of this.

More stories at /r/jd_rallage