Monthly Torment: Week Two

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~ It had started with the shades once considered to be the upper class, but like any widespread problem it doesn't take long for the classes to be bridged. There was a little while when the residents of the deeper Levels got quite the kick out of the comparatively pious shades from One slowly acting more like thugs every day. The humour gets a bit lost, however, as things get worse for everyone.

Language skills begin to decline, and not just in the upper class and not just the often-resented Ones, but in everyone from every part of Hell. Those who used to spin tales or speak with any sort of elaborate expression find themselves searching for words more and more often. Those who use their words to exercise any kind of authority or power or in any kind of trickery are in for a change in lifestyle. Conversation between anyone and everyone slowly turns into the most basic descriptions they can muster to get their points across.

It is probably good that intelligent verbal mockery has become more difficult, though, because the gradual physiological changes overcoming everyone would certainly be a topic of conversation. In the gnarled and more wild-looking it is less noticeable, but it's very dramatic in anyone with a once smooth forehead. Brows somehow get heavier as if the very shapes of people's skulls is slowly morphing. It makes it even stranger to watch someone try to think of how to put something, and gives everyone a thicker, dimmer general look. To further mar foreheads, even the most naturally thin eyebrows seem to be growing thicker and moving in to try to meet in the center. That's not the only hair gone wild - everywhere on the body there just seems to be more of it.
The intelligent shades all see what's happening but it's just so hard to care these days, and even harder to describe it to anyone. ~