He used to hate being able to smell their stench, but now it was just a part of the job. Now he smelled like them too.

When using your POV character’s senses, watch out for wordiness like “smell their stench”. Is it their stench he hates? If so, just say, “He used to hate their stench, but now it [the stench] was just part of the job.”

Hating being able to smell their stench is pretty awkward, because in essence (eeewwww) he would be wishing his sense of smell away. If that’s what you want to say, then maybe say it just like that! Because things really get ambiguous when you move to the next line. You are talking about his sense of smell, and then you say “Now I smelled like them too,” which could mean his sense of smell worked like the demons’ sense did. I don’t think that’s what you mean, but you might.

In short, this wording is a bit muddy. Don’t use extra words. And you don’t need to have your POV character smell smells or hear sounds or see sights unless there is something special about the act of smelling, hearing, or seeing. Just describe the sensory input as your character would and the reader can take it from there.

Otherwise a good hook.

Thank you for the thoughtful and thorough feedback on my piece. Your comments are just what I needed to hear since they will help me to improve the technical side of my writing.

Also, congratulations on being #41 so soon after your launch date. This is an amazing achievement.

Cheers,
Erin

Otherwise, this is a good strong beginning. I too would turn the page.

 This is quite good except for various annoying niggling things.  The most glaring is the fact that, while it is good that you’re actually using the sense of smell in a story–it’s a highly underused sense–you’re writing about these scents as if you’ve only heard of them, not actually smelled them.  Put bluntly, yes, it is traditional that demons stink of sulfur, but do you know what sulfur smells like?  It smells of rotten eggs, or more pleasantly, egg yolks.  Or sewage or farts.  Not skunk.  Skunk is terribly unpleasant, mind you, but it’s a musk scent.

 In a diner that would be cooking a lot of breakfast, you’d smell sulfur from the eggs anyway.  Faintly and mixed with the scent of ham and maple, but there.

 Anyway, it’s from such small details that stories are built.  Don’t get them wrong.

 Beyond that, don’t name your characters rhyming or alliterating names: Jack, Jolly, Lila.  It’s confusing and draws attention to itself.  If it’s not important later, rename “Jolly” to “Mary” and that will make the pun at the end of “You’re not Mary” “I rarely am” all the funnier, especially since it will underscore that these people are speaking the names, not reading them.  Leave the rhyme/alliteration for “Dig’s Diner.”

Apart from that, there are punctuation and spelling niggles: change sunk to the more usual “sank” (sink/sank/sunk); remove the commas after “Diner” and “coffee”; hyphenate “demon-related”; and carefully proofread everything.  People with strong copyediting skills find little mistakes of this sort insulting, and worse than that, distracting, which is a shame because otherwise the story is going along well and I want to read the next page without getting jarred by a gift-assortment of spelling and punctuation errors.