by David Evans
Tuck bent over Stahmer, slapping his face lightly to bring him back to consciousness.
“That guy does not like you, Stahmer. First he takes your eye and now he connects with your glass jaw.”
Stahmer opened his eyes a little, trying to gain some focus.
“You’re an asshole, Tuck,” was his drowsy and considered response.
Less than forty minutes later, Tuck and Stahmer were in the hire car, with Sebastian trussed up in the trunk. Cutler had finished by taping his mouth, ensuring that he would not asphyxiate before they got to the destination.
Tuck followed them a little way behind in Sebastian’s Fiat. The car struggled to ascend Etna Sud Road as quickly as the hire car.
Ghislaine had not been idle either. Sicilians loved wine, food, and women, in that order. The approach road to the tourist road leading to the crater had been closed by a single barrier, manned by an overweight Sicilian guard.
Fabio had thought all his Christmases had come at once. The beautiful woman had turned up at the wooden shack that had been hastily cobbled together to give him some shelter from the blistering heat of the day and the coolness of the night.
Ghislaine had explained that she had wanted to watch the eruption of Etna at first hand. Would he mind if she spent several hours with him? She could sit by what passed for a window and stare up as the gas slugs erupted some several hundred yards above the shack. But first they would eat from the hamper and drink from the bottle of Chianti and Frascati that was within the food basket.
Fabio was only too happy to oblige. It was his modus operandi to eat a little and drink a lot. When his Dutch courage was enabled, he would try to make a move on this beautiful woman.
Ghislaine guessed right, he was a Chianti drinker. Several glasses later, the sedative she had added took effect. Fabio began to snore heavily, and would not wake for several hours.
When she heard the two cars approach, she lifted the barrier. As instructed by Cutler, she stayed at the barrier in case of any unwanted visitors.
Cutler and Tuck, in the separate cars, made their way through the ancient and not so ancient lava field, through which the road had been carved. Every now and then, a rooftop would sit on top of the lava, the substructure buried for eternity in the rock of life.
Finally, they came up alongside a cone some two hundred yards from Crateri Silvestri. Cutler judged the eruptions, albeit that they were merely small fountains of lava, too dangerous to approach.
From Google, Cutler had learned of these cones and along this flank they were plentiful. They were like the craters but on a much smaller scale. The cinder cones are small, steep-sided volcanic cones built of pyroclastic fragments. They consisted of loose pyroclastic debris formed by explosive eruptions or lava fountains from a single, typically cylindrical, vent.
In the centre of the cone, the lava glowed red and black and rose and fell with the tide of pressure beneath the earth. This particular cone was some twenty yards across, wide enough for what Cutler had in mind.
Tuck set about draining much of the petrol and oil from the Fiat. Cutler did not want the car exploding quickly.
Cutler dragged the trussed form of Sebastian from the hire car. Sebastian was mumbling away beneath the duct tape as Cutler pushed him towards the Fiat.
“Not interested in anything you have to say. Nothing you could say would add anything more to what I know. You killed a beautiful, innocent girl. Now I am sending you straight to Hades.”
Stahmer helped to push the struggling Sebastian into the car eventually. He would not bend his legs and Stahmer took no pleasure in breaking both legs with a small lava boulder. Sebastian no longer mumbled; he was trying to stifle the screams from the agony in his lower limbs.
Cutler taped his bounds arms to the steering wheel while Tuck placed a heavy piece of lava rock on the accelerator. Together Cutler, Stahmer, and Tuck manoeuvred the vehicle to about twenty yards from the cone, and it steep sides.
“I believe you like Wagner,” Cutler said rhetorically. “Today, I am afraid it’s Liszt.”
Cutler removed a CD from his jacket and placed it into the car’s battered old CD player.
“A symphony to Dante’s Comedy, but it's not so comical. It is based on Dante Alighieri's journey through Hell and Purgatory. A journey you are about to embark upon,” Cutler said, with ice in his voice.
Both doors were open. Tuck on the right-hand side started the engine and he whined and roared as the gas pedal was to the floor. Once he was clear Cutler leaned in and jammed the engine into gear.
Cutler was dragged along with the car towards the cone and jumped clear with only yards to spare. The intense heat searing and the sulphur fumes choking.
The car stayed in mid-air for a millisecond over the edge of the cone, clearing the steep sides. The car descended into the middle of the fiery hole. A sudden gas slug and fountain of lava spat out. The molten rock did not clear the cone but raised high enough to engulf the car and its screaming occupant.
“The Devil had reached his arms out for one of his own. May the bastard burn for eternity,” Cutler said, praying for the first time that there was such a creature.
