by Mark Tufo
“Food,” Bill said again, maybe slightly more urgently. Tough to tell the real meaning of a word that has to swim through the canals of a substantial fluid.
“This is what I’m talking about,” Tommy said.
“Huh? Food? What?” I looked to Tommy and back to Bill, whom he was pointing to.
“Bill has been a smuggler for centuries. He does a job, gets paid his price, and moves on to the next with nary a thought to what he just carried or why. Yet here he is, following you through hell like a lost puppy.”
“Come on, you got that all from him saying ‘food’?” I did my best to mimic the wet sound of it. Goob’s…I mean Bill’s head bobbed as I said it. Apparently, we were speaking the same language now.
“I don’t need to know what he meant; here he is,” Tommy responded.
“You don’t really think it’s because he wants to eat me again, do you Linnick?” I was looking down at her.
Again, she gave a very human shrug of the shoulders, or at least what I assumed were her shoulders.
“You did feed him once; perhaps he thinks you will do so again,” she said.
“Oh, that’s true…just like a puppy. I fed him and now he thinks we’re besties.”
“Sludgenous are highly intelligent, Mr. T. They are mostly brain. As a matter of fact, that is how they reduce an object or a being into its atomic parts and are able to reassemble it. Just because you gave him a cookie does not mean you are friends for life. And before you say anything that he might take offense to, it is not normal for them to speak at all, so the fact that he even says ‘food’ to you just proves my point.”
How does one deal with the knowledge they’ve been reduced to microscopic particles? “My memories? Are they still mine or have they been altered or possibly erased?” At this point how would I even know what was real?
“Memories are connections made in the synapses of your brain and since he recreates a form precisely back to its original state, nothing will have been changed,” Tommy said. I was not feeling reassured.
“Okay, could he have changed things?”
“I would imagine, but to what point?”
“To what point? Maybe to just be an asshole. Like maybe he injects in there my hatred for ham, yet it has been something I have loved since I was a little kid. Or possibly, I was a saint growing up, yet now my memories are flooded with remembrances of being inside police stations.”
“Please. You have to remember that I was there while you were growing up. You were no saint.”
“I’m just saying, I could have been, and Bill over there, in some twisted corner of his brain, decided to fuck with me.”
“Well, Bill, did you? Did you screw with Mr. T’s head?”
“Food,” he nodded vigorously.
“See, I told you,” Tommy said as if this explained everything and should have allayed my fears.
I was somewhat certain my memories were intact but truly, how would you know? For all I knew I could have been an accountant my entire life and had ended up down here because I cooked the books. Siphoned off so much from my employers that I retired in Antigua. It could happen. But this was one problem I had to assume was not valid, so I moved on to the next most likely.
“You don’t really want to eat me, do you?” I asked. Every time I backed up an inch he came forward two. He was starting to severely invade my personal space.
“Food…no.” He had to work hard for that second word. I’d have to take what he said at face value. Honestly, if he wanted to, all he really had to do was walk into me and absorb me into his immensity. Not sure what anyone could do about it, as he apparently contained some neurotoxin that prevented you from moving once he had you ensnared.
We moved out, keeping to the shadows. There really wasn’t a choice; the entire place was like a dimly lit basement. Bill was hugging my ass. Usually, I’m okay with someone watching my six, but he was entirely too close. If I stumbled, we were going to become intimate again, just in a different way, and I was not alright with that. There was wailing off in the distance, sounded like your standard damnation remorse or something of the sort…was waiting for the scary music to cue up at any second. The problem with being petrified all the time is that it becomes your new normal. Was I scared? Yeah, sure I was. I was also sick of being scared. But, here’s the thing, all the monsters I’d fought in my lifetime were based on humans: zombies—infected humans; vampires—again, infected humans; werewolves—holy shit, I sense a pattern here—again, infected humans. Women…naw… I’m not going there. Plus, they are their own completely separate species. Reel it back in…where was I going? Oh yeah, now it was demons and they were not human; they had not a lick of humanity in them. Did they possess sensibilities and feelings that were not even on our spectrum, or were feelings a universal characteristic of living things and theirs were just at varying degrees from ours? Like maybe the normal mood for them is anger. I sped up a little when some Bill drool, landed on my shoulder.
“Come on, man.” I didn’t dare to touch it. “Nice friend you got there,” I said to Tommy as I dug through my pockets, looking for anything to wipe away the dripping mass. For me, at least, the next minute or so got worse. I felt Linnick leave my pocket, climb up my shirt and start to work furiously at the glob. And by work furiously, I mean eat. Thankfully, there was nothing in my stomach to roil over because it was damn near doing back flips on itself.
“You shit on me, Linnick, I’m going to lose it.”
She slurped down a particularly long stringy portion before answering. “I’m not a Parnog!” She went back to her delicious meal.
Don’t know what a Parnog is, but if she looks down on it, I’m thinking it’s fairly nasty.
“A Parnog,” Tommy said. He was laughing and shaking his head.
“You know what a Parnog is?” I asked.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Oh, I don’t know…because it’s a creature that exists in another dimension would be the easy answer.”
“For a being that travels so many realities, I would think you would be more in tune with your varying selves and their surroundings.”
“Don’t start that shit. I’m barely able to navigate this self through.”
“Ain’t that the truth, Mr. T.” He was still smiling.
“You realize we’re in hell, right?”
“Not quite, but I understand what you’re saying.”
“Yet you’re still smiling.”
“Would you rather I was angry?”
“Stay out of my head,” I told him, figuring he’d been listening in when I’d been meditating on the emotions of the inhabitants down here.
“I shall. It is a lonely place in there anyway.”
“I can’t tell you how happy I am that jokes can still be made at my expense down here.”
“We’re not really down…though I suppose that is a relative term.”
“Alright, Mr. Literal. It’s just an expression.”
His next words floored me. I suppose it’d be better to tell you what he said as opposed to describing my reaction from them.
“I spent a lot of time with your kids.”
The excessive slamming of my heart nearly knocked Linnick from her perch as she finished her, ummm., clean-up duty and was heading back to catch a nap after a big meal. I couldn’t say anything; I felt like it had been me snacking on Bill’s globules and my throat had frozen shut, my mouth open.
“I spent a lot of time up there, in fact, in between bringing cows to you. They missed you terribly.”
“After Tracy passed, I didn’t have it in me to go on. I wasn’t the same person anymore and every time I looked at them I saw her. The pain was more than I could bear. Was I wrong to leave, Tommy?”
“My opinions are not absolution, Mr. T.”
“If I’d known then that at some point I could have joined her, that would have at least helped, but to be stuck for an eternity apart? I just…I just couldn’t fucking do it. I would not
watch helplessly as they all slipped into old age and died in my arms. The temptation would have been too great for me to…to intercede. To curse them, as I had chosen to be cursed.”
“I understand. It was not easy for me, either. I was there when each of them died.”
“What? I never knew.”
“We all meet with circumstances we find difficult to bear. Mine was that I allowed myself to bite you. I hid, watching and waiting. Had you known I was there, you would have turned your angst and sadness into ire and anger at me. Even if you had not meant it you would have blamed me for your lot in life, and I’m not sure I would have been able to deal with it. No, it was better that I stayed away.”
I wiped my eyes. “We sure do make a pair. We run into things and run away from them hardly thinking either course of action completely through.”
“That’s more your specialty, Mr. T, but I have been guilty of it from time to time. Not that I would have, but I asked Nicole, Justin, and Travis each individually if they wanted me to turn them.”
“What? And?”
“You raised strong offspring. Each of them in their own manner thanked me for the offer but refused without hesitation. They saw how tortured you were and could not imagine putting themselves, or more importantly, their loved ones through that.”
“Well…I did something right, I suppose.”
“You did a lot right. Please tell me you are not fishing for pity.”
“Maybe a little.” I wore a small smile. “How does this work down here—around here— you know what I mean.”
“Maybe you should use your words,” Linnick added in.
I could barely look at her. Sure, I was getting used to the way she looked, but not what she considered food. Her face was still shiny from the slobber she’d not yet had a chance to clean off.
“The demons, for example. Is there, like, a Devil City where they all live and work? Do they go to torture centers? Like, maybe get assigned a few dozen souls to serve eternal damnation to? Do they clock in and complain about how much they have to pay in health care premiums?”
“In many ways,” Tommy said, “this is a world much like our own. For the demons themselves, it is a fairly safe place to exist. From what I understand, there is a lot of scheming going on. Many wish to escape and let loose their evil onto our or another unsuspecting world; a few plot to garner favor with the one in a grand attempt to overthrow him. It was close once, but that is a story for another time. It could have gotten quite bad for our world had Sicerone succeeded. He would have opened all of the gates and those here would have flooded to every world. Reigning them back in would have been nearly impossible.”
“Wait. So, the one we call Lucifer is actually in charge of all the gates?”
“All save one.” Tommy pointed up. “Up is relative in this context.” He felt the need to explain.
“What the hell? Who thought that was a good idea?”
Tommy again pointed up. “He thought it was too much power for any one being, even one as mighty as himself to possess.”
“This is a little vast for me to grasp.”
“Yes, it’s not quite as narrow as Earthly religions would have had the populace believe, but like most things, there was a kernel of truth buried in there.”
“I’m going to attempt to boil this down to basics. Lead me back if I start to veer off.”
“I am not an expert, Mr. T, and I am not entirely confident of my understanding. There are things just not meant for us to comprehend.”
“Just going for rudimentary here.”
“You should be good at this, then,” Linnick said, like she wasn’t even paying attention but wanted to make sure she was heard periodically.
“I wish there was a zipper on that pocket. So, there is a main God and a main Devil.”
“That is how we labeled them in our realm, though those are not their true titles, if such things even exist. I do not believe they have need of something as mundane as names, but perhaps we do. When you are one of a kind, what is the purpose of a name?”
“True. So, there is a version of our theological good and evil. Fair?”
“Fair.”
And it would seem that those of us that attempt a pious life are rewarded and those of us that don’t, end up somewhere down, err, around here. Is that true?”
“More or less.”
“I’m going with yes because I’m trying to get the worms back into their cans, not open up new ones. So, there are arbitrary judges that decide on a predetermined scale whether our actions were right or wrong, and depending on which way the scale balances out we fall down a chute or ascend up an elevator, to what we thought was Hell or Heaven, but are really just other realities where our soul travels on to and continues its existence. Am I still basically on the railroad tracks?”
“Okay.”
“Yeah, that’s not much of an answer, but we’ll go with it. Now, this place, and I would imagine Heaven as well, are way stations for a nearly infinite number of other worlds. True?”
“Sure.”
“Are you agreeing to move me along because I am right or because you don’t know?”
“It’s much more than that, and yet it isn’t. We could spend decades discussing this and not get any closer to the truth; there is no absolute Truth.”
“I guess I’ll just get to the meat of it, then. Why? Why do these realms exist? And who created them? Who felt it was necessary to hold each and every creature accountable for their actions above and beyond what each civilization thought was necessary? I mean, who knows? Maybe eating slime in Linnick’s world is completely acceptable, yet to do it in another world and they send you down here to be punished for a thousand years by having a hot poker shoved in your eyeball.”
“It was delicious,” she said. “Worth it.”
“My point is, how could anyone in our world or any world know if what they were doing is acceptable or unacceptable to beings we can’t comprehend? Seems to me certain rules would apply across the board. Murder, for instance. Universally unacceptable on Earth, but down here maybe they get a hoot out of it. Who the fuck knows?”
Tommy said nothing. It was like asking somebody what was at the edge of space. How could anybody know for sure? How can anything be infinite? And worse, even if space ends; doesn’t something have to be on the other side?
“This is bullshit. Seems like double indemnity as far as I’m concerned.” I was mumbling as I headed off. I was pissed off at the thought of “higher beings” and this wasn’t softening my mood. “An entire world created just for payback? How fucked up is that. I’m not participating.”
“Food,” Bill commiserated. He stayed a half-step behind me; my own acid slime stray.
“At least you understand, buddy.”
We kept walking on ground that looked like cooled lava fields. And I’m not talking about long ago, either. It was still warm to the touch as if there was an active flow running underneath the thin crust of the material. There were sounds off to our right; I think it was a caterwauling feline in heat simultaneously having its tail stepped on and its claws cut too short
Tommy immediately halted us. Part of me was drawn to see what could make such a racket, a much larger part was repelled. It was a fundamentally alien screeching; whatever was being tortured must be grotesque beyond words and have done unimaginable things in its realm. Again…wrong.
Tommy looked around. “We have to go that way.”
“No, we don’t,” I stressed. The wailing became a prolonged shrieking.
“There is no other way.”
“I’m looking at vast fields of other ways,” I said spreading my hands out. Though, in reality, I couldn’t see much more than a few hundred yards in any direction because of the shitty lighting.
“Well, there may be other ways to go, but that is the way I know. There are traps down here, like mazes, and once you get into them it’s over.”
“So, I’m thinking you can’t just keep your hand on
the left side the entire time until you find your way out?”
“Not really. Some are traps of time; you relive the same moment over and over, or time does not elapse, so you can never move. Some are of space; no matter how far or fast you run, walk, or fly, you will always be in the same place. We need to stay far from them.”
“I agree with him,” Linnick said.
“Yeah, so do I.”
“Food.”
“Bill says ‘hell yeah,’” I offered.
There are times in my life when I wish I could unsee things, just bleach them from my mind and vision. Like that time I saw a box of condoms in my daughter’s laundry. Yeah, she was living in an apartment with her boyfriend and yay, great! (sarcasm font) she was practicing safe sex. However, the beauty of being a man is our incredible ability to make up our own realities in the face of overwhelming facts. Case in point. My daughter was out on her own, but there was no way in hell she was having relations. I mean, how could she? She was my little girl, right? Even if we think it’s a possibility we might be making shit up, our next best defense is ignorance. Yup, I said it. We just choose not to believe it, and that’s the end of it. That sums up the entire basis of human faith and we need some kind of faith in something to stay sane. My daughter, even after having her own kids, remained pure. She had somehow repeated the Immaculate Conception as far as I was concerned, although then I have to deal with the nightmare of a god having impregnated her, and that really pisses me off…yeah, so some things you can’t unthink.
Holy fuck, I was digressing so much because the wriggling mass of demon flesh I was gazing at had me stunned. “Please tell me that’s not what I think it is.”
“It’s a Saturnalia,” Tommy said.
“You sure? Because it looks like an orgy.”
Tommy didn’t say anything.
“Same thing.” Linnick had ducked down. Apparently, this was too much even for one who sucked up slobber.
“Oh.” It was a chaotic maelstrom of arms, legs, tentacles, wings.…and…other parts. Things of all sizes, colors, textures, and sexes were writhing in…maybe ecstasy? Though, a lot of them looked to be in some serious pain; easy to mistake the two. Fluids sprayed here and there like a very high-priced sprinkler toy. I saw fountains of blood and at least one neck torn wide open in the throes of…passion, I guess. There had to be hundreds of individual beings involved in the collective debauchery.
