And Then There Were Dragons

by Alcy Leyva

  Passing underneath these horrors dangling at eye level sounds pretty terrifying, but the truth was that the only one that seemed disturbed by any of this was me. They just hung there, muttering to themselves about gas prices, people not curbing dogs, and the price of cereal.

  “It’s a six-dollar box with a two-dollar taste,” one of them chattered to no one in particular.

  On her way through, Cain accidentally bumped one of the meat pods and sent it rocking off to the side, to which it snarled, “This may be a site of unspeakable torture, honey, but manners are free. The only thing you gotta pay is attention.”

  After making our way through this grotesque menagerie, we passed an area without any Bladders. The entire space was hollowed out with hundreds of armored locusts on patrol. On guard as well were the massive rats. Just like the one that had been sitting at the preacher’s feet in New Necro, they all wore tattered clothes. Their fur was matted and smelled rancid, and they stared at me with beady red eyes as I marched by.

  At one point, I even heard one tell the other, “That one is a female.”

  “Ugh,” its neighbor responded, shielding its eyes with its pink hand. “Looks dirty. I honestly can’t look at them for too long. Gives me the creeps.”

  “Excuse me,” I shouted. “I can hear you, you know?”

  Both rats jumped to attention. One said, “It’s yelling at us. I think that’s a sign it’s ovulating.”

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” the second one yelped and skittered away looking for a barf bag.

  The rats themselves seemed to be tending to a large collection of objects growing from the floor and ceiling. At the center of this den was a large stockpile of putrid looking eggs big enough to encase a human being. There were covered in mucus and rotting flesh encircled the base of each egg in a death hug. I could see, even in the low lighting, shadows curled inside their fleshy interiors jerking this way and that.

  When we stopped for Cain to speak to another guard, I backed up to where Palls could hear me. Just as I was about to ask, a few of the eggs ruptured, emptying their content of yellow slop and passengers onto the ground with a rotten barfing noise. Some rats came over and quickly began scratching and pawing the residual tissue from these creatures. I couldn’t see what these beings were exactly, but what I did see was enough to turn my stomach—not an easy thing to achieve, by the way. Standing to their feet, the three newborn figures spotted us and approached.

  “What are those things, Palls?”

  Gaffrey Palls spat. “The worst of the worst, Grey. Give me demons any day before having to deal with these things. And it looks like they’re making an entire army of them down here.” And then, as our new guests stopped a foot from us, he spat again: “Trolls.”

  As they came into full view, I saw that these “trolls” were some of the most ordinary-looking people I’d seen in what felt like ages. Unfortunately, that wasn’t saying too much.

  The man on the left wore a hemp shirt and I could see yellow teeth on the other side of some wickedly chapped lips. He caught me staring and grabbed at his crotch. “Hey, honey. I’m down to fuck. You down to fuck?”

  I nearly lost it. “What did you just say?” My voice came out in a shriek.

  But this only brought the attention of his neighbor, a skinny guy with a comb-over and dead shark eyes. “I wouldn’t hit that,” he howled. “She looks like a bitch—and she’s fat.”

  My mouth hanging open, I spun on this one and was ready to punch him, when the third—a tubby round kid, roughly sixteen to seventeen years old—added for no reason, “I personally think Episode I and II are the superior Star Wars.”

  “Oh, that’s strike three, motherf—”

  But Palls grabbed me by the shoulder before I could ground that freak into the dirt.

  “Don’t feed the trolls, Grey.”

  Our trek continued as Cain led us up a thin walkway through the back of the troll-hatching chamber. I couldn’t help but wonder how she had landed a job in the Fourth Circle. Walking behind her, it occurred to me that her resume must have the most impressive things on any plane of existence. She had a plan, and it was almost impossible to get her to talk, but she’d left clues.

  Back amongst the Bladder, as she snapped our rusted shackles together to bind our forearms to our lower backs, she had told us, “Look at your face. Been down here so long you can’t even speak.” And as we walked, she kept making comments like, “These guys’ brains are mush. Look at them. They can’t even fight back.”

  Both of these were obvious words of warning.

  Don’t act up. Lay low.

  Palls must have understood this, too. I knew already it would only take a blink for him to slice everyone in half, but he kept his mouth shut and did as he was told.

  Cain walked ahead. Her coworker—the lobster looking monstrosity with beautiful blond hair and broad shoulders—brought up the rear. I took the opportunity, with my hands pinned behind me and obstructed, to practice the light trick. But no sooner had I formed my fingers to snap, Palls rammed me with his shoulder. He played it off like he had stumbled, but I could tell by his face he wanted me to stay away from practicing anything with people nearby.

  Our destination came up at the very back of Misfit. Running in hundreds of designated rows, a long system of pipes ran forward a few yards before dropping into the ground. The pipes were rusted over and seemed ancient, but one sported a hatch with an opening large enough for someone to climb into.

  So, naturally, the first thing Cain did was swing open the nearest hatch and cackle. Even when she removed our chains, she kept on cackling.

  I swear she was enjoying this act way too much.

  The lobster creature reached for something but Cain declared, “I’ll bind these two,” and whipped out two silver collars lined with black runes. Her lobster coworker waived his head, swung his antenna around, and gurgled, but Cain rolled her eyes. “Really? I think you should leave it to the folks with hands, pal.”

  Dejected, the lobster person looked down at its claws and emitted a faint sob.

  “Behold, you idiots,” Cain exclaimed holding the collars for us to see. “The Binds of the Fourth Circle. These will keep you stupid and docile. The moment you do so much as flirt with common sense, your mind will be bombarded once more by the images you have faced within your Black Bladders. They will remind you how pathetic your life really is.”

  Chuckling to herself like a villain not even a community theater would find credible, she looped the collar around my neck. Just as she made to fasten it, her fingers jerked in one extra movement. I caught it. She hadn’t clamped the collar down, so the whole contraption just kind of hung around my neck without actually being locked in place. She did the same to Palls’ piece and then threw her hands up to exclaim, “Now go, sheep! Cower in the face of my Lord. The Scourge of the Sectarian. The Embodiment of the Immoderate. The Signer of my Paychecks.”

  She cackled again and tossed her blonde hair around like a shampoo commercial for sociopaths.

  “Hey, Cain?” I whispered. “I think you’re operating at about an eleven.”

  She winked as if this were a good thing.

  “No, you idiot. Don’t wink! That rating is out of three!”

  Cain’s eyes shifted between the pipe and me, a clear sign that I should shut up and climb in. Nearby, her lobster pal curled its eyes at me. Palls and I did our best zombie stumbles into the pipe and laid flat. Just before Cain shut the hatches down on top of us, she glanced down, flashed me a thumbs up, and then with both hands shut Palls and me into total darkness.

  Cain’s voice lingered outside, muffled but distinct, until it slowly died off and vanished. From his own pipe, Palls called out to me.

  “Hey, Grey.”

  “Yup.”

  “I kind of hate your friend.”

  I didn’t want to agree wit
h him so I kept my mouth shut.

  “Let’s just be ready for any—”

  I never heard the rest of what he said, because the next thing I knew my body was shot through the pipe like a bullet.

  CHAPTER 16

  The pipe spiked left and then right. At one point, it spiraled upward and then it dropped down bobsled style.

  After a few interesting winding turns, I dropped right into a cushioned seat. Palls landed in a seat beside me and we realized that—much to our mutual horror—we had been spit out in the middle of a studio audience. Our neighbors around us were all human and, from what I could tell, just as confused as we were. There must have been over a hundred of us, fired out of the overhead pipes like spuds from a potato gun, and dropped into stadium seating chairs. I noticed everyone was wearing Binds of the Fourth Circle, only theirs were fastened correctly. Outside of these seats was a vast sea of blackness in every direction. It was as if we were floating in space.

  “What is the meaning of this?” one man screamed. “I was a respected man of the clergy. I gave my life to the Church.”

  “I shouldn’t be treated like this,” a woman chimed in. “I was a doctor who dedicated her life to cancer research and medical aid for underserved populations.”

  “Hi, my name is Chad,” a third man explained with a wave. Everyone stared at Chad. “I, um, don’t belong here either, or as well, because I just never really left my house. Not sure why I’m being tortured if I mainly stayed in my mom’s basement and drank soda. You know, living my best life.”

  Everyone waited for him to sit down and shut up.

  The crowd started to argue, everyone trying to voice their concerns about their afterlife placements, but before it got out of hand, the little runes and scripts on the collars flashed gold. At this, everyone sat down and shut their mouths—even Chad. Palls and I made sure to sit as still as possible and do our best to blend in.

  Rushing toward us was a red wall about twenty feet tall. It was as if it were flying toward us from miles away, but at Mach 5. It stopped just short of the front row and I recognized it as a curtain, one that parted as soon as a giddy little piano showtune began to play.

  Behind the curtain was a stage featuring a u-shaped desk and curved chair that made it look like any run-of-the-mill evening talk show. Suspended over the chair, through thick black cables that snaked high into the air, was a helmet-like contraption. Behind this stood a backdrop featuring the silhouette of a sparkling cityscape, and above, a sign was lowered that not only let us know what we should do next, but was reinforced by a foursome of rats riding giant locusts who appeared on the sides of the stage and demanded:

  “APPLAUSE!”

  They snapped their tails at us threateningly.

  “APPLAUSE!”

  The collars clicked off and everyone, dazed and depressed, began to clap. One man broke down crying and the locust closest to him impaled him through the face and flung his body to the side. Almost instantly, a new nobody was spat out into the vacant seat and, unsurprisingly, she started clapping right away.

  A fiery tear put-put-put’d itself on stage and out stepped a woman—half of one anyway. She wore a black dress that wrapped around her body in thick coils. Her right side was smooth and flawless, and jet-black hair spilled down to her waist. A beautiful ice blue eye sat next to a sharp nose, while her left side was … I guess the word would be “nonexistent.” Mostly it was just loosely knit gray nerve endings and withered bone. Side-by-side, this creature was half-gorgeous while her other half looked like a plate of worms passing around an eyeball like a beach ball at a concert.

  She reveled in our applause. “You’re too kind. Too kind.” Holding up her rotting arm, she bowed to our forced reception. “Honestly, too kind. All of you.”

  We clapped harder.

  “No, seriously! Cut this out! It’s too kind!”

  She pointed at a man who was clapping too graciously and a large hound the size of a horse leapt from out of nowhere, mauled him to death, and dragged the corpse back to the stage before beginning to play with it like a pet-store chew toy. We all clapped a little less enthusiastically as a replacement audience member was plopped into his recently vacated place.

  Our hostess returned to being jovial. “My name is Hel, and thank you for joining me on ‘The Hel Report.’ We have a great show for you tonight, so let’s jump right in.”

  I couldn’t help but notice how half of her face was smiling and the other half was busy trying to hold her teeth in place. She tapped the hound as it played with the severed torso and performed a silly dance back to her desk. Nine television screens appeared hovering over the stage and each one showed close-ups of various angles of Hel’s face.

  The hound in the corner was truly monstrous. The matted brown fur running along its body stopped around its massive black paws. With six red eyes—three on each side of its large head—it watched us all carefully.

  Hel clapped gleefully. “First, I’d like to thank you for checking out my channel. ‘The Hel Report’ is the number one watched streaming torture channel in all the Circles, and I couldn’t have done it without all of you.” She blew a kiss and some of her lips fell off. “And, just to show my love for my die-hard fans, my ride or dies, my ‘Hel-Heads’ out there, I’m giving out something special to the first ten people who press the red button on their armrests. That’s right, smash that button. Get a gift.”

  The entire audience looked around. Ten buzzers sounded as ten buttons were pressed, causing a series of blades to drop down from thin latches in the ceiling and behead the button pressers as they sat in their seats. Someone beside me had been one of the lucky (or unlucky ones, not sure) and his severed head bounced down the steps like a giant meatball covered in loose hair. I could see the dog on the stage twitch with desire.

  “I feel good about tonight,” Hel told us with a smile.

  Rats appeared from the side of the curtain, carrying the bodies of the dead to the front where they piled them like discarded luggage.

  “Tonight, I’d like to talk about something near-and-dear to my black heart—and something everyone is talking about nowadays: the state of Hell.”

  Everyone in the audience looked at each other. Were we talking about that?

  She looked at the audience. “I’ll tell you what, and excuse me for getting a little ‘real’ with you right now.” As if to better catch the power of her emotions, the images of the television screen flashed through several filters until it landed on a somber sepia. “I remember the heyday of Hell. Back when everything was just torture and strife and disembowelment, you know, when things were simple. Back when names meant something—like the Valley of Infinite Screams or the Cave of Endless Wonder.” Hel paused on this last. “On second thought, a den where you’re rectally fed snakes until your stomach bursts should have had a better name slapped on it. I’ll admit our PR department needed some work.”

  I elbowed Palls to show him that someone else agreed but he just hissed at me.

  “My point is this: what happened to us? Only the Old Ones—like me, like my brother Fen here—know how glorious damnation used to be.”

  She pointed over to the hound quietly gnawing on a skull and then sighed, causing a puff of moths to flutter out of her dead cheek in the process.

  “I’ll tell you when it all started. When the world of humans almost ended on earth. Then all of a sudden, we were saddled with Wardens. Shade Wraiths. Who voted for them to be in charge? Why did they get jurisdiction over the Circles of Hell?”

  Using her dead, bony finger, she tickled the top of the desk. Instantly, it grayed and withered. Hel stood up just as the wood collapsed in a rotten heap. “Before them, the Seven Dragons held dominion over the Circles of Hell, and they haven’t been seen in ages. And now look at me. Me! In charge of the Fourth Circle: The Abaddon of Have’s and Have Nots. Pathetic! I should be in charge. I was
here before all of them. I mean, you can’t even spell ‘Hell’ without ‘Hel’.”

  The APPLAUSE sign lit up and we all did as we were told.

  Hel acted as if she were genuinely taken aback by our praise. “I know, right? You get it. You get it. Who better to lead you than me? Lucifer? Ha! He thinks he can vanish for a few thousand years and then send Screeches out expecting the hordes of Hell to bend to his will? Torture isn’t a hashtag. And that’s why, to commemorate the success of ‘The Hel Report,’ I am announcing an expansion of sorts. I’m going viral.”

  Grabbing the cabled cap from the air, Hel placed it on her head. It seemed like the entire world shuddered as purple energy currents arched out from the cables. It dawned on me that this was why the Black Bladders were syphoning energy from us. That was their purpose.

  Whatever energy was pumping into Hel was also rising out of her mouth in a green cloud. Drifting onto the pile of corpses nearby, the green mist quickly settled into their expired flesh. And then, one by one, the bodies stood. From out of their bloodless stumps, where their heads had once been, sprouted large cameras draped in colorless flesh. The cameras swiveled back and forth for a while before setting their lenses on their master.

  “What would I be without Followers?” Hel cackled.

  “We gotta get the fuck out of here,” I whispered to Palls, who nodded in immediate agreement. As soon as we stood to make a break for it, a familiar woman appeared, carrying a spear in one hand and a card in the other. Cain dashed passed the hound, which snapped at her heels, and handed Hel the card only to turn and disappear behind the curtain again.

  Hel read the card, passed it to her dead hand, and watched it disintegrate.

  “What the hell is your friend doing,” Palls whispered to me.

  I was too scared to respond. I didn’t have a clue anyway.