Burn, Beautiful Soul

by William J. Donahue

“You really should be nicer to people,” Melody tells him.

  “I didn’t do anything. I even smiled at her, if she had bothered to look me in the eye.”

  “Yeah, about that. I’d refrain from showing any teeth, if you can help it. When you smile, you look like a rabid dog hungry for a bone to chew on.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” he says. He purses his lips in an attempt to hide his fangs.

  “So. Why is it you decided to come here?”

  “You picked the place.”

  “Not the restaurant, dumdum,” she says. “I mean here in a broader sense.”

  “To Beak?”

  “To Beak. To Nebraska. To the United States. To Earth, for that matter.”

  “You’ve got to start somewhere.”

  “So this is just the opening salvo?”

  “Something told me this is where I needed to be. Call it instinct.”

  “So you just walked through the Gates of Hell and just … arrived here? There’s a portal to Hell beneath our feet—that’s what you’re telling me?”

  “We call it Our Fiery Home, and it will be beneath your feet no matter where you are in the world. There are corners of my kingdom that my hooves have never touched, and will never touch, inhabited by creatures I will never meet. I’m here because my nose led me here.”

  “I’m a big believer in going where you’re called. Frankly, I’m confounded that I’m sitting here, sharing a meal with the devil, at a nice-enough restaurant in downtown Beak. I wonder what that says about me.”

  This devil business again, he thinks. He decides not to correct her.

  “You seem like a nice person,” he says.

  “I find it hard to believe ‘nice’ is the quality you’re looking for in a woman.”

  “Then why did you say yes?”

  “A girl’s got to eat, and I believe some opportunities you just have to explore. Besides, you don’t seem like the kind of person who takes no for an answer. Wait—is person even the right word? Clarification: You don’t seem like the kind of being who takes no for an answer.”

  “I’m getting a little tired of those kinds of remarks. You know nothing about me.”

  “You’re the freaking devil.”

  “Sticks and stones. I prefer Basil.”

  He will no longer deny the implication, guessing her opinion of him as some sort of ancient, all-powerful demigod might somehow work in his favor.

  “So why don’t I just possess your body and do whatever sadistic things you imagine I might do to a female under my control?” he asks. “Why should I even bother going through the trouble of manufacturing all this pretense if I could just swoop in and take what I want, whenever I please?”

  “I don’t know. Sport?”

  “I suppose that would be crueler.”

  “You don’t know a thing about women at all. You ever hear the phrase ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer’? That’s why I’m here.”

  He raises his water glass and toasts, “To enemies.”

  Their glasses clink.

  “Is this really what you want to talk about?” he asks.

  His frankness seems to disarm her. He watches the tension leave her body.

  “I suppose not. But first I want to know who I’m dealing with.”

  “If something horrible were going to happen, it would have happened by now.”

  He is tired of having to prove himself. At least in Our Fiery Home his word meant something.

  The tall, gaunt host appears tableside and explains in his rich baritone that their waitress seems to have taken ill. He asks for their orders. Melody opts for the crab cake. Basil, who hasn’t consulted the menu, says, simply, “Something rare, please. And a glass of something red.”

  “So,” Melody says as the host departs for the kitchen. “Tell me about Hell.”

  “Please. We don’t call it that. It’s just home to me.”

  “Right. Sorry. Tell me about home.”

  “There’s not much to tell. It’s always dark, save the glow of the firelight. Lots of shadowy nooks, lots of places for killers to lurk and their victims to hide—try to hide, anyway. If you were to pay a visit, you would see sights your eyes would not believe—nightmarish beasts that astonish even me from time to time. So many hunters of every size and shape, with plenty of doomed prey from which to choose.”

  “Sounds familiar. Give me an example.”

  “Troglodytes. Pterodactyl-like vampire bats. Venomous centipedes, each one’s armored trunk longer than a school bus. Dragon-like salamanders that belch acid.”

  “Interesting pets,” she says. She tears a piece of bread into small pieces and pops a sliver of crust into her mouth. She nods as her jaw does its work, one eyebrow raised, lips firmly together. He struggles to translate her expression. She’s unimpressed, perhaps. Or maybe she thinks he’s lying.

  “We have a kraken,” he says, sounding almost boastful. “Cthaal, we call it. The creature lurks at the bottom of a blood-filled lake, the Pool of Infinite Perdition. No one really knows how big the beast is, or how many tentacles it uses to rove the depths, but it’s monstrous. Mean son of a bitch too.”

  “A kraken, you say,” she says flatly. “Now that’s something.”

  His shoulders droop, dejected. What does he have to do or say to impress this woman? He wags his head, thinking he should just call this date a bust, head somewhere else and find someone who appreciates his company. She seems to notice the darkening of his demeanor.

  “What?” she asks. “Did someone get his fragile little ego bruised? The poor little Prince of Darkness gets his feelings hurt because the big, mean girl isn’t paying him enough attention? I mean … come on, man.”

  Basil sighs heavily.

  “Seriously?” she says. “I mean, seriously? Did I actually injure you?”

  “It would be nice if you were at least civil.”

  Her arms fall to her sides. She looks to the ceiling so Basil sees only the whites of her eyes.

  “Now you’re making me feel bad,” she says. She plants her elbows on the table, and her palms prop up her chin in mock enthusiasm. “Okay, tell me about your kraken.”

  “It’s quite remarkable that the beast even exists,” he says, newly buoyant. “This thing must have twenty, maybe twenty-five tentacled arms, each one as hard as iron and lined with rows of suckers, and in the center of each sucker is a venomous spine. It’s the perfect killer. Let’s say some fool splashed down into the Pool of Infinite Perdition and ended up in Cthaal’s tentacles. Even if he somehow managed to escape Cthaal’s crushing grip, the venom does its work all too well. The doomed fool’s heart would likely stop before he reached shore. How such a thing comes to be, I simply cannot fathom. Lucky for me, Cthaal is about as brainless as a paperweight—clever but brainless. If it had the slightest thirst for power or aspirations of any kind, it would dominate every one of us, with no one to oppose its rule. Even I don’t mess with it.”

  “Brainless kraken aside, your home must have some positives going for it.”

  “Imagine the worst place in your country, and then subtract the guns and the consumerism and the culture and the thin veil of civility that seems to keep everything from falling to pieces,” he says. “Then add all these fantastic beasts looking to fill their gullets and claw their species one ladder rung closer to the pinnacle of the food chain. On top of those, add the humanoid creatures like me, most of them intent on killing each other for reasons other than sustenance—power, mostly, though some kill simply to pass the time. Death pervades, much like your warzones here, but our sins are committed face to face, never from a distance. It’s much more personal that way. It’s more honest, I think. So that’s something.”

  “If you’re going to kill someone, at least have the decency to do it to his face.”

  “Precisely.”

  “I was being sarcastic,” she says. “Why would anyone choose to live in such a horrid place?”

  “For most, it’s
not a choice. But my home does have its charms.”

  “Charming, indeed. You must be happy as a crab in a sandbox.”

  “It’s a love-hate scenario. I carry Our Fiery Home with me wherever I go.”

  As he talks, his mind feeds him images of the over-warm, over-dark place he once ruled—or still rules, technically. He misses home, or at least parts of it, to be precise. The world made sense down there: simple, straightforward and all too comfortable in its many shortcomings. Despite the beautiful things he has seen above ground—the gorgeous human female sitting across from him, as one example—he has felt a profound sense of unease each day among the humans. But he reminds himself he’s not supposed to fit in here. It’s a vacation, a respite, and nothing more. This whole experience, at its heart, can be only one thing: a temporary escape.

  Melody works her jaw on another piece of bread, and Basil follows suit. He butters a roll, tears it in two, and pops both halves into his mouth.

  “You have fine table manners,” she says.

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Because you come from a land of savages. You said so yourself.”

  “That’s no excuse for acting like a savage. Everyone should have the brains to know what a salad fork is for.”

  “I suppose.”

  Basil’s glass of wine arrives. Ever so gently, he brings the stemmed glass to his lips and draws a long, quiet sip. Melody does the same, and for the first time all evening they share a meaningful silence. They lock eyes every few seconds before one or the other turns away, before the stare becomes awkward—before it means something.

  “You mentioned the whole hunter-and-prey situation,” she says, killing the quiet. “I can’t imagine you ever having to worry about death, about dying.”

  “On the contrary. Thoughts of my demise consume me. Every day in Our Fiery Home I wear a target, so it’s only a matter of time before my life reaches its end. I would live on only in memory, but even memories have a shelf life.”

  “How do you know the end is truly the end?”

  “I know some humans believe in some sort of afterlife—a Heaven, a Hell, maybe something in between—but my people never learned such things. To us, the end is the end. Stay in power to stay alive, the teachings say. One day my brain will deteriorate and my limbs will fail, but the end comes only when the heart says it’s time.”

  “So you’re not immortal.”

  “Far from it,” he says. “You could slit my throat with those candy-apple claws of yours right now, and I would meet my end by the time the dessert menu makes its way to the table.”

  Of course, doing him in would never be so effortless, not that he would tell her such a thing. He doesn’t need to brag, at least not yet.

  * * *

  Two oafish demons drag Kamala into the Room of Contrition. They move to the center of the room and await instruction from Lubos, who lingers at the entrance.

  “Lash her to the slab,” he tells them. “Face down.”

  The demons know the routine all too well: bind the left wrist first; force the offender onto the slab, a heavy palm on the skull and an elbow in the center of the back to hold the offender firmly in place; snake the leather through the cylindrical channel bored through the slab’s base; bind the other wrist; bind each pastern to its respective hook, anchored deep into the floor, one on either side of the slab.

  “It’s a shame you won’t have a hand in our victory,” Lubos tells her. “You’re going to miss out on so much of what’s to come.”

  Her chin burs into the rock, so she can only grunt.

  “We’re a lot alike, you and me,” he says. “We want the same things: liberty, prosperity, the freedom to roam. And we shall have them. The human world is ours to take, and take it we shall. We’ve been quietly infiltrating their world for ages, and what good has it done us? We’re still down here, breathing this poisoned air, begging for scraps. No longer. Now is the time to make some noise. Now is the time to take what belongs.”

  Kamala arcs her neck. She can feel the vertebrae straining until she’s able to tilt her head to one side.

  “What will you do?” she asks.

  “Simple. We invade.”

  “There are far too few of us to become conquerors of anything. Basil estimated fifty thousand demons in Our Fiery Home, no more. The humans must have millions.”

  “Precisely. Hand-to-hand combat is the second wave. A band of demons—a few hundred—has already ascended. They aim to bend the will of those who control the levers of power, to weaken the humans’ resistance. Then we attack, and the battle will not be fought by demons alone. Every imp will brandish a blade, and every creature that shares our home will be enlisted with a singular purpose: the spilling of human blood.”

  “Enlisted? More like enslaved.”

  “The ends justify the means, my dear. Fear not: We will have our peace. First, we must destroy those who wish to keep it from us.”

  “This is our home. Why do you wish to abandon it?”

  “You’ve never been to the surface,” he tells her. “You can’t imagine the promise it holds. Here, the walls constrain us. Up there, you see only horizon. When Basil chose me to lead his hunting sorties to the human world, his motives were clear as glass. It had little to do with merit or praise. Rather, he wanted me gone from here, to have me out of the way, because he saw me as a threat. But I’m so glad he did, because it opened my eyes to the possibility. Basil felt the pull. You must feel it, too, as we all do. We were meant to ascend.”

  “We have endless room to expand here, below.”

  “Not expansion. Destruction.”

  “Mass suicide—that’s what you’re talking about. Any demon who follows you deserves the fate that will greet him. If you wish to leave, no one or nothing will stop you, but leave this place intact. Leave the world to do its own work.”

  “You must know the legends as well as I do—of how Our Fiery Home came to be. The Eternal One cast out of paradise, only to make his home beneath the surface in the warmth of the firelight. He was meant to return, to feel the sun on his face. As are we. Call Our Fiery Home what it is: a broken society on the verge of death. I will bring about its demise. The fires will go out, and every creature that shares our home will ascend or forfeit its life. And one will lead the way.”

  Lubos unfurls a three-fingered hand, gesturing beyond the walls.

  “Look to the Pool of Infinite Perdition,” he says. “An army with Cthaal before it cannot fail.”

  “Failure is inevitable.”

  “All, including our tentacled friend, must follow me. My reign has come.”

  “Basil remains king, and I his alternate. You know this.”

  “Basil rots in a ditch.”

  “Even if you had earned the throne rightfully, Cthaal obeys no one. A rancorous beast like that won’t abide your attempts to tame it.”

  “Dearest Kamala, don’t heavy your head with such worries. I have arranged other busywork to engage your mind and body.”

  As Lubos steps to the side, more than a dozen demons spill through the ragged entrance to the Room of Contrition. Lubos extends an open palm, as if offering Kamala as an unopened gift. The demons descend on her, jostling for position. Pushing and shoving turns to the clawing of eyes and throats, the demons brawling over which of them will have her first.

  * * *

  The gaunt host returns to Basil and Melody’s table, this time bearing their entrées. The aroma of freshly cooked meat makes Basil drool in his lap. Melody pretends not to notice.

  “Compliments of the house,” the host says as he sets a beautifully garnished crab cake before Melody. The puck-shaped patty has an artful drizzle of a beige-colored sauce and a pink-and-white radish carved to look like the bloom of a flower. For contrast, Basil’s scratched-metal plate has no accompaniment, no gilding of the lily. It’s nothing more than a cut of brown meat with blackened edges, sizzling in a broth of reddish juice. A dollop of Béarnaise butter melts into every meat
y crevice. An oversized steak knife juts from the filet’s center.

  As Melody readies to fork a piece of crab cake into her mouth, she says, “So tell me more about where you live.”

  “My boss, Mister Bulcavage, he put me up in a nice place. I have my own patio, my own TV, my own bed, which I almost never use.”

  “Not up here, dummy. I mean down below.”

  “Oh, the underworld? I tend to roam, but I do have a chamber—a nice chamber, by most demons’ standards. It’s got a throne, made from the bones of those who have fallen before me. My poems line the walls. I have a reasonably soft spot to lie down, when it’s needed.”

  “And what happens there?”

  “I sleep, fitfully.”

  “Is that all? It must get lonely down there.”

  He thinks of the company he keeps in Our Fiery Home: Kamala, a few tolerant imps, the cast of characters in his dreams, the voices in his head he now knows by the names Conscience and Ego. He guesses she’s referring to something else.

  “Oh, copulation?” he asks. “If you want, you take.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “You want sex, you take it from the nearest she-demon. You crave fellatio, you command her to please you: ‘Use your mouth until your tongue tastes my seed.’”

  “That’s abhorrent.”

  “I can assure you, it’s all rooted in fairness. Whether it’s sex or territory or food, the strong prevail—like your consumerism and capitalism. If you have the means to acquire something, you do so. If whomever you’re trying to take it from cannot stop you, then the spoils are yours to keep.”

  “That’s not capitalism. That’s rape.”

  “It’s not rape. It’s just the way things are.”

  “Do you ask their permission before you stick your monstrous penis inside them?”

  “Well … no.”

  “So, rape.”

  “No. I—”

  “Rape while the raping’s good, is that it? ‘What do you want to do tonight, Basil?’ ‘I don’t know, Beelzebub. Let’s go rape that hot bitch over there.’ Rape, rape, rape—raping all the time.”

  “Please!” He slaps the table with his heavy palm. Silverware clatters against the wood. A water glass tips over. He changes his tone and whispers, “Please stop saying rape.”