The Golden Age of Death (A CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES NOVEL)

by Amber Benson

  “Because if you want Alternate Frank here in charge, then just keep doing what you’re doing,” I added. “You might as well be working for the other team, the way you’re withholding info.”

  I wanted the boys to understand who they were going to be dealing with in the future if they didn’t get their butts in gear and start sharing all their information with me. Because Alternate Frank wouldn’t be half as cool as I was—especially when he remembered how “nicely” they’d treated him.

  “I know the way, too, and I’d like to go with you. To make up for my mistake,” Judas said, a hangdog expression on his gaunt face.

  It was the meekest call to arms I’d ever heard, but since he was the only one offering, I happily took him up on his services.

  “Thank you, Judas. You can definitely go with us.”

  Judas looked surprised to be taken so seriously—especially by someone like me (Death)—and he stood a little taller after that.

  “Are you guys coming?” I asked, as Runt, Bernadette, and I followed Judas toward the red sea.

  “Hold on,” Daniel said.

  Me and my mostly female crew stopped near the water’s edge, waiting.

  “Someone has to stay behind and man the East Gate,” he finished lamely.

  “Not Cerberus,” I said, raising one eyebrow to show I meant business. I wasn’t going to this “Pit” place without Cerberus. He was one scary-ass mofo and I wanted him there with me if I ran into any trouble.

  Daniel was at a loss. Obviously he was going to come with us—and there was no way Marcel was going to stay behind since he considered himself to be my “champion” and was all about dogging my every step, ostensibly for “protection.”

  “I could do it,” Bernadette said quietly, all eyes turning in her direction.

  “I don’t think—” Daniel began, but I interrupted him.

  “Great idea. Daniel, swear her in.”

  My boyfriend was incredulous—I don’t think he’d ever been bossed so thoroughly before. He gave me a sidelong glance then shook his head, letting me know I was going to get an earful later. I hated to be a bitch, but I was more than willing to take one for the team if it meant we got the show on the road.

  “Bernadette,” Daniel said, purposely not looking in my direction. “With this dispensation, you are now the Guardian of the East Gate of Hell. May this confer all powers of the office to you forever and always, or until I, or my successors, should choose to revoke them. Good luck to you.”

  The words were no sooner out of his mouth than she began to transform. Gone was the elderly woman we’d first met, replaced now by a ravishing young woman with dark brown hair and raffish eyes. She held up her hands, eyes goggling at how smooth and unlined they were. Then she touched her face, her fingers trembling as she felt the tender, young flesh.

  “I’m…young again,” she breathed, tears trickling down her cheeks. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “My pleasure,” Daniel said, and he genuinely seemed pleased to have brought her so much joy.

  As we left the newly improved Bernadette standing by the edge of the bloodred sea, one hand on the scroll, the other waving us good-bye, I wondered how she would take to her new job. She had a no-nonsense quality about her I really responded to. Maybe if I got out of this thing with my life still intact, I’d lure her away from Hell with a cushy job at Death, Inc.

  I was tired of all the underhanded subterfuge, the diehard political affiliations…the narcissism and bad behavior at Death, Inc. I could really stand to have a few more people working for me who I could trust to be on my side when the going got tough.

  I found myself at the back of the group with Daniel and Runt as we hit the path leading into the thick of the bloodred sea. As we walked, the water boiled and oozed around us, giving our group a bit of shade from the oppressive heat—and giving me a little relief from the intense sweating my body had been doing since I’d arrived in Hell.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered as I reached out and took Daniel’s hand. He seemed surprised, but didn’t pull away. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. It was shitty.”

  He shrugged—which meant he agreed with my estimation I’d been shitty to him.

  “Mad at me?” I asked, pushing him a little.

  He shook his head.

  “I’m never mad at you. I just wish…”

  He didn’t finish the thought.

  “Wish what?” I asked, starting to feel a little defensive.

  “I just wish sometimes you would think before you speak.”

  “Woah,” I said, his words yanking me out of my repentant mood.

  Was I just supposed to censor everything I said and did so I wouldn’t offend my boyfriend? That sounded about as exciting as having my teeth pulled without Novocain.

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now, okay, Cal?” he said. “Can we deal with this stuff later when you’re not acting all annoyed?”

  Let’s just say the word “annoyed” didn’t even begin to cover how I was feeling.

  “Sure, whatever,” I said, dropping his hand and picking up my pace. “C’mon, Runt.”

  Runt and I took off, leaving Daniel to bring up the rear all by himself.

  * * *

  to get to The Pit, or She’ol—or whatever you chose to call it—you had to trek through some really rank parts of Hell. Not that I’d spent much time in the interior of Hell (zero time actually), so it wasn’t like I had anything to compare it to. Still, I knew the nasty parts of town when I saw them…and our journey took us right through them.

  It’d taken us a while to get beyond the bloodred sea—the path, which was sandy and irregularly planed, like the bottom of any good body of water should be, kept the going slow. We had to pick our way around sinkholes whose terminuses lay miles below us, and avoid spots where flash floods washed across the path, dragging away any stragglers who didn’t start running as soon as they felt the ground rumbling beneath them.

  By the time we’d reached the end of the path and stepped back onto dry land, I was really stewing over what Daniel had said to me. I didn’t want to be angry with him, but I couldn’t stop myself from growling on the inside.

  Stupid, stupid liking of boys, I thought, anger burbling up every time I replayed our conversation in my head.

  I decided the best thing I could do was to just stay away from him until I’d calmed down—and he seemed to be in agreement. A few minutes after the fight, he’d passed me by on his way to catch up with Marcel and Cerberus.

  Thankfully, Runt had chosen to stay by my side, sticking as close to my heels as possible as we walked—and I found myself talking to her as we trudged along the path, even though I knew she couldn’t answer me.

  “Am I an evil bitch?” I asked as we’d skirted the edge of one of the larger potholes.

  “I mean. If I am, just smack me with your tail.”

  She looked up at me with sad eyes then gave me a halfhearted swipe with her tail.

  “So I’m half a bitch?”

  Tongue lolling from the heat, she smacked me harder on the leg.

  I guess that’s a yes, I thought.

  We’d gone on like this for a while—me asking Runt if I was an ass, her half smacking me with her tail—and then Runt had encouraged me to pick up my pace, so we could catch up with the boys.

  I was sure she and I could take care of ourselves if we’d gotten separated, but she was being really pushy about us staying close to the rest of our party. I chose to stick by Marcel and Cerberus, basically ignoring Daniel. He did the same by walking with Judas—though he looked rather bored by the East Gatekeeper’s nonstop chatter.

  I’d known what kind of stuff happened in Hell, the debasement and humiliation, but the stories didn’t prepare me for the reality of what I saw.

  Each “neighborhood” of Hell (I use the term very loosely) was set up so you would eke out your punishment time alongside the other true believers from your religion or philosophical way of thi
nking. Since we’d entered the interior of Hell via the East Gate, we got to walk through a number of the monotheist neighborhoods. For me, it was like stepping into another world: Tenement-like wattle-and-daub buildings crowded on top of each other, people herded together like cattle as they stared blankly out at us through holes in the crumbling walls. Even the roads and alleyways were dilapidated, a sheen of human excrement and dirt covering everything we saw.

  There were demons everywhere—you knew who and what they were by the studded leather bodysuits they wore—and they did the enforcing, making sure the souls carried out the duties assigned to them in Hell. Some of the demons were humanoid, others more oddly shaped, their skins the texture and color of rotting fruit. But every single one of them wore the same miserable expression on their face.

  I thought the demons looked about as happy to be trapped in Hell as the souls being punished.

  Just to give you a sampling of what I saw down there:

  We passed a demon standing on top of a naked woman. The woman was lying at the base of a giant pile of horseshit, her mouth wide open, guzzling down the excrement as the demon prodded her with a stick.

  Every other prod, she crawled forward an inch, her body tunneling further into the pile.

  It was so disgusting I had to turn my head away.

  Another demon—this one was bright blue, but otherwise humanoid—stood over a semi-circle of naked human men sitting on the ground. At first, they appeared to be doing intricate beadwork, but upon closer inspection, I realized they were actually sewing thousands of sequins onto brassieres.

  I pointed to the men, asking Snarly head who the sequined bras were for. His answer was sad, though rather apropos:

  “The demons put on a drag show every Friday night in the Fallen Angel Quarter. The men you see before you are here because they bullied a homosexual to death on Earth. This is their punishment: sewing sequins on brassieres for drag queens.”

  It was a trip to hear Snarly head use the word “brassieres” in a sentence, but the mood of the place kept my laughter in check.

  “I heard the drag shows are supposed to be amazing down here,” I said.

  Snarly head nodded then suddenly flicked his gaze behind him to make sure the dumb head carrying Alternate Frank still had a good hold on the prisoner, before returning his gaze back to me.

  “If we were here for different reasons, we would go see a show. It’s well worth the price of admission,” he added.

  “And what’s the price of admission?” I asked curiously.

  “A kiss.”

  “That doesn’t sound too bad,” I said.

  Snarly head looked down at Runt, who was trotting between us. Whatever he was going to say was naughty enough he didn’t want his daughter to hear.

  “Go walk over by Daniel,” he said to her.

  Runt shook her head defiantly, but I reached down and patted her on the head.

  “Your dad can tell me later,” I said to her—and Runt thumped my leg with her tail, telling me if I ever got the four-one-one, she wanted all the details.

  Though we got some funny stares, we were mostly left alone as we journeyed through the different “neighborhoods” occupying the East Gate of Hell. The demons seemed to know who we were, and every now and then one of them would bow to Daniel, but that was it. The poor souls there for punishment hardly even looked at us.

  Our path led us through a number of different Christian sects, wove us in and out of the Jewish quarter, and then finally dumped us out of the monotheist section via one of the Hindu neighborhoods. Judas had taken a very direct route to guide us through the eastern part of Hell, so we only saw a fraction of the different neighborhoods—and even this was almost more than I could handle.

  At the end of the Hindu area, we’d watched three human men being force-fed raw hamburger by a bored-looking demon with pale green skin, four arms, and a quintet of triple-D breasts. She was daintily picking up large chunks of meat from a fly-ridden wheelbarrow then ramming the raw flesh down the men’s throats. If they threw it back up, she would get a trowel, shovel up the regurgitated meat, and force it back into their mouths.

  I watched, disgusted, as the men cried while they chewed.

  “Don’t look at that,” Marcel said, holding up his hand to block my view.

  “Stop it,” I said, pushing his hand away. “What kind of a Death am I if I’m too much of a pussy to look at what really happens here in Hell?”

  Marcel thought about what I’d said, rolling it around in his mind before finally agreeing.

  “You’re right, Death. It would make you a pussy.”

  Well, I didn’t want anyone to think I was a pussy, so after that exchange, I kept my eyes glued to every indignity and atrocity we passed. Needless to say, I was very happy when we left the misery behind us so we could venture farther into the interior of Hell, where this She’ol was supposedly located.

  “This is creepy,” I said to Marcel, as the last of the tenements dropped away behind us, and we crossed into what appeared to be an expansive junkyard.

  As far as the eye could see, the horizon was littered with junk. Empty rusted-out cars, metal pieces of God knew what, trash, broken toys, torn sheaves of paper—I didn’t know where all the trash came from or what it was supposed to represent, but it smelled awful. Like piss and vomit and rotting garbage, all mixed together in a sickly sweet bouquet.

  “It smells like death,” I said to Marcel, who was standing beside me.

  He grinned back at me—and out of the corner of my eye I caught Daniel staring at us.

  “Excuse me,” I said to Marcel then I headed over to where Daniel stood talking with Cerberus and Judas.

  They were trying to decide which way we were going to go through the junkyard. There seemed to be some disagreement as to which path was safest, with Judas and Cerberus of one mind and Daniel of another.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” I asked Daniel.

  He glanced at the others then nodded.

  “Okay, sure.”

  Daniel followed me back toward the Hindu tenements until we were far enough away from the others they couldn’t accidentally eavesdrop on us. I had no interest in having a personal conversation with Daniel while everyone listened in and judged us.

  “Look,” I said, turning on my heel, and spinning around to face him. “I love you and I’m sorry. I’m down to talk about all the other stuff later, but I just wanted you to know that.”

  He ran his hands through his hair, messing it up in the front, and I had to stop myself from reaching out to smooth it down.

  “Me, too,” he said. “That I’m sorry and that I love you.”

  “Good,” I said, holding out my hand for him to shake. “Friends again?”

  He took my hand then used it to pull me in closer.

  “More than friends.”

  He kissed me hard on the lips, his tongue slipping inside my mouth, tasting me. I melted into him, enjoying the intensity of the embrace as his body pushed against mine hungrily. But instead of continuing the kiss as I’d expected him to, he suddenly pushed me away. I stared back at his handsome face, shocked by his raw, sexual aggression.

  “Don’t forget. There’s more where that came from if you’re a good girl,” he said, enjoying my dazed expression—he’d never been so dominant before and I had to admit it kind of turned me on.

  I nodded, my body wanting more right then and there, but he just grinned down at me and took my hand, leading me back to where the others were still waiting.

  Daniel was in a much better mood after that. Even letting Cerberus and Judas have their way, so we ended up taking the safer but longer path through the hellish junkyard. As we climbed through the trash, I stayed close to Daniel and Runt—and Marcel stayed close to me. Normally this would have gotten on my nerves, but for some reason I didn’t mind having a makeshift honor guard.

  “What’s with the junkyard?” I asked Daniel as we picked our way through a mangled VW minibu
s, three decapitated dolls sitting in the driver’s seat.

  “It’s not junk, Cal,” he said, offering me his hand as we climbed up onto the roof then clambered down the front bumper. “It’s all the sorrow of human existence concretized into stuff”—he indicated the junk—“and it can be toxic.”

  “How so?”

  Runt had circumvented the VW instead of climbing through it, and this had somehow gotten her ahead of us. We found her waiting by the engine of an old lawn mower, tail thwacking against a rusted-out metal filing cabinet.

  “Find yourself in the wrong part of the junkyard,” Daniel said. “Touch the wrong thing, and you’ll end up as part of the scenery.”

  I’d been about to touch a piece of metal signage wrought in the shape of a snail, but I thought better of it and yanked my hand away.

  “What?” I said, upset, as Daniel laughed at me.

  “We’re in a safe part. Nothing around here will get you. It’s why Cerberus and Judas wanted to come this way.”

  Suddenly I heard a high-pitched whine coming from just ahead of us. This was followed by a sharp, angry bark.

  “Runt!” I screamed and started blindly running in the direction of the barking, almost tripping on an exposed piece of metal sticking out of the ground.

  “Hold up, Cal!” I heard Daniel yell behind me, but I kept running.

  I found the hellhound pup standing on the bottom of an upside-down rowboat and I fell to my knees beside her, wrapping my arms around her neck.

  “Runt!” I cried, hugging her tightly.

  “It’s all right, Cal,” she said, licking my face. “No one’s hurt. It’s just, well, Dad…”

  She looked over at Cerberus, who was standing a few feet away from us amidst a sea of junked cars. He wore a stunned expression on the faces of all three of his heads.

  “What’s happened?” Daniel said, racing to my side and kneeling down beside me to make sure Runt and I were okay.

  Marcel and Judas joined the party a moment later, having had to backtrack to find us.

  Only then did Snarly head finally speak:

  “I don’t know how he did it, but your Alternate Frank has escaped.”