“I swear you pick these tacky establishments just to offend me,” Gefjon said.
Alistair looked up to see her leafing through the New York Times. The far windows showed the sun beginning to crest the horizon.
“You were particularly frisky last night.”
She smiled. “You’ve given me more insight into the Register in an hour than I’ve scraped up on my own over the last hundred years.”
“Have I now,” Alistair asked. “And what do you think you know?”
“Just that this world-hopping reporter routine of yours is only half of the equation,” Gefjon spat.
Alistair smirked but remained silent.
“Fine,” Gefjon said, “play it close to the vest, but don’t think I haven’t figured you out. The ratings system was corrupted right here in this lowbrow state and I’ll bet you’ve done the same thing with the Register down in Hell.”
“A nasty accusation from one so low on the totem pole,” Alistair said. “You know, I could report you on a number of violations – attempting to seduce a superior officer of the court being only one of them.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Gefjon said, “your not-so-subtle little past-life story last night did the trick: I want in.”
Alistair’s face took on a ghastly smile and Gefjon swallowed nervously.
“Do you really, my dear?” Alistair asked. “Even considering the potential repercussions?”
“Are you kidding me?” Gefjon squealed, then lowered her voice to a whisper: “Status means everything to the arrogant pricks strutting around the infernal Hall of Injustice. There isn’t a prosecutor, defense attorney, or judge in hell who wouldn’t give their left cloven hoof for a chance to one-up their colleagues. Besides, I’m sick of being an errand girl on a tether. I want some freedom, like you have. Damn it, I’ve paid my dues.”
“You could be right,” Alistair said, sipping his orange juice.
“Please,” Gefjon said, “I get it. You’ve been playing me like a trout. You wanted to see how discreet I was, while bedding me over all these decades. Well, have I passed?”
Alistair smiled. Glints of red sunrise reflected off his teeth. “You’re in.”
*
BIH (Back In Hell)
Field Agent Repatriation 665
Chrysler-Smith, Alistair
Priority 1 Recall
Pandemonium, In Transit
Barreling up Nile Boulevard, Alistair’s demonic taxi driver, a tiger-striped, wolverine-faced monstrosity named Matali, paid scant attention to his bureaucrat passenger. Only operatives with the highest of hell’s security ratings ever traveled this narrow, mostly empty road that led directly to the lower garage caves cut deep into the base of Pandemonium’s grand City Courthouse. Matali knew it was best not to get chummy with these spook types. Besides, the infernal mange eating its way across his buttocks and lower back was more than enough to worry about on this pothole-covered road.
Alistair looked up from his hellpad to take in the surrounding mix of skyscrapers, warehouses, and volcanic parks. If New Hell was hell’s Manhattan, then Pandemonium was its Chicago, smaller, no less corrupt, and a lot less hypocritical in its immorality and venality.
The colossal courthouse slowly came into view. There were five hundred Doric columns, fifty feet high, marking the perimeter of the imposing building. Phidias, Iktinos, and Kallikrates had used every spare soul from hell’s massive population to build this monument to Tartarosian justice. Unlike the stacked-cake approach they designed for the Parthenon’s columns back in mid 5th century BC, each of these towering pedestals was carved as a single piece of black-speckled, white granite, mined from the slopes of the stunted mountain that serves as the courthouse’s foundation.
Alistair rubbed his temples for the fifth time this morning. He never should have had that eighth drink last night at the Death Rattle, but it couldn’t be helped. The popular back-alley dive had a two-drink minimum per act, and Alistair had to sit through some atrocious performances before his favorite band, the Ungrateful Dead, started their set. It was an ear-numbing cacophony and perfect for covert conversation.
Alistair examined his hellpad intensely. Gefjon’s erotic and highly experienced colleagues (Malfean, Alalahe, and Gemmeul) had done their job well. Playing the pimp was a new trick for Alistair, but then, much about him had changed since he’d first transubstantiated into existence down here. Nothing was beneath him now. He’d always been a survivor in life. Deep in the Inferno, his instincts for self-preservation had been honed sharp.
Matali stopped his taxi as two security demons gave him and his passenger the once over. Looking like tuxedoed, upright rhinoceroses suffering from erythropoietic porphyria, they motioned Matali onward with pus-covered claws.
*
BIH Departmental Debriefing666
Alistair Chrysler-Smith
Priority 1 Recall
Pandemonium, City Courthouse
Hell Register/Ratings
Alistair sat before the Hell Register ratings department’s review committee – six coldly beautiful female demons renowned for their successes as interrogators, debriefing specialists, and torturers.
Right now, this judgmental sextet did not look happy.
It had taken Alistair a full five minutes of elevator descent to reach this deepest of courthouse sublevels. Former Truman White House contractor John McShain and thousands of deceased employees from the Laborers’ International Union of North America spent over fifty years in the secret excavation. Alistair considered it a point of pride that his division of the Hell Register of Preeminently Damned Lawyers merited the most secure of concealed office locales. The rating of incoming lawyers was a redundantly-secure activity, hidden from all surveillance equipment, eyes, soothsayers, and remote viewers.
“We’ve downloaded your latest statistical analyses, Alistair” Mayet, presiding demon and committee chair, possessed the body of an exotic dancer and a green haired countenance sporting a single, large yellow eye. “You’ve done more work topside in one year than our entire task force has processed in a decade. Recent conversations in the higher court’s cafeteria paint you as a real fair-haired boy.”
Alistair swallowed nervously. He sat in the interrogation chair, a monstrosity of black obsidian and ebonite. His red hellpad lay upon the wide right arm of the throne. His fingers rubbed the edge of his tablet computer every few moments.
“So, would a raise be out of the question?” Alistair asked.
Astraea, a multi-limbed demon (renowned for her erotic excesses in Pandemonium’s after-hours scene), took a step forward and displayed a smile filled with dagger teeth. “The problem, handsome, is your pre-death rep. We have high standards down here. We’re sure you’ve heard what happens to those seeking to corrupt the, ummmm, sanctity of our activities.”
Alistair looked up at the far wall, where a startling eight-by-thirteen-foot oil painting was hung. It was a perfect reproduction of William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s horrifying 1850 painting, ‘Dante and Virgil in Hell.’ The painting depicted the fifth circle of hell, where the wrathful are destined to fight eternally on the surface of the river Styx while the slothful watch from beneath. The crimson “sky” of hell glowed hot in the artwork’s background. In the foreground were two naked Caucasian men in vicious combat, one biting the other’s neck vampire-like. On closer examination, Alistair could see that the victim’s eyes were alive and blinking. Every now and then the figures of Dante and Virgil would animate for a few seconds and lean forward to whisper in the victim’s ears. Alistair fancied he heard their hushed message, “…right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used…”
Mayet followed his gaze. “Mister Moore is the loser in the painting, Alistair,” the demon said. “Moorie thought he could sell premature ratings data for favors in the higher circles. Now he suffers his punishment under our watchful eye.”
“Yes, well … point taken,” Alistair said. He tapped his fingers nervously over his hellpad.
“So, if there is nothing else to discuss?”
Astraea took a step forward and pointed four of her eight arms at Alistair. “We’re on to you, pipsqueak. You may not have sold any information yet, and we’re sure our blade servers are sacrosanct, but we got over a dozen off-the-record snitches who think you’re up to something.”
“And you think this will hold up in court?” Alistair asked. “I protest. Besides, I’m innocent.”
Mayet stood taller. “There will be no court review, Alistair. We police this division. We’re judge, jury, and … executioner. Even if you are innocent today, your true nature will eventually come out. You can’t be trusted. Besides, I think Mister Moore could use a little company in my favorite painting.”
Alistair’s fingers rubbed the surface of his notepad. “Then I guess I have nothing to lose by saying you’re a bunch of bloody hypocrites. I don’t know how you get away with it, but it’s been obvious to me from Day One that you’re all corrupt and have been abusing your oversight of ratings for some time.”
“Nice try, loser,” drawled Mynndie, a petite, naked demon with skin mottled like desert camouflage and a strong West Virginian accent. Her right hand pointed at Alistair like a loaded gun. “Nobody knows what we do in here.”
“Then you admit your crimes,” Alistair asked, “that you’re all guilty of abusing your positions?”
The sextet laughed uproariously.
“So what, punk?” Mynndie spat. “We’re at the top of the pyramid, and we’re here to stay.”
“You’re a fool, Alistair,” Andraea said. “You think recording us on your little toy is going to save you? We pull the strings from down here. We’re the real power behind the throne. There isn’t a lawyer in hell who doesn’t owe their current position to our selective rating system … and they repay us daily with innumerable favors.”
“Andraea’s right,” Mayet said. “Our electronic and thau-maturgical countermeasures make this the safest of safe houses … the ultimate panic room. There is no deeper or more secure pit in all of hell. Your silly little device can’t transmit anything through these walls, and nothing you’ve learned will ever see the red light of day.”
Alistair looked up from his hellpad, but not with an expression of defeat.
“Whoever said this was an electronic notepad, ladies?” Alistair asked.
“A talisman then,” Mayet spat, “no matter. There is no captured spell or magically charged ‘juju’ that can pierce these barriers.”
Alistair slowly and carefully picked up his device, popped off the false cover, and held up what appeared to be a rectangular slate of polished black rock.
“Oh crap,” Mynndie said, “the jig is up.”
“We repeat: charms and fetishes will not work here.” Mayet growled.
“I… I was instructed by persons in higher ranks,” Mynndie yelled. “Besides, this is hell. I’ve done nothing out of the ordinary!”
“This isn’t a mere talisman, ladies,” Alistair said. “It is one of the nine black tablets of the Apostasies, Hell’s Supreme Court. Rumor has it these ebonite slates were carved from Lucifer’s own tears, shed at the end of his great fall, each one crystallizing into a large black diamond upon contact with the fiery lake. Had one hell of a time convincing Justice Taney to loan it to me. Seems he always wanted a four-way with two succubi and a seraphim. And to the best of my knowledge, everything witnessed, heard, or seen by one of the black tablets is immediately known by them all. A nice function for when the justices need an emergency conference.”
“Liar!” Mayet screamed.
Alistair smiled. “Your superiors are being contacted as we speak.”
“Boy,” Mayet snarled, “you just bluffed the wrong demon.”
Mayet stepped away from her five colleagues and charged Alistair. The field agent leaped from his chair and braced for impact. A moment before reaching him, Mayet raised what appeared to be a small, wood hammer in her right hand.
“Roy Bean sends his regards,” Mayet shouted.
Alistair raised the black tablet like a shield, two handed. Gavel and tablet met with a thunderous explosion and a roar.
The resulting shock wave floored the sextet.
Mynndie was tossed clear across the conference table to strike the far wall. Her neck snapped audibly. According to Alistair’s research, this would make the tenth time she would wake in the hands of the Undertaker, naked, blindfolded, and facing degrading humiliations.
Andraea lay slumped in her chair. The handle of the gavel had impaled her right eye and now protruded from the back of her skull. Several spasms ran through all eight of her hands, belying her death. She too would face a horrific awakening in the Undertaker’s hands.
Her sister demons, Vali, Naru-Kami, and Chantico, were struggling to stand upright, moaning about their bruised and broken limbs.
Shaken, but still standing, Alistair smiled down at Mayet.
“I wasn’t bluffing, Lady Chairman,” Alistair said, “and this all could have been much more civilized.”
Alistair reached down and, grabbing Mayet by one wrist, dragged her toward the wall where the Dante and Virgil painting hung.
“Please,” Mayet begged. “No! No … not that.”
“I personally prefer the Impressionists,” Alistair said, “but I suppose one must make allowances when it comes to taste in art.”
Alistair slammed Mayet’s right hand against the painting’s frame.
There was a blinding flash of white light.
Into it, Mayet disappeared. In her place crouched a slim, naked man of indeterminate age.
Wide-eyed, he screamed with joy.
“I’m free,” former defense attorney and Miranda Rights trailblazer Alvin Moore yelled. Then his eyes fell on Chantico, whose head sprouted red serpents and cactus spikes. “You,” Moore gasped.
Moore launched himself across the room and tackled the wounded demon. “Everything you’ve done to me will now be done to you.” Before Chantico could protest, Moore’s teeth fastened on her throat.
The demon couldn’t even scream.
The foundation and walls of the interrogation room shook violently. The black tablet in Alistair’s hand pulsed with a dull, green light.
“I wouldn’t crawl too far, ladies,” Alistair said to Vali and Naru-Kami. Vali’s zebra-skinned hide and Naru-Kami’s rainbow plumes shivered in terror. “Your own canvases are on their way.”
Alistair turned away. He’d thought this victory would be sweet; instead, it tasted bitter.
The exchange of victims removed much of the painting’s original homoerotic charm, but Mayet’s bright green hair and huge weeping eye leant a wonderfully macabre flavor to this new rendering of a fine work of dark art.
*
BIH Staff Briefing: 001
Pandemonium Courthouse
Register Ratings Department
Alistair sat at his new desk and appraised his twelve recruits. Foremost in the group was Gefjon, among the most seductive of succubi, and yet somehow looking as natural as ever in her Chanel outfit.
“Under direct supervision by the editor-in-chief of the Hell Register of Preeminently Damned Lawyers,” Alistair said, “I have been tasked to revamp this department, rewriting standards as well as official rules and regulations. We’ll be creating much of this as we go along, but rest assured I plan to make the systematic assignment of lawyer ratings far swifter and more efficient.”
Alistair smiled wickedly at his new staff and waved his hand in the air. “As the recent redecorating of my office shows, corruption of any kind will not be tolerated.”
Gefjon gulped as she assessed the six huge paintings strung across the surrounding walls, all depicting variants of the same scene. Each showed one of the former committee who had ruled the ratings department. In each painting, one female demon’s throat was being torn out by a ferocious, naked man. The three-dimensional eyes of the two-dimensional female demons bled and blinked.
The staff listened, mesmeri
zed, as Alistair continued.
“But before we begin our planning session,” Alistair said, “I want you each to place every single electronic device in your possession on my desktop.”
The recruits hurriedly obeyed.
Alistair tossed a small sledgehammer onto the pile of notepads, tablets, and personal electronic assistants.
“Now … smash those damned things to bits!”
Island Out of Time
by
Richard Groller
The Oracle at Delphi screamed a scream…
…a scream that could evoke nightmares for eternity. Nichols stood frozen by her stare, looking into the eyes of a woman who beheld infinity and found it totally mad.
When first approaching the temple of white marble overgrown with moss and ivy, Nichols had sensed no danger in its decrepit splendor. Even in hell, he put no store in sibyls. And here he was, about as deep in hell as you could get, in the old dead’s mythic realms. Nichols trusted only logic and his five senses, first in life, now in afterlife.
His boss, Dick Welch, had sent him to this oracle to determine the source of the time perturbations troubling Satan: “Go to the oracle at Delphi, Nichols. She’ll tell you something,” Welch had ordered.
Temple steps. Brackish water in green and murky pools, barely reflecting Paradise’s ruddy light. The temple caretakers must not venture out much.
A fresh-faced female acolyte, nubile in her green linen chiton, appeared from shadows and led him through an anteroom, past white marble benches, to a bronze door, ten feet tall, with bas relief scenes from Greek mythology. Vintage old-dead theatrics.
Doors opened before them, anticipating their approach like sentries, channelizing their progress until they stood in a big domed chamber: hundred foot ceiling; central dais of dead-black marble. Nice touches. So were the gold sconces for unlit torches every ten feet. Very Hollywood, or very Greek, or very overdone – take your pick. Light shone from behind Corinthian cornices.
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