“Where am I?”
Rudolfo’s face split into a mischievous grin. “On an elevator.”
“I had that much figured out,” Monty grumbled. “Where is this elevator?”
“It’s between destinations.” Rudolfo was enjoying Monty’s rising frustration.
“Okay. That means it’s going somewhere. So, where is it going?”
“To hell.”
Monty blinked. “But, it feels like it’s going up.”
“What it feels like and what it is ain’t necessarily the same thing.” Rudolfo twitched with repressed glee. He loved baiting the ‘new dead.’ It made the long elevator ride so much more enjoyable – for him.
“Shouldn’t it be going down?” Monty persisted.
The imp laughed. “You new dead always get it wrong. Up, down – it don’t mean nothin’ here. Einstein had it figured out. It’s all relative and dimensional.” Rudolfo leaned toward Monty, winked, and gave him a conspiratorial poke in the ribs. “He’s down here, by the way.”
Monty looked around. The car was austere. The walls were bare. Dark splotches dotted the surfaces. He sniffed again and immediately regretted it. It wasn’t coming from the demon.
“What’s that smell?”
The imp sniffed. “Oh, that. It’s brimstone. Sulfur. Goes with the territory. You’ll get used to it. No, wait. You’re dead.” The creature chortled and snickered. “You’ll never get used to it. So, get used to it.”
“Dead?”
“Right. Dead. Expired. Recently departed. Deceased.” Rudolfo leaned forward and breathed an acrid sulfurous cloud into Monty’s face. “Dead.”
The demon returned his attention to his control panel and its single lighted button. He began humming the same, discordant, familiar tune.
“What is that?”
Rudolfo stopped. “What’s what?”
“That tune. What is it?”
“This?” He hummed a few more bars.
“Yes, that. I’ve heard it before.”
“Oh, it’s just somethin’ I picked up in a bar in Sydney when I was up there doin’ some harvestin’ for one of th’ big boys. See if this helps any.” The demon cleared his throat and started singing. “Don’t mind you playin’ demon – as long as it’s with me – if this is hell – then you could say – it’s heavenly – hell ain’t a bad place to be.” He grinned. “How’d you like that?”
“It was definitely … interesting.” Monty smiled. “That was an AC/DC song, wasn’t it?”
In truth, it sounded like feeding time at a large zoo.
“It’s called Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be. I’m thinkin’ about singing it for Demonic Idol when the auditions come to Sinsunatti next month. What do you think? Have I got a chance?”
Monty shifted expressions, using the smile he reserved for when he told his clients everything was fine, no worries, when truthfully all had gone to shit and there was nothing he could do to save the situation. “I guess it depends on the competition, doesn’t it?”
The ascent was bad and got worse. Monty had been on high-speed elevators in the past, but nothing like this. The laws of physics said this kind of speed was impossible, yet he was certain that the car had exceeded terminal velocity some time ago. Just when he thought the car must burn up from friction, it stopped.
It did not slow down.
It did not ease gracefully to a halt.
It stopped.
While he tried to come to terms with the realization that he was not a puddle of protein jelly on the car’s ceiling, the doors slid open with the sound of fighting – or mating – cats.
Marty looked through the door at the empty vista beyond. The terrain that stretched before him was totally flat and featureless, devoid of vegetation or creatures. Black, billowing clouds raced overhead across the garish, red-orange sky. A bright glow shone through the clouds straight above, but he could not tell if it was the sun, the moon, a star, or a really big spotlight. The wind howled as it raced across the plain with nothing to retard its progress. The rotten egg smell filled his nose and throat. He gagged. Tears filled his eyes and ran down his cheeks. The gas mixed with the tears and turned them to acid that burned runnels in his skin.
“Here you go, Mac.”
“But… but…” Monty choked, unable to speak with the burning in his nose, mouth and throat. He doubled over.
“Hey, a smart lawyer like you oughta come up with somethin’ better than motor boat sounds. Step on out there.”
Monty turned to Rudolfo. “You said … this … is hell. There’s … nothing … here.” He choked the words from his raw throat.
“You been listenin’ to too many religious stories. Some people say that everyone builds their own hell when they’re livin’ back on Earth. If so, this is the one you made.” Rudolfo sighed. “Look, Mac. I don’t make the rules and you ain’t the only soul I gotta pick up. This one is all yours. You own this bit of real estate. Now, get out there and claim it.”
Rudolfo gave him a firm shove and propelled him, unresisting, through the doorway and spinning him around as he did so.
Monty caught his balance and looked up. An elderly woman stood before him. No, not elderly-geriatric – ancient. For the first time in his life he fully understood the meaning of the word ‘crone.’
Her liver-spotted scalp shone beneath the thin, lank silver threads that cascaded down either side of her head in limp curls. Her seamed and leathery face bore more cracks than a dried riverbed. Pale, bleary blue eyes sparkled from below a thick, snowy unibrow. Her nose was a hooked wedge of flesh stabbing knife-like from between her eyes. Cracked, flaking lips opened in a leering grin as spittle dribbled from the corner of her mouth.
“Well, well,” she cackled, exposing cracked and yellowed teeth. She leaned toward him for a better look. “Ain’t you the pretty one?”
Unable to stop his natural, ingrained male inclination, his eyes continued downward over her naked flesh. The skin hung in sagging, wrinkled folds. Her breasts – dugs, really – lay flat against her chest. On the right breast the word WELCOME was branded in angry, brownish-red letters. On the left, the word was WOMAN.
Monty’s glanced continued downward to her crotch. Her right hand partially covered her pubic hair in an obscene parody of modesty. Her fingers rapidly worked the protruding and sagging lips of her ancient slit. He saw more movement within the thicket of gray hair nestled between her legs – motion other than that of her fingers. He shuddered. A scream grew within his mind. Something was twisting and writhing down and out and reaching toward him.
This can’t be happening, his brain screamed even as his legs tried to push him away from the squirming flesh. He first thought they were tentacles, but he soon realized his error. They were worse. They were tongues – two twitching, reaching, grasping, bifurcated, blue-black appendages.
And, they were reaching for him.
“Welcome to hell, Darlin’.” She raised her arms and stepped toward him. “I have so many wonderful things to show you.”
The old woman pressed herself against him, her sagging breasts surprisingly firm against his chest. Her left hand slid up and behind his head as she tilted her face up to him and his down to her. Her lips parted. Her pustule-covered tongue darted over their flaky surface. Despite his struggles, he felt his head pulled inexorably closer. His nostrils filled with the stench of shit and rotting flesh. Her lips pressed against his; her tongue stabbed into his mouth.
Monty screamed around the invading flesh and tried to push himself backwards into the car. The doors were already closed. He pushed helplessly against the steel panels as he felt his zipper pulled slowly down. His erection grew to a tumescence he had never experienced in life. The slippery tongues reached into his boxers. As the black muscular flesh enveloped his engorged member, darkness claimed him.
*
Monty awoke face down on a hard laminate surface. He frowned. The last thing he remembered was being raped by an ancient hag on a flat plain unde
r a red-orange sky. The pain of his chafed, abraded organ told him it wasn’t a dream. He also had the worst case of “blue balls” he had ever experienced. His scrotum felt swollen to ten times its normal size and it ached like it had been used for field goal practice by an NFL place kicker. His body screamed for release, but he was afraid to touch himself.
A deep rumbling vibration thrummed throughout his body. He heard a metallic rattling from somewhere above and behind him. Slowly, he pushed himself to a sitting position and looked around. He frowned. He was sitting in the elevator car again. A feeling of déjà vu washed over him.
Not again, he thought. If this thing takes me to that old woman I’ll kill myself.
“Goin’ down.”
Monty shuddered. “Rudolfo, right?”
“Afraid not,” the creature on the stool growled. “What, we all look alike to you? You racist or somethin’?”
“Um, no. N-nothing like that.”
“ Oh. So you think we only got one elevator, then. You think this is sticksville or somethin’, don’tcha? Listen, Bud. This was a heavy duty, high class operation long before you came along. Modern guys like you an’ Howard Hughes an’ all th’ rest think just cuz youse is th’ newest deads that nothin’ else before you was any good. You don’t know it, but we hadda huge marble staircase that worked just fine. Yeah, it was slow. Yeah, all you newly-deads kept bleedin’ an’ pukin’ an’ pissin’ an’ shittin’ all over it, but, hey! That only gave it character, y’unnerstand?” The demon poked a blackened claw into the middle of Monty’s chest. “There’s so many of you dyin’ up there and comin’ down here we’d never handle it with just one car.”
A cold dread filled Monty. “You’re not taking me to that old hag again, are you?”
“Dubbayah, Dubbayah? Nah. Fun time’s over. Time t’get t’work. Th’ Undertaker’s released ya back t’full duty status.” The creature extended a green, scaly, black-tipped claw toward the panel and pressed a button. The car halted. “You’re overdue for orientation. You musta had a real good time with the Welcome Woman. I unnerstand she gives some great tongue action.”
Monty felt the acid burning in his throat as his gorge rose.
The doors rumbled open revealing a massive foyer.
“Hall of Injustice, hell’s Law Library. All out!” The demon kicked Monty forward. As he pin-wheeled to keep his balance, the doors closed behind him.
He managed to keep from falling on his butt – barely. As he smoothed his coat and shirt and brushed the ever present sprinkling of yellow dust from the lapels, he saw a little Greek-looking man wearing a gold-trimmed white robe hurrying toward him. He was followed closely by an Egyptian-looking kid dressed in a crimson smock, gray slacks and gray sandals. The boy wore heavy black eye makeup and there was no mistaking the adoration on his face when he looked at the older man.
What the hell, he thought. The old guy looks Greek. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Unless I’m supposed to defend one of them, it’s not my problem.
“My name is Demetrius. I’m the Chief Librarian of hell’s Law Library. And, you are late,” the figure scolded. “Foreman and Belli are about to introduce the guest speaker. For you to come in afterwards would be a horrible insult. I ought to make you wait for the next group.”
Monty blinked and looked around.
“Over there.” Demetrius pointed to where a number of men and women sat watching two others standing before them. One looked to be the embodiment of every successful litigant who ever lived. The other, not quite as impressive. “Get moving or I will hold you back.”
*
This was not what Monty expected. This was not how a lawyer of his stature and standing was supposed to be treated. He listened to the speech and the pep talk from Justice Cardozo. Yes, he, too, was a big deal in his day. He handed down many important decisions in landmark cases; wrote dozens of scholarly reviews; yadda, yadda, yadda. So, what? He died in 1938. That was almost a century before Monty had … died. The world – and the law – had moved on. In the modern world, Cardozo’s only value was as a precedent and resource material.
Afterwards he had to go with Belli to receive his assignment. What was with that? Monty had been a very successful (and, well-paid) defense attorney. What was with this tort crap? That was for schmucks with no balls. Yeah, insurance lawyers and corporate geeks made decent bread, but criminal law was where the stars came out to shine. And, Monty was one of the brightest.
Then Belli gave him that slip of paper with his assignment on it and, before you could say “Goodbye, Porsche!” he was standing in a linoleum-tiled foyer. In the center of the room, four couches had been arranged in a square. A low table stood in the middle. A wide vase rose from the table’s center, its glass throat filled with fake flowers on plastic stems. Dusty, tattered leaves adorned the stems and flowers in lackluster and uncaring disarray. Faded framed watercolors and bleached photographs hung crookedly on the walls.
He glanced at the slip of paper.
Golgotha Gardens Retirement Home
And Assisted Living Center
What the … a goddamn nursing home?
Monty looked up. Men and women shuffled toward him like a scene from Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. Some had canes; others, crutches. Walkers squeak-thumped along the floor as the dead advanced. Wheelchairs screeched their worn rubber tires as decrepit hands propelled them forward. Uniformed demons moved here and there among the creeping tide, intent on their errands and oblivious to the human detritus around them despite the crisp nurse’s hats and starched uniforms each one wore.
The omnipresent rotten egg odor of sulfur was gone, replaced by the stomach-turning stench of old urine, feces, vomit, sweat, and decay.
Monty backed up until his butt hit a hard, unyielding surface. He reached behind him; his hand brushed a metallic lever shape – a door handle. Frantically he worked it until the door opened. A clawed hand gripped his right shoulder and pulled him through the doorway and into a lighted office and then slammed the door.
“Aaron Montgomery?”
The voice was feminine, sultry, and so seductive that Monty felt himself rising in response despite the intense pain of his previous encounter. With the pain and erection came the memory. He spun and placed his back against the closed door.
“Ooo. Are we jumpy?”
The source of the voice was the most beautiful woman Monty had ever seen this close. The top of her upturned head came to just below his nose. Her shimmering blue-black hair was parted in the middle and cascaded down each side of her round face. The tips of her pointed ears only added to her sex kitten charms. Dainty, pointed little white teeth peeked from behind full, scarlet lips. Her tiny bifurcated tongue darted ever so coyly – now peeking, now hiding. He decided that her delicate green scales only heightened her beauty. Her big, round, yellow eyes with their catlike, vertical slits captured his heart completely.
She took a deep breath revealing a cleavage that mortal women vainly paid thousands and tens of thousands of dollars to acquire, only to fall short of this creature’s magnificence. Pain filled his brain from his already tortured penis. Even as he clutched himself in agony he knew he had to have her at any cost.
“Cool it, Mac,” the succubus said, pitching her voice into a less seductive register. “You don’t want this. You ain’t getting this. That ain’t my assignment.”
After several very long moments (for Monty), the room’s pheromone saturation dropped enough for him to think clearly and for his painful erection to subside. He looked around the office. Dark wood panels glistened below the wainscoting. Pale green patterned paper – possibly flowers but most likely leering demon faces – covered the walls above. A dark brown leather chair stood behind the mahogany desk. It took Monty a moment to realize that there was no computer – no office equipment of any kind – on top of the desk. All that was there were a leather-cornered blotter, ‘in’ and ‘out’ trays (the ‘in’ stuffed to overflowing, the ‘out’ bare and dusty), a pen holder,
and a black, rotary dial telephone.
“Whose desk is this,” he asked.
“Yours, of course. I hope you didn’t think I was going to sit here for hours on end listening to them whine and bitch and moan, did you?”
Outside the office the lesser demons and imps gathered the residents. The line started at Monty’s office door and extended down an infinite (literally) corridor as people shuffled papers, looked through valises and briefcases, and otherwise prepared for their meeting with the home’s new administrator.
Monty lifted one of the slats from the mini-blind that covered his office window and looked out at the waiting people.
“Who are those people?” he asked. “And, why is there a rest home in hell?”
The succubus smiled. “These people weren’t patients when they were alive. Oh, no. Far from it. These were the other ones – the nurses, the orderlies, the administrators, the inspectors, and the families of those unfortunates left to finish out their existence in squalor, indifference, and neglect.”
Monty shuddered as he dropped the slat and turned around. “So, what is my role?”
“Your role is to sit here and listen to each and every one of them. You are to help them with their estate planning, trusts, and wills.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“Not at all. You will find that almost every one of them is absolutely certain that they brought it with them.” She paused and licked her lips. “And, you have one other duty.”
Monty groaned inwardly. “And, that is?”
“You are their intermediary, their ombudsman. It is your job to listen to their complaints, fill out the proper forms, and present those complaints to HSM for proper resolution.”
“HSM?”
“His Satanic Majesty, of course.”
“Of course. So, when does this farce begin?”
Lawyers in Hell Page 40
