by Ben Stevens
‘The faintest glimmer of hope, way up there,’ said Hitler in a distant voice, gazing upwards. ‘Taunting everyone sent to Hell since the dawn of mankind. And that’s its purpose – just another torture. Same as the heat, the rocks, the never-ending work, the pokers stuck up your ass and all the rest of it. Just… a torture.’
‘You’d… You’d go through that cave, if you could?’ I questioned softly. I’d never seen Hitler looking like this; he seemed almost… vulnerable.
Hitler looked around, as though checking to see if anyone was listening in to our conversation.
‘Yes,’ he said in the faintest whisper.
‘You just said you wanted to become a demon,’ I returned in a similarly low voice.
‘Yes, yes – because that is all I can hope for, here. If I made it up… there’ – Hitler briefly raised his eyes – ‘I could get through, all sins forgiven. That’s something they make sure you learn here, once you’ve been around a while. Salvation’s right up there, perfect paradise or whatever you care to call it. You can be as evil as me and still they’ll let you in – if only you can get up to that cave first.
‘And of course, you never will.’
Turns out I didn’t have to wait much longer to witness one of Hell’s more desperate inhabitations try to make that climb. This guy was big, well-muscled. I wondered if he’d been an athlete, soldier or such when he’d been – well – alive.
He started the climb. Soon X hundred-million of us working away realized his intention and were staring up at him. The flying demons hissed at us and used their stinging whips – but they could hardly chastise the whole lot of us at once. So most of us just continued looking up.
He did pretty well, that guy. Whether because they were too busy with trying to get us to return to work, I don’t know, but the flying demons didn’t even bother snatching him from that rock face. He made his way methodically, fingers and toes searching for a hold in the scorching red rock. Must have been burning the skin off him, but he never faltered. Soon he was so high up he was like a toy figure. His feet slipped a few times and once he was hanging by one hand; but then he recovered and continued with his steady ascent.
‘I never saw anyone get as high as that – he must be a real expert at climbing,’ breathed Hitler. ‘I never thought… but maybe he can…’
Turns out he couldn’t. Suddenly his body just detached from the rock face and he fell back down to ground, his body spinning round and round. The impact was loud, and with his body hopelessly smashed and broken he just lay there screaming. (On Earth, of course, he’d have been killed instantly. Needless to say you couldn’t die here in Hell, no matter what happened to you.)
The demons all gathered round to hiss and laugh at him, jabbering away in their own tongue. (They could communicate with us, but one of the ‘privileges’ of reaching flying demon status was the fact that you got to talk in Hell’s very own language – and by that I don’t just mean the common tongue we automatically spoke as Hell’s accursed laborers. Being able to talk ‘Hellish’ as a flying demon just sort of happened, along with your body’s metamorphosis from humanoid-shape into – well, a flying demon. That is, according to Hitler, who of course knew everything.)
The climber was left screaming on the ground for a good long while – a few weeks – before his body was finally ‘healed’ and he could get back to hacking away at the rock face. Naturally, what had happened to him deterred everyone watching. No, clearly there was no way to climb up to that small cave…
No way to climb…
I caught my breath for a moment. Hitler looked at me.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked, almost with compassion. Strange, the ‘bond’ there now was between us.
‘Yeah, yeah, fine,’ I said quickly. As close as we’d become, there was still no way I was going to tell Hitler what I’d just realized. Or had I? Maybe what I’d suddenly thought was merely ridiculous; there had to be a reason why someone hadn’t come up with such a plan before! Come on! All the millions of people sent to Hell since the dawn of mankind (a great many of them much smarter than me – I’d absolutely no problem admitting that), and I thought I’d figured out a way to…
To what, exactly…?
Escape from Hell?
Then suddenly the red sky darkened, and a great moaning and howling started up. Hitler dropped his pickaxe, and got down on his knees. He hissed at me to do the same.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked, keeping my voice low.
‘This is it – your first time to see our leader,’ returned Hitler, his icy-blue eyes looking strangely excited.
‘What… who…?’ I stammered.
Hitler sighed and tutted.
‘Him – Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub… Whatever you care to call Him.’
And as a colossal shadow slowly spread over that scorching, reddened, rocky land, I slowly dared to raise my eyes…
2
Judge Timothy J. Green had to be just about the meanest son of a bitch God ever shoveled guts into. So it was just my luck that I had him overseeing my trial. Only one thing on my side: Judge Green was particularly notorious for his habit of finding defendants ‘guilty’ who just happened to be a) young, and b) black. As I was young but also white, the color of my skin was at least something on my side – I hoped. But soon as I entered the court room and saw that pompous, fleshy face with the half-moon glasses balanced on the end of that nipple-like nose, I knew I was for it.
It didn’t help that I looked the very picture of a crack- and alcohol-addicted meth head. Long, greasy hair, terrible skin and teeth, twitching limbs and face as I slowly detoxed. As I swore to tell the ‘whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God’ with my hand placed on the Bible, I could see that Judge Green wasn’t all that convinced.
Smart man. I’d tell whatever got me off a class-A murder rap, which in this state would see me going to the electric chair. I didn’t believe in any god, religion or anything like that – but if putting my hand on some book full of ancient fairytales and swearing to tell the truth might at least help to formulate the idea in the minds of some of the jury that I was innocent of the crime of which I was charged…
Well – I could only hope for the best, and use whatever I could to my advantage. My parents had long since washed their hands of me, despairing at their once handsome, high school-attending son having become a drug- and alcohol-dependant petty crook. Oh, they tried to help me any number of times, don’t get me wrong… But always I just took their money, told them a bunch of lies about how I’d clean up my act, and then just threw it straight back in their faces. I knew full damn well just how big an asshole I was; and I didn’t care. I just wanted to get high again.
But first I had to beat a murder rap. And that wasn’t gonna be easy.
My defense attorney (hired by the state) was trying to claim that what had happened was manslaughter. That the old boy had had a weak heart in any case and probably would have popped his clogs sooner or later, regardless of what I did to him. Yeah, I’d told the police all about that, and drunk and stoned and kind of remorseful as I’d been, it still somehow stood up as evidence. My attorney had tried to get my confession dismissed, citing the fact that I’d been extremely – well, wasted. But as this attorney was state-appointed, averaging maybe thirty to forty bucks an hour, he’d not tried all that hard. I was just another punk this pasty-faced, overworked schmuck had to represent, after all – if I got sent to the chair, he’d just get straight on with defending the next bozo.
So, right now I guess you’re champing at the bit to discover what it was I actually did. You could say it started the night me and the other bums were huddled round a big old metal barrel in which was burning a fire. You know the sort of thing – like at the start of a movie. It’s cold, dark; we’re holding out our hands and our breath comes out like thick mist. Kind of suspicious of each other, each one of us hurting in our own way. Never enough junk to get as fully loaded as you’d like. I was in too bad a phy
sical condition to try mugging anyone anymore, even if I was carrying a blade. The state I was in, a schoolgirl would have laughed at me down a dark alleyway. So that was another potential source of revenue kaput.
But the bums were talking. Sometimes it paid just to listen. I had one thing on my side: I was still young. Still in my late twenties. Could still move relatively quick if I needed to, even in my lamentable physical state.
‘…they say he’s got fortune hidden up there,’ rasped one old-timer, who’d a penchant for drinking brass-polish. ‘Doesn’t trust no bank – just hides it away under his floorboards or such…’
Bullshit stories. If I’d heard one I’d heard them all. Some sucker who had a load of greenbacks, just ripe for the taking. I almost zoned out of this scintillating conversation; but then I heard someone else say –
‘You talking about the O’Reilly place? That old nutball?’
That made my ears prick up. There could be only one ‘O’Reilly’ they were talking about. He lived a few blocks away from here – given that ‘here’ was downtown and avoided after dark by anyone who wasn’t a homeless, drink- or drug- (or both) addled bum. ‘Fact he lived not too far from my parents’, in this huge white-boarded house set well back from the road. I knew it well, because in my early-teens I’d done Mr. O’Reilly’s gardening.
Yeah, some old woman at my parents’ church put me onto that one. I never did get to thank her. I’m being sarcastic here. Because O’Reilly – despite being the single occupant of a large house that must have cost over a million bucks to buy even back then – was so tight I guess he cried with one eye. Four-to-five hours’ backbreaking labor in his front- and backyard (and for a twelve or thirteen year old working on his own, these yards were huge) got me around ten bucks, depending on how generous Scrooge himself was feeling. Sometimes it might be as little as five – on occasion he’d go as high as twelve.
‘There you go son; don’t go spending it all at once,’ he’d say, putting this colossal sum into my hand and causing me to look at him slightly, wondering if he was mocking me or not.
One thing I ‘specially remember about working there was when it got to be autumn and winter. Then I’d be freezing outside, raking up leaves or such – working just to keep warm – and I’d see the smoke spilling from out his chimney and I’d know he was tucked up somewhere inside his large house (I never did get to see inside: once he refused me permission to use his bathroom, which ever-after just meant I did what I had to do behind one of the large bushes in his back garden), toasting his toes before a roaring fire.
The miserable old skinflint.
…And here was this old bum saying now that O’Reilly had a fortune squirreled away somewhere inside that house – not in a bank or such. And O’Reilly lived on his own (had done for years, his wife dying even ‘fore I was born), and I was standing round this metal can half-freezing and starving to death, my rotten teeth chattering because I couldn’t afford the various chemicals I needed to keep myself on an even keel…
‘Ah, but he’s got them bars over all his windows and doors, security lighting and such,’ said another bum, younger than the first one who’d spoken. This was Bill, who could go a bit psycho when he got angry. In fact, fair to say he could go very psycho. All of us stood around the burning metal can were ‘fraid of him. Whatever he was doing – fighting to freebasing – he’d take it to the limits. So if Bill decided something wasn’t worth doing (i.e. breaking into O’Reilly’s house to look for this supposed loot), then it probably wasn’t.
Only it was then – almost with something of a jolt – that I realized I had an edge.
To be more specific, I had a key. For an old side door situated on one side of O’Reilly’s house, where it bordered onto a small wood where the well-heeled residents of that area walked their dogs and such.
I’d found it well over ten years before – more like fifteen years before, come to that – when I’d been a bright little eager-beaver of a high school student, slogging my guts out for that miserable old bastard O’Reilly most weekends. Fact was I’d been turning over the soil that was on one side of O’Reilly’s house – the narrowest spit of land just before a wooden fence, the other side of which was this wood – when I’d unearthed this old rusting key.
Straight away I put two-and-two together and figured this key was for the old door that was set into the brickwork on this side of the large house. (When I said earlier about the house being ‘white-boarded’, that was mainly at the front.) I mean, this door was covered in cobwebs, the paintwork flaking. Clearly, this door hadn’t been used in years. But there was a keyhole, and so I put in this old metal key I’d found.
I thought it wouldn’t turn – or else might just break with the effort – but then with a loud click it described a full revolution and this cobwebbed door creaked open.
A small cupboard full of junk, most of which was leaning against this door. Brooms, an ironing board and such. It started to all fall out as I opened the door, and I quickly caught several items before they hit the ground and made a racket.
I cautiously made my way inside. It smelt of age and mould. The broom, ironing board and such were also covered in cobwebs. I guessed nothing in this cupboard was ever used. Only a couple of paces on bare floorboards and there was a door which I was almost certain was going to be locked from the outside – the outside, that is, of where I was. Yet I tried the handle and again it creaked open; and I was in Mr. O’Reilly’s kitchen, which from the look of it had last received a refurb. sometime in the mid-fifties. Blue tiles, blue units, the lot. Then I heard him creaking along the hallway or whatever was just beyond that kitchen, and so I quickly shut the door again, and heading back outside also closed and locked the first door I’d opened.
There was a kind of large, ‘hollowed-out’ rock, for want of a better description, that I’d found in the woods next to the O’Reilly house. I’d started to smoke sometimes, and so I put my cigarettes inside this rock, ‘case my parents found them someplace in the house. Needless to say they were adamantly opposed to tobacco; but compared to what I’d shortly be getting into, cigarettes were nothing…
Anyway, work finished and the whole seven dollars or whatever the Hell it was I got paid received, I snuck over the fence and went into the woods. Found my lonely spot, fished out my cigarettes and lighter from the hollow rock, and lit up, lay back and smoked as the wind blew mysteriously in the tops of the trees, the leaves pattering down all around me.
I was going to be a writer, I thought. Either that or a singer in a famous band – the next Kurt Cobain or Jim Morrison. I felt wild and poetic, totally ready for the future.
I’d not yet any idea that I’d such a weak character, which would so shortly succumb to crippling drug and alcohol addiction, and so conclusively end any such dreams of attaining artistic fame…
…But was the key still there? I thought as I stood around the burning metal drum with the other drug-addicts and bums. I’d kind of placed it in the hollowed-out rock well over a decade before, and then… Well, had just forgotten about it. But now I felt a wave of evil intent rising within me. If the key was there, and I could still open that forgotten side-door with it. And if there was even a grain of truth to the story that that old bastard did have a colossal amount of money stashed away somewhere inside his house…
I’d find it. Oh, believe me, would I find it. ‘Cause I was hurting bad, and I needed a fair few bucks to help get this pain to stop.
I ‘made my excuses’ and snuck away from this exciting little gathering round the oil drum. No one cared where I was going. Not exactly any close friendships here. None of us had a life expectancy of much more than five years anyway. If the others had had any inclination that I had an actual key to the O’Reilly house – this fabled place of wealth and riches – they’d have tied me up and cut off my fingers one-by-one till I told them where this key was hidden.
I walked through mean streets and then into the closed-up shopping area. Started movin
g into the prosperous residential area –the area where I’d been born and brought up. Where my parents still lived. But no one could help me now – least of all them. I was on a path of total self-destruction. Whether I croaked now, in two days or six months’ time was all the same to me. All I asked was that I was high when it happened.
Which was where Mr. O’Reilly and his apparent riches came in. I entered the small woods next to his house; the wind was blowing, a freezing December night. I walked through the dark trees, careful of ankle-breaking roots and rocks. I’d not been to this rock in years but still I knew the way almost automatically, in this deep windy darkness.
Yes, this was it. I’d found it. I reached in and found not only the key but also an old packet of smokes and a lighter. All covered in cobwebs. Couldn’t hardly believe it when the lighter still flicked into life (cupped by my hands against the wind) and lit a cigarette whose tobacco must’ve been more than a little ‘green’ by now.
I let the smoke hiss out between my rotting teeth. Felt good. Funny thing was that the more I got into the real bad shit – meth, crack and such – the less I found I smoked ‘straight-up’ tobacco. Usually because I was just so financially strapped with supporting all my other addictions, that I didn’t even have the cash for a packet of smokes.
Anyway – I had the key. I crushed out the smoke, and made my way towards the wooden fence (it was still in place) dividing this wood and the O’Reilly house. I jumped this fence noiselessly and quickly – wasn’t exactly my first time breaking and entering – and then crouched down right beside that old door I’d opened well over a decade before.
