by Edward Lee
The man sat down at the rickety table. He paused momentarily to frown at the typewriter, then his eyes—which were bright in spite of the death pallor—looked directly at Hudson.
“I presume the Senarial Messenger has apprized you of the fact that we’re subject to a considerable time constraint, the equivalent in your world of six minutes. So we must be concise and, above all, declarative,” the man said. “My name is Howard, and I bear the curious title of this term’s ‘Trustee to the Office of the Senary,’ and I’m speaking to you from a Scrivenry at the Seaton Hall of Automatic Writers. It’s located in a quite malodorous Prefect dubiously known as the Offal District . . .” Abruptly, then, he smirked. “Are you able to hear me, sir?”
Hudson’s mouth hung open for a time, but he eventually managed to say, “Yes . . .”
“Splendid. It’s my infernal pleasure to tell you that you’ve won the Senary—”
“What’s the Senary?” Hudson blurted.
“Denotatively? From the Latin senarius: anything of or relating to the number six. But here we’re only concerned with its connotation. The Senary is a drawing, in a sense, but those eligible are not random. Aspects of your own . . . resolve present the most pertinent considerations. Let me reiterate, we must be expeditious, and as I have no way of discerning that constant unit of measure known as time, your colleague will alert you when one minute remains. Do you understand?”
“No.”
“That is immaterial. You’ve been invited to partake in a—”
“A tour of Hell?” Hudson interrupted.
“Quite right. Only a smattering of persons, in all of Human history, have received this lauded opportunity. Indeed, you’re one of a privileged lot. It is guaranteed that no harm will come to your physical body, nor your Auric Substance, should you choose to proceed. You will be returned, intact, to make your final decision. At the end, in other words, you’ll be free to return to your normal life, should you so choose. But I can say to you, sir, that in 6,660 years . . . no Senary winner has ever elected to not accept the prize.”
Hudson could think of nothing to say, save for, “I-I-I . . .”
This man, Howard, held up a warning finger. “We mustn’t be frivolous with verbosity, sir—I can only presume that time is growing short, so without further delay, I must show you the Containment Orb.” Then he reached beneath the table and brought something up—something on a stick.
“Huh?” Hudson uttered.
The object on the stick, about the size of a basketball, looked brown, mottled, and, somehow, organic. A twist at the top reminded Hudson of a pumpkin’s clipped stem, and in the middle of the bizarre thing was a half-inch hole. Howard pointed to the hole. “The intake bung is here, as you can perceive—”
“But, what is that thing? It looks like a brown pumpkin.”
“Hell’s rendering, you might say—in specificity, the Feotidemonis Vulgaris, commonly referred to as a Snot-Gourd. It’s been eviscerated completely, of course, and disenchanted by Archlocks, so to serve as your Auric Carrier. And—” Howard swiveled the peculiar fruit on the stick, to reveal its other side—
“Holy shit!” Hudson profaned.
A semblance of a face existed on the other side of the thing. Two eyeballs had been sunk into the pulp; below that, a large, pointed snout as of some oversize rodent had been affixed. Also a pair of fleshy lips, and lastly, two ears, though the ears were maroon and pointed.
First he thought of a nightmare rendition of Mr. Potato Head, but then thought, A jack-o’-lantern from Hell, but just as he began his next question, the deaconess tapped him from behind. “Tell the Trustee there’s only one minute left.”
Hudson bumbled, “Uh, uh, I’m supposed to tell you—”
“So I’ve gathered,” Howard said, still holding up the hideous brown fruit with a face. “By now, it’s my hope that you can cogitate the entails of what awaits; hence, I ask you, sir . . . Do you choose to proceed?”
Hudson blinked. No obligation, his thoughts raced. Guaranteed that no harm can come to me, that I’ll be returned intact . . .
And my opportunity to be the first in history to say no to their faces . . .
“I ask once more, sir. Do you choose to proceed?”
“Yes!” Hudson whispered.
Howard seemed to smile, however thinly. “A wise choice. I look forward to our coming discourse. Tell the Senarial Messenger I’m at the ready.” Then Howard stood up and came round the table. He turned the Snot-Gourd back around and held the side with the hole in it up to the hole in the wall . . .
The deaconess looked longingly at Hudson. “Do you have . . . any idea how privileged you are?”
A tour . . . of Hell. He wiped his face off in his hands. “I don’t even know how to answer that. Oh, and the guy says he’s ready.”
“Can you still see the Auric Carrier?”
Hudson looked back up. In the opening, the appalling fruit remained, showing the hole cut in it. “Yeah. It’s a . . . messed-up pumpkin, and there’s a hole in it. He called it a Snot-Gourd.”
“Hmm, all right . . .”
“But he’s blocking the hole in the wall with it. Don’t I crawl through the hole?”
“Oh, no. Via this ritual, nothing solid can move from here to there, and vice versa.”
“Then how—”
“Remember, nothing solid. Be careful; make sure the end of the hose doesn’t actually touch the intake opening in the gourd. Try to keep it a few millimeters away—”
Hudson shot her a funky look. “What?”
“It’s your breath that will be transferred from here to there,” the deaconess explained. “On this side, it’s just breath, but on that side . . .” And before Hudson could even plead for more information, the deaconess got him out of the seat and urged him closer to the wall. In her hand now she held the short length of garden hose, one end of which she moved toward his mouth.
His eyes flicked to the bubbling skullcap. “No way I’m drinking that crap!”
“Of course not. You breathe it—the fumes.”
When Hudson’s lips parted to object further, she placed the hose in his mouth.
“It’s time, Mr. Hudson. I’ll be waiting for you when you come back.” She pressed his shoulders with her hand, to gesture him to lean over. She held the other end of the hose into the faint steam coming off the Elixir. “Now. Count to six, then inhale once very deeply and hold it . . .”
Hudson’s lips tightened around the hose. I can’t believe I’m going to do this . . . And then in his mind he counted to six and took a hard suck on the hose.
The warm air tasted meaty in his mouth. The fumes made his lungs feel glittery.
“Keep holding it,” he was instructed; then the other end of the hose was placed in his hand. “Now, once you’ve lined the end up . . . exhale as hard as you can.”
Hudson’s cheeks bloated. Very carefully he manipulated the end of the hose to fit over the hole in the gourd—
—and exhaled.
Hudson’s soul left his body, and he collapsed to the floor.
PART TWO
GRAND TOUR
CHAPTER FOUR
(I)
Perfect, Gerold thought, and that’s exactly how it looked. He’d tied the hangman’s noose as though he were an expert, and when Gerold appraised it on the balcony of his second-story apartment—at three A.M.—he felt a comforting satisfaction. He secured the other end to his balcony rail.
Suddenly the moment was in his face.
How do I feel?
The warm night seemed to throb from without: insects issuing their endless chorus. The moon hovered, light like white icing.
I feel great.
In that instant, then, he realized that this was a great night to die, and Gerold was not only okay with that, he was ecstatic.
He’d bussed earlier to Home Depot for the rope after working his shift at the air-conditioning company where he processed calls and kept the books. “Can I have tomorrow of
f?” he’d asked the boss when his shift was done, only because he didn’t want to leave them hanging.
He himself would be the one hanging.
“In this economy?” the boss laughed. “Sure you can have tomorrow off.”
No more struggles, no more buses passing him by for the inconvenience of lowering their wheelchair ramp, no more pretty girls passing him on the street as though he didn’t exist.
His gaze stretched out into the moon-tinged darkness. Yes! A great night to die!
Someone in the morning, probably walking their dog, would see him hanging. Gerold knew he’d have a smile on his face.
He placed the noose about his neck and tightened it down. He felt no reservations. But when he put his hands on the rail, to haul himself up and fling himself off . . .
“Hey! You up there!”
Gerold was appalled when he looked down.
“Don’t do it!”
“Aw, shit, man!” Gerold yelled. Just down below, some old guy with a splotch on his head like that guy from Russia was walking his Jack Russell. “Nobody walks their damn dog at three in the morning!”
The dog yelped up at him, tail stump wagging. The old man had his cell phone out. “I’m calling the cops—”
“No, please, man! Gimme a break!”
“Don’t do it!”
In seconds, it seemed, he could hear sirens.
Quick! Now! Gerold grabbed the rail, his muscles flexing.
“What’s going on up there?” said the old biddy from the balcony below. She looked up, curlers in her hair. Across the way, lights snapped on in various apartments. Figures appeared on balconies.
“That young man above you is trying to hang himself!”
Gerold had himself half propped up on the rail, when he heard pounding at his front door.
You’ve got to be shitting me . . . He knew he didn’t have time now—the door exploded open and hard footfalls thunked toward him.
Disgusted, Gerold lowered himself back in the chair, and took off the noose. This is so FUCKIN’ embarrassing! Why can’t people mind their own business? He unraveled the noose and untied the other end just as two police officers barged out onto the balcony and jerked the chair away from the rail.
“It’s all right, buddy,” one of them said. The other cop, a sergeant with a pitted face, grumbled, “So much for a quiet shift.”
“Look, it’s not what you think,” Gerold bumbled. “I was just . . .”
“Come on. We’ll get you taken care of.”
Another siren approached, an ambulance, no doubt.
“Life ain’t that bad, pal.”
As Gerold was rolled backward into the apartment, he saw that a crowd of spectators had gathered down below. Shit, shit, shit, shit! he thought, and then they took him down and out.
His face turned red. Were fifty people in pajamas and nightgowns congregated outside? It looked it.
Can’t even fucking kill yourself without other people butting in, he thought, humiliated. He’d probably be in the papers tomorrow. His boss would see it, his landlord, the neighbors. They’d all think he was nuts. As they put him in the ambulance, he could see the headlines: DISTURBED VET TRIES TO KILL SELF BUT POLICE INTERVENE.
In the back of the ambulance, two EMTs said nothing as he was driven away. They were eating doughnuts.
I guess I just can’t do anything right, Gerold thought, feeling like the perfect ass.
They took him straight to the local hospital, where a silent intern took his vital signs; then another intern wheeled him to an elevator and took him up. The first thing he saw upstairs when the doors opened was a sign: PSYCHIATRIC UNIT. He felt like a putz as a drab-faced admittance nurse rolled him down stark halls. Eventually an abrupt turn took him past blue-painted metal doors with chicken wire windows. Faces appeared in some of them. Voices bled from others. “Abandon hope, ye who enter here,” someone said, and another: “Where’s my cake?”
A dark-haired woman in a white lab coat eyed him from behind a desk when he was wheeled into an office. She looked tired and displeased. Probably on call, Gerold figured.
“Well, well, well.” Her eyes were bloodshot when they scanned a computer screen on her desk, no doubt his records sent over from VA. “Gerold, I’m Dr. Willet. My, what an inconvenience you are.”
Gerold was outraged. “Sorry about the inconvenience.”
“Suicide is the coward’s way out. There are patients in the quadriplegic ward who would sell their souls to be you.”
“I know that,” Gerold said. He wanted to spit. “I’d trade places with any of them. The fact is, I’m sick of living. I feel I have the right to kill myself.”
The woman scowled. “Oh, but you don’t. Life is a gift, Gerold, and suicide is a crime. It’s a form of homicide, and you can be prosecuted for it.”
“Come on,” he scoffed.
“Not in this day and age, of course. Everyone’s a victim, hmm?” She had large, fake eyelashes that looked whorish. “You’re sick of living? Tell that to the people in the Sao Paulo ghettos, or Paraguay, or Chad. You’re young, capable, and have a lot to contribute in spite of your disability. But, no. You’d rather kill yourself because you can’t hack a little hardship. Tell the people in Sao Paulo or Paraguay or Chad about your hardship. Tell the people in the quad wards how miserable your life is.”
I can’t believe this! “You really know how to make a guy feel good.”
“You should feel ridiculous, Gerold. You’re wasting tax dollars and wasting time, when you should be contributing.”
Gerold winced. “What, is this some new kind of behaviorist psychiatry?”
“You don’t need a psychiatrist, you need a kick in the ass.”
Wow, Gerold thought. I picked the WRONG NIGHT to try to off myself.
“There’s nothing wrong with you mentally—I could tell that the second you rolled in here.” The frown on her face kept sharpening as she continued looking at his records on the screen. “There are better ways to get attention—”
“Listen, lady! I don’t want attention! I want to be dead! I’m sick of this!” Gerold bellowed. “It’s my business.”
“Well then next time, do it right. We’ve got people here who need genuine care. We don’t have the time or money to screw around with whiny pains in the ass like you.”
Gerold was flabbergasted.
“I hope they bill you for the 911 call, the police time, the EMT time, the fuel—everything,” she said. Disgusted, she tapped a bit on her keyboard. “Tomorrow morning you’ll be transferred to the VA hospital. Nurse!”
The drab nurse returned, rubbing sleep from her eyes.
“Take this upstanding gentlemen and pillar of the community to the precaution wing and get him a bed.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
When Dr. Willet came out from around her desk, she didn’t do it on her feet. She did it in a wheelchair.
Her body was gone from the waist down.
Oh, my God, Gerold thought.
“I’d be sick to my stomach if I had one. You’re a disgrace, Gerold. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” For the first time, the doctor smiled. “Now get the hell out of my office.”
Gerold wished he could shrink into nonexistence when the nurse wheeled him away.
(II)
Your name is Hudson Hudson and you’ve just won the Senary. Your soul has been turned into gas and squeezed into Hell through a hole in the wall.
And here you are . . .
Regaining consciousness reminds you of the time you got your wisdom teeth pulled at the dentist’s. You’re a balloon underwater that has just risen to break the surface. First, senses, then awareness, then memory. The only difference is, that time you awoke into your physical body, but now . . .
I don’t have one, comes the oddly calm realization.
There’s a faint noise, something reverberant like water dripping in a subterranean grotto. Your eyes open in increments but only register scarlet murk, just as anothe
r sensation registers: rocking back and forth and up and down as if in a car with too much suspension. Your vision struggles for detail as the dripping fades, to be replaced by a steady metallic clattering along with a hiss.
Then your vision snaps into perfect, even surreal, focus.
The macabre lips on the Snot-Gourd scream.
You’re in a vehicle of some kind, which idles down a street whose surface is chunks of wet bone, split ankles and elbows, and other odds and ends of meaty gristle. “How’s that for your first glimpse of the Offal District?” comes the familiar New England accent. “My own reaction was much the same, but of course, that’s why they call it the Offal District. It’s constructed primarily with surplus scraps from the Pulping Stations: less-edible organs, joints, bits of bone.”
You look up and scream again when you realize exactly what you’re looking at: a very black sickle moon hanging in a scarlet sky.
The attempt to move your arms and legs comes reflexively; then you remember, My body’s back in the house with the deaconess, but my consciousness . . . is in the pumpkin . . .
Your cue ball–size eyes blink. I’m in Hell . . .
“The Senarial Sciences here are impressively successful,” Howard tells you, sitting off to the left. He cranes around and looks into your eyes as if looking into a fishbowl. “I trust your senses are in proper working order?”
“I . . . think so,” you reply through the brutish, demonic lips.
“Your Auric Carrier is quite the top of the line.” Now Howard is cleaning his round spectacles with his shirttail. “You have the mouth of a Howler-Demon, the eyes of an Ocularus, the nose of a Blood-Mole, and the ears of a City Imp. Each represents a superlative. It is with only the greatest acuity that we wish you to perceive everything.”
“But, but—”
“Just relax, sir—if that possibility exists—and give your psyche time to acclimatize to the new environs, as well as the new vessel for your soul. There’s no rush—answers to all your questions will be furnished. Just relax . . . and behold.”
You try to nod. Relax? Good Lord . . . First, you focus on your immediate surroundings. You appear to be sitting in the elevated rear seat of a long automobile—that is, not actually sitting since you no longer possess a rump; instead your Auric Carrier has been mounted on a stick in this queer backseat. The clattering vehicle reminds you of pictures you’ve seen of cars from the 1920s, spoke-wheeled and long-hooded monstrosities like Duesenbergs and Packards. Yet no hood actually forms the vehicle’s front end; instead there’s a long iron cylinder showing bolts at its seams, and a petite pipe where one would expect a hood ornament. It’s from this valve that steam hisses out.
