by Edward Lee
Howard unreels a high, nasally laugh. “Goodness no, Mr. Hudson. This is the final sight that’s intended to fully evolve your awareness of the totality of Lucifer’s power and forethought. The clincher shall arrive later . . .” Howard pauses, then adds, “But the tour is nearly at an end. I dare say a minor respite is in order . . . before our final debarkation.”
You’re taking a final glance at the ghastly manse, at the innumerable living heads facing you, all those lips mouthing silent horrors, and all those eyes shock-wide by the excruciating particulars of their Damnation; and the millions more heads that comprise this entire incalculable place when the black static sizzles yet again and then—
Coolness.
Quiet.
Your gourd-head clears, and you find yourself back in the bedimmed Turnstile. It’s uneven, flat black walls emit the faintest indescribable luminescence.
“Ah,” Howard utters. He sits down on a squat, companulated protrusion made of the same material of the Turnstile itself. He loosens his frayed gray tie and smiles at you.
“Just as sleep is nature’s balm, I daresay quietude is its sedative.”
Your stick has been leaned against a corner whose angles are precisely sixty-six degrees. Within the polygon’s inner vault, you’re finally able to relax. The only sound you’re aware of arrives as the most distant hum, which is somehow organic, not electronic. That and an occasional tick of the steam-car’s cooling engine.
Howard unwraps a napkin and removes a cookie of some sort. “I’d offer you a Uneeda biscuit but, lo, your Auric Carrier doesn’t allow you to consume food.”
“Thanks just the same . . .” You try to collect your thoughts but aren’t sure how to; you’re not even sure what to think. But you know that Howard is merely giving you time to either consider or recover from all the detestable things you’ve seen.
You jerk your gaze at a sudden sound: a grunt, a shuffle. Torchlight sputters from a farther corner, and then a shadow lengthens.
The Imperial Truncator—the watchman of this place—shuffles nonchalantly across the black floor, his cleaver-hands swinging, the Ghor-Hound helmet high on his head.
“I forgot all about him,” you remark, but then: “Hey! What happened to the—”
“Ah, yes. Our lithe chauffeur, the Golemess . . .” Howard squints; then his shoulders slump. “Ostensibly not so lithe any longer.”
Now another, less lively shuffle, and from the same corner the Golemess appears. She seems winded, wearied now, and when she trudges into more torchlight, you see why.
She’s pregnant.
“The dude with the meat cleavers for hands got her pregnant!” you exclaim. The gray clay belly looks stuffed, the breasts doubled in volume, presumably full of Golem milk now.
“I was unaware that our Golemess came equipped with fertility features. No doubt before her clay was Hexegenated, the Master Sculptors at the Edward Kelly Institute of Inanimate Enchantment implanted her with a reproductive tract and ovarian process. This is another Luciferic Law that’s gradually activating: the Public Gravidity Initiative. Lucifer desires that anything female—even things unalive—be fertile. More progeny, more fodder for the machinations of the Mephistopolis. God invented reproduction via Human passion, to bring forth more Children of God to one day enjoy the Firmament of Heaven. Lucifer, therefore, perverts God’s endeavor, to reduce femalekind to repositories of lust, and bring forth more meat and building material.”
You stare at the huge stomach as the fatigued Golemess lumbers to the steam-car. “But what . . . what’s going to come out?”
“Immaterial,” Howard answers. “It’s purpose is served, and the Initiative is duly discharged.”
Meat, you recite Howard’s information. Building material.
“And now, Mr. Hudson,” Howard intones. “You’ve had this moment of respite. I’m curious as to the constitution of your thoughts.”
Your hideous head swivels to meet his gaze. “I’m thinking that everything here is illogical—”
“Which serves as the perfect logic within the confines of an antithetical demesne.”
“—including my being here.” You blink. “What, I win this Senary because I’ve tipped some scale of sin, some fulcrum. It makes more sense to go after some guy who’s a hundred percent. A cardinal, a bishop . . .”
“Perhaps in your own purview of logic. Just as popes don’t question God, we don’t question Satan.”
You smirk. “Okay, fine. But in that case, your methods are terrible.”
“Really?” Howard seems intrigued. “Be kind enough to articulate your impression.”
You recite them thus far. “I’m a good enough person that if I died right now, I’d go to Heaven, right?”
“Beyond doubt.”
“But Lucifer wants me to give that up so that when I die, I come here instead. He wants me to make that choice, right?”
“Precisely.”
“He wants me to give up Heaven, in favor of Hell, right?”
“Indubitably.”
Your eyes lock open. “WELL THEN WHY WOULD I DO THAT? HELL SUCKS!”
Your outburst bounces off the vault’s obsidian walls like bullets ricocheting. The Golemess flinches. Even the Imperial Truncator jolts from the start.
“My, Mr. Hudson,” Howard says after his own shock. “That’s . . . quite an ejaculation . . .”
“You guys must be out of your minds!” you continue to rail at the senselessness of it all. “This place is the biggest pile of shit I’ve ever seen! Bridges made of people? Taverns where the kegs are bare boobs with beer taps on the nipples, and bars that serve wine made from fermented babies? Towns made of guts and towns made of skin? And the guy who runs the whole shebang lives in a mansion made of heads! Who the FUCK would want to live here?”
“Please, Mr. Hudson,” Howard urges. “At least try to mind your cursing.” A long, crackly pause. “But certainly, sir, you can comprehend the unending bliss of one who enjoys Privilato status?”
“The Privilato? That asshole in the jewelly jacket?” You roll your demonic eyes. “He’s a putz with a posse of hot chicks who wouldn’t give a shit about him if he wasn’t a Privilato in the first place. Big deal. He drives around town in a flying hole in the sky and gets a red carpet wherever he goes. You gotta do better than that, man.”
“Ah, well, I see that you are underestimating the entireness of the Mephistopolis for those few granted privilege.” Howard raises a finger. “Allow me to query. Seeing that the lion’s share of your sins—however meager that may be—fall primarily into the lust category . . . if you could revel in the carnal pleasures of any woman in the world, who would that be?”
The question, absurd as it is, percolates in your mind. Angelina Jolie? Paris Hilton? Jessica Alba? Just as you think you’ve been stumped, the answers appears. “Well, I’m kind of old-school, but I’d still have to say Pamela Anderson.”
Howard nods. “Bear in mind, of course, that since Mademoiselle Anderson is still a member of the Living World, it defies possibility for me to be familiar with her. However, I can assure you beyond all dubiety that the women awaiting you as a Privilato will be possessed of a desirability no less than sixty-six times that of your coveted Ms. Anderson.”
You try to picture that in your mind. Women . . . sixty-six times HOTTER than Pam Anderson . . .
Wow.
But still . . . the proposition is folly and you know it. “Doesn’t matter if they’re sixty-six thousand times hotter, Howard. This place is still Hell, and Hell sucks. Not to mention, I’m celibate. Next week I’m going to the seminary to become a priest.”
“Then what could possibly explain your recent intent with those slatternettes?”
“Slattern—what?”
“The prostitutes the other night. You fully intended to proposition them, for a sex act. You trumpeting the piety of celibacy and the pursuit of the priesthood seems . . . hypocritical.”
If you had a finger, you would point in his
face. “Hey, I almost propositioned them. Part of me . . . wanted to know what sex was like before I officially gave it up for a life of godly servitude.”
Did Howard frown as if unconvinced?
“Sex out of wedlock is a sin, and priests—as well as priests-to-be—regard sin as an enemy of the soul. I don’t consider agreeing to take this tour to be a sin, and I don’t think God does either. It will strengthen me in my purpose; it will verify my faith and make me a better priest.”
“Oh, please extrapolate, Mr. Hudson! How can one being temporarily in the midst of Hell make one a better priest?”
“Simple,” you explain. “It’s an opportunity that no other priest but Christ himself has received. By seeing Hell firsthand? I’ll be able to prepare Christians more effectively. This will make me work even harder to save souls, and the more souls I save, the fewer Lucifer will get his hands on. It’s a victory for God.” You grin at Howard. “Glory be to God.”
Howard seems disappointedly quelled. “Your mind appears to be made up in quite an intractable fashion.”
“It is.”
“Then explain your seeming turn toward profanity. Is it not true that to profane is to offend God?”
“Oh, God doesn’t give a shit about that,” you feel sure. “I never cuss on Earth. The only reason I’ve started to here is just due to the environment, I guess.”
“Hmmm . . .”
“And my mind is made up,” you reiterate without hesitation. “So get me out of this fucked-up pumpkin so I can go back to my life like you promised.”
“As you wish, if you’re sure.”
“Sure I’m sure, and this little tour of yours is the reason I’m sure. It proved to me that Lucifer’s a grade-A moron. He’s a nitwit. All that power and all these resources and technologies, and look what he does with it. He could turn Hell into a great place, and you want to know why he doesn’t?”
“I know why, Mr. Hudson,” Howard admits. “Because of his pride.”
“Right. He’s obsessed with being evil and disgusting and cruel because God’s the opposite of that, and Lucifer’s pissed off at God for throwing him out of Heaven. He’s like a little kid having a tantrum because mommy spanked him. I don’t want anything to do with this place, or him. Lucifer’s a dick.”
Howard’s brow rises in a defeated surprise. “Why not let me at least encourage you to take the final leg of the tour.”
“No reason to. My mind’s made up.”
“Then what harm can there be?”
You huff. “Well, what’s the final leg? Believe me, I don’t need to see any more piss pumps, baby factories, or Decapitant Camps.”
“The final leg is the Privilato Chateau that you would occupy if you accept the Senary. At least go and behold all the pleasures you’ll be missing.”
You pause. Well . . . Suddenly it begins to sound interesting again. But, “No. Why tempt myself to do the wrong thing when I’ve already decided to do the right thing?”
“Right and wrong are relative, Mr. Hudson, and in Hell they’re interchangeable. Consider the obvious imperative: in Hell there is no sin. You find trepidation in the prospect of temptation? So did Jesus during his forty days in the wilderness. Why not test your resolve as he did? You may think that you’re doing that now, but isn’t your faith only proven after you’ve witnessed the entire tour? Need I remind you that Christ took a similar tour after he died on Calvary?”
“I know that,” you say.
“Lucifer offered Jesus Privilato status, by the way, and he obviously turned it down. See all that Christ saw; face the same temptations he faced, in which case, if you still decide to turn the Senary down, you will have done what Christ did as well.”
“My thoughts exactly,” you tell him. I’ll become an even better Christian by seeing every temptation and STILL turning them all down . . .
You think a moment more, then say, “All right.”
Howard stands up. He seems relieved.
“Still think you can get me to change my mind?” you ask, a bit prideful yourself now.
“Irrelative time will tell,” Howard says. He pats sweat off his brow with a handkerchief embroidered, HPL. This guy’s really sweating bullets, you think.
Howard picks up your head-stick and approaches the circle of geometric etchings in the black wall. “And the tour goes on,” he murmurs.
For a reason you can’t define—and just before the Turnstile powers up—you look behind you and see the Golemess lying back on the floor, her knees pulled back to her sleek shoulders. Her back arches. Evil water breaks and gushes; then the enormous belly tremors, hitches, and collapses as it disgorges a slick Mongrel fetus with an accordioned face and arms where its legs should be. Puff-eyed, the demonic thing bawls as nublike horns appear on its bald head. It’s almost cute.
Almost.
The Golemess labors to her feet. Her elegant clay hands scoop the fetus up. The last thing you see before the Turnstile’s black static shifts you into another phase is the new mother calmly sliding her newborn into the fuel hatch of the steam-car’s boiler housing. Just as calmly she pushes the hatch shut . . .
. . . and you fall through that now-familiar combustion of morbid energy amid the crackling vertigo of scintillescent black static, and just as the Mongrel baby was pushed forth from the Golemess’s womb, you and Howard are pushed through space and some wicked substitute for time until . . .
CHAPTER SEVEN
(I)
The pallid censer smoke thinned from a rising, abyssal breeze, but even this far out in the Quarter Favius thought he could hear drifts of screams from the immeasurable city too far away to see. It brought delight to his horrid heart: the relief of the visual monotony, because for decades or centuries, the Great Emptiness Quarter and the Reservoir pit itself existed only in foul, glittery blackness.
But now?
So beautiful . . .
A new color to the terrain had been introduced: bloodred.
The bottom of the Reservoir was almost covered—not very deep yet—but covered all the same by the great scarlet gush from the sixty-six-foot-wide Main Sub-Inlets. Favius crudely thought the inflow into the Reservoir could be likened to a toilet slowly filling, only the toilet was the Reservoir itself and its tank was the Gulf of Cagliostro untold miles away. The Pipeway was running at full capacity now, the enormous pumping stations back in the Mephistopolis—at the harbor of Rot-Port—running at full tilt. Favius looked out across the impossible red vista, which churned and foamed from the force of the inflow. This close to the southern Main Sub-Inlet, the violent gush was almost deafening.
It’s finally happening, he thought. Had he been capable of the act, he might’ve cried in sheer joy.
The Conscripts under his command watched the outer perimeters, high and low, with great vigilance, always on guard for signs of an anti-Luciferic attack. Platoons of Golems marched along the ramparts, their horrid clay faces blank, the sounds of their massive feet thundering on the basalt causeway. And all the while, the sub-inlet gushed and gushed.
Exactly how long it would take to fill the pit to its six-billion-gallon prerequisite, the Legionnaire could not reckon, as time itself was unreckonable. Instead of counting seconds, minutes, and hours, then, he reasoned he could count depth. By the looks of the progress now, most of the pit had been filled to a depth of at least one foot . . .
Only sixty-five more to go.
Next, he stared directly at the sub-inlet’s great Y-connector, and in the waterfall-like expulsion of noxious fluid he knew he could see solid objects as well: detritus from the sea, scraps of old boats long since sunken by nauseating nautical creatures or artillery from vessels of the Satanic Navy. Corpses, too, were rife amid the inflow, but closer scrutiny showed him living creatures as well, siphoned all the way from the Gulf to here, via the Pipeway. Next, a school of Slime-Sharks burst through, followed by several twenty-foot-wide Gulf Nettles, their milky orb-heads oscillating above even longer barbed tentacles. An excite
d breath caught in the sentry’s chest when, in an instant, an immature Gorge-Worm was siphoned through—nearly a quarter of a mile long. Thousands of Conscripts surrounding the pit cheered at this astonishing evidence. The massive, gilled parasite churned in the shallow Blood-water, sidewinding like a snake in a shallow pool.
It was spectacular to behold.
The inflow continued to roar. Above, Dentata-Vultures and Caco-Bats flew mad circles over the Reservoir, inflamed by the Bloodwater’s meaty stench. Every so often, they shot straight down into the stew to snatch a buoyant delicacy on which to feed. When one of Favius’s Squad Leader’s—a Conscript Third Class named Terrod—approached, his armored hand extended to point into the rising gush.
“Commander! Praise Satan for this blessing!”
“Glory be to he who was cast out,” Favius replied.
“My heart sings for this great success, Commander, but we are all mystified—”
“As to what?” Favius’s voice grated.
“As to the purpose of this wondrous undertaking.”
“Keep your spirit on your duty, Terrod. Compared to Lucifer and his Hierarchals, we are unworthy to even contemplate such things.”
“Yes, Commander!”
“We exist to receive our orders, which we obey to the death. Just as Judas betrayed Christ, I’m certain that we are but sheep against the greatness of the Morning Star, and therefore incapable of understanding his most unholy plans. It is not for us to muse upon, but only to know that lowly as we are, we are a small part of great black wonders.”
“I sing praises to his wretched name, Commander.” The lower Conscript looked back out of the scarlet churning. “It’s just such a glorious sight that I am beside myself!”
“As am I as well as all of us, good soldier.”
“And—look!” Terrod pointed with urgency. “What might those be, Commander?”
Favius peered through his visor. “Hmmm . . .”
