Lucifer's Lottery

by Edward Lee

  “As long as it’s evil stuff, Gerold,” the Troll accentuated. “And there’s plenty of that here.”

  The creature’s inexplicable face suddenly seemed morose. “But-but—” It looked at its horrific hands, then down the line of its corrupt physical body. “But-but . . . Shit, Krilid. I’m a monster.”

  “You’re not a monster, Gerold. You’re the most powerful weapon ever made! And if you hadn’t come here, what would you be then?”

  Nightmarish, fathomless eyes blinked. “I’d be dead. I’d be nothing.”

  “Yeah!” Krilid yelled. “So stop feeling sorry for yourself just because you . . . look different. And you’re forgetting the best part!”

  A titan pause. “What’s that?”

  Krilid winced. “You can walk, moron! What you wanted more than anything you just got—in spades!”

  “I can . . . walk . . .” The voice, however inhuman, seemed suspicious. Very slowly, one leg lifted and—

  THUD!

  —stepped forward. Then the other—

  THUD!

  The District tremored like a seismic shift.

  “See?” Krilid said from the Demonculus’s hand. “It might take a little getting used to but, hell, what’s the big deal?”

  The Demonculus took three more steps in succession. The third step begat a giant crack in the ground. “I can walk!” Gerold celebrated.

  Krilid pointed a finger. “Yeah, and look what you get to walk with. The biggest legs to ever exist.”

  Suddenly, the Demonculus began to hitch. Its abyssal mouth hung open, and the two ragged back holes that were its nose actually sniffled. Tears like raw crude oil squeezed from the impossible eyes.

  “Aw, come on, Gerold,” Krilid implored. “Demonculuses don’t cry.”

  “I can’t help it,” the thing sobbed. “I’m happy. And I owe it all to you. Thank you!”

  “Don’t thank me, thank your Celestial Destiny—”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” Krilid decided. His eyes glittered with enthusiasm as sirens and alarms began to blare from every District, Prefecture, and Municipal Zone for miles. “This is gonna be really cool, Gerold. We’re gonna kick ass and not take names. We’re gonna go on an anti-Luciferic tear-ass like Hell has never seen!”

  “Right on!” The ground rumbled when Gerold yelled.

  “We’re gonna destroy every Pulping Station, Power Plant, Tortuary, Prison, Police Station, every Grand Duke palace and every Sorcerial College in Hell! We’re gonna be Satan’s worst nightmare and nothing can stop us!”

  “All right!”

  “And who knows? One day we might even stumble upon Manse Lucifer itself—”

  “And tear the shit out of it!”

  “You got that right, my friend! So let’s do it!”

  Staring, the Demonculus paused, as if bracing itself for a prospect too good to be true. Then it took a step—

  THUD!

  And another step—

  THUD!

  And then another and another and another, each stride consuming the length of half a city block, and that’s when Gerold started walking, and he would walk and walk and walk, for time immemorial, each step destroying something vile, each thud of its monstrous feet laying rents in Satan’s domain, each stride celebrating the gift that Gerold had taken for granted but had received yet again.

  Indeed, Gerold—the first Demonculus of Hell—could walk, and from that point on, he would never stop—

  THUD!

  —never stop—

  THUD!

  He would never stop walking.

  (IV)

  The suitcases thunked as he clumsily got them down the stairs. For some reason he was not the least bit at odds with the prospect of walking out of an abandoned house with two suitcases full of cash. He bumped the front door open with his rump, then wheeled the suitcases out into the teaming night. Moonlight coolly painted his face; crickets throbbed dense as electronic music. Hudson felt enlivened even after this ultimate sin: his complete betrayal of God on High. Nor was he afraid of the fact that he was standing in a crackburg with six million dollars in cash.

  A tiny light glowed above the bus stop just down the street. Hudson looked at his watch, then chuckled and shook his head when he saw that the bus would be coming by six minutes from now.

  “Yo!” shot the subtle voice. Dollar-store sandals slapped the cement. Then another darker voice—a man’s.

  “Shee-it . . .”

  Bags in hand, Hudson turned to face them, unworried.

  “This the fuck askin’ ’bout the Larken House,” said the prostitute whom Hudson recognized at once: the woman who’d shown him where the house was, in the zebra-striped tube top. Her white teeth gleamed when she smiled.

  Two more figures stood on either side, a slouchy black male with his hair stuffed in a stocking that looked like Jiffy Pop, and a chubby, high-chinned white guy in jeans cut off at midcalf, a ten-sizes-too-large T-shirt, and a whitewall. He had snakes tattooed on the sides of his neck.

  The black guy took one step. “What’s in the suitcases, my man?”

  Hudson stalled, then laughed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  The white guy bulled forward: “What’s in the suitcases, white boy!” his voice boomed, and from nowhere he’d produced a very large Buck knife.

  “Six million dollars. If you want it, you’ll have to take it.”

  The black guy nodded to the white one. “Just another poo-putt white muv-fuck.”

  “Shee-it,” chuckled the white guy, and then he lunged with the knife.

  “Cut dat boy!” the girl cheered on. “Cut him!” But it was only a second later when she shrieked. Plumes of blood launched from the attacker’s eyes, mouth, nose, and ears. His crotch, too, expelled a copious volume, which saturated the ludicrous pants. Then the knife clattered to the sidewalk and he collapsed.

  “Ambrose!” shrieked the girl, fingertips to face. “What he do?”

  “Don’t know,” crackled the voice of the black guy. There was a click! when he cocked a small pistol. “But he got somethin’ in them cases, so’s I’ll just bust a cap in his face.”

  Here was the proof of Hudson’s newfound faith. “Go ahead,” he said. “Bust all the ’caps’ you want.”

  The tiny pistol’s report sounded more like a loud handclap. A muzzle flash bloomed in a way that Hudson found spectacular. More spectacular, though, was the way the bullet was instantly repelled by the otherworldly ward surrounding him, and bounced immediately back into the black man’s Adam’s apple.

  The man gargled, pop-eyed, and actually hopped about in the nearest weedy yard, hand clamped to his throat. He thrashed into some bushes and collapsed.

  Hudson looked at the girl. “I’m protected by Lucifer, the Morning Star. That’s what I did in the Larken House tonight. I sold my soul . . . to Lucifer.”

  The girl ran away.

  “Hmm.”

  Hudson moved on. The ruckus of helicopters snapped his gaze up to the twilit sky. His ears thumped; several large helicopters—clearly military—roared overhead. They were flying strangely low. Then:

  Wow!

  Several jet fighters screamed past in the same direction: north.

  I wonder what that’s all about, Hudson thought. Maneuvers, probably; there were several big air bases nearby. He wheeled the suitcases down the sidewalk and across the street. Exactly sixty-six steps later, he arrived at the glass-shattered bus shelter where he detected the ember of a cigarette brighten, then lessen.

  “Oh, you,” a ragged voice greeted. “How’s it goin’?”

  It was the homeless guy from the deaconess’s church. “Hi, Forbes. I’m fine.”

  The bum sucked the cigarette down to the filter, then flicked it away with begrimed fingers. His body odor seemed thick as heavy fog. “You goin’ on a trip?” he asked, noticing the suitcases. “Shit, man, the Greyhound station’s the other way.”

  Am I . . . going on a trip? Huds
on could’ve laughed. “No, I’m just going home.”

  Both men jerked their gazes up when several more jet fighters screamed by overhead.

  “Been goin’ on for a while now,” Forbes said, then burped. “I was with a john ’bout a half hour ago, and while I’m doin’ my thing he’s got music on the radio but then the music cut off and then an emergency broadcast comes on.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, man. Somethin’ happened couple counties north of here, some big lake.”

  “Something happened?” Hudson couldn’t imagine why military aircraft would be sent for some mishap on a lake. “What was it, Forbes?”

  “Don’t know. The john turned it off—said it was fucking up his karma or something.”

  Hudson’s perplexion sparkled, but then he sighed with a smile. What do I care? I’m a Privilato.

  Forbes showed a nearly toothless grin. “Hey, how ’bout I do a mouth-job on yer johnson for twenty bucks.”

  “Oh, no thanks,” Hudson said.

  “You can blow right in my mouth. Lotta guys like to do that for some reason, and I can always use the extra calories.”

  “Uh, no. No thanks.” Hudson pulled some twenties out of his pocket and passed them to the bum. “But here’s some food money for you.”

  Even in the dark, the bum’s face beamed. “Hey, man! Thanks! God bless ya!”

  Not God. Not anymore . . .

  Now was the first time he contemplated exactly what he had done. It was a deep contemplation. After a lifetime of SERVING God with my whole heart, I’ve now ABANDONED him . . .

  He felt a state of exuberance well up from the core of his being with such power that he thought his eyes must surely be alight.

  “Yeah, I’m takin’ the bus to the John’s Pass Bridge to sleep,” Forbes jabbered some more. He reached into his horrific mouth with two fingers and pulled out a rotten tooth.

  “What’s that, Forbes? The bridge?”

  “Yeah, it ain’t bad, ya just gotta be careful of the fire ants. But there’s no way I’m sleepin’ in the deaconess’s church no more.”

  “Yes, I remember you telling me. Bad dreams.”

  “But I sure miss her.” His flinty brow furrowed. “Somethin’ happened to her, somethin’ fucked her up.” Now Forbes looked beseeching. “You seen her tonight?”

  Hudson stared down at him. “Do you really want to know, Forbes?”

  “Well . . . sure. You seen her?”

  “Yes. About ten minutes ago—or, more than likely, six minutes ago—I saw her commit suicide in a house across the street—the Larken House.”

  Forbes’s pose stiffened. “No way, man!”

  “I’m afraid so. She killed herself as a means of executing a contract I had just signed.”

  “Fuck! A contract?”

  “I sold my soul to the Devil tonight, Forbes. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

  “Shit yeah, man! The Devil? Really?”

  “Yes,” Hudson calmly stated. “The Devil. I’m protected by the Devil. I am now a disciple of the Devil.”

  “Aw, you’re full’a shit,” Then—

  SCHULP

  Hudson never saw the knife in Forbes’s mangy hand, until that same hand was already pulling it out of Hudson’s lower abdomen.

  Holy—You gotta be—

  Shock—and also outrage—made Hudson’s face feel twice its size. Blood like hot soup poured through his fingers; he also smelled his own waste as the knife had clearly punctured intestines. He began to convulse as he slumped to the other corner of the shelter.

  “Fuckin’ people always tellin’ me bullshit ’cos they just think I’m a retarded bum, man,” Forbes complained. “Well, fuck them and fuck you.”

  “Forbes,” Hudson croaked. “Call an ambu—”

  “Here’s your fuckin’ protection, fucker.” The bum stuck the knife in again, several more times.

  What Hudson felt more than the pain was simply outrage.

  “I could use some new clothes, ya shit,” Forbes said, but he just stared and stared when he opened one of the suitcases. He scratched his beard, begetting dandruff. Then:

  “What a fuckin’ great day!” He slapped the case closed. “Thank you, God!”

  Hudson watched through hemorrhaged eyes as Forbes grabbed the suitcases and ambled away in the dark.

  What a rip-off . . .

  Each time Hudson coughed, blood sprayed into the air and more innards uncoiled in his hands. He died exactly six minutes later.

  (V)

  What stepped out of the lake next was a man in a leather strap-skirt studded with brass plates. He wore shin guards, a fat buckled belt, and one arm was covered with metal bands that reminded Dorris however obliquely of a Roman gladiator. He even held a sword, and as he strode up to her, dripping, muscles tensing, she noticed first that the skin of his chest existed as faces stitched together, while his own face . . .

  God Almighty . . .

  Dorris saw that the severed faces of babies had been grafted onto the man’s own face as effectively as patches stitched onto a shirt.

  Dorris stared at the impossible man.

  The tip of the sword touched her throat. His voice sounded sonorous and grating like rocks clacking together. “What place is this? Answer me and you may be allowed to live . . .”

  Tremoring, Dorris replied, “It’s-it’s . . . Lake Misquamicus . . .”

  “This is . . . the Living World, then?”

  “It’s-it’s—Fluff-Fluff-Florida . . .” The man must be an alien. “Florida, on the planet Earth.”

  “God’s green Earth, then?”

  Dorris drooled as she nodded. Her eyes had yet to blink.

  “State your name, your function, and your origin.”

  “My name is Dorris Markle. I ruh-ruh-run the bait shop and boat rentals, and I’m from Ocala, Florida . . .”

  The grafted face surveyed her. This man—or this semiman—had muscles bugling over more muscles, and when they moved, the severed faces stitched over them seemed to sigh.

  The sword point lowered, and the stony voice gurgled, “My name is Conscript First Class Favius, formerly of the Third Augustan Legion and currently of Grand Duke Cyamal’s Exalted Security Brigade. I am from Hell.”

  He turned to the three nine-foot-tall clay men, pointed his sword, and barked, “Golems of Rampart South! Single file, follow me.” And then they walked away and disappeared into the woods.

  Dorris, in a trance of revulsion and disbelief, stared after them for several minutes. When things began to howl from the atrocious scarlet water, Dorris snapped, and ran and ran and ran.

  EPILOGUE

  Was it a dream?

  You hear a THUNK! as in the sound of a cleaver striking a cutting board, and then comes the impression of rising—up a circular staircase?—and you hear footsteps. Then—open air.

  Finally your eyelids prize apart.

  “ ‘Let not thy hand be stretched out to receive, and shut when thou shouldest pay,’ ” comes a high-pitched, New England accent.

  Your vision re-forms and then you know that—

  This is no dream.

  You are back at the Privilato castle, and the first thing you see is the grand courtyard and inner wards.

  It’s Howard who looks back at you; he seems elated, but there’s also a tinge of scorn in his eyes. “It’s a line from the Bible,” his voice piped, “which I foolhardily never believed in. The Book of Ecclesiasticus, parablizing the sin of greed. I’d have been wiser to have heeded that book, rather than in obsessing over the creation of my own.”

  “You promised me I’d die when I’m sixty-six! You promised me supernatural protection!” you wail at him.

  “I, personally, forged no such promise, Mr. Hudson. It was, instead—as you’re well aware—Lucifer’s promise.”

  “I sold my soul for a price!” you scream.

  “Consider the author of the terms,” Howard lamented. “It’s so very regrettable: that resonant and universal power k
nown as avarice. You were a very, very easy victim, Mr. Hudson. But, honestly! Why do you think they call him the Lord of Lies, the Great Deceiver?”

  “This is bullshit!” But then only now do you realize something crucial, because when you try to look around, your head will not obey the commands of your brain. “What-what—”

  “—happened to you?” Howard finishes. “It’s elementary. You died, you went to Hell, and immediately upon the commencement of your eternal Damnation, you were decapitated.” Howard, then, holds up a mirror that reflects back your severed head, which has been neatly propped upright within a stone sconce. “And, as you have hopefully cogitated, we are back at the Chatêau-Gaillard—”

  “My castle!” you spit in outrage, “where I’m supposed to spend eternity living in luxury as a Privilato! But I can’t be a Privilato with my fuckin’ HEAD cut off!”

  Howard’s voice, in spite of its elevated pitch, seems to turn foreboding. “Not your castle, Mr. Hudson. Mine.”

  Only now do your eyes lower to scan the rest of Howard’s form. He’s no longer dressed in the shabby 1920s-style shirt and slacks . . .

  He’s wearing a surplice of multifaceted jewels of every color conceivable and inconceivable. An ornate P has been mysteriously imbued on his forehead. More jewels glitter when Howard smiles: the most illustrious dental implants. “You haven’t won the Senary, Mr. Hudson. I have. Lucifer is not only notoriously dishonest, he’s also industriously dishonest. And I’d say your current circumstance demonstrates the extent of his machinations. By effectively causing you to believe that you won the Senary, you disavowed your Salvation, and since I was principal in stimulating your decision, the Senary has been awarded to me.”

  “This is a pile of shit!” you bellow. “You screwed me!”

  “Indeed—”

  “I could’ve gone to Heaven!”

  “Quite right, but here you are instead.” And then Howard picks your head up by the hair and carries you along, holding it over the ramparts. “Enjoy the view while you can. You’ll not see my beautiful castle again.”

  “It’s supposed to be my beautiful castle!” You’re sobbing now. “That was the deal!”

  “That was the deal that your greed allowed you to perceive. So intoxicated were you, Mr. Hudson, by the prospect of having all of this, that you never once considered the unreliability of the monarch here. Love is blind, they say, which is true, but it’s truer still that greed is so much more blind.” Howard looks forlorn for a moment. “The genuine deal is that I won the Senary and its sequent Privilato status by convincing you of the opposite, for enticing you to give your Salvation to Lucifer of your own free will. It really is quite a prize for my master and I might add, my master rewards those who do him service.”