“Of course, of course. It’s over there.” He pointed to the phone in the hallway. “You call who you want. I’ll make some tea.” Annette nodded
“OK, thanks.” She moved towards the phone while Boone went out into the kitchen. When he returned a few minutes later she was sitting on the couch. She looked up at him
“I called my brother Xuan. I was on my way to visit him. He’ll be here in an hour, do you mind if I wait here.” Boone not only didn’t mind he found the suggestion immensely pleasing.
“Yes of course you can, you can’t wait out there in the cold.” She smiled back at him
“Thanks.” He pulled over a small glass table to hold the tea pot and then sat down beside her on the couch. He poured out a cup of tea and passed it to her. She was so beautiful. He felt like an old fool – he was well over twice her age, nearly three times. But did he see something in her gaze, some recognition of possibilities – even openness to it? Was it possible? It had been a long time since he’d been with a female. He looked at her closely and smiled. He was of course determined to be absolutely polite and correct in every way. The sheer unlikelihood of the course of events he was anticipating never even occurred to him. Annette though made the situation abundantly clear. She put down her cup of tea and moved over to sit directly next to him – pressing up against him. Then she put her hand on his leg and stroked it gently. Boone closed his eyes and sighed. For the first time in years he was rock hard. He started breathing more heavily.
Annette sat on his lap and then kissed him on the lips. He responded. Bizarrely though, before continuing further she seemed to want to talk. She was looking around the room with obvious curiosity. The room was cluttered with papers, mostly case files, both originals and print outs. There was a large computer monitor on the desk but Boone still liked to see things on paper. The files and folders were spread out over a large desk to the side of the room and also on two long wooden benches. Many more of them were just scattered about on the floor. She pointed to them vaguely
“What are all these? What are you working on?” He didn’t even find her questions incongruous, almost as if he was under some kind of spell - and so the course of events proceeded with heavy inevitability towards their preordained end and his personal doom. He answered her thoroughly and completely. He told her about Jarrod and the long series of midget murders in Brighton, Cambridge, London and also in Sydney Australia. He told her of his suspicions - no they were certainties. He held nothing back. He told her about the surveillance and the hacking and how he had been forced to resign, which he had to admit was very lenient of them. He told her how his wife had abandoned him and he’d lived here ever since. She listened carefully, apparently fascinated and always sympathetic. She made an occasional comment, encouraging him to continue, to reveal everything. He stopped. He was staring into her eyes. He could feel her legs wrapped around his thighs. He wanted to please her in any way possible. He would do or say anything – he wanted to fuck her so badly. She kissed him again. Then she pointed around the room.
“Is this all of the information you have?” Boone found himself answering all of her questions eagerly, thinking nothing of it.
“A lot of it is here. The rest is upstairs in the wardrobe in my bedroom.” Annette asked
“What about electronic records? Backups?” Boone replied
“The computer over there - and the backups - also upstairs.” Annette smiled
“Well then Reginald let’s go upstairs.” It didn’t occur to Boone that he’d never given her his name. They got up on their feet. She kept hold of his hand and moving about playfully, swaying her hips, she led him towards the staircase and then upstairs to his bedroom. She knew the way.
She led him into his bedroom. They undressed and climbed up onto the bed. She pushed him onto his back and then climbed up onto him and just sat there on his stomach her legs wrapped around him. She smiled at him
“You’re very brave Reginald, digging into all of this the way you have, most people would have been too scared.” Boone mumbled something incoherent – he was lost in admiration of her beautiful nude body, the curve of her hips, her breasts - small but perfectly formed. He wanted her desperately. She saw the look in his eyes. With a roll of her own eyes she sat up slightly, repositioned herself and then slid back down onto him. Boone gasped. He closed his eyes. Oh my god, he’d almost forgotten what this was like – insanely pleasurable. He moved his hands to take hold of her hips. But something happened. Something changed. Her weight seemed to change to something heavier, her shape changed. He opened his eyes. Oh No! It was the fucking midget! He screamed out
“Oh God!” The midget glared back at him, holding in its right hand a large butchers knife. It screeched at him
“God has got nothing to do with it. Jarrod Bennet sends his regards.” Boone tried to struggle but the midget was inhumanly strong. He couldn’t believe that after all of his efforts it ended like this. The midget slashed the knife down cutting deeply into Boone’s throat. Boone continued to struggle even as the blood gushed from him. He kicked his legs furiously and pushed upwards with all of his might. But the gnome held him down easily. He felt his life rapidly fading away. He managed to mouth the phrase
“Fuck you.” The gnome sneered back at him.
“That’s what they all say.” Boone desperately tried to hold onto his last fleeting moment of life – but then he lost it and was gone.
The gnome rose from the bed and started searching the room for the evidence that Boone had described earlier. As if by magic he was dressed in his usual garb and with no trace of blood on him. It didn’t take him long to find all of the paper files and the backup disks. He took them downstairs. He collected together all of the files scattered about the living room and put everything into one large pile on the desk. Slowly and systematically he cast it all into the fire and watched it burn. He liked fire. He liked watching things burn. He had already made sure that the various police databases were being hacked and trashed. It didn’t really matter, in just a few months it was all over for them, all of them. But he had been firmly instructed to leave no trail and in the past clearly hadn’t been as careful as he should have been. The Master was not one to trifle with and to the gnome anything short of absolute compliance to his will was unthinkable. His long and difficult task was almost complete. If all went to plan, his new plan following on from his failure at Amsterdam, Jarrod and Cassandra would meet at Waterloo Station in just a few months.
He decided to leave the house as it was. The body might not be discovered for many weeks – an added indignity. He walked out of the front door shutting it behind him. As he walked back down the pathway he wiggled his hips a few times as if trying to dislodge something unpleasant. He grimaced, mumbling to himself
“Hmm, should have killed him sooner, got caught up in the role.” He started humming his favourite tune.
“Hey Ho, Hey Ho, it’s off to work we go.” When he got to the end of the path he vanished. Detective Chief Inspector Boone’s body was not found or disturbed until the day after the world ended and the demons came screaming down out of the sky.
Chapter 21 – The Department of Envy
Jarrod still couldn’t believe that Cassandra had betrayed him – and so casually. Lucifer had left him lying on the ground beside the pit. He lay there for some time, getting his breathe back - torn, aching muscles and joints at least easing off slightly. He jumped to his feet and started half running, half walking around the edge of the Pit of Despair towards the Department of Greed. This wasn’t over. He couldn’t be defeated as easily as that. Cassandra must have been tricked or enchanted in some way. He had to save her. He was almost managing to convince himself of this but the old gloomy pessimism vied for precedence. She did not love him; she never had and she never would. She had simply cast him off when a better opportunity presented itself. In the struggle to survive you did what you could. Down here who could blame anyone for anything. Any ideal was something to be cast
aside – and love itself the merest of pretences.
He was still a considerable distance away when he saw Belial walking back into the building. Belial was following someone – presumably it was Cassandra. But when he got to the front door of the department he found that it was shut. He pounded his fists on the huge wooden door, yelling out loudly, demanding entrance. But there was no response. He walked around the building. It was quite large but there was no other way in. He hammered on the front door for an even longer time but again there was no response. He didn’t know what to do and was getting more and more angry. It occurred to him that he should confront Lucifer. He started walking again, further around the Pit, making his way to the Department of Pride. Its front door was also large and forbidding – it was made of thick plated metal, painted black. Again he knocked loudly and cried out, demanding a response, and again there was nothing. Oh, Lucifer was going to pay for this, so badly – and Belial – Belial was going to suffer pain beyond belief. He would beg and scream for mercy and there would be none.
He went back around the Pit to his own Department and made his way to his private apartment. He pulled out the old document describing the Fist of God – wondering what it was and how it could be used – but mostly brooding, thinking about Cassandra and the futility, absurdity and absolute impossibility of love. Someone was knocking. He opened the door. It was Abaddon. Jarrod snarled at him
“Fuck off.” Abaddon was pleased that the Master was recovering so well, he was more and more like his old self with each passing hour. He replied quickly
“My Lord, the Lord Gaap has requested a meeting with you in his department, the Department of Envy - the one next to us, on the right.” He added the details at the end, still unsure to what extant the Master had recovered his memory. Jarrod looked at him. He thought to himself
‘Well maybe Gaap can help - at least I’ll find out more.’ He pushed pass Abaddon and strode off, completely ignoring him. Abaddon almost smiled.
“Ah yes, it wouldn’t be long now.” He just wanted things to go back the way they were. But then again with the attack coming up that wasn’t going to be possible anyway.
When Jarrod arrived at the Department of Envy the door opened and there was a demon there waiting for him. The demon was obviously one of the lesser demons; he didn’t introduce himself and was as obsequious and fearful as all the others. All he said was
“My Lord Beelzebub, the Lord Gaap is waiting for you in one of the puzzle rooms. I can take you to him if you like.” Jarrod nodded. The lesser demon turned and walked down a corridor and Jarrod followed. He was very disturbed by what he saw next. They walked through a series of corridors looking through transparent walls into rooms where humans were being tested in various ways. There were people of all types, widely varying in age, size, ethnicity, and everything else – with a more or less equal number of males and females. Jarrod noted that this in itself was quite atypical, everywhere else in Hell, of course, the demons exhibited a marked preference for young and attractive females and showed little interest in anyone else. In one of the rooms, cubical in shape, several of the humans were placed in the middle of the floor. Large red balls, clearly dense and heavy and covered in sharp metal spikes would come shooting out of the walls and roof from different places and at different speeds and angles. At a glance Jarrod could see that there were obvious patterns in the distribution of positions and speeds. It looked a bit complicated but not really that hard. To the participants in the room it was a matter of life or death. At the higher speeds the balls could easily take their heads off and even low speed impacts were obviously very painful and potentially damaging. Jarrod stood and watched from just outside the door. The lesser demon waited patiently for him. Before long there was only one human left, a middle aged woman, looking around anxiously – she was thoroughly bewildered. She was escorted out of the room by another of the lesser demons. Jarrod knew without asking that she had simply graduated to the next puzzle, something even more difficult. The ones left in the rooms were in pieces, literally. Other demons came in to take them away, gathering up arms and legs, picking up smashed bodies and heads quite casually with no regard for the fallen. Their eyes still blinked and looked around frantically. It occurred to Jarrod that it hadn’t been so much about life or death – they were already dead - rather it had been about staying out of the Pit a little longer. Whether or not they knew about the Pit yet, this was obviously where they were going next.
They passed several more puzzles, all intellectual challenges of one kind or another and all with the same result – one winner and the rest broken and ready to be discarded. Jarrod wondered what was the point of it all. Finally they came around a corner and there was Lord Gaap, standing outside one of the puzzle rooms, looking in, clearly fascinated. He was taller than most of the other demons and noticeably thinner. He had a kind of austere appearance, unlike any of the other demons Jarrod had come across. Even just looking at him Jarrod could see a wide nasty streak, something distinctly academic. It was something he was quite familiar with from his former life. Gaap turned and spoke to him
“Ah Beelzebub. Welcome back.” The lesser demon turned and rushed away, his task completed. Jarrod stared back at Gaap. He just nodded. Gaap waved his hand indicating to Jarrod to come forward. There was a gleam in his eyes.
“Come, watch this. I didn’t design this one; it was designed by my predecessor. It doesn’t really accomplish anything. But it’s fun to watch. He called it the Who is Going to be the next King Game.” Jarrod moved up beside Gaap and looked into the room. A man was seated on a throne at one end of the room. He seemed uncomfortable and obviously couldn’t get up from the throne. He tried to cry out a few times but couldn’t speak. There were nine other humans in the room all of them trying to beat each other to death with wooden clubs – well three of them were, three large males. The other six men and women had already been knocked out and were spread out on the floor. Gaap turned towards Jarrod, with an evil sneer
“They are competing to replace the one at the front as the King.” There was a loud snapping sound. One of the combatant’s heads had been knocked to the side when a club smashed into it. It seemed to be just hanging there. He dropped to the ground and lay there not moving. Not long after that the second man fell, taken down by a rapid combination of blows to the knee, to the chest and then to the head. The victor stood in front of the room uncertain what to do next. A demon came into the room from the other side and walked up to him. The demon pointed to the king on his throne and growled
“You have to finish him too.” The man readily complied. Without hesitation he walked towards the other man and began smashing into him with his club until his victim was covered in blood and unconscious. The demon grabbed the unconscious man, picked him up, carried him to the centre of the room and dropped him. Then he moved back towards the victor. He spoke without emotion.
“Congratulations you are the next king.” The man still hadn’t figured it out fully. The demon helped him take his seat on the throne. He found that once there he couldn’t move or speak. The bruises and streaks of blood on his face magically disappeared. Several other demons came into the room and carried off the bodies. Through a far door nine more humans were herded into the room. They were carrying clubs. One of the demons pointed to the man on the throne and called out
“Who wants to be the king?” They instantly started fighting, each of them trying to get the advantage of surprise over the other one next to them. Two were knocked down. The others continued fighting. Outside the room Gaap was laughing hard – making a harsh cackling sound. He faced Jarrod
“Ah, I love it, it never gets old.” Jarrod couldn’t see how this nasty old fuck was going to be of any use to him but he remained calm and waited patiently to see how things would turn out. Until meeting Cassandra and being cast down here with her he’d usually been calm or at least contained. Well, almost always. It occurred to him that for the most part he hadn’t really cared about anyt
hing or anyone enough to even bother getting agitated. Of course that all changed when he met Cassandra at Waterloo station. Six days ago!
Gaap walked off, still laughing. Jarrod followed him. They turned a corner into a wider corridor and Jarrod moved forward until he was walking alongside Gaap. There were a lot of questions he wanted to ask him. To get him talking he started with the obvious and immediate one
“What was that all about?” Gaap sneered
“The King Game was invented by my predecessor, Sallos. Ironic really, when I took over here I sliced him up and had him thrown into the Pit.” Jarrod wasn’t satisfied by this, he persisted
“But why? What’s the point?” Gaap seemed amused
“Why not? There is no point.” He paused, looking at Jarrod carefully. “I just like watching them slaughter each other - they are so determined, so ferocious. And the look on their face at the end, priceless.” He smiled for a while. “For Sallos it had something to do with envy, who the fuck knows. I don’t care about that stuff.” Jarrod asked
“But your department?” Gaap sighed.
“Envy! Too easy! When were humans ever not envious? Why shouldn’t they be? Why should some poor schmuck be content with his lot and keep in his place when some other dumb worthless asshole just down the road or across the pond has a massively bigger house, plenty to eat, two or three decades more of life and five lovely females licking his balls all day long. He’s gotta say – ‘hey I want some of that’ – and why the fuck wouldn’t he. Envy, greed, lust, pride, and all the others, they are not flaws for us to prey on, they are design features, they are the best in Man, the way they were meant to be - driven, aspiring, demanding. God really fucked them over when he made them that way and then commanded them to be otherwise“. Jarrod felt compelled to say
The Department of Hate - A Love Story Page 23
