Kimberly's Capital Punishment

by Richard Milward

  THE END

  Part 3) Kimberly in Hell

  As Hell’s Bells ring out, piercing my ears, suddenly everything turns black. It’s only the g-force flapping my face that tells me I’m falling into a bottomless pit. I scream, but it’s like screaming in a vacuum: painful silence. I try to grab for a lightswitch, or alarm, or escape ladder, but the formless void doesn’t even have a third dimension, I don’t think. I cross my arms, legs and fingers, praying for the Devil to go easy on me. But it’s probably a bit late for redemption.

  Over the next twenty-four hours, I whip off all my clothes as the temperature rises through the Earth’s crust. Sweat scribbles all over my body in invisible ink. Before long, I’m choking for air, cooking in my own juices. It’s only the bittersweet wind-chill factor that keeps me from burning to a crisp.

  After forty days and forty nights of falling, it turns out the pit’s not bottomless, after all. I land with an almighty SMASH! in the centre of the Earth. Surprisingly, my skeleton doesn’t shatter when I hit the dry concrete. There’s a certain sickly immunity you get from being dead, you see – you can hurt yourself as much as you like, without the risk of re-killing yourself. The only problem is your pain receptors still work.

  I prise myself off the floor, in agony, and glance cautiously about the place. It turns out Hades is just a collection of cold corridors. I wish I hadn’t taken my clothes off now. I feel ashamed, turning up to a stranger’s domain in the nude. Getting my breath back, I wait a few minutes in case my outfit reappears, but there’s a good chance the 100% polyester fibres have been frazzled during the descent.

  I decide to start walking, before I freeze and seize up. Covering my modesty with both hands, I slump through the breezeblock labyrinth, trying not to panic. To be fair, though, Hell doesn’t seem so frightening, so far. The only folk I come across in the maze are lazy, crumbled skeletons, and they don’t wolf-whistle or pass judgement.

  Pacing onwards, every corridor looks identical to the last, only with more skeletons, and more blood caked across the walls. The further I go, the fresher the blood looks. I gag, but my empty stomach’s got nothing to give.

  The gore looks fake and almost comical, like I’m waltzing through a ten-year-old’s rampant fantasy version of Hades. Washing-lines of entrails spin spiderwebs above my head. Several severed legs play footsie with me as I pass. Flowers grow out of cracks in the concrete, with tiny, pointed tongues instead of petals. And the whole place smells of damp carpet.

  Before long, my legs grow tired. When I reach the next T-junction I stop for a breather, finding a dry spot to lean against. I try for a little cry, but I don’t think it’ll get me anywhere. I feel like I should keep walking, but the fear is soon trumped by the fatigue. I consider a quick sleep. I glance up and down the silent corridor, then prop my head up against the breezeblock and let my eyes fall shut. I dream of fluffy clouds, uncut crystal, and bubbling champagne …

  I’m only out for thirty or so seconds, when a sharp, syringe-like sensation strikes me on the back of the neck, and then WHIP!! I’m wide awake again, stinking of sawdust and ammonia.

  At first, Hell’s just a collection of cold corridors. Then, it’s a hamster cage.

  I rub my fringe out of my eyes. I feel shifty and groggy, like I’ve been under for days. Whoever whipped me unconscious was at least kind enough to tuck me up in a bed of torn tissue, and turn the heating up. I clamber out of the Andrex to survey my new home. I’m trapped in a giant replica of my hamster cage in Tottenham, floating on a gloomy lagoon of molten lava. The lava gurgles and guffs as I look out across Hell, with my face pressed to the bars. All sorts of undignified, disfigured sinners, skeletons and traffic wardens bob about on fire-retardant dinghies, while hundreds of other demons cling to the volcanic mountains jutting out of the Tabasco froth. The mountains all end in pointy peaks, poking at the toxic cyan sky. Up in the sky, Tourette’s-afflicted thunderheads throw lightning and abuse at the folk down below. Pterodactyls and magpies slalom between the forks of lightning. And the whole place smells of damp carpet.

  In a way, I’m glad to be behind bars, in the relative safety of the CE-certified hamster cage. A few little devils try to prod me with bent javelins and sharpened knitting needles, but they can’t quite get close enough in their dinghies. Over in the red swell, I spot a few familiar faces: Fred West surges past in a speedboat, nearly capsizing Meaty and Fruity Stevie’s clingfilm canoe. Meaty Stevie glares at me with his one mini-meatball eye, clad in a cloak of maggots. Fruity Stevie’s adopted a more sophisticated look: a pistachio green fur coat of mould, and matching slippers.

  In one corner of the cage the Death-Cap Mush-Room keeps groaning, full to the brim with penned-in prisoners. Sad, grey faces peer out at me. In the opposite corner, the Wheel of Misfortune has been doused with petrol and set alight, like a giant, deathtrap Catherine Wheel. Glancing over the toiletwaterbowl, I hardly recognise the fat, naked reflection staring back at me. I’ve ballooned to a size 22, and I’m covered in red whip-welts. The fat reflection gasps when something makes a shuffle-shuffle sound behind me. I shift my titanic frame ninety degrees as a sinister shadow creeps out from under the Mush-Room. Attached to the end of the shadow is Lucifer the Hamster. I’m taken aback by his height, not to mention his three, sneering heads.

  ‘What a

  naughty girl

  you’ve been,’

  the heads boom, one after another.

  Lucifer hobbles forwards on his hind legs, carrying a long, leather whip. The tip of the whip looks brutal: barbed, with a blob of rainbow-coloured serum on each point. It must be the whip’s fault I’m a size 22. The serum must fuck with your brainwaves somehow. Or your metabolism.

  ‘I haven’t been that bad,’ I mumble, dry-mouthed. While I used to natter away to Lucifer in the flat, I never imagined I’d have to explain myself to him in Hell. His six red eyes seem to burn with pure malice, as I stand there sheepishly, in his shadow.

  ‘You must

  be here

  for a reason,’

  the Cerberean hamster bellows, causing the cage bars to rattle. Under his pot belly, I see he’s wearing a red utility belt, with the following items attached: trident, jumbo 15ml syringe, harmonica, flask, megaphone, pot of wax, pocketwatch, TV remote.

  ‘Might be the, er, Reader’s fault,’ I suggest, though I swear I’m sorry for bringing you back into this.

  I can’t stop shaking. There’s a major flaw in the human body, in that it begins to shake and malfunction at times when you most need it to be focused. Fear’s only useful when you’ve got the option to flee your foe – it’s a fucking nuisance when you’re locked in a cage with a gargantuan, fire-breathing rodent.

  ‘No