Just to See Hell

by Chandler Morrison

  “Snort it? Yes, absolutely. Just lean over and hoover that shit right up your holy honker. You think the booze was good? That’s nothing compared to this.”

  Jesus started to hand the paper tube back, but then thought of his father watching from above, his father so full of supercilious cocksureness, his father who had used His own son as a mere poker chip in the interest of proving a point. It was a point Jesus was determined not to let Him make.

  With a surety that was astounding to him, Jesus hovered over the line of dandruff and drew it up his right nostril in one quick, clean snort.

  The effect was instantaneous. A sharp jolt of precious pain piercing his sinuses, followed by a rush of explosive confidence riding up into his brain on a wave of blissful elation. His head cleared of its fuzziness of drink, and his joints tingled with anticipation…anticipation of what, exactly, he did not know, but he did know that he was excited about whatever was going to come next, no matter what it was, just so long as it happened soon because he wanted to go.

  “Jesus H. fucking Christ on a bicycle,” Jesus said, taking two faltering steps back and gripping the edge of the stove for stabilization. “Shit, you were right. Goddamn, that’s fucking amazing.” There was a numbness creeping into his jaw and teeth and spiderwebbing across the right side of his face like cracks on a windowpane. “Now what? What now, what do we do next? We have to do something, let’s go.”

  Lucifer grinned that grin of his and said, “Yes, yes, we shall do and we shall go. Come, let us return to the car and make haste into the coming night.”

  “Wherearewegoingwhatarewedoingwhat’snextwhat’snext?”

  A good-natured laugh from the Prince of Lies, and then, “You’ll see, my friend. I have somewhere very special and very exciting picked out for us.”

  Jesus’ eyes were fixated on the whirling reflections in the dome light when the limousine pulled up to the special and exciting place in question. His foot was tapping uncontrollably to a silent beat playing rhythmically along the chords of his coke-infused veins, and his gloved fingers provided additional percussion as they drummed mutedly on his khaki-clad thigh.

  The car came to a stop and the door was opened once again by the fancily-dressed driver, who helped both Jesus and Lucifer out onto the sidewalk and into the crisp night air.

  “Welcome,” said Lucifer, gesturing sweepingly to the neon-lit building before which they stood, “to the Wild Rose, which just so happens to be my absolute favorite haunt in all of Millhaven.”

  Jesus looked up at the glowing neon silhouettes of naked women swinging from poles, and he said tenaciously, “Is this a…”

  “Strip club? Yes, it most certainly is, and the best one on Jubilee Street, as a matter of fact. There are four or five others, but this one is where the deep-pocketed high-rollers come to spend their not-so-hard-earned dollars. You’ll find no stretch-marked or saggy-titted dancers here…no, these girls are of the highest pedigree this sordid town has to offer.”

  Jesus’ first instinct was to protest, to tell the devil that he had no interest nor intention of entering such a seedy house of sin, but he was just too goddamn high to give a fuck, so he simply said, “Lead the way, Lucif-…”

  “No, no, no, remember what I said about the name,” Lucifer said, cutting Jesus off and wagging his finger back and forth as if he were scolding a small child. “I am held in very high esteem at this establishment, and it wouldn’t suit either of us for you to go around calling me that which you were just about to call me. I am known to these humans as Mr. Adrian Morningstar…a little clichéd, I know, but I did, after all, invent the cliché…and that is how you shall refer to me for the remainder of the night. As for you, we’ll call you…” He paused to think, and then a mocking smile played across his lips. “We’ll call you Billy-Bob. Yes, I think that shall do just fine.”

  “Yes, yes, yes, so be it, whatever you say,” Jesus sputtered, shifting his weight anxiously from one jittery foot to the other. “Let’s go, come on, let’s go inside.”

  “Very well,” the devil answered, and the two of them proceeded to the heavy steel doors leading inside, which were opened for them by two heavyset bouncers with bad crew cuts and matching moustaches.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Morningstar,” they said in baritone unison, nodding curtly. Lucifer barely acknowledged them, entering the dark building with a calmly arrogant stride as Jesus followed closely behind, looking half-crazed and strung out and jittering like a woman’s vibrator.

  Once inside, Jesus paused to look around. There was a main stage upon which a trio of completely naked women, all of them more beautiful than any of the angels he’d met in Heaven, performed a suggestive dance routine to the musical accompaniment of the bubblegum pop song that boomed from the overhead speakers. There was a number of gleaming chromium poles mounted on purple-lighted triangular platforms throughout the club, with circles of men standing around them and tossing large bills at the girls dancing above them. Off to the right was a long bar tended by a busty blonde in a gem-bedazzled bikini, and topless waitresses in hula skirts flitted around the floor serving drinks to men lounging in the various circles of plush leather chairs. To the left there was a row of red-curtained private booths, and off in the back were three heavy metal doors with “VIP” stenciled in glowing bright pink upon each of them.

  “This,” Lucifer said, putting an arm around Jesus’ shoulders, “is my conception of Heaven.”

  Jesus’ mouth was growing dry, and there was an unfamiliar stiffening within the crotch of his slacks.

  No sooner than he realized this, they were accosted by a woman in lacy yellow panties and tasseled blue pasties covering her nipples. She had long, raven-colored hair that rippled down past her bare shoulders and a pretty face with faint lines indicative of the beginnings of aging but were mostly concealed by makeup as well as what Jesus suspected was the expert handiwork of a cosmetic surgeon’s youth-restoring knife.

  “Ah, my love, how wonderful of you to grace us with your presence this evening,” Satan said sweetly, embracing the woman and affectionately squeezing the rich fullness of her buttocks. “Billy-Bob, it is my exquisite pleasure to introduce you to Ms. Eliza Day, the proprietor of this fine establishment. She has given me some of the most glorious nights I’ve ever experienced during my considerable time upon this godforsaken rock we call Earth, and you will not find a more hardworking businesswoman in all the Midwest.”

  “Oh, Mr. Morningstar, you silver-tongued devil, you do have a way with words,” Eliza said, her cheeks turning rosy. She shook Jesus’ gloved hand with a charming smile and then said to Lucifer, “What pleasures can I offer my most beloved patron this evening?”

  “Two of your best, if you would, please. You know what I like, and I have a feeling Billy-Bob here won’t be too choosy. And a bottle of Cristal, of course.” He paused, glanced at Jesus, and then said, “On second thought, make that two bottles.”

  “As you wish,” Eliza said, stepping closer to Lucifer and gently squeezing his groin. “I will make sure the two of you are taken care of promptly. Make yourselves comfortable in one of the VIP rooms while I arrange your entertainment for the night.”

  Lucifer winked at Jesus, and if the latter felt any apprehension or preliminary remorse regarding the sins he knew he would surely commit in the coming hours, it was a distant and cloudy thought far off in the recesses of his mind, hardly worth attention or note. For the first time in his life, he was determined to truly enjoy himself.

  * * *

  “You’re nervous,” Lucifer said, leaning back in the armchair and lighting a cigarette. “Don’t be. Everything is going to be fine.”

  Jesus shifted anxiously on the couch and tried to will his heart to stop beating so hard against his chest. “I’m not…I’m not going to know how to…I’ve never…”

  The devil cocked his head to the side and studied the look on Jesus’ face. After a moment, he realized the issue and clapped his hands together, letting out a resound
ing laugh that made Jesus feel very small and embarrassed. “That’s right!” Lucifer exclaimed. “How could I have forgotten? You’re a fucking virgin!”

  Jesus said nothing, but he could feel the blood rushing to his cheeks and he was grateful for the sparseness of the room’s dim blue lighting.

  “I did always kind of wonder if you fucked that Magdalene broad, but if you say you didn’t, I’ll believe you.”

  “I didn’t. I mean, there was a night where I had a little too much mead and in a moment of weakness I let her perform…ahem, um, f-f-fellatio…upon me, but I ejaculated nigh immediately. So, um, does that count?”

  “Of course it doesn’t count. Just ask Bill Clinton. No, you’ve gotta…penetrate her church with your steeple for it to count. Though it’s all for the better that you didn’t, I suppose, because she had crabs and genital warts.”

  Jesus, blank-faced and still lost in his recollection, said, “She gagged and it came out her nose.”

  Lucifer snickered. “That’s an image to which I may have to jack off sometime. But listen, and trust me on this…when the big moment arrives, it’s all gonna come naturally. Here’s how things will likely go down…our girls will come in, we’ll drink and they’ll give us lap dances, and one thing will lead to another and we’ll fuck their brains right out their goddamn ears. Don’t feel embarrassed at your inexperience, though…these bitches are on my dollar for the next few hours, so they work for us. No matter how bad you are at it, your girl will act like you’re the best fuck she’s had in her pathetic life.”

  Jesus sat back and rubbed his face. “This is all just so…foreign. It goes against everything I’ve always believed in. And the worst part is…I don’t care. I mean, I do, but I really don’t. It’s like there’s something inside me that’s…that’s begging to let go, but there’s a part of me that keeps pushing it back down, a part of me whose sole function has been to do exactly that. It doesn’t know how to stop, because that’s all it knows how to do. That’s all it can do.”

  “Shee-it,” the devil said, lighting another cigarette. “That’s deep, even for you. Makes sense, though…I’m told morality is a tough habit to break. The thing is, though, your concept of morality is based entirely upon an eternal lie. God has built within you some phantasmagoric disasterpiece out of something that never existed in the first place. You, and by default Christianity itself, is little more than an experiment He’s been fucking around with for the same reason that He does everything else.”

  Frowning, eyes downcast in despondent shame, Jesus asked, “And what reason is that?”

  “Because He can. Listen to me, man…God is the ultimate hypocrite. Sure, He’s my pal and all that, but I have to call a spade a fuckin spade. He planted this silly idea of abstinence in your head, but He gets more fucking action than a goddamn toilet seat, for fuck’s sake. But that’s beside the point…the point is that the duality inside you is there without legitimate reason. Free yourself, Jesus. That is what I’m all about…not evil, not temptation, not sordid misery and pain…no, my thing is liberation. I just want to bring light to people, because they’ve been living in the dark, walking in circles around a pitch black room with one thumb in their mouth and the other up their ass. I’m here to open the blinds, so they can look out the window, see what’s outside, and then walk out the door that they never even knew was there. I’m here to open people’s eyes.”

  Jesus ran a hand through his hair and scratched his beard. “But…why? I admit, you’re not what I thought you were, but I know you’re not that benevolent. You have to have a reason, so what is it?”

  The devil smiled and hit his cigarette, his cold eyes somehow gleaming with truth and self-assured frankness. “My reason for doing what I do is the same reason that God does what He does. I do it because I can. He engulfs the world in darkness so that he may have absolute control, and I bring light to it so that I may create absolute chaos. It’s a game we’ve been playing since the beginning of time. Give people freedom, and everything goes to hell, so to speak, if you’ll forgive the play of words. Control is boring, chaos is entertaining. God is like a kid who wants all his toys aligned perfectly on his shelf, and I’m the mean little brother who likes to mess it all up. Why? Because it’s funny. And what is life without humor? Tell me, can you guess what invention of which I am most proud?”

  Jesus pondered this for a moment, thrumming his fingers on his knee. “Um…strap-on dildos?”

  “Ha! Believe it or not, your dad is actually responsible for that one. No, my absolute favorite creation is something much, much simpler.” He paused to stub his cigarette out in a silver-plated ashtray in the shape of a heart and then spark up another. “Laughter,” he said. “I created laughter, and for that God has always resented me most fiercely.”

  Jesus gawked at him. “You…but…you…fuck, none of this makes any sense.”

  Lucifer smiled. “Let go, Jesus of Nazareth. Abandon your useless principles and embrace the freedom with which I have so graciously presented you. Would you like some more blow?” He inclined his head, offering up his scalp to Jesus. His hair was luscious and clean-looking, but Jesus knew the dandruff was there. Oh yes, it was there, hidden from sight but undeniably there, and he did want it, so he stumbled across the room and took Satan’s head in his hands and buried his face in his hair, snorting loudly and feeling the electrical jolts pulse through his sinuses and into his brain.

  “Fuuuuck,” Jesus gasped, staggering backward and collapsing onto his previously-held seat on the couch. He felt his synapses sizzling away into puffs of pink bliss, and it was wonderful. “There is nothing so great,” he said, leaning his head back and sniffing as he rubbed at his nose. “Nothing in the world or the heavens. Nothing so great.”

  At that, the door opened and two women entered. One was short and blonde, deeply tanned and clothed scantily in a platinum-colored bra and a patent leather miniskirt; the other was tall and somewhat pale, with flaming red hair and freckles dappled across her cheeks and bare breasts, her only item of apparel being see-through black panties and fire-engine-red stilettos with heels that looked as though they could pierce a man’s flesh with only the slightest effort from the wearer. The blonde cradled in her arm a tin ice bucket out from which pointed two elegant gold bottles, and the redhead held a silver tray with four glimmering crystal glasses.

  “I’m Ms. Boo,” said the blonde.

  “And I’m Ms. Quick,” said the redhead.

  “Glorious,” answered the devil. “You must be new, for I don’t recognize either of you. You know what they say about variety.” He nodded at the redhead and said, “You’re with me, darling. Ms. Boo, you’re with Billy-Bob. Now, shall we drink?”

  And drink they did. Ms. Quick sat upon Satan’s lap, stroking his hair and whispering in his ear. Ms. Boo sat next to Jesus on the couch, her hand resting firmly on the firmness of his crotch. Jesus kept shifting nervously, unable to make eye contact with the girl and gulping down large amounts of wine in a dire effort to calm his anxiety.

  “You look like someone,” Ms. Boo was saying, her head cocked as she studied Jesus with eyes narrowed in close scrutiny. “Someone famous, I just can’t put my finger on it.”

  Jesus felt himself tense up, knowing he was too drunk to form sentences convincing enough to talk himself out of accusations of his identity.

  Ms. Boo’s face suddenly lit up, her eyes widening. “Holy shit!” she exclaimed. “I figured it out! You look exactly like George Bush! I mean, the resemblance is, like, uncanny!”

  Jesus breathed a slow sigh of relief and wiped sweat from his brow with his forearm. He found it sadly comical that earlier that day his sole goal was to convince people of his identity, and now he wanted to conceal it. He tried to evaluate this, tried to determine the how and why of it, but it required too much logical thought, so the musing slipped away into the slurping abyss of drunken oblivion.

  Ms. Boo looked over at Ms. Quick and said with giddy excitement, “Look at him! Doe
sn’t he look just like George Bush?”

  Ms. Quick looked at Jesus and regarded him with the same scrutiny that Ms. Boo had, and then said, “Kind of, I guess…but I think he looks more like…shit, who was that guy in the Beatles? The one with the glasses who got shot?”

  “Um…Mick Jagger?” Ms. Boo said.

  “No, no, that’s not it. Was it…Martin Luther King?”

  “John Lennon,” Jesus slurred. “It was John Lennon.”

  Ms. Boo looked at him with her face scrunched up in doubt. “Really? I thought John Lennon was the guy who came up with that whole evolution thing.”

  “No, that was Ben Franklin,” said Ms. Quick condescendingly. “That’s why he’s on the five-dollar bill.”

  Jesus was becoming less and less capable to keep up with the conversation, not only due to its absurdity, but because the drink was taking strong effect and his head was filling up with that warm buzz that he was coming to love.

  Regardless, he must still have appeared nervous, because Ms. Boo put a comforting hand back on his stiff cock and said, “Relax, honey, there’s nothing to be scared of. Would it help if I gave you a lap dance?”

  “I…well, I…um, I don’t…I…”

  She required no answer, for she mounted him and began to gyrate in rhythm to the music beating from the speakers, some hip-hop song that Jesus didn’t recognize.

  “I…oh my…that’s…that’s very nice.”

  Ms. Boo smiled and unhooked her brassiere, letting the straps fall away but holding the cups tantalizingly over her breasts for a few moments, and Jesus felt all of his blood rushing southward. All remnants of rational thought were beginning to leave him. Something was happening and it was strange and frightening but so, so enthralling.

  The stripper finally tossed aside the bra and pressed Jesus’ face to her chest as she continued to rub her groin against his. The scent of her brought Jesus back to his brief soirée with Mary, but only for a second, for he was rooted to this moment and this moment alone. His gloved hands were moving up the girl’s back, and he felt himself longing to feel her with the flesh of what remained of his palms, wanted to trace bare fingertips along the contours of her body, but there was enough fleeting reason left in his brain to allow him to know that she likely wouldn’t react well to being fondled by holed hands.