The Endless War That Never Ends

by Christopher Brimmage

  God-Art tugged on the python-leash, pulling Drillbot away from his vantage at the edge of the stalagmite. The god pulled Drillbot down the path, squeezing past the line of damned souls—only a few of whom failed to move far enough aside to avoid Drillbot’s wheel-daggers. The duo followed the path as it looped around the stalagmite thirty-three times. They reached the end of the line of the damned where it halted to the left of the archway that Drillbot had spotted from the top of the stalagmite.

  Just past the archway, a great hulking brute nearly sixty-feet tall sat on a throne the size of a city bus. The sallow beast wore a pointed crown with seven red jewels at its peaks. His hair was cropped short beneath the crown, and his beard was long and gray and bushy. His gigantic brows seemed stuck in a furrowed position. He wore no clothes other than the crown, and though his arms were bulky and muscular, his belly rose into a large paunch. His legs lay curled and twisted below him, skinny and feeble from disuse. An enormous serpent’s tail grew from the brute’s back. The tail’s end lay in the dirt between the throne and the brunette at the front of the line.

  The brunette was engaged in conversation with the monster. “A-A-And a few times, I lusted after my gardener,” she said. “But I never acted on it, I swear.”

  The hulking beast on the throne shook his head. Sweat glistened on his bare chest. His angry voice bellowed so violently that the brunette fell to the dusty ground. “There! Is! More!”

  The woman looked at her bare feet. They were cracked and bleeding. “F-F-Fine,” she muttered. “I also stole money from my business partners. But I had no choice! It was them or me!”

  God-Art leaned over to Drillbot. He pointed to the brute on the throne and whispered, “You’ll want to watch this, old chap. That creature’s name is Minos. He assigns people to their Circle of Hell by twisting his tail around his body. Number of twists corresponds to the Circle of Hell. He’ll be the one to tell us where to find Art, since every soul down here undergoes his judgment.”

  Minos grunted angrily and leaned forward. His mammoth serpent tail twisted around him eight times. “Fraud,” he bellowed.

  “No!” the woman screamed. “It should be lust! Or at worst, greed! This isn’t fair! I had no choice! It was them or me!”

  But demons flew in from somewhere near the ceiling of the gigantic cavern and dragged her away, despite her protests. God-Art walked forward with Drillbot in tow, cutting past the front of the line.

  “You!” Minos bellowed. Without waiting for God-Art to say anything, the brute twisted the tail around himself nine times. “Treachery! Now begone. I will not fall for your tricks again.”

  God-Art held up his hands in submission. “Minos, old friend. You know I was only playing with you last time. We’re good friends. That’s how friends play.”

  Minos frowned. “I was without a serpent for three decades the last time you visited here. I had to beg every demon in Hell for a new one, and even then, I had to lease this one for an outrageous sum from one of the imps in the Eighth Circle! Hell descended into chaos! I was nearly sacked from my post when all was said and done!”

  Minos pointed at the python surrounding Drillbot. “And now you bring my serpent back to taunt me. Guards! Get him out of my sight!”

  “Wait, wait, wait!” called God-Art. “I apologize. We’re here looking for someone specific, and once we find him, we will leave Hell at once. As a token of good faith, you can have your serpent back.”

  God-Art tugged twice on the python’s tail, and it fell away from Drillbot. Before the robot could move, however, strands of the god’s flaming hair leapt from his scalp to encircle Drillbot anew in magical restraints. Drillbot sighed, deciding that he did not care enough to ask God-Art how he had transformed the arm that Drillbot had severed into the serpent that the god had apparently stolen from Minos, because asking would only result in an inefficient story where God-Art would divert upon tangent after tangent, likely never answering the original question in a satisfactory way, and Drillbot would eventually simply turn off his audio receptors to cope. Thus, Drillbot sighed once more and remained silent. God-Art whipped the gigantic python toward Minos, and its mouth snapped shut upon the giant’s stomach, burrowing into the brute’s belly button. Minos allowed a smile to creep across his lips.

  “I am whole once more,” he muttered. He stared at God-Art with black eyes. There was little mirth in them.

  “I’m looking for a man named Art,” said God-Art. “He looks just like me, but shorter and with none of the magical bits. He’s a bit of a dullard and a louse, and you likely would have assigned him to the Circle where you send the slothful, since pretty much every molecule within him is lazy. Would’ve been approximately ten years ago.”

  Minos closed his eyes. “Yes, I remember just such a soul. Made a terrible pun about my serpent tail, which hurt me deeply because of the trouble I went to procure it. He begged to just be left alone and to watch a device called a television. Does that sound familiar?”

  God-Art nodded enthusiastically. “That’s him! Where is he?”

  Minos smirked. He twisted both of his serpent tails around himself five times.

  God-Art looked confused. “Minos, old friend, you’ve got yourself two serpent tails now. You twisted each around yourself five times. Does that mean the Tenth Circle? Is the Tenth a new one?”

  Minos grunted in frustration. He untwisted one serpent tail and let it drop limply to his side. He sighed. “Five. Look for him under the surface of the Styx. Now be gone, before I grow weary of your presence and smash you to bits.”

  God-Art nodded his thanks and tugged on the fire-leash that now surrounded Drillbot. The robot rolled forward and passed through the arch. God-Art leaned over to Drillbot and said, “He really botched that tale about the serpent. It was an epic bout of mischief when I stole it. It all started when-”

  Drillbot did not hear the rest. He preemptively turned off his audio receptors.

  *

  When Drillbot rolled onto the rocky valley at the base of the stalagmite, he was surprised to find that the raging black clouds he had seen from high atop the stalagmite were not a storm at all. They were instead hundreds of thousands of souls swirling aimlessly in the air.

  The fiery leash surrounding him flickered in the wind. Drillbot turned his audio receptors back on.

  “-and that’s when I said to his mother, ‘Minos is a terrible name. I hope you’re quite ashamed of yourself.’ And that, Drillbot, was that.”

  “[whir] Amazing,” lied the robot. “Please don’t try to – CLACK – try to top it.”

  God-Art glanced over at Drillbot and furrowed his brows. Souls fell to the ground all around them—always in intertwined pairs—crashing onto the rocks like raindrops and bouncing back up into the air to rejoin the storm. God-Art stopped for a moment and looked up. “Smell that storm? What’s it smell like to you?”

  Drillbot’s olfactory sensors analyzed the odors while tornadoes crashed down at random across the valley. A list of ingredients popped up, including blood and sweat and fire and smoke. Drillbot finally identified the odor that God-Art was almost certainly going to point out to him, the one that blared across his processors whenever a tornado touched down or a pair of soul-raindrops crashed nearby: the musk created when mammals mate.

  Just when Drillbot was about to speak up with the correct answer and knock some of the ones from the god’s arrogant metaphorical code, the god cut in, “It’s sex! You’ve never smelled the musk, since you are of course but a robot. But it’s the smell of humans mating.”

  Drillbot frowned his version of a frown and remained silent as the concept of mating flittered through his processors. He refused to tell God-Art of his lost love, Ginny Rex, and the hope he had held in his heart of starting a family with her, and the lust with which they caressed one another every night when Ginny Rex was given leave to rest from her duties in the Army of Life. These were the robot’s positive memories alone.

  When Drillbot said nothing, the go
d tugged on the leash to continue their hike and said, “This is the Second Circle of this version of Hell, dedicated to punishing the lustful. If you don’t control your loins in life, then you’ve got no control over your soul in the afterlife! Well, according to this particular culture on this backwards reality, you don’t. On my earth, I rewarded the lusty in the afterlife, especially the ones that called out my name when they mated.”

  Before Drillbot could be subjected to another long-winded story, a pair of intertwined souls crashed atop God-Art. The force of their fall smashed him into the ground and crushed his skull. Little fairies climbed out of his ears, looked around at the desolate terrain, and climbed right back in. God-Art lay dead on the ground, and Drillbot sighed. The leash of fire remained tight around him, holding him in place, so now he would have to wait for the annoying god to resurrect himself before continuing the descent into Hell.

  On the ground before Drillbot lay a man and a woman, both rubbing their heads in a state of dizziness. Drillbot had nothing better to do until God-Art resurrected himself, so he decided to begin a conversation with them, though he stayed as far back as possible, having learned his lesson from the encounter with the Five Phalanges of Science in the First Circle.

  “[whir] Hello.”

  The man sat up and looked quizzically over at Drillbot. Salt-and-pepper hair lay slicked back on his head, and an overlarge widow’s peak stood out prominently on his forehead. Thin black eyebrows perched above small, untrusting eyes, and a thick bulbous nose jutted out from the middle of his head. A scowl twisted across the bottom half of his face.

  “Why, I don’t reckon I’ve seen anything quite like you before, boy,” said the man, studying Drillbot. “You look mighty tough. Why don’t you take mah hand an’ get me outta here?”

  He extended a palm to Drillbot. Drillbot stared at it. The man took Drillbot’s hesitance as immediate refusal, and his eyes grew petulant. He said, “Led my country through the most controversial era of the century and through a war lots of people didn’t agreed with. But I held strong to mah principles. I even helped a lotta people to get the same rights as ever’body else.”

  His frown deepened, and he continued, “But no, none o’ that fills up the good side of the ledger, accordin’ to this back’rds place. I did nothing wrong! Nothing! Mah wife never wanted me carn’lly, and never got dolled up or nothin’ for me. I gots me a’ unnatural large endowment, if you know what I mean. She knew what she was gettin’ into with me ‘fore we married, an’ she never complained neither when I went sniffin’ ‘round other women. Now tell me how it’s fair that I’m rottin’ down here with the lustful, when she’s somewhere up above? I made tough decisions all day long, decisions that weigh heavy on a man’s soul, and damn her fer never givin’ me no relief!”

  The woman nearby interjected. Her curly brown hair fell in tangles across her face. Her eyes were red from crying and her pale, bare skin was covered in sweat and bite marks. “I’m innocent, too! As the nineteenth century rolled into the next, you could find my portrait everywhere—it was used to sell so many things in the magazines. An affair blossomed between myself and a comely gentleman, and this man murdered my husband. But my husband had abused and hurt me. What was I to do? This new man’s attention Thaw-ed my heart—see, I’m very funny with the puns, another of my many great qualities—for I thrilled at his touch, and he thrilled at mine. How could I stop him from his vendetta, if his mind was set on it? I just wanted to be treated right.”

  Drillbot began to reply, but the man on the ground seemed to notice the woman for the first time since dropping from the sky. His face contorted and his mouth twisted into a lustful, impish grin. He looked positively primal, and he seemed to lose all memory of the conversation in which he had been engaged with Drillbot. He leapt over on top of the woman and they began rolling together in the throes of carnal passion across the dusty ground. During their thrashing, a hot breeze picked up and lifted them into the sky.

  Drillbot’s processors were confused. Seemingly on cue, God-Art sprang to his feet, resurrected. “That’s better,” said the god.

  “[whir] Drillbot does not understand. Circumstances were beyond their – CLACK – beyond their control. Eternal punishment is too – CLACK – too steep a price. We should set them free.”

  God-Art tsked at the robot. “Put that thought out of your mind, my metal companion. I’ve traveled these depths and others just like it many times before, so I should have warned you before we entered: everyone down here—just like in every Hell—is innocent, at least according to themselves, because they believe that they are the heroes of their own stories. If given the opportunity, they’ll all tell you sympathetic tales about themselves to try and gain your pity, but you must remember that you’re only hearing their side of the story. They committed wrongs according to this culture, and they were all sent here in accordance with its strict ethical codes. And thus, they will be staying here.

  God-Art stared at Drillbot, who was frowning his version of a frown. The god frowned back at the robot and continued speaking, “Look, I can tell from the way you’re looking at me that my answer wasn’t satisfactory to you. Though your heart is made of metal, it is softer than most. The rules of this culture’s afterlife seem backward and wrong to you. That is fine. They do to me, too. They are incredibly stupid. But they belong to this culture, and though we are free to mock its stupid afterlife, we will not change it. Because in order to change it, we would need to overthrow a cultural regime—likely including both deicide of some sort and a philosophical revolution in this culture’s thinking, which is something that can take decades. We simply don’t have time for it, and I simply don’t care enough about these mortals to put forth the effort—and even if I did and we enacted this change, most of these mortals would simply end up assigned to some other stupid version of Hell that would be created from this cultural regime change, where they would be just as unhappy and think they are being treated just as unfairly, rendering our effort moot. So, feel free to listen to these souls if that is what you wish to do, but we will not be bringing any of them with us, even if they gain your pity. Leading those that you deem worthy of rescue out of this Hell—which, knowing how soft that steel heart of yours is, would mean all of them—would draw too much attention from a version of Yahweh that I do not care to start a war with just now, and more importantly, it would mean that accomplishing my goals would be delayed much longer than I care to delay them.”

  God-Art did not wait for Drillbot to respond. Instead, the god tugged on the flaming leash, leading Drillbot the rest of the way down the winding path across the valley, which ended at yet another tunnel, this one chiseled into the cave wall. Just inside the tunnel, they encountered another sheer cliff with another set of rungs carved into the cliff face. Drillbot frowned as God-Art hung him over the side and descended into the next Circle of Hell. This time, there was no glowing fungus on the ceiling with which to distract himself. He sighed.

  At the bottom of this ladder, they followed another tunnel from which they emerged into another enormous cave. This one contained another winding path that led down to a hole in its middle. The cave’s layout reminded him exactly of the First Circle through which the pair had descended, only slightly smaller. Glowing fungus covered the ceiling of this cave, too, but the clumps gathered differently, and the resulting “constellations” were not the same.

  Drillbot would have begun the process of naming these novel clumps of glowing fungus, but he grew distracted when he noticed that storm clouds also roiled across the heights of this Circle. Drillbot assumed the souls in the Third Circle of Hell must be undergoing some type of punishment similar to the previous Circle, flittering about up in the sky with no control over themselves. However, when Drillbot zoomed in his telescopic eyes for a better view, he found that he was mistaken. The churning clouds were brown and green, and what dropped from them made Drillbot sigh again.

  “Talk about a shitstorm, am I right?” said God-Art with
a smirk. Seemingly on cue, green lightning flashed amongst the clouds, thunder roared—sounding like some horrid god’s foul flatulence echoing across this Circle of Hell—and brown clods of excrement began falling from the sky to crash upon the valley floor.

  “The smell in this Circle is much different than the last one, huh?” continued God-Art. His fingers danced along his robes. “The punishment here is for the gluttonous. This is my least favorite Circle. Do not linger and do not speak to anyone, for I want us to be rid of this Circle as quickly as possible. If you knew how tough it is to clean excrement from baby seal fur, then you would understand.”

  God-Art yanked on Drillbot’s fiery leash and led him down the winding path at nearly a sprint. Drillbot almost immediately caught a clump of excrement in the face. He frowned. God-Art glanced over his shoulder, tugged on the leash to move faster, and said with a smirk, “Hmm, looks like that cloud must have had corn for dinner!”

  Drillbot glanced down and realized that covering every square inch of the valley on both sides of the path were men and women who wallowed on the ground. They were chained to stakes so that they could not escape, and their mouths were tied open with ropes so that they could not close them as the torrential downpour of excrement rained upon them. The path that traversed this Circle of Hell was elevated above the bound souls so that the damned souls did not block the way through.

  God-Art turned a relatively sharp bend in the path up ahead and his heel slipped on a freshly-fallen clod of excrement. He slid from the path, but he yanked hard on Drillbot’s leash to stop his momentum before he could slide all the way down atop a pile of writhing, gluttonous men and women. He dug in with his heels and pulled on Drillbot’s leash in order to drag himself back up onto the elevated path, cursing all the while and smearing excrement all over the back of his outfit.