Bad as I felt tonight, I needed to get out of my claustrophobic flat, so I dragged my sorry carcass down to a café of sorts I discovered recently on an idle walk. The place is just called Blue. I think any place in Oblivion that might call itself Hellishly Good, Devil’s Food, or something cute like that would be set upon by a very humorless mob.
It’s one large, gloomy, low-ceilinged room, with most of its light coming from gas jets burning inside open-topped glass globes, set into the rough stone walls. The odorless, hissing gas is blue…hence the aqueous glow to everything…hence the name of the establishment.
I’ve heard there are secret places in Oblivion—speakeasies, really—where you can buy rotgut, moonshine, whatever they choose to call the half-poisonous brews that are concocted in the black market’s stills. (Just as I’ve heard there are drugs to be had in Oblivion; but I was never much into those, even in life.) But Blue is right there open to the street, and so it doesn’t take chances. There are places where you can buy a steak made from one of those animals provided for the Neanderthals and such, and not from human flesh…but if one is caught eating or selling this meat, which is not intended for those of us who had the opportunity to be enlightened by the Creator’s only child, then one can be expected to be harshly punished. Being eaten alive by baboon Demons is, I understand, a typical response.
So in Blue, one eats human meat dishes (not me, though; I still haven’t given in to that and I hope I never will). There’s cool water to drink, brought into Oblivion from outside its borders via underground pipelines, I’ve learned. (It only rains lava, not water, in Oblivion, where there are no clouds above to cover the fiery sky.) There is an artfully concocted imitation coffee available that is almost as good as the worst decaf I have ever tasted, watery and weak and bitter, but hot and dark, at least. Much more successful is their hot mulled cider, which tastes like an instant brand I used to buy in life. Nowhere near actual mulled cider, but still nostalgically approximate. I enjoyed one tonight, letting its aromatic steam rise up into my face as if it might clear my sinuses, hunkered over my small sticky table in a cave-like stony corner.
The first time I’d come here, I’d found two musicians sitting on a scrap of stage, playing lovingly made lutes. Another patron told me the musicians had died centuries earlier. While they played, I saw a woman at a nearby table weeping softly.
Tonight there were no musicians. I had hoped to catch one of the jazz acts I’d heard about. I contented myself with chewing my salad, sipping my drink and eavesdropping on the conversations of those around me. I was comforted by the proximity of other people, by their laughter, by the atmosphere of near normalcy…but I had no desire to interact with any of these people on an intimate level. In life I had always been reserved, introverted, not unusual traits for a writer…but here, I am even more withdrawn. Traumatized, still. My soul dazed and stumbling even two months into eternity. At work I resist the efforts of several other laborers to draw me into friendship. But I’m not singular in this respect; the boisterous, guffawing sorts are definitely in the minority. Many of us shuffle through our days, smiling shadows of smiles at each other, if at all. The walking wounded.
I didn’t hear the door to the café open, but I did notice the sudden lull in conversation, the abrupt suppression of laughter, and this is what caused me to turn toward the entrance. In the threshold there was a Demon, and I recognized her appealing haircut like Louise Brooks in Lulu, short and glossy black with bangs hiding her eyebrows. She was the Demon I had seen with Chara back on, I think, Day 47, dragging a man out of his home…
And in fact, following Lulu through the door was Chara herself, her hair again cocooned behind her head in a thick braid as she had worn it that day.
Both female Demons wore nothing but a thick leather belt which supported a sheathed sword, Lulu’s apparently short and wide-bladed like a Roman infantryman’s gladius, and Chara’s longer, its straight blade more slender and no doubt double-edged, the tip of its scabbard almost scraping the floor.
But they weren’t arriving alone. Two Angels trailed them inside, the latter closing the door behind him. Now the place really got subdued.
One Angel had a white robe with a cowl which he had pushed back off his balding head; the other wore a white headdress with a conical peak. Neither had swords, as I had noticed on some of the bikers I’d seen arriving in town, but both had holstered pistols on their belts. Slung over his shoulder, the paunchy, balding one carried what looked like an Israeli Galil assault rifle, roughly like the AK-47, its hinged skeleton stock folded to make it more compact. The tall, lean one with the cone to make him even taller carried an MP5 Heckler & Koch submachine gun, with its distinctive short barrel and long magazine. Like just a few other Americans, in life I had an interest in guns; after all, I owned that nice Ithaca 12-gauge that had been my ticket to this place.
Looking at the one with the gut, then the tall one with his acne-cratered hollow cheeks, I thought it odd that Angels weren’t all transformed into Mel Gibson or Tom Cruise when they entered Heaven. I guess that even there, one has to make do with the literal replication of their living self. Then again, would the Creator really stock Heaven with the billions who die elderly and bed-ridden? Maybe, at least, they can choose the age they want to be restored at.
With a mix of surprise, disgust and something I couldn’t then admit to as jealousy, my first impression was that the two devils were escorting the Angels for a night on the town. I soon realized I was wrong.
"Hey, come on," the shorter man said, trying to take hold of the edge of one of Chara’s folded wings. "Why won’t you talk to me, missy?"
"Little butterflies flyin’ away," said the taller man. His Southern drawl was even more pronounced than his friend’s.
"Mm-mm," said the first, trailing the two women to a small table near the service counter. They pointedly chose one with only two chairs, not four. He hovered over them as they took their seats. "What do you prefer, Mr. Franklin?" he asked. "Wings, breasts or thighs?"
Chara finally lifted her eyes to the two tourists. Her deep voice was chilly but restrained. "You gentlemen might be interested in visiting the Aviary. It’s not far from here and it’s open all night…"
"We know what the Aviary is."
"Been there, done that," said Franklin, the tall one.
"What we haven’t done," the balding Angel went on, "is try somethin’ a little…spicier." And with this, he brazenly reached down and cupped one of Chara’s breasts in his hand. Tightly, it looked, from the way the soft flesh bulged between his fingers.
Chara took hold of his wrist and extricated his hand firmly but without inflicting pain. I could see the tendons standing out like supporting struts in her neck, and a vein raised on her forehead like my branded A. "If you boys don’t mind," she told him through her bared teeth, "we’d appreciate a little respect."
"Respect? Respect?" The Angel bulged his eyes at his friend in exaggerated shock. "An Angel should respect a Demon whore who struts her body around like she’s in a damn nudist camp? Do you hear what this thing’s sayin’, Mr. Franklin?"
"I think these devil-bitches ought to be treatin’ us with a lot more respect, Mr. Butler."
Butler leaned down into Chara’s geisha-white face. "You soulless little devils are just my Father’s wind-up toys, you know that? But Mr. Franklin and I, here, we’re His children. I don’t think you girls better be forgettin’ that."
Chara turned her face away, her jaw set, heavy lips composed in a surly pout.
"Do you hear me?" Butler persisted, like a father lecturing his child.
"Tell them to come with us, Mr. Butler," said the tall one.
"Do you hear what Mr. Franklin said? You’re my Father’s servants. That means you’re my servants. That means I order you two to come back to our hotel with us."
A waiter approached the table timidly, wondering if he should be taking orders. Franklin looked over at him with flat dead eyes. The waiter veered toward anot
her table instead.
"I’m gonna ask you for the last time," Butler spat, this time seizing Chara’s braid in his fist and jerking her head back to look up at him. "Do you hear what I’m sa—"
Then Chara was spinning around in her chair, striking Butler’s wrist with her own forearm, causing him to lose his grip on her hair.
"You fuckin’ bitch!" Butler cried, more startled than hurt, and taking an alarmed step back from her.
I saw his pudgy hand go for the pistol holstered on his hip…
Bolting up from my seat, I called out, "Leave them alone!"
If the café had become subdued before, it was frozen into a grotto full of statues now. Customers gaped at me from their tables and the bar at the counter. The two Angels, Butler and Franklin, stared at me as if dazed with horror. The two Demons, Chara and her partner, stared as well.
"What did you say?" Butler fumbled. "You…you aren’t sayin’ that to me, are you?"
"You’re going to get in trouble messing with them," I fumbled, but trying to keep my voice stern.
"Trouble? Trouble with who, you fuckin’ grave worm? I’m an Angel!" Butler’s squat face was flushing red. He ripped a Glock out of its holster so violently that it almost went spinning out of his hand, but a moment later it was pointing across the room at my face. "First I gotta put up with this whore’s attitude, and now I have to listen to a vermin like you talk to me that way?"
"Shoot that son of a bitch," hissed Franklin.
"Shooting him is too good for him. I’m takin’ this sucker down to the nearest torture plant myself, and I’m gonna make sure they never let him out of there. You hear that, devil lover?" Spittle was ejected from his mouth like venom. "They’re gonna have you in a meat grinder from now ’til doomsday!"
"It is doomsday," Chara said, rising from her chair and drawing her sword all in one graceful, fluid blur of white flesh, flashing white steel.
A whooshing arc. A solid thunk. A wet spatter across the floor, as the blade hewed through the Angel’s skull just above the eyebrows. The balding top of his skull thumped onto a neighboring table and rocked upside-down like a bowl.
"Fuck!" the lower part of Butler’s head blurted.
"Shit!" Franklin said, backing off fast and unslinging the Heckler & Koch from his shoulder.
Lulu, as I thought of her, shot up from her own chair, whisked her short sword out of its sheath and hurled it end over end at Butler. With a practiced throw, the heavy blade lodged itself into the center of the Angel’s chest, audibly cracking through his sternum. He stumbled back a few steps more with a terrible grunt.
Butler’s head was now a volcano, spewing red lava while more poured down its sides. Through this caul of gore his eyes blazed white with fury and pain. His gun hand had faltered, but it rose up again to aim at Chara.
But Chara hadn’t finished. Her blade hadn’t stopped soaring through the air, but instead continued in a smooth figure eight. From the backhand blow which had cleaved through the Angel’s skull, its momentum carried it around again in an upward, crosswise strike.
This time, the honed edge caught Butler squarely across his spongy neck. What remained of his head was hacked off its shoulders, and toppled backward into his cowl, which caught it like a guillotine’s wicker basket. Butler staggered, and managed to get off one shot that bored harmlessly into the floor, before he crumpled.
My eyes flicked back and forth between the two bloody Angels as I half-crouched behind my table.
Franklin had already straightened up from the impact of Lulu’s lightning fast response. Though the sword jutted out of his chest, he hadn’t even lost his peaked hat. Now Lulu was unarmed. Now his eyes had that flat, dead look again as he tucked the submachine gun’s stock up against his cheek.
Her wings half-opening, so that she descended on him like a raging dragon, Lulu lunged at the former human, actually began to bat the gun’s muzzle to one side and reach a powerful hand to his throat even as Franklin pulled the trigger.
The chattering burst of gunfire was crisp and deafening, jackhammers in my ears in this enclosed room. Meant to bore straight through her center, Lulu’s swiping hand caused the blast to instead stitch across the side of her chest…but I still saw several exit wounds wink open in her back, one of the slugs tearing a hole through the membrane of her wing.
I learned Lulu’s actual name when Chara roared, "Verdelet!"
Verdelet was spun half around by the impact, yet still remained on her feet.
Franklin was free to raise the gun to his shoulder once again, as if resighting on a wild turkey.
Chara descended with her sword rising. Her wings half-opened, as well, like a ragged cape billowing behind her.
The second short blast of automatic fire, with nothing to impede it, struck Verdelet square in the face, and drilled out through the back of her skull in a leaping expulsion of blood and bone shrapnel. Gobs of tissue, clotted with hair, splatted onto surrounding tables.
And just a microsecond later, Chara’s sword hummed through the air, struck Franklin in the top of his skull (his dunce cap causing no resistance) and split his head so far down the center that, had it traveled just a few inches lower, it would have struck Verdelet’s blade, still wedged in his breastbone.
Franklin fell. I thought I saw one of his eyes, in its bisected half of a head, roll to look up at Chara as she positioned herself over him and swung her weapon again. She whacked him across his cloven throat, disconnecting the torn head from its shoulders before the two halves could fuse back together. Usually in a beheading, as in Caroline’s case, it is the head that regenerates and the body which rots…but in a case like my own, and with these two Angels who’d had their skulls decimated, the body would resurrect instead. Even now I saw Butler’s hands closing and unclosing as he lay there on the floor. I knew that Angels regenerated at least twice as quickly as the Damned did. I swore I could hear a liquid rustling or stirring from Butler as a new head was preparing to grow from the lengthening stump of his neck. My only consolation was that Angels could suffer the excruciating agony of reanimation as well, since they retained all earthly sensation, the better to enjoy sex and drink and food, and pain was an incentive to succeed in their war campaigns in Hell.
Only Chara and I remained standing, and we were both looking down at Verdelet. Her face was lost, chiseled away to a raw pit, black blood pooling beneath her. The Demons could withstand wounds that would kill a mortal man, as Chara herself proved, but this damage was too extreme. Despite her immense strength, in this way I was superior to the demonic warrior, this fallen angel. Verdelet was dead.
Around me I heard Blue emptying, as its terrified patrons scattered to the street. I won’t quip there would be hell to pay for this unthinkable altercation with two vacationing Angels.
Chara and I lifted our eyes to each other. The pain and loss in her face was almost heart-breaking, but the fearsome hate mixed in with it tempered my pity with wariness.
"Go!" she hissed at me.
"You’d better go, too," I said.
She kicked Butler’s dropped Glock, causing it to skitter to a stop near my foot.
"Go," she repeated.
I held her gaze a moment longer, then knelt down to scoop up the pistol. I tucked it under my waistband and covered the handle with the tail of my shirt. While I was down there I jerked Franklin’s handgun out of its holster, and shoved that in the back of my pants. When I straightened, I saw that Chara had sheathed her sword, and was recovering the Heckler & Koch from the floor.
The wet, unpleasant sounds were more insistent now from Butler’s carcass, and beginning with Franklin’s as well. There was a knot or lump of tissue on Butler’s shoulders, the glistening red ball of an embryonic head affixed to an adult’s body. The hands of both bodies were clenching, flexing, and the legs had begun to slowly pedal and writhe. Butler appeared as though he were gathering himself up to rise to his feet…
"Now!" Chara ordered me, gesturing with the gun toward the do
or.
"Come see me!" I told her.
"Why?"
"So we can talk about this! I live…"
"I know where you live," she said, positioning herself in a broad stance over Butler and aiming the submachine gun at his burgeoning head. "Get out of here!"
This time I obeyed, crossing the empty café to its gaping door. This time I didn’t look back, even when I heard the bellow of automatic fire as Chara took out her frustrations and bought me time to escape. I heard one long discharge, and then another as she switched her attention to Franklin. Even when I was a block away I heard the sputter of gunfire. I was sure that Chara had emptied the long magazine of the Heckler & Koch, and had switched to the Galil, emptying that weapon into the two Angels as well, to make the process of their reanimation as drawn-out and painful as possible. The distant echoing patter of fire made me feel as though I were in a city at war.
Day 65.
I half expected Chara to come see me last night, late, after the furor had died down a bit. She didn’t. I suppose it was foolish to think that she might…
Letters From Hades Page 10
