Letters From Hades

by Jeffrey Thomas

  My wife Patricia, who I called Patty, was lying on an unfamiliar sofa, and behind her head I could see a section of a Christmas tree which sent its mix of pastel light across her face like sunlight through a conventional stained glass window. Lying atop my wife was her coworker Keith, now her boyfriend. She had on a red nightshirt with a cute snowman on the front, hiked up around her waist, while Keith’s sweat pants were pushed down far enough for me to have to watch, hypnotically, his colorless and stubbled buttocks which pulsed rhythmically as if they were the very heart of him. Every detail of this lingering scene (did Keith have a lot of stamina or was I watching an endless loop?) etched itself with increasing sharpness, branding my inner head more forcefully than my outer head had been marked, until I noticed that one of Patty’s green socks with their candy cane patterns had a thread hanging loose, and that Keith was trying not to be too conspicuous about peeking at the TV, which was out of frame but evident in the blue glow reflected softly on his profile, leaving me to wonder if a sports program or a porno was on (I doubted it was a National Geographic special or A Room With A View).

  From my room with a view, I watched as Keith’s pulsations mounted, deepened, and Patty seemed to be moaning though there was no accompanying soundtrack. But as Keith ground his orgasm into her, and Patty’s fists squeezed the folds of his sweatshirt, I didn’t avert or close my eyes. While perhaps my subconscious mind had told my captors that this was the type of scene that would most torment me, in fact it stirred only a small degree of loss and anger in me. To mourn the loss of Patty now felt to me like resenting someone for removing a steak dinner from under my nose and then revealing to me a dead mouse buried in the mashed potatoes; I should be grateful for the revelation. I couldn’t hate these two. They were pathetic, as I was in life. Sad, rooting little things, hungry and greedy, scared and discontented, squirming in their nest. I had lusted after other women when I was married. I might have cheated on Patty first had an inviting enough opportunity come along. I was not purer, less sullied by much.

  But there were two greater reasons that I was fairly unmoved by the scene. For one, the suffering I had experienced in Hell had taken the edge off this torture, which once would have had me bawling. And, most importantly of all, I was in love with another woman now.

  I blinked involuntarily, and in the space of that blink the scene changed. This scene was more painful, and this time I did feel more of an ache at the loss of my wife. Because at this time, we had been a couple, and sharing a great suffering. We were in the waiting room of a clinic. We were waiting for the test that would confirm what we already knew…that Patty had had a miscarriage.

  I remembered—no, I felt again—the anger, more than anything else. The resentment that these other women around us were still pregnant, had not had their dreams crumpled like paper, too. That teenage girls were getting pregnant, getting abortions, even while we sat there, despairing. We had planned this baby. But the Creator had apparently had other plans, just to remind us of who really pulled the strings.

  Another scene; my father’s funeral. He was wasted and withered like a mummified gnome in his coffin, with his red plaid tam-o’-shanter on his head and, because he no longer had a nice suit coat, wearing my russet corduroy jacket he had helped me pick out to wear to my cousin’s wedding when I was a teenager. Worse, I saw my poor, small, wilted mother, dazed in the funeral parlor as if embalmed while still alive. Suddenly I had a great terror of seeing my own funeral, of seeing my mother in that funeral parlor. I mustn’t think about it, lest my captors seize upon the idea! That scene I would have to look away from, in guilt. The agony I had inflicted on the woman who had brought me into this world, who had already suffered the loss of her husband, the loss of her unborn grandchild. How selfish I had been, how blinded by my own petty concerns. I thought, then, that if they showed me moping over my fat file of rejection slips for my writing, I would die all over again out of sheer embarrassment.

  But the sequence of scenes appeared to be in reverse chronology. I saw my old dog Tippy die in my arms by lethal injection. I hadn’t cried at my father’s funeral, but watching Tippy die when I was ten years younger and ten years less hardened to the world made me feel that young again, and tears started to film my eyes. I couldn’t wipe them away and the next few scenes were somewhat blurred.

  One of the last scenes I watched was curious to me because of its subtlety when compared to the more conspicuously dramatic ones.

  I was in third grade, in art class, and a pretty young woman who was substituting while our regular teacher was on maternity leave had us making cards out of colored construction paper to give to our mothers for Mother’s Day. We were instructed to put glue on the back of the central overlay for the card, and then approach the front of the room so the teacher could position it for us on the card itself. She told us not to put too much glue on the top layer; just dots here and there. I suppose I didn’t think that was really going to be enough to hold, however, and I put on a more liberal amount…so that when I approached the front of the room, the substitute snapped, "I told you not to use too much glue." And in disgust, she slapped my glued section onto the card, so that it was blatantly crooked.

  I remembered clearly my dismay as I looked down on this card that I was supposed to give to my mother as a gift. But just like when my child was miscarried, my sadness at that moment was secondary to my anger. It was anger at a kind of injustice. I knew that my crime, of squirting a little too much glue on a Mother’s Day card, was of less significance than the reaction of an adult woman who should be so moved to contempt by so simple an act of a child. It was as if I suddenly realized how small even grownups were, filled up with their anxieties and failures and resentments so that they’d rather inflict those feelings on others than see to it that no one else suffers as they have. I felt a precursor of the injustice I’m experiencing now, again from my supposed betters. I did not feel shame, however. I did not feel regret. I knew then, as I do now, that I was unfairly judged, unfairly treated. But it obviously stuck with me, this small, seemingly forgotten incident. Because it wasn’t about someone beating me, cheating on me, abandoning me. It was one of the smallest but most numerous pieces of the mosaic of the Hell we live when we’re still alive.

  I remembered trying to pry the card apart so I could reglue it properly. In the end, I threw it away before I left school…and when I went home, I recreated it as best I could with my own construction paper and glue. It wasn’t crooked, at least. And my mother loved it. It was a triumphant feeling, in a small way. Like a tiny act of defiance that doesn’t undo the incident, but at least preserves some sense of dignity, balances out the injustice ever so slightly. It’s all that we can really hope to achieve, in either version of Hell.

  My tears had dried by the time the Demon returned to unstrap me from the chair. I felt the spirit of defiance in me still, and wanted to tell him to give me a bucket of popcorn next time…but I didn’t want him to strap me in again for a second feature. Maybe my own funeral, this time, after all.

  Not really sure just how long I had been inside it, I left the Black Cathedral…and I was not interrupted again on my way home to my hotel.

  But Chara was not waiting for me there.

  Day 73.

  When I first heard the close gunfire, I thought the Angel motorcyclists still hadn’t left Oblivion, were still hanging around until Chara could be caught and brought to justice. But when I went to my window and looked down into the street, I saw a furtive figure run by on foot, apparently with a rifle or shotgun in his hands. He wasn’t wearing white robes. He had to be one of the armed, rebel Damned…

  In the distance, now that I was close to the window, I detected more gunfire; either rattles of automatic fire or crackling individual shots. And then, a flat heavy thud made my window, already trembling from the vibrations of the machine building, shudder more deeply. It had to have been an explosion.

  On the tail of this thud there rose from the city a terrible ulul
ation, that sounded like a perfectly synchronized chorus of children wailing in fear or agony. It took me a few minutes to realize that these were the voices of the pumpkin-like Overseers, in their six towers along the boundaries of the city, calling out a siren-like alert. It was pretty ghastly. It kept up for a good fives minutes, during which time I think every synthetic cell of my body squirmed.

  As I sat penning a formal proposal to Necropolitan Press, in the hopes that they might publish these memoirs, I heard more gunfire shift and spread through the city, and occasionally there were more of those heavy thuds…one so loud and rumbling that I actually felt my floor quiver. Even had the Overseers given no warning, there was no question now what was happening…

  The force of Celestials had arrived in Oblivion, to do away with its untrustworthy Demon population. To squelch the rebel movement. To put the whole town back in order.

  "What’s going to happen to Chara?" I asked Lyre, who gazed up at me dolefully. And what would happen to me? Could Inspector Turner really be trusted not to send Celestials here to arrest me, and spirit me away to tortures that would make everything I had yet experienced pale in comparison?

  As the hours passed, and I paced the flat, unable to concentrate on my query letter for long, I eventually grew restless enough to descend to the street and take a better look at what was going on in my local vicinity, my view from the window being so limited by the machine building.

  I smelled smoke in the air, straight off. And the crack of gunfire was more sharp, distinct. I even heard far-off screams and shouts. Not much different from any time in Oblivion, really, but there was a subaural hum in the air, a vibration, as one might feel before an encroaching tornado…ominous forces building…

  Concealed on my person, under my coat, were my two pistols, but they were not much comfort against this awareness that the city around me was becoming a battleground. Tilting my head back, I stared at the roiling molten sky, that hole in the clouded heavens like a vast red eye glaring directly down on Oblivion. The ruddy glow reflected on the upper face of the soaring machine building. The hateful, blood-soaked eye of the Creator, not so much frowning on the violence below but thriving on it, lusting for the endless wars and jihads. I wanted to pull my useless little pistols out of my waistband and fire them straight up into that lake of fire.

  Then I heard the motorcycles coming.

  So they hadn’t left town. And here they came now, just two of the Angels, driving side by side up the road on their heavy bikes, each bike dragging a length of chain, and the ends of both chains hooked through the wings of a male Demon. His flesh was torn, shredded to the bone by the cobblestones, and he flopped brokenly, probably already dead. Though my own kind without number might have been tortured by that very Demon, I still felt the strong urge to whip out both my guns and fire them into the backs of the Angels who dragged the creature after them. Instead, I watched them roar down the street and turn the corner out of sight.

  Then, from around that corner, there immediately came a deafening fusillade of machine gun fire. There were chaotic sounds…shouts…cries…and it seemed to me from the commotion that both motorcycles had crashed.

  I was just deciding I’d best get myself back inside when I saw one of the two Angels running around the corner and directly at me, his peaked hat missing and his robes splashed with lurid gore. There was fear in his jowly face, and a moment later the reason was revealed, as a half dozen Demon warriors tore around the corner after him, their wings thrust wide, most of them with swords upraised but two of them with MAC-10 machine pistols. Though they could not kill him, the thought of being set upon by the savage pack rightfully had him in a panic.

  The Angel locked eyes with me. Seemed to be running right to me as if I might help him. I saw a shaven-headed female Demon begin to level her MAC-10 on him as she ran, but several of her sword-wielding comrades were ahead of her and blocking a clear shot.

  This time I followed my impulse, slipped the Glock out of my waistband, and began shooting the Angel again and again. It was as if he threw himself onto my bullets, impaling himself on them in his frenzied momentum.

  The projectiles, as they thunked into him, made him jolt awkwardly, horribly, as if he had dropped to the end of a gallows rope. He spun down onto the ground, and then the first two Demons were upon him with their swords.

  However, one of my bullets had either gone straight through the Angel or missed him entirely, and pierced the wing of one of the sword-wielding Demons. With a bellow of pain, he bounded past the fallen Angel and straight at me, his blade held high for a blow that might split me down the center. I shifted my pistol to point at him, now…

  "Cresil, no!" the shorn-headed female shrieked. "Not him!"

  The Demon Cresil faltered, skidded to a halt, but didn’t dare take his eyes off me.

  "Don’t," I told him. "You have more to lose than I have!"

  The female with the MAC-10 ran up beside him. She lifted her chin a little and seemed to sniff the air. "He’s Chara’s friend."

  "All the more reason to cleave him," the powerfully muscled male rumbled, like a wolf growling deep in its throat. "He’s the cause of all this. Both he and Chara…"

  "Chara is our sister. Remember that."

  "Where is Chara?" I demanded, still not lowering my gun.

  "Maybe alive, maybe dead," Cresil snarled. "All of us Demons might be dead, soon, thanks to you! But what do you care, who cannot die?"

  I looked past these two, and saw that the remainder of the demonic pack had chopped both of the cyclists into various barely human chunks, which they carried or dragged behind them. They also had more guns, now, stolen off their victims. They had dismembered the Angels with such passion that one of them had broken his sword’s blade against the cobblestones. I nodded at the soaked bundles they bore. "What’s the use? They’ll just grow back."

  "They’ll grow back in a cell to which only we have the keys. And we’ll lose the keys," said Cresil. He grinned ferally. "If I had my way, I’d chop you up and throw you in the same hole with them. There are cells in this city that only we know of…and these two may never be found…"

  "Come on," the female urged, "before they regenerate in our arms, or the Celestials come…"

  Cresil thrust his face close to me. "You look familiar. Didn’t some friends and I rape you in the street once? Before even your deluded friend had you?"

  "You wish," I muttered.

  His hand shot out to grab my neck but his wrist was seized by the female, who was even faster. "Cresil, there’s no time!"

  "You see how he divides us?" he choked.

  "Look around you, Cresil. We’re already divided. Things are changing. If that’s possible…"

  "My feelings for these fleshlings will never change," Cresil said through gritted teeth, but he allowed the female to pull him away by the arm.

  "If you see Chara, tell her I’m waiting here for her!" I yelled after the creatures as they whirled and began to flee, like bats bursting into flight.

  "If I see her I’d just as soon kill her myself!" bellowed Cresil, but he was gone before I could protest.

  Before more Angels might come in search of their buddies, I got myself swiftly back inside the hotel.

  Later.

  A detonation, very near, woke me from the doze I’d fallen into. From my window I saw nothing unusual but a haze of drifting smoke. Gunfire still stitched the town around me. Were shells being fired by one of the battling factions, or were these explosions simply provided by improvised Molotov cocktails?

  I was about to leave the window when an earthquake began to shake my shabby little flat, causing Lyre to slip off the edge of the bed and me to grip the window’s frame for support. An immense rumbling, sounding as if a multi-stage rocket were preparing to launch itself from right across the street.

  It was the machine building, I realized, and it wasn’t about to launch into space…but had begun to sink down into the ground. At first I thought the explosion I’d
heard had brought the great structure down, but I realized it was lowering itself ponderously into some incredibly deep chamber or silo beneath it. Along with the rumbling was the screeching of metal, as ear-rending as the arrival of the Black Cathedral had been.

  Since I had no idea of the function(s) of the apparently fully automated machine building (I had never seen workers come or go, unless they were kept constantly prisoner inside it), I couldn’t really guess what it was up to now. I could only assume that it was protecting itself, as the violence around it began to escalate.

  A loud knocking on my door turned my attention from the window. I scooped up one of my pistols, and took only a single step closer to the door.

  "Who is it?" I yelled.

  "Who do you think?" barked a familiar, strong voice.

  I rushed to the door, swept it open. Chara was there, with a second Demon lingering tensely behind her. She was shiny with sweat, plaster dust sticking to her slick legs, and a wound on one shoulder was crusted thickly with half-congealed black blood. Her hair was in the single thick braid she favored, while the male Demon accompanying her wore his hair in a topknot like a samurai. Both had shotguns in their hands, presumably stolen either from Angels or Celestials.

  "What took you so long?" I fumed in relief.

  "You’ll see in a minute. Are you ready to leave town?"

  "Leave? Right this minute?"

  "Well you’ve had time to pack, haven’t you? You just complained about the time you waited. Grab what you need…hurry."