“Go ahead,” I said. “You’ll never see your box again.”
She pointed at me, and the Ammit padded forward. Its jaws yawed open, sending ripples through its black mane. On its breath, I could smell a jumble of scents similar to those the Torments had given off on the first night at the clearing. I was breathing in the remnants of the sins of the devoured. I gagged but put the cigarette to my lips, concentrating on not letting it shake, and blew smoke down the beast’s throat. It didn’t flinch. Nor did I.
“Last chance,” Laureen said, her voice tight.
Sitting and waiting it out was too passive, too much the act of a woman paralyzed by fear. I had to take the initiative and show her I wouldn’t falter. “I’ve always wanted to be a lion tamer. This is only part lion, I suppose, but it’s the best chance I’ll get.”
Straining against my fear-soaked muscles, I leaned forward and inserted my head into the Ammit’s mouth. An incisor scraped against my cheek, opening the skin. Blood dropped onto its tongue. A rumble vibrated deep in its body. The back of its throat opened up with a glottal click. Air rushed past my ears as though a door had been opened onto a vacuum. My buttocks left the sofa as my head slid toward the blackness of its throat. I kept thinking Laureen would call it off, but she said nothing. Its tongue hooked under my chin, smooth and sickeningly ticklish. The creature was preparing to reel me in—its tongue the hook, me the helpless, flopping fish. My heart hammered against my ribs, trying to get as many beats in as possible before it was stilled forever. Still Laureen said nothing. It occurred to me that maybe she wasn’t bluffing, that maybe my misfiring instinct had led me astray again. I thought of how, if this thing did swallow me, Danny would come charging in to the rescue and go the same way as me. In an instant, my resistance collapsed. My arms were already moving to grasp the side of the Ammit’s head and fight its pull, my mouth opening to promise to give up the box, when the creature’s throat closed. It spat me out like a half-chewed peanut.
I collapsed onto the sofa, every bone in my body turned to jelly. The Ammit stepped back, closing its jaws with a snap.
Laureen cocked her head and looked at me with something close to admiration. “You are one crazy bitch,” she said.
She waved her hand, and the Ammit padded out of the room, showing no signs of resentment at having to give up its snack. The weight lifted from the air, and the room appeared brighter again.
“Fine, you’re not going to cave,” she said. “What do you want? Better pay? Were you here looking for something to hold over me? I assumed you were above that kind of cheap tactic.”
I smoked the remainder of my cigarette through the misshapen filter in three long draws, brushed the ash from the armrest, and placed the butt tip up on the floor—buying myself time to gather my ragged composure. Yes, I wanted better pay, but now wasn’t the time to ask. “I came here for information. The Oblivion Box. Tell me about it.”
She tucked her chin in and frowned. “The what now?”
“Your box. The Oblivion Box.”
“Have you been reading comic books? It doesn’t have a name, let alone something so cheesy.”
“Play it that way if you want. Let me tell you what I heard, and you can let me know if I’m getting warm. There’s something very bad inside that box, something that will swallow the world the way your mutt swallows souls. Satan isn’t coming to town to check up on you. He’s coming because it’s time to open it.”
She stared at me, an incredulous smile on her lips. “Open it? Why would we do that?”
“Because you’re a demon. You want to destroy God’s creations.”
“And put myself out of a job? I’m here because of the human world.”
“Yes, and you hate it. Look at what you do to us down here, the way you delight in torture, the end you have in store for all of us. Forgive me for suspecting you may be a little evil.”
Laureen sighed. “Ah, to not be misunderstood. You think I want to destroy the world? The world I visit on holiday every year to dip my toes in the warm Mediterranean, drink sumptuous red wine, indulge in the tweaking of luscious Italian waiter buttocks, and be pampered head to toe in luxurious spas? You think I’d like to destroy all that and instead squat down here in this grotty sandbox with you lot without a break?”
“That’s right,” I said. The already forced conviction faded from my voice in face of the list of happy pursuits she enjoyed upstairs and the memory of all the books she’d collected.
“But you’re here anyway, trying to convince yourself otherwise, which means you have doubts about your theory. You’re hoping you can still give the box back and get your payment.”
I let silence answer for me. She had me pegged. I was being selfish, and I knew it. I shouldn’t have taken the chance, should already have done whatever was necessary to keep the box out of any hands that might open it. Yet here I was, risking the lives of billions of people to chisel out a better life for Danny and me. The sad fact, though, was that most people would have done the same in my place. Grand gestures were for Hollywood, which shone a light on the best of humanity so we could goggle at the screen and pretend we were better than we really were. Hrag’s flicks were a more accurate depiction of human existence.
“Well, since I’m so evil, I suppose I could torture you into giving it up,” she said when it became apparent that I wasn’t going to say anything. “I’ve got a lovely set of Victorinox kitchen knives. Great for chopping carrots—would do just as well for fingers. Would that work?”
“No,” I said, even though she was clearly messing with me—which again didn’t suggest she was a powerful force for evil whose plan to end the world had just been uncovered. “Convince me I’m wrong, and you’ll get it back. That’s the only way.”
“Just as well. I hate torture. It’s messy, noisy, and gets bodily fluids all over the rug, which you correctly surmised I’m very fond of.” She tapped her teeth, then abruptly crossed to the drinks cabinet and filled two crystal glasses with what looked like very expensive brandy. She handed one to me and clinked the glasses together. “I don’t normally bring out the good stuff for housebreakers, but you’re going to need to fortify yourself. Bottoms up.”
She gulped half the glass in one. I allowed a tiny splash of the nectar to caress my lips. She sat down beside me and poked me on the shin with the tip of her elegant leather boots.
“You, my misguided little cherub, have got the wrong end of an infinitely long and endlessly complicated stick,” she said. “First things first, my pet peeve: we’re not the bad guys. You are. Every single soul in Lost Angeles is here for one reason only. You all broke one of God’s unbreakable laws—in plenty of cases many of them, on multiple occasions, with malice aforethought and gay abandon.”
She paused. Perhaps she wanted to give me time to respond, to argue that we weren’t all prime examples of assholery. More likely she wanted her barb to sting long enough for me to feel its truth.
“Tell me,” she continued, “do you consider a police officer a bad guy? A prison warden? That’s what we are, nothing more. God created everything, including this place. There are no demons and angels, dark side and light side. We all work for the big cheese—whether we’re stuck down here with you filthy lot, poncing around in Heaven having a jolly old time hillwalking and singing around campfires, or keeping an eye on things up on Earth. Even Satan is an employee, albeit a senior one. He does what he’s told.”
“You’re telling me God created this place?”
“Like I said, he created everything, including the grotty bits. It’s simple, but I’ll say it slowly so your dim brain can grasp the concept. God gave people free will, so he also had to give them consequences for their actions. Hence Hell.”
“What about the religious literature? The Fall, the antichrist, demons battling God and beavering away to corrupt humanity?”
She shrugged. “All stories. Some we told you, some you told yourselves. Yes, way back through the mists of time, Hell used to se
nd up the beasts to frighten the humans. After a while, it wasn’t necessary. Belief systems became entrenched and took on a life of their own, and you developed systems of governance and punishment to keep yourselves in line—up to a point. And your imaginations invented far worse depictions of the afterlife for bad people than we could manage. That isn’t to say Hell wasn’t more unpleasant in the past. There may have been some fire and brimstone and the occasional application of pitchfork to bum. But it didn’t work. Constant punishment corrupted the souls even more. So we changed our approach, became more modern. We set up cities like this one.”
“There’s more than one city?”
“Of course. There are seven billion people up on Earth now, and plenty of them are naughty buggers. We couldn’t fit all the sinners in here. There are dozens of other rehab facilities.”
“Hold on a minute. You torment us every night. You feed people to your pet Egyptian monster. You let everybody run around killing each other, gambling, taking drugs, having perverted sex, and generally being unfettered assholes. How is that rehab?”
“If God had wanted humanity to be mindless, well-behaved automatons, he wouldn’t have created sin in the first place. He wants you to choose to be good. Doing the right thing is easy, meaningless when it’s the only option. Dump an alcoholic on a desert island, and he’ll kick the booze all right. Stick him in a free bar at a wedding, and you’ll soon see how strong his character is. That’s what we do here. We give you every opportunity for depravity. At the same time, the Torment reminds you of the consequences of indulgence. We leave the rest up to you. The only way we can know a sinner is redeemed is when she does the right thing in the face of a thousand temptations.”
“Have you looked around this city, or do you spend all your time up here sunbathing? I live my life on the streets. I don’t see many people doing the right thing.”
“You’re not looking hard enough. Your line of work takes you amongst the worst of the worst. Plenty of people go quietly about their lives without wallowing in the muck. Plenty of people reform.”
“Like the Penitents?”
“Hell, no. Sure, they run around being all charitable, but only because they think it’ll get them off the hook. It doesn’t count if you’re doing it to get points in the credit column. Beside, they’re a bunch of hypocrites. After the day’s good works are done, most of them are down at the brothels, justifying the shagging by telling themselves it keeps the prostitutes in a job. But plenty of other souls have proved they’re ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“The next step.”
“And that would be?”
“Reincarnation, for the most part.”
The conversation had been getting increasingly more outlandish, but suddenly I wanted to believe every word coming out of her mouth. If she were telling the truth, Enitan had been right. There was a way out of Lost Angeles. I blinked and shook my head, trying not to get sucked in. I’d seen the monster devouring sinners, which didn’t sit comfortably with her explanation. “And what about the Ammit?”
She held out her hands, palms up. “A lot of souls can’t be saved, no matter how long we give them. Consider it the death penalty.”
“I’ve seen the dust devils. That’s way worse than death.”
“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think they’re aware. The Ammit draws nourishment from the untainted parts of the souls. The rest is, if you’ll forgive the crudity, shat out. The dust devils are the corrupted fragments of a devoured soul, nothing more.”
“If you want to rehabilitate people, why don’t you tell them there’s a reward for behaving themselves? Or tell them the Ammit’s waiting for them if they don’t shape up? Apart from the Penitents, everybody thinks they’re down here forever. Why do you think lifers upstairs go around shivving other prisoners for farting in the showers? They’ve got no motivation to behave.”
“Every one of you had the carrot-and-stick model to follow up on Earth. You still ended up here. Actions have consequences, but people are expert at convincing themselves they don’t. That’s why smokers smoke, killers kill, and husbands and wives cheat; they genuinely believe they won’t get lung cancer, end up in jail, or get caught with their pants down. Bad things only happen to other people until they happen to you, right?”
“So nobody believed it upstairs. But people here know. This whole place is one enormous awful consequence, for Christ’s sake. At least give them some ground rules.”
“Again, if we did that, they’d only be behaving themselves because they stood to profit. God wants people to be good for goodness’s sake. He’s basically Santa in a white robe. That’s why he has such a soft spot for well-behaved atheists. They don’t have damnation or salvation to egg them on. They do right by others because it’s the moral way to live, not because they’ve got one eye on the eternal reward. You had your chance upstairs, when you had all the guidance you could wish for. You didn’t take it.”
“It still doesn’t make any sense. You have everybody here locked into the day-to-day grind for survival. How can anybody aspire to be better when they have nothing to inspire them? No hope. No art. No development. Nothing to look forward to but another day in the thresher.”
Laureen’s face darkened. “Have you got a degree in sociology? It works. The sin’s the thing. Nothing else matters. Anyway, I don’t need to justify anything to you. I’m only telling you this so you understand how far off the mark you are and give me back my bloody box.”
She returned to the bar and poured herself another drink. She didn’t offer me one. Her tale was all fine and dandy, and like Franklin, she told it well, but it didn’t address the elephant in the room. “Since you mentioned the box, how does that fit in with your story? I’ve touched it. It spoke to me. Are you going to deny what’s in it?”
She kept her back to me, adding a splash of water to her drink. “No. It does indeed contain the end of the world. Mind, body, and soul. Nothing survives.”
“How does it work?”
“That knowledge is above my pay grade. God created it. Maybe it contains what scientists these days call strange matter. Given the right conditions and charge, a tiny ball would eat up the whole world. Maybe it’s a mini–black hole. Maybe it’s a mind-bogglingly vast pan-dimensional hamster that will nibble the Earth to death. I haven’t looked inside to find out since opening it would, you know, destroy everything. I’d rather that didn’t happen.”
“But why would God create something that would trash all his work?”
“Why would a writer throw out the draft of a book? A painter crumple up a canvas? It’s a delete button, a cosmic bin. When God decides the human experiment is a washout, we’ll open it.”
“And isn’t that now? The way I understand it, the world’s an unholy mess.”
She sat down again and rolled the glass over her forehead. “Do you ever run out of questions? The world’s getting better, not worse. The Middle Ages were rancid. Black death, black teeth, and brutish rulers. And today’s conflicts are nothing compared to the First or Second World Wars. Between them, those two babies killed almost a hundred million people. The Cold War’s done, the threat of nuclear apocalypse has receded, living standards are rising, and people are generally a lot more pleasant to each other, even taking into account all the localized conflicts and terrorists running around. We’ve got a whole stats department tracking everything, you know. The difference now is the age of instant communication; everybody’s hunched over their gadgets, drinking up every last slurp of bad news. Makes it seem like the world is falling apart.”
My head was buzzing from the info dump. I was already way beyond the point where I could attempt to make sense of what she’d told me and come to a conclusion. I needed to distill it to the one point that really mattered. “So you’re telling me everything’s hunky-dory and you don’t intend to open the box?”
“Maybe it’ll happen one day, but it isn’t my decision. As far as I’m aware, God has zero p
lans to do it now. I don’t foresee that changing for a very long time.”
“So why are you desperate to get it back?”
“Wouldn’t you be pooping your pants if you’d lost something your boss had entrusted to your care? Mr. Stanton is coming in a few days, and if I don’t have it, I’m buggered. I’d prefer not to spend the next few hundred years cleaning out the lavs.” She drained her drink. “Seriously, where’s this nonsense coming from?”
“I spoke to the Administrator who arranged for the box to be stolen. He says he’s an angel, that he infiltrated Hell to steal the box and stop you from destroying the world.”
This time she laughed out loud. “Spy angels? That’s ridiculous.”
“No more ridiculous than what you’ve told me. He spun a convincing yarn.”
“He knitted the wool over your eyes, more like. What’s his name? What does he look like?”
“I’m not ready to tell you.”
Laureen curled her lip. “Remind me again why I hired you. You’ve been fed a healthy dose of bobbins so you’ll give up the box. If I were you, I’d be more worried about what he’s going to do with it.”
We sat in blessed silence as I digested both my brandy and what I’d heard. There were so many other questions I wanted to ask about Lost Angeles itself—why it had frozen in the fifties, how everything regenerated, where all the goods came from, why it was such a mix-up of different religious beliefs, if the place itself was even real or some kind of collective nightmare. But my tiny brain was already spluttering. Further information would have caused it to detach itself from my spinal column, clamber out of my ear, and throw itself into the Ammit’s mouth for a bit of peace and quiet. I took a deep breath and tried to filter out all the blah, to focus on the one thing that mattered: was Laureen telling the truth or not?
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