by Mark Cain
In front of us, a clutch of men and women was working at an even more frenetic pace than usual. Seeing the large, humpbacked monster in the middle, I knew why. “Dig!” it shouted. “Dig more! Dig faster! Dig, dig, dig!”
I recognized the voice. Digger.
Digger was a rather large and unusually shaped demon. He measured about fifteen feet, from horns to tail, and he was almost half as wide. Digger’s chest, arms and legs were powerfully muscled, and his hands and feet were shaped like big shovels. The demon was using them now, digging at the earth beneath him with speed, ferocity and enthusiasm. Ironic that Digger got as much joy from digging up sulfur as the humans around him got misery.
Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.
The human workers could not possibly keep up with Digger, but they worked as rapidly as desperation drove them. All but two, who were hanging on the fringe of the crowd, pretending to work hard, but not really digging up much of the yellow stuff, as evidenced by the relative whiteness of their coveralls as compared to those of their colleagues.
“Edison! Ford!” I said in a voice much louder than it needed to be. “Why aren’t you digging?”
“NOT DIGGING?” Digger howled, looking over to where a very guilty looking Thomas Alva Edison and Henry Ford stood. The other humans, coated in sweat-soaked sulfur, turned and stared. Their eyes narrowed in anger.
“NOT DIGGING?” Digger repeated then brought out a huge whip and thrashed Edison and Ford with it. I was impressed that the demon could even hold the whip with his shovel-hands.
After Digger finished beating them, Edison and Ford pulled themselves painfully off the ground. The bright red welts on their backs were already closing up, as was the fabric of their uniforms. “Thanks a bunch, Minion,” Ford groaned.
“Don’t mention it,” I said, and began to whistle.
“What Minion and assistant want here?” Digger asked, coiling his whip and attaching it to a belt at his waist.
“Lord Beelzebub has given me permission to borrow Mr. Edison for a while.”
The demon stared at me, slowly rocking his head from side to side, as if the motion would somehow shake the words he was hearing into synapses in his brain appropriate for comprehension. “Edison have quota. No can go.”
Orson piped in. “Perhaps Ford can take up the slack.”
“What?” Ford snapped. “I can barely meet my own quota.”
“At the rate you were working just now,” I opined, “I’d be surprised if you could ever get it done.”
Ford’s insult was too vulgar to transcribe here, but it involved some sulfur, a tamp, a lit match and my lowest bodily orifice. Pretty creative, all in all, but I wasn’t passing out gold stars. I merely said “Sticks and stones,” before turning back to Digger.
“Sorry, Mr. Digger, sir, but I’m working on a special project for Satan, and I need Edison to provide some backfill.”
Digger scratched his head. “Backfill?” he said, not comprehending. Then his eyes lit up. “Take sulfur. Use as backfill.”
What a moron.
What I said was, “Sorry, Digger. Different kind of backfill. I need a human who can work with Orson here to fix things around Hell while I’m working on Lord Satan’s project.”
Edison’s eyes lit up. “So, I’m going to be replacing you as Hell’s Super for a while?”
Orson and I had a jolly laugh together. “Not bloody likely,” Orson said. “You’re going to be replacing me. You’ll be my assistant.”
“You!” Edison sputtered. “Why, you’re even less competent than Minion here.”
“Bite me, BP.”
“And don’t call me that! I hate it when Minion does it, and I won’t have it from you as well.”
Digger interrupted. “Edison can’t go. Must dig. Dig, dig, dig!”
“Sorry, Digger, but these are Beezy’s, ah, Lord Beelzebub’s orders.” I handed him the memo Beezy had given me authorizing the temporary transfer. Digger could barely hold the tiny piece of paper. He turned it this way and that, eventually settling on staring at it upside down, with the print facing me instead of him. “Duh, okay. If boss’s boss say so.” The paper slipped from his grasp, and he turned away and began digging again.
“Dig! Dig! Dig! Dig!”
Boy, I see what Pinkerton meant. Digger really is dumb as a post, and some people say his boss, Adramelech, is even denser. There’s no way either one could have pulled this off.
“Why didn’t you choose me?” Ford asked.
“I didn’t choose. Orson did. Besides, I wouldn’t feel too slighted. I doubt your friend will have much fun working as Orson’s assistant. Now, Mr. Ford,” I said in a loud voice, “don’t you think you should start digging? Your fingernails look unusually clean to me!”
Digger’s head shot up from the impressive hole he’d made in the ground beneath him. Ford dove for the floor and started digging just as Digger’s whip caught him on the butt.
“Bastard!” Ford gasped, shooting me a look filled with venom.
While I was playing with Ford, Orson had been eying Edison. “Hmm. This won’t do. It won’t do at all.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s the color of his coveralls. They’re still white, the slacker. Ours are yellow, and we don’t have any spares.”
I nodded. “Good point. Do you have any ideas?”
“Well, I have one.” Orson tripped Edison. As the Wizard of Menlo Park lay sprawled on the ground, my assistant quickly stooped and started rolling him in the powdered sulfur that covered the soil near the dig site. When he was finished, Edison’s coveralls were a bright yellow.
“A little stinky,” Orson said, as he brushed the sulfurous residue from his hands, “but at least your uniform is the right color now. Now turn around.” He examined the HOTI acronym on the back of the coveralls. (The mining operation was part of Hell’s Office of the Interior, just as the Maintenance Department was.) With his sleeve, my assistant wiped the powder from the lettering. “It’s not perfect, but pretty close. What do you think?”
“That should do just fine,” I said, chuckling. “Let’s go.” The three of us headed outside, a grumbling Thomas Edison bringing up the rear.
BOOH was playing kick the can with an empty hand cart when we found him. “Sorry, pal,” I said, “but there are three of us, so I guess you’ll have to make two trips.”
The giant bat shrugged, then grabbed me and threw me on top of his shoulders. I managed to right myself, putting my knees on either side of BOOH’s ears. Then my batty friend grabbed Orson and Edison with his claws and took off.
I liked being on top.
Oh, I liked riding on BOOH’s shoulders too. It made me feel less like a piece of carrion. The only problem was I needed something to help with my balance. I grabbed for the most obvious.
“SKREE!”
“Okay, okay! I get it. Sorry. Not the ears.” I locked my fingers through some fur on either side of his ears.
“Urm.” I guess that’s okay.
We were back at the office in two shakes, and I determined that, BOOH willing, in future I’d travel on his shoulders when it was just the two of us. No more BatPassenger for me. Now I really was BatRider.
Chapter 11
When we got back to the office, I noticed the windows were blocked on the inside by piles of paper. Dismounting from BOOH’s shaggy shoulders, I snagged Orson by the arm and pointed.
“Just great,” he mumbled.
“Well, it is a cold day in Hell, ya know. Triage first, I’d advise.”
“Always a good strategy,” agreed my assistant, or rather, my temporary replacement. “Say, Edison!”
Edison was climbing painfully off the asphalt. BOOH had placed Orson delicately on the pavement, but Edison had not yet earned the giant bat’s consideration. I had a feeling he never would. The Wizard of Menlo Park seemed in a daze. Five minutes ago, he’d been dodging work down in the mines of the Sixth Level. Now he was an unwilling gophe
r in Hell’s Plant Maintenance Department.
“Edison!” Orson repeated, a little more insistently.
“Wha … what?”
“Head on into the office and see if any new work orders have come in.”
“Where would I find them?”
“Don’t worry,” Orson said, nonchalantly, as he scraped some sulfur off his sleeve. “They should be easy to spot.”
We’d never let BP inside our office before, so he had no idea how the work order system operated. Evidently, Orson was going to show no mercy to his new assistant. Edison took a deep breath and headed for the door. As if Orson had forgotten something, he called to the new guy. “Big Prick?”
The inventor’s eyes flashed. “Stop calling me that!”
“I’ll call you whatever I want. What year did you die?”
“Let’s see.” For some reason, all of us down here have a harder time recalling the year of our death than we do that of our birth. I guess it’s because birthdays and birth years are causes for celebration. Death days … not so much. “I think it was 1931. Why?”
Orson scratched his beard as he did a quick calculation. He smiled. “Four or five years too early. That means you never heard of Fibber McGee and Molly's hall closet on the radio. That’s good.”
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” Edison grumbled, turning the knob on our office door. It flew open as if springs had been on the door jamb, and an avalanche of papers tumbled on top of him.
Now, it’s mildly interesting that the door flew outward. It usually opened inward, as do most outside doors, but the Devil will never miss an opportunity to mete out a little punishment that also provides him with a little comic entertainment. He has no problem changing the rules on a moment’s notice if he can get a jolly out of it. Orson and I both know that, and my friend had clearly been banking on it. Smart guy.
As the door flew open, Bik shot out of the trailer and into my pocket protector. “Boy!” he gasped. “That was close. A few more seconds and I would have been forced to torch your office!”
I shrugged. “That might not have been so bad.”
Edison flailed helplessly against the work orders that had overwhelmed him. “Help! I’m drowning!”
“Only in paperwork,” Orson said, laughing. After he and I had a good yuck at Edison’s expense, Orson wiped the tears from his eyes. “This is going to be fun. I think I’ll call him my best boy.”
That’s the movie term for assistant, in case you didn’t know.
“I thought you hated that expression.”
Orson shook his head. “I don’t want to be called best boy. I prefer assistant, but I don’t mind using it with others. Besides, it’s nice and degrading, don’t you think?”
I whistled in admiration. “I think you may dislike Edison even more than I do.”
“Probably. I think you got a lot out of your system when you pushed him through the Mouth of Hell.”
I winced again at the memory. “Could we not talk about that anymore? I’m not exactly proud of my actions that day.”
Orson looked appraisingly at me. “O … okay.”
“And don’t be too hard on him. He’s your assistant now, and like I said before, he’s handier than both of us put together.”
“I know that. Should be interesting when he finds out he won’t be able to fix anything.”
“No doubt. Still, things might actually go fairly quickly with him. He should be able to figure out the fastest way to fix most anything.”
Orson nodded as he walked toward Edison, who was still struggling to get out from under the pile of papers that had overwhelmed him. “Yeah, but first I need to teach him our triage system.”
“Have fun,” I said, heading back over to BOOH, “but not too much fun.”
My friend looked in my direction, to find me pointing meaningfully toward the ground. “Right. Beelzebub wouldn’t like that very much, would he?”
“Neither would Satan.”
“Got it.”
“And don’t forget to write me and Beezy a memo about each completed work order.”
“Will do. Come on, best boy,” Orson said, grabbing Edison’s arm and pulling him out from under the avalanche of papers. “Let me show you how we prioritize our work here in the Plant Department.”
“Mmph!” Edison replied, then spat out the paper that had gotten lodged in his mouth. I grimaced. Those multipart forms were killer on the throat.
BOOH looked a little disappointed when I returned to where he was sitting on the pavement.
“Sorry, pal,” I said, patting his shoulder in sympathy. I had a pretty good idea what he was thinking about. “I can’t get at the blood bags right now. Orson and BP have to clear out a little paper first. I’ll get you one later, or maybe you’ll have time to hunt down some fresh blood while I take care of a little business.”
My batty friend raised an eyebrow.
“BOOH, I need to go see Asmodeus over in Lustland. Can you take me there?”
BOOH launched in the air and prepared to grab me with his hind claws.
“Do you think I could ride on your shoulders, instead? I liked it up there.”
BOOH shrugged - yes it was a shrug, that much of his body language I could tell, since it was a gesture he used so often - and settled back on the pavement. He flattened down a little and made mounting my trusty steed pretty easy. I grabbed the fur tufts, resisted an impulse to dig my heels into my friend, and said I was ready when he was.
BOOH is always ready.
As we flew up to Level Two, I thought some more about the metaphysical ramifications of a cold day in Hell. Millions and millions – maybe billions and billions – of people had used that expression for hundreds upon hundreds of years, and the possibility of a massive karmic backlash seemed very possible. I recalled my discussion with Orson from earlier in the day. It had been stupid of me to “cold day in hell” (used as a verb here) Orson’s comment about me finding another beautiful woman in Hell. While that seemed extremely unlikely, the vertigo I’d experienced right after opening my fat mouth made me wonder.
Don’t misunderstand. Vertigo is a common condition down here. Being damned for all eternity, well, it’s not conducive to a sense of calm and complacency. Usually, though, I experience dizziness and/or nausea as a result of some torment being meted out by a devil or demon or just something shitty happening because Hell is my home. A casual remark in a conversation on its own won't generally make me lose my lunch.
Well, I didn’t exactly throw up, but I was damn close to it, and that had never happened before. I shivered, not from the cold, but out of a sense of foreboding.
All of these thoughts fit into the space of about thirteen seconds, the time it took BOOH to reach our destination. We were hovering over Lustland. The City of Covetous Sin, located on the southwestern edge of the Second Circle, reminded me of a seedy Las Vegas more than anything. The town had a cheesy strip, lined with neon signs advertising gentlemen clubs, aka titty bars, brothels, and comparable establishments that might appeal to heterosexual women, lesbians or gays.
I find it ironic that, while straight guys have plenty of names for the places they frequent to satisfy their baser needs, women and gay men have not developed an entire lexicon around this topic. Or maybe I just don't know it. Still, it makes me wonder why the men in power on Earth maintain such a holier-than-thou attitude about sex outside of marriage, when they are the ones who practice it so frequently and have such a rich vocabulary with which to describe it. The houses of ill-repute for females and non-heterosexual males don’t generally have names down here but instead state their meaning with garish neon signs, showing in tubular brilliance the services they offer. There are exceptions, of course, like the Dancing Dildos and the Gay Caballeros.
Brothels in Lustland aren’t like those on Earth. There is a definite “look but don’t touch” rule regarding anyone a damned soul could possibly find attractive as well as a requirement to “have sex w
ith this repulsive, bepimpled sow” or suffer the lash of a demon. Sometimes you had to have sex with the repulsive one and still undergo the lash. That’s called a twofer down here.
Lustland doesn’t have the magnificent hotel palaces of Vegas, though there are plenty of roadside motels, the kind you see back on Earth, low-slung, ramshackle buildings with parking lots that consume all the space between building and street, so you can pull your jalopy right up to the front door of your rental room. Most of these places have seedy old farts sitting on the steps before the rooms. These perpetually leering characters are either grotesquely fat or cadaverous, but always ugly, with long, stringy hair, dirty and stinking clothes, and rotting teeth that hold the stubs of long-burning cigarettes. Those are the male versions. The female ones, also ugly, tend to show vast expanses of blotchy, sagging skin, breasts stuffed into ill-fitting bras and hanging six inches below the knees, puffy legs etched with cellulite. None of these abominations is actually human, but demons posing as derelicts. They sit there only to freak out both ladies and gentlemen. Periodically they’ll holler out to one of the damned something like, “Looking for a good time?” or “Do me, do me!”
All part of the ambience of Lustland.
At the end of the street was a twenty story office building, the only piece of high-end real estate on the Strip. It was basically a tall cylinder with a rotating observation deck, shaped like a hemisphere, atop it. Huddled at the base of the tower were two geodesic domes. In case that description doesn’t conjure up a precise image for you, the building looked essentially like an erect phallus.
Leaving BOOH outside to hunt up a quick meal, I stepped inside the tower. Next to the elevator, located in the center of the lobby, was a brass plaque that said “Lust Unlimited: Corporate Headquarters. Asmodeus: Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.” Beneath the plaque was a call button for the elevator. I pressed it and settled in for a long wait.