by Mark Tufo
“Deep, heavy breaths…quietly. You will get through this. They are not causing harm, only pain.” Linnick was talking in as soothing a voice as possible. I wanted to shear her head off with my molars. The pain was unlike anything I had ever experienced in my life, I wanted to writhe in agony but did my damnedest to hold still. The pain; so immense I didn’t know how I could possibly hold on to my self. There was not one goddamned fucking fiber of my being that was not aflame with horrendous hurt. Linnick continued whispering psuedo-comfort babble into my ear; it was like she was inside my head; well, she was. It was only a short matter of time before my mind snapped and reeled itself in, pulling as far away from the shock of my body as it could. My back was arching and my jaw was clenched shut with teeth shattering force.
I was way beyond my ability to stay in control. The fiend was on the move; something somewhere had made a run for it—for all I knew it could have been me. Each second was dragged out in exquisite, eternal pain. I didn’t even notice when it started to get lighter around me; my eyes were clamped as tight as my mouth. My back was so highly arched, the only points of contact I had with the ground were the flats of my feet and the crown of my skull. You could add in breaking my spine to the list of injuries I was likely to endure from “holding still.”
Linnick had crawled out from my ear and was still talking as she scoured my body, pulling flutchers out. The relief was instantaneous from each extraction. The dopamine that had been flooding my body to counteract the pain was now making me loopy. So much of it had poured into my system and was no longer in combat that it caused me to hiss-giggle uncontrollably; tears ran past my temples. My back slowly straightened itself out and slid to the ground. My breathing was labored and I choked on acid reflux as Linnick raced to get every one of the poisonous spines out of me.
“You still with me?” she asked.
It took many seconds before I had the faculties to clear my throat and produce a response. “Where else would I be?”
“Most lose their minds in the first minute.”
“What…was that thing?” I asked.
“A Polion. I thought it was a myth. I read they were once pets to the demons down here but turned on their masters and were banished to the wastelands. Supposedly they’ve been cursed with perpetual darkness.”
“What?” I wasn’t following.
“The demons thought that they were so evil, that they made sure no light could exist around them.”
“The flutchers?”
“They have adapted to their surroundings.”
“How do you know about all of this?”
“How do you not? Underworld history and mythology is of a great interest to my world; your education is incomplete without absolute knowledge of the demonic realm.”
“Out of necessity or academic curiosity?” I sat up, expecting to see rivers of blood from the dozens of flutcher wounds. What I got were raised bumps that a mosquito may have left.
I gasped as she threatened to shove a discarded flutcher back in. “Thank you,” I finally told her. “I wouldn’t have made it without you.”
“I know.” She climbed back up my shirt and hopped into my pocket. “We should get out of here; it will come back to pick through its offal for anything undigested.”
“Oh, come on; that just can’t be right.” I was sure I’d be warped and paralyzed at least. I stood on shaky legs, which I expected, but they held up pretty good.
“The toxin is extremely powerful, but short lasting. Once the stingers are removed it breaks down rapidly in the body.”
I was going to do my best to put this entire episode out of my mind. “What now?” I asked as I trod on, in the exact opposite direction of the Polion and the holes.
“We need to get out of the wastelands and into the demon-land proper.”
“Sounds charming. And what of you, Linnick? What do you hope to gain by all of this?”
“I do not know, Tallboat. We study the underworld, but we still do not know very much about it. There is a lot of speculating and postulating. Few return from the realm, so obviously it is difficult to gain firsthand information about it. What I do know is that you are somehow unique, possibly immune to some of the hazards of this area, and as such, my best chance of anything beneficial happening. Even my survival, perhaps, resides with you. And for once I have seen something more abhorrent than yourself.”
“You saw the Polion?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Breatines have acute night vision.”
“I’m not sure why we are together, Linnick, but I think I got the better part of the bargain.”
“Undoubtedly.” I think she smiled, she said the word with an easy-going lilt. Though, as one more closely related to a bug than a human, it was difficult for me to tell.
I walked for a couple of miles, surprised that nothing or nobody attempted to kill us in all that time. I didn’t think letting my guard down was a good idea, though, given our current location. As I’ve said before, I’m pretty smart like that. And then in an instant, I show just how unsmart I am. Is that even a word?
“So, when we get out of the wastelands is there like, a demon village?” I mean really, how in the fuck would I know? I had originally pictured brimstone, lava, and boiling cauldrons everywhere…maybe evil laughter coming from nowhere.
“Demon village? What do you want? Postcards? You knew absolutely nothing about this place and decided a walkabout was a good way to discover the underworld?”
“I’m gonna say there’s no town square then?”
There was a cute little slapping sound from, I think, Linnick smacking her forehead, though I did not confirm that visually.
“Think of the underworld as one giant mountain. It has four distinct levels; we are in the bottommost one, the wastelands. This is the lovely place every outcast and malformed misfit calls home—those that have been exiled and have no place among the others.”
“Even in Hell there are cliques? That is just the weirdest thing ever.”
“Oh, we’re not in Hell. Not yet. There’s this place, the underworld; the upper world, and then there’s Gehenna. Each of those levels has six tiers.”
“Of course, it does. Where would ‘wandering souls in trouble’ be?”
“Every wandering soul in this place is in trouble, Tallboat.”
“Fair enough. But how do I go about finding the ones I’m looking for? Is there a directory? For some insane reason, I did not think this place would be quite as vast as it is.”
“You use the word ‘think’ like you actually know what it means. From what I have seen, I do not believe that to be the case.”
“You know, usually the people that give me shit are huge, mythical monsters come to life, or, well, even a witch or two, not pocket-sized beetle women. I could pull you out of my shirt at any time and leave you here.”
“You would not.” She did not say it indignantly, but rather as a statement of fact. “It is true that we are different species from different worlds and that your outward appearance would make a Dredgemire ill, but you have grown fond of me and, although I, for one, still find you completely distasteful to gaze upon, I know your heart is good.”
“Insult or compliment?”
“Take from it what you will, Tallboat.”
“Fair enough.”
“As for your friends…”
“One of them is most definitely not my friend, but go on.”
“As for those you seek, it is unlikely they would be in the wastelands or Gehenna, alive, anyway. Both of these areas are significantly more dangerous than the middle worlds.”
“And these middle worlds…?”
“Are full of demons and their spawn.”
“Sounds absolutely heavenly. And how, pray tell, are those places safer?”
“They are demons.”
I might have grunted “Yeah?”
She sighed. “…and as such, are constantly scheming and plotting. Most are focused on finding ways to dethrone the One
that sits in Gehenna. The rest, realizing that goal is futile, are trying to escape their world for any of the alternate realms.”
“Alternate?” I asked.
“Worlds such as ours where they can wreak havoc at unimaginable cost to life. They have succeeded from time to time in my world.”
“Mine as well,” I replied solemnly. “So, the upper worlds, then?”
“It is where your friends most likely are. The wastelands are all about death. In the upper worlds, they might be used for leverage over others or in some devious plot, possibly ensnaring more unsuspecting victims.” I felt her hand slapping against my chest. “Like you!” she said, in case I hadn’t understood where she was going with that.
“The souls that are sent here, what is their ultimate destination? I mean, what is the end game? I don’t know if knowing a little is better or worse than knowing nothing; now I just realize how little I know.”
“This is my…our life now. There is no purpose except that which you bring with you. You attempt to do the best you can in the worst situations possible.”
“Wait, I’m not getting it. So, the demons, or the One that sits in Gehenna, they don’t really give a shit about us?”
“We’re not their first priority—that is, not unless you are a special one from your world, one who has committed great evils, or has unusual powers… or perhaps was mis-sent, then you might become of great interest. If they feel you can somehow further their cause or be of use they may guide your passage. Almost all that make it through the wasteland become slaves of some sort to a malevolent master.”
“What is the purpose of this entire place? Why does it even exist?”
“For the same reason your own world exists. It just does. There does not need to be a reason for this world, for you, for me…for anything.”
“I get that argument, I just don’t like it. There were a great many philosophers on earth that talked just like that. I didn’t do so well in those classes, although it didn’t help that I was stoned most of the time…at least I don’t think it helped. In retrospect, that might have actually been beneficial. So, no grand design?”
“I never said that. You and I play out parts in these worlds on a much different level than the greater beings. We are more like the Polions who are also trying to survive and escape.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“I meant only that we live out our lives as best we can; others are living on far grander scales, controlling reality as they move world-sized pieces around on their playing fields.”
“Is it always just a game? Because it certainly doesn’t feel that way to the rest of us lowly bastards.”
“A game of chance, of some skill, and the most powerful factor of all…luck.”
I scoffed. “Luck? The one thing we cannot control is the most powerful of them all?”
“I have already witnessed great bouts of luck from you; yet you would discount it so quickly?”
“Luck? Luck has screwed me plenty of times. That was all skill.”
“Truly, you believe that?” she asked. “Imagine luck as an entity. It can take the most random of events and either bolster your chances of success or turn a minor situation into an impossible task. How many circumstances in your life, Tallboat, just seemed to fall the right way?”
I couldn’t even begin to put my finger on the sheer number of times I had escaped hopeless situations with nothing more than a few bruises and a good story to tell. It had not always been easy, but providence, fate…had seemingly conspired to give me a fighting chance, sometimes in minuscule ways…saved by an inch this way or that. “Like once or twice, maybe,” I told her. “Luck favors the prepared.”
“I do not need to look into your eyes to know that in this, you are lying.”
“You want me to admit that everything I’ve done my entire life, the battles I’ve won, the evils I’ve outwitted, has been decided purely by luck? Why bother putting forth an effort, then, if I can just sit back and let the pieces move around me?”
“You are misunderstanding. You create your own luck, Tallboat. The actions you perform, the thoughts behind those actions; the approach you take to the situations you find yourself in. These are conscious actions that determine or at least affect your luck.”
“Yeah. That’s called skill,” I said sourly or maybe all surly. We were making good time, I suppose; though since I wasn’t entirely sure where I should be going or how far it was, making time was relative. Linnick wasn’t attempting to correct my course, so I figured we had to be going the right way, or at least what she thought was the right way.
“Do you know which way you are going?” she asked after a while.
“Yeah. Straight ahead. Is there a problem with that?” It was a sincere question.
“I know a bit about direction down here, not all. I am letting luck dictate our course, since you are such a master of it.”
“Yeah, it’s going to take me more than an hour to wrap my head around the fact that my entire life has been a fluke.”
“Are all humans as dense as you?”
“Either of my wives would most likely tell you that I am my own special kind of dense.”
“We seem to communicate clearly enough, but there may be times when certain words don’t come across quite right. Luck can also be tied extremely closely to fate, destiny, and providence; are these terms more acceptable to you?”
“Yeah, I don’t know how comfortable I am with that either, to think that my pursuits have been planned and decided by others.”
“How would you like to think of your life?”
“I prefer to believe that I am the master of my own fortune; that my failures and accomplishments are the product of effort and wit, not the whim of some higher being or an accident of coincidences.”
“Accident of coincidences? I do not believe I have ever heard this before, I will keep note of that phase to ponder at a later time.”
“Yeah, even a couch with busted springs can seat an ass.”
Linnick didn’t get the reference and I didn’t clarify, if it was even possible.
“So how do we get from this shitfest to the next?”
“Shitfest?”
“How do we go from the wastelands to the upper worlds?”
“There is a gate.”
“What is it with gods and demons and their gated communities?”
“They believe themselves to be much greater than we; by instinct this produces suspicion of our kind.”
“Yeah, we used to have a lot of people like that back when I was much younger. This gate…they guarding the entry or the exit?”
“Both, I would think, depending on the traveler. There are a great variety of reasons for casting creatures into the wasteland and they are never welcomed back among their kind. Likewise, there are those living inside the upper worlds that would choose to escape their lot.”
“Any ideas on how we get in?”
“I would assume you will be allowed. Your soul is intact, and more importantly, unclaimed; that will be of great value to a great many demons.”
“And you know this how?”
“Are you familiar with the phrase, ‘the eyes are the window to the soul’?”
“I am.”
“Then I believe I have explained myself.”
Chapter 6
MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 6
Something about my walking, the swaying action, the heat from my chest, and maybe Breatines just needed a lot of sleep, like cats, but Linnick was out. When I stopped walking I could actually hear her snore, which was kind of funny. It didn’t make her even remotely cuter; it was just funny that something that small snored. Off in the distance, I saw what I thought were people. I shielded my eyes from a non-existent sun thinking this would give me binocular vision or some shit and then I peered harder. They were still too far away to tell exactly what they were, but they were the right height and they seemed to move in the same manner as people.
“They could b
e with them,” I said softly, but excitedly, and I started moving at a quicker clip. If I could find Tommy plus one in that mob and get the fuck out of here soon, then all the better.
“Is something chasing us?” Linnick asked as she poked out of my pocket.
“No, there’re people up ahead.” I was close enough now to be sure of it.
“Tallboat.”
I was jogging by this point.
“Tallboat, something is wrong.”
I was on the verge of running.
“Tallboat, stop! That is a gathering!”
“I know! It’s great, right? They have got to be here!”
“Stop right now!” she screamed with such force I was compelled to do as she said.
“What, Linnick?” We weren’t more than a couple of hundred yards away; even as I waited for her to tell me what the hell was wrong I looked for Tommy’s profile.
“You should turn around, walk away, and forget you ever saw this place.”
“Huh?” But it was already too late, the screams had started. I saw a being easily three times the height of anyone around it. Over its head was a large, black cone-shaped hood. On its body were sharpened metal spikes the size of my forearms. The thing wielded a double-edged axe and was swinging it back and forth as if it were mowing down wheat. But instead of grains, he was lopping off the heads of people. Sometimes he would pick some poor bastard up and pull them slowly into his body, piercing their flesh in dozens of places until they were impaled on his spikes as some sort of twisted meat suit.
“We need to help them!” I said the words but my feet were rooted to their spot.
“There is no help for them,” Linnick said sadly.
Had to have been a hundred or more people in that group and the beast was killing them all without impunity. Most he cleaved in two or simply pulled apart with his powerful arms. I watched as he bit the head off one á la Ozzy Osbourne and his infamous bat. I’ve been on dozens of battlefields and I had never seen any sort of carnage that could begin to match the savagery here. The beast took great delight in stomping the existence completely out from those that lay on the ground, dying. Because of the hood I could not see his features, but his actions led me to believe he wore a large smile as he performed his murderous acts.