by catt dahman
“I would be punished for saying so, but BBDU enjoys transforming us as an affront to Him. Failures of the churches and religion are enjoyable here,” Cassie sighed a little. But then she picked up our cat and cooed to him, causing him to purr happily.
Once Cassie was sure Coral and Dana had everything they needed to make a consumable dinner, she and I went to her window to look out. I saw a few hookers again, two humans and one demoness, dressed in short skirts over long, sexy legs that ended in strappy sandals with platform heels. Both humans had three breasts each in tight halters, and the demoness had one breast in the middle of her chest.
I decided that hell did a thriving sex business. Cassie explained that once a month, prostitutes went to a clinic to be infected with syphilis, gonorrhea, and HIV. Medical Act of 1982 requires all prostitutes to ‘share the burn’.”
“Everything is backwards here,” I said, “but I as a warrior when in my real life, I am a boring, plain person, is backwards as well.”
Chapter Fourteen: No Slate to Make Marks On
A fat man came towards us, a leash in his hands. On chains about their necks were three small children: a fat one who would be roasted, a thin one who might be a servant, and cute little girl with freckles and sad eyes. It did no good, but the children fiddled with their collars, hoping to loosen them as the leather eternally chafed their skin. The tiny girl tripped on a cobblestone and fell, skinning her knee.
Kicking and cursing, the fat man began kicking her violently. The three hookers joined and began kicking her as well, laughing. They kicked all the children. Their sharp spiked heels bruised the little ones who screamed with pain.
The hookers were Lice-Hookers because I saw the wave of tiny bug-creatures lunge for the man who got too close to them as he yanked at the children. The lice might jump onto the children, too.
Cory and Annie watched out another window and looked at me with dismay. It was hard to watch the brutality.
I spun, grabbed Cory and Annie, and bolted for a back door Cory had found. Running, I didn’t feel tired but instead, energy flowed through my body as I played out the image, in my mind, of the violent people kicking the children.
We sprinted down a dirty, needle-filled alley (a waste since Danny had said throwing used needles into the canal was encouraged) and around the corner so we could approach the people in the street without giving away where we were staying.
“Hey, get away from her and stop kicking her.” I waved a pipe I found and pretended it was a sword. I decided right then, I wanted a sword for battles. Guns were a last resort as they attracted too much attention, so we didn’t have them.
“Mind your own business, bitch,” the plump man snarled. He yanked at his ‘roast’ brutally. “Get up.”
“You stop kicking, too,” I ordered one of the hookers.
“’Ho, you wanna mix it up with Lee’noleum? Huh?”
“Linoleum?Unreal,” I said. She moved into my personal space, ready for hair pulling and fingernail raking, but that’s not how I fought.
Lee’noleum raised a hand to grab my hair, and the fight was on. I took her arm and swung her around so I could pin her arm, painfully, way up high on her back. I jerked at her arm to make her screech. I kneed her in her big butt, causing her to fall on her knees. Barely catching herself with one hand, she almost did a face-plant on the ground and scraped both knees as she went down.
She didn’t like someone her own size fighting back.
Carrying through, I pushed her down and planted a boot on her back. Rearing back, I popped her head with my pipe, splitting her skull. It’s not as if she would stay dead, but she would remember the headache I gave her. I hit her until blood and brains leaked.
Cory took on the other two hookers, and we found out that when the hookers “die”, the lice become free to feast fully. He broke both of the hookers’ necks with quick snaps. When they came back, they would suffer a world of pain as well.
Annie jumped the fat man and took away his big machete. Coral taught us well how to disarm and fight, and Annie put the lessons into practice. Annie disarmed the fat man. Literally. His arms went flying. Annie, quite and sweet, chopped off his arms, and blood spurted everywhere as he ran around wailing.
We stopped the fight to watch him. I ducked as a spray of sticky red blood flew at me. It missed and went onto the road. He ran away, crying and blubbering with snot running down his face.
The ‘roast’ looked at us stupidly, not understanding we had set them free.
“Go on and go somewhere safe. You’re free,” I told the thin girl.
She nodded a little, looking at the dead hookers. The lice, with tiny popping sounds, were eating the demoness; they had finished her greenish skin and were to the bloody layer underneath with no signs of being finished.
The thin girl and fat child waddled and walked away down the street, without looking back at us. I had the feeling that they had no clear concept of what had occurred. We turned to go back down the street and around to the back door, but as we turned the corner, we saw that the small girl with freckles was following us quietly.
She was like a stray cat.
“Shoo…go on now,” Cory tried waving her away.
The child made a faint hissing noise but didn’t retreat.
Annie shook her head, “No, she’s adorable. We can feed her.”
“She isn’t a cat, Annie. You wanna feed and water her and take her for walks and clean up after her? She’s…well…not a real human.”
“Cory, that’s horrible,” Annie said, tears filling her eyes.
“We’ll keep her a while,” I said, making Annie smile. Cory gave me a partial hug before we went inside.
“We saw,” Coral said, his voice like deep thunder, rolling and booming, “You went out there to fight for no reason and could have gotten caught or worse.”
“I couldn’t watch that fat slob do that shit,” Cory said. His face lost the angry look and lit up as he saw Cassie’s hookah, “Awe, man, this is cool. Cassie, you rock.”
I shrugged. Cory was like a child with wavering moods.
Danny looked the stray over, “She’s not hurt, and she’s a cute kid. The thing is she was born here of two humans and is without a soul.”
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“Well, she couldn’t go to Heaven, and she couldn’t go to your world. She’s here forever.”
“So are the rest, right?”
“True. She never had a choice and never lived outside of here. She’ll never know of the other world. She is neither good not evil, but without a soul…no slate to make marks on.”
I washed her face and hands for her, then braided her hair French style, and tied it off with a bright blue ribbon Cassie gave me. The child didn’t know her name and spoke very quietly in whispers if she spoke at all. She was afraid of the men. “I want to name her Dinah. Is that okay? Do you want to be Dinah?”
She smiled and hugged me. I told her we would eat soon, and Cassie gave us some scraps of cloth and some odds and ends that we made a doll with. It wasn’t a great dolly, but it was something she could have of her very own for once. Coral watched with interest.
Danny huffed and sighed. I ignored him.
Virgil watched me.
Coral made spaghetti with sauce and bread with pesto dipping oil; also, we had a fruit salad for dessert. Dinah ate as if she were starved, which Danny said she probably was. We were hungry and had seconds and thirds of the food.
Dinah finished eating and sat on the floor to pat Limmerfer’s fur as he purred happily. Dinah waggled a string, and Limmy chased it, but we saw the set of his jaw and knew he did it to please her, not because he enjoyed the chase. Lim ran, did a few flips, slid along the floor, jumped, and made Dinah giggle with his antics.
Chapter Fifteen: Parade of Lamma, Hashish, and a Cat
“Tomorrow morning the Parade of Lammas will be going down the street out there. Of course, it runs all day as there are so many streets to cov
er,” Cassie told us.
“Lammas?”
“People celebrate it back home differently; you’d never notice it as anything, but here, they follow the old Druid holidays because it is so associated with paganism. It’s kind of a laugh at those who think pagan holidays have anything to do with hell, see? An inside joke. Lammas was always the celebration of harvest, especially wheat,” Danny told us.
“What would hell do with wheat?” Pax laughed.
“Inside joke, remember. Usually they have a float with big glass jars with wheat inside: people suffocating in wheat and people with wheat stalks stuffed…well, you can imagine, giant wheat-people loaves of bread.Other entertainment were the demonic band, playing humans as the instruments such as strumming ribs, and drumming fat bellies, and you don’t want to know how the horn section works. Obese acrobats with multiple arms and legs perform along the way, horses…skeletal ones with demon riders, and midget clowns…anything you can imagine but with twists you wouldn’t like,” Cassie finished.
“Maybe we can sleep through that,” Cory suggested, “it sounds like a depressing parade.”
Cassie nodded, “I’ll share some ear plugs with you. It is very depressing.”
Danny told me he wanted to show me some things around hell, and we would go as a small group. Cory wanted to stay and smoke hashish with Cassie, and Annie wanted to stay with Dinah and watch her play with Limmerfer. Dana and Pax went with us.
Chapter Sixteen: Satan’s Tit
The bar was called Satan’s Tit. That was a stupid name I thought, but then who was I to think up names of bars in hell?
Danny ordered for us: an imported beer so we wouldn’t have to drink the local swill, and we found a place to watch everyone from a back booth where the din was slightly less than eardrum piercing. The music was rap music, so yes, it was indeed hell there.
Our waitress, with yellow skin, was a demoness, wearing a halter for four breasts and a short denim skirt. From under the skirt, thin, shining tentacles wriggled from underneath like a petticoat with fringe, making me shiver with disgust. Her nostrils were held wide-open by metal rings so we could see right into her sinus cavities if we had so wanted. Instead of ears, she had metal disks covering the sides of her head with holes for hearing. We could see them plainly, as her orange hair was shorn very short and spiky.
Danny told us, “The ear covers were popular fashion. They remove their ears, sell them, and cover the spot with those plates. The nose rings are all the rage, as well. She’s in high fashion.”
A human at the bar sported slash marks across his face that scarred him badly. Danny said the human was a victim of a velociraptor and said we could always tell by the slashes and missing forearms; they liked to bite those off. I didn’t understand why dinosaurs went to hell and asked, but Danny shrugged and said he didn’t know either, really.He did know that very few dogs and only about half the cat population ended up in hell.
It seemed some cats were just evil creatures, but I never knew that before. I wondered why they would be, but I didn’t ask Danny because I didn’t want to think about evil cats. Limmerfer didn’t seem evil, and Danny said that Limmy was actually a very good cat and was on the mission to clear his slate.
That seemed a little far-fetched.
In the bar, I saw humans and demons, and both were missing body parts, or they had strange fashions, or they were monstrous since some had crab-like pinchers, spider eyes, deformed features, matted fur, or horns. Very few looked as normal as we did, but we didn’t get attention.
Danny told us, “Sorry, but you and Dana are like the homely girls here. They’re ignoring you. Remember, beauty is not beauty here. Now, if you were deformed….”
“I get it,” I said.
“You two are the ugly girls here,” Danny went on.
“Yes, we get it,” I repeated.
“The hookers here are a lower class than the lice-hookers,” Danny said.
Dana gaped, “How can they be lower? No, never mind, don’t tell me.”
We saw that the bartender made sure to serve underage patrons doubles, and he made sure everyone drank until he tossed everything back up. Drugs were set out in little bowls such as peanuts might be in regular bars.
Danny told us that if we could smell the bar, we’d be heaving, which would be fine as everyone was encouraged to vomit on the floor. “After hours, the mess is mopped into the wooden floor, not mopped away.”
Dana made a face and said, “Yuk, okay, hell can be bad, but it is just nasty if you ask me.”
“Perversions and nastiness. Pain and misery. Sickness is highly prized. This is more involved than I would have imagined,” Pax told us, “but that is what is worse for the majority, so those things are enjoyed here. Now for me, the bad thing would be no football.”
“There is a sort of football, but it involves rape and bone saws, and I doubt you’d want to watch it, Pax. There is basketball, too, but that is played with dental tools, and fouls are penalized in a most painful manner. Tooth nerves are excellent to poke in for penalties.” Danny clandestinely pointed out a demon with two heads, “He’s a funny one. One head controls the top of his body, and the second controls the bottom part. He is funny to watch.”
That was our lesson on how backwards and how terrible things could be as if we didn’t know. Danny concluded, “You can’t whip everyone in hell, Alice. Dinah can’t be helped since she lives here. You aren’t here to save the world; well, you are, but not by attacking everyone who is doing something vile.”
“Then you picked the wrong person. I can’t watch people harm animals or children and not help them, Danny, so just understand who I am,” as I said that, it occurred to me that weeks before, I would have walked away from confrontation and would have ignored wrongdoing in order to stay uninvolved.
I guess who I was had changed some, right? Yep, it dawned on me then as well, and Virgil and Danny almost smiled, so they realized it as well.
Chapter Seventeen: Into the Pot:Mushrooms, Dreams, Caterpillar
When we got back to Cassie’s house, Annie and Coral were laughing at Cory who lay on the floor giggling, “Hey, Pax; hey, Dana; hey, Alice and Danny. Did you have fun?”
“Sure, what’s up here?”
Cory giggled, “Alice, I grew really big, and my head went up high into the trees.”
“Wow. Do tell?”
He nodded, “I saw this bird and scared him, and he was calling me a serpent even if I’m not green or scaled. How cool is that?”
“Very cool, Cory.”
“So this bird was accusing me of wanting her eggs, but I don’t eat raw eggs. Coral makes them for me over easy, but she said I had a long neck. Then, I was itty bitty, and that sucked ‘cause I could have run into one of those lice, and it would be big and chase me. Scary, huh?” he kept talking.
“Really scary. Big louse after you,” said Pax as he agreed.
Mesmerizing us with his story he said, “The big louse had segmented parts that overlapped like armor, and his bottom legs were pinchers like you see on a crab. That’s how they hold on to your hair with those pinchers.
Up front, they have normal bug legs and can point at you when they talk, see? So the louse winked at me and said he was too big to get in my hair.”
“What’s wrong with Cory? Why did he see a giant louse? Did he go outside and see demons?” Dana asked.
Coral shook his head, “Nah. He and Cassie ate mushrooms of a type that I don’t cook.” He watched with us, and when Cory fell asleep with his mouth wide open, Coral sighed, bent down, and dragged Cory to a pallet to sleep.
Dana, Annie, and I found places on the sofa and in chairs, allowing Dinah to sleep close to Cassie. We liked Cassie a lot but sleeping next to a big caterpillar was odd to us, but not to Dinah. I feared being squashed which was weird since in my world, caterpillars worried about being squashed by us.
Exhausted, we slept heavily that night, and the earplugs worked well, so we slept late; Coral, Pax, and Ann
ie were the only ones who got up to watch the Infernal Parade of Lammas and said it was as weird as anything Cory could have made up in the ‘shroom-induced dreams he had. He disagreed, saying he had seen things far stranger than what we had seen so far in hell and then said Cassie had amazing hallucinogenic drugs.
When we were ready to go, Cassie walked to the door with us. I paused, wondering how we could possibly thank her enough for her help. What could I say? That I was going back home and so sorry she had to stay in hell? Not cool. To my shock, she told me she wasn’t finished, “I’ll go along in case you need help. Besides, I can take care of Dinah for you.”
That was something we hadn’t talked about. What would we do with Dinah now that we had rescued her from her handler? But the idea of taking a big worm and a little girl along on our trip was daunting. Danny frowned a little.
“Cassie, if you were harmed because of my mission, I would be heartbroken,” I told her honestly. I really liked her. She was a very nice…ummm…worm.
“Silly. I will be fine. If I can help a little, then I shall,” she said.
So that was how our group enlarged. We were two girls and two guys all in leathers, a girl (me) in a bustier and bright blue coat, a cute cat, a huge black man (who was forty/elderly), a guy with funny fingers and hands, a caterpillar, and a little girl.
Of course, we didn’t look out of place in hell.
Chapter Eighteen:The Duchess and Friends?
Danny led us down a street and up a road until we reached a wooded area. The trees were gnarled with a black, moist fungus that grew up each trunk and along the limbs and twigs. Some trees had furry leaves, and others had only branches but were so close together, and the trees were so tall that they blocked out most of the grey, hazy sunlight. A cobblestone path wound from the road and into the forest of ugly trees, and it was this path that we took.