Alice In Wonderhell

by catt dahman

  I didn’t know what to say. I reached out a hand to touch his shirt and faltered. I cared about him, and I wanted him, but it felt as if we were separated by worlds; we were. I stepped closer, hoping that the answer would be there although I didn’t know the question.

  Before I could think, Virgil was kissing me, and everything else vanished. He was there. I was there. We were in the moment. It wasn’t as graceful as one would hope for, but amid giggles and banging into walls, Virgil swept me into his arms and took me to his bed where we made love for hours before sleeping deeply, side by side.

  I was able to tell Virgil I loved him, too, and I meant it.

  Even in hell, there is love. And isn’t that the worst of misery?

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Styx and Stones

  The River was dark, black as onyx, as it flowed across the land. Three tall beings stood before us, and we had to pass them before we could take the ferry across.

  “Hello, Imposers, what do you want? I am Beelzebub.” He was human looking, handsome, and had black hair and full features.

  The next fallen angel was red haired and fierce looking, “Why do you dare come here? I am Azael.”

  “I am Wyrmwood. What is it you seek?” The third one looked very gruff.

  “We’re only travelers.”

  Azeal glared, “Is that a cat with you? Why did you bring a cat?”

  “He is part of our group,” Virgil said, scooping Limmerfer into his arms.

  Azeal sniffed, “I smell mortal.”

  “It’s of no matter…what is a mere mortal?”

  “Indeed, but mortals smell so sweet. I feel my stomach rumbling,” Azeal said as he rubbed his heavily muscled belly, “when did I last taste mortal?”

  “We’re on an important errand, and even Satan himself takes interest in it. Eat the mortals, and you will subject yourself to his wrath, but that is your choice,” Danny said.

  “Yes, it is our choice,” Beelzebub agreed, sniffing the air as well.

  I couldn’t stop myself from asking a question, “Why are former angels here? How did you end up in hell?”

  Wyrmwood grinned, “Look at us. Are we not magnificent? And this is the way we look in hell. When we were angels we were so beautiful that your eyes would have burned away in your heads had you looked at us.”

  “Oh, it was pride?” I asked.

  “No, you ignorant mortal,” Beelzebub thundered.

  “We were among the most beautiful of all, and what does a handsome man want? A handsome woman,” Wyrmwood said.

  “A perfect, sensuous, woman with human scents and a warm body…ummm,” Beelzebub shivered with delight, making my stomach roll with repugnance.

  “I left the confines of…you know,” he said as he pointed upwards, “and walked the earth in your world, Mortal. I found many willing women, the daughters of man, and they satiated my cravings. That wasn’t allowed, so for my vanity, lust, and pride, I was tossed out to reside here. My brethren here suffered the same indignity for daring to love mortals.”

  “Oh,” I said, “Well, you broke the rules, huh? And I was right…it was partially pride.”

  Wyrmwood nodded, “Can you not see how difficult that was? That rule? Can angels not feel desire? Why should we feel it and be forced to refrain?”

  “Because those are the rules,” Coral said.

  Wyrmwood stared at me, “ Now, I find you attractive, mortal. Do you fancy my love?”

  I resisted the impulse to puke. They were creepy, and malevolence wafted off them, so I knew lust for mortal women wasn’t their only sin. I doubted they were so innocent and thought maybe they had taken advantage of women at the very least.

  “She’s with me,” Virgil said.

  Wyrmwood sniffed delicately, and his eyes went dark, “I could take you in battle.”

  “I don’t think you could. If you could, you would have pounced immediately, and yet, you didn’t. We’ll pass, and you will not touch the mortals with us.”

  “She is your first mortal love; she was a dream, a taint only; why did you damn yourself, Virgil? For a dream?”

  Virgil faced Wyrmwood angrily, “A dream? She is with me.”

  “For now. She can’t remain.”

  Danny interrupted, “Stop listening to him.”

  “What does he mean?” I asked.

  Azael chuckled, “Secrets, Vine?”

  “Vine?” I asked.

  Azael nodded, “Your lover is named Vine, and he was once one of the most beautiful angels of all. Some of the others were admonished for impure thoughts of him, but he was absolute perfection.

  Vine had no eyes for anyone of the angels, however, but he did his work dutifully until it was noticed that more and more, he was found idle in the gardens, dreaming and lost in his own mind.”

  Virgil made a huffing sound.

  “Vine, or Virgil, as you now know him, dreamed of a mortal woman who was yet to be born, undoubtedly the only reason he didn’t act upon his desires and wind up here standing along with the three of us,” Azrael chuckled again. “But he no doubt waited for the mortal to exist.”

  I gulped.

  “To correct Vine’s failure as an angel, he was sent here for a while to work the other side of course, to ask forgiveness and change his thinking, and yet, here we are.

  Had he repented, he would have been allowed back into His graces and allowed to resume his work in Paradise, but I can smell it clearly that he not only failed to be penitent, but also has mated with you, mortal female.”

  I blushed furiously. Did we have to talk about my sex life?

  Wyrmwood blinked, breathing deeply, “Do you smell that, Brethren? Why you were a virgin!” he almost yelled, his voice like low, rumbling, deep thunder that made my bones ache with the vibrations.

  I blushed again as my friends looked at me with dismay and curiosity.

  “And? That’s not your business,” I said.

  Wyrmwood smiled, “But it is. Your suffering is sweet to me. It is beginning to dawn on you that by being his lover and by loving him in return, you have doomed him to eternal suffering. How delicious that is.”

  Virgil looked ready to fight, “It was my choice. It was worth it to me to know the love of Alice. What we share…these precious moments will give me succor for eternity. You have nothing from your trysts. Either let us by or battle. It’s no matter to me as I have never felt more powerful.”

  Wyrmwood blinked with hesitation. Azael flinched a little. Beelzebub looked worried. None of them would fight.

  We gathered in a boat to cross the River, as Virgil steadied me since my legs trembled like gelatin. No one said anything, and I knew they were mulling over what they heard, imagining what it must have felt like to be me. I couldn’t have told them since I was also in shock. Fallen angels. Virgil was Vine, and he couldn’t go back to my world. How unreasonable was all of this?

  Truly this was hell.

  Danny finally spoke as they rowed, “Well, now you know who we are exactly and why we were sent. It was our second chance.”

  “What is your name really?”

  “Dantanian. I was too prideful of my beauty and needed to learn modesty. I hope I am learning it.”

  Coral tilted his head, “The eye of a fallen angel was very valuable, I would suppose.” That was a very acute observation. It made me feel sad again that he had given his own eye.

  “It was. I was able to buy many potions and tokens to help us. It was all I could think to barter with.”

  As they left the boat, Danny pointed to stalls along the road.

  At the first were bottles of potions, and the name of the stall was Uglification where they sold acids to ruin the skin, fat clothing (clothes with padding in the belly and thighs), and potions to cause rashes and pimples and hair matting.

  There was a stall called Derision, where one could find sacrilegious books and shirts and materials that made fun of every race, culture, and handicap and a stall called Over Ambition.Distraction, the last shop, sol
d little pins and piercings that would cause pain and greatly distract the wearer. The seller sold eye-lid holders, bottles of eye-specks, sinus blockers, and potions that guaranteed headaches.

  Along streets that wound off the main road were more stalls, each one offering something negative. In another stall were paintings and prints, mostly of serial killers and long dead dictators.

  “If BBDU is in charge, then why doesn’t he set the sufferers free to run around? Why are they really punished? Is he not pleased with what the bad guys did?” Dana asked.

  “It’s tricky. BBDU controls what is left to him after certain punishments and trials are set into place. People think BBDU has free reign and gets to run about having fun, but it isn’t that at all. He rules the leftovers, the morsels dropped from the cake,” Virgil said, “and the suffering is very tasty to him; he enjoys cries of pain and the wails of misery. That is his music.”

  I was curious about that since Danny had veered us off course to show us something. It was laid out like a giant park; paths wound about among leafless, gnarly-looking trees with benches along the way. Concrete containers were set every foot or so along the way, no more than two and a half feet long and were buried into the ground, surrounded with more concrete and with edges like a in ground pool in a backyard, only tiny.

  Each pool was no more than five feet deep, and in each was a venomous mixture of boiling blood, feces, and some sort of hot lava or thick red fluid. A person was immersed into this terrible concoction to his chin, nose, or higher, depending on his crimes against property and persons. A plaque was posted to tell others who each person in the pool was.

  Alexander the Great was there, and so was Attila the Hun. There was a whole section of German scientists, some Roman and Greek leaders, and some I recognized from my time: a cannibal, a child rapist, a wife/ unborn child killer.

  When we returned to the road, Limmerfer was there to greet us, and Virgil grabbed him up at once since the poor cat was covered from whiskers to tail in thick blood as if he had bathed in it. He looked horrible.

  “Oh, no,” Cassie cried as she and Dinah watched with fear. Dinah burst into tears.

  “How is he?” Coral asked, “is it bad?”

  Virgil finally grinned, “Why not a drop of it is his. He is absolutely unharmed and in good health. I think this must be from whomever he fought. I guess he won.”

  Ignoring the blood, Dinah grabbed him into her arms and covered him with hugs and kisses. He allowed the attention.

  We stopped at a stall to buy water so we could wash the cat; he didn’t mind at all being scrubbed and rinsed until he was grey and white again instead of bright scarlet.

  We decided to eat at the stall since there was a seating area inside the stall, looked clean, and smelled good. Danny suggested eating turtle soup and bought a huge amount of the soup and bread, and I am here to say I have never eaten turtle and was very put off by the idea.

  An alternative was mock turtle soup which was, Danny explained, a rich stew made with a calf’s head and brains with vegetables and a wine broth and served with forcemeat, or balls of the fat.

  I went with the regular turtle soup, which was served with boiled eggs and spinach, a popular food in hell, I was told, because people seemed to hate it. Brussels sprouts, asparagus, and liver were also abundant here, but I loved the vegetables and was slightly okay with liver.

  Anyway, the soup was actually delicious, and I enjoyed it.

  When we left that area and entered another, we saw a chimera, a young one, in fact, who lounged in the sunlight. We were prepared to fight as we were told he was ferocious even if he were not fully grown. Instead, he only watched us and essentially backed away, his eyes fearful.

  He had two heads, one of a goat and one of a lion, a goat’s body, and the tail of a serpent, but the creature acted fearful of us. I saw that on each of its two faces were deep, bloody scratches, and the goat head had a flayed open cheek that still dripped blood.

  “Limmy, did you do that?” I asked.

  Limmerfer gave the beast a disinterested glance and walked past it, and we followed. The chimera trembled as it watched Limmy. How interesting that our cat had bested this monster in a battle; I wished we had been able to see the chimera getting his ass beaten, but it was done. We took turns carrying Limmerfer since he was our hero and deserved some attention.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Middle Ring

  It was our intention to circle around the middle ring and inner ring of hell and go to the eighth where we would find the girl, get her out of prison, and end our journey. The path was frequently laced with thorny bushes that we had to carefully push away and scramble past. When we came to an opening, Limmerfer’s fur stood on end, and he ran to the center to stand close to Cassie and Dinah as if protecting them.

  We heard growling.

  Wild, huge dogs leapt from the bushes and attacked us. One, which was my adversary, kept trying to get my arm in his jaws to bring me to the ground so he could maul my throat and finish me off. I kicked him in his face, but he didn’t back away. I pulled my sword but was hit from behind as a weight caught me across my back and knocked me to the ground. Two dogs growled at me.

  I dropped my sword and went for a knife I carried, bringing it up just as one of the dogs came at me; the blade slipped into his jaw and out the back of his head. My hand was in his mouth, but he didn’t bite down. He pulled away, taking my knife with him and fell, twitching onto the ground.

  The second dog caught my arm in his massive jaws and bit down, holding me. He would be on my neck in mere seconds, but I rolled, taking the dog with me. On all fours, with the animal attached to my arm and foaming my blood, I took my sword, slid it beneath his stomach sideways, and caught the dog in his gut. He tried to get away, but I got to my feet and unmercifully gutted him like a deer, letting blood and intestines leak everywhere.

  He whined, but I didn’t care. All around, my friends were fighting one or two dogs at a time, protecting Cassie, Limmerfer, and Dinah. Cassie and Limmerfer both did what they could to fend off a piebald mastiff that snapped at Dinah.

  Limmerfer scratched deeply at soft noses and jumped back before the dog could bit him. He was no match for the beast, and Cassie slapped at it but was also helpless. Dinah shrieked.

  I heard a loud moan that was probably meant to be a scream, but it turned into a gurgling, wet noise. Pax was on his back, and two of the dogs bit at him. One had his muzzle buried in Pax’s throat.

  “No. No. No,” I yelled, slamming my sword down on the dog’s head. I spun and ran it through the dog’s thick chest and saw the animal sag and drop on top of Pax. The other dog lunged at me in retaliation, and I gutted it as well. Cassie dropped down to hold a cloth to Pax’s throat, leaving Dinah to fight the other dog.

  That was because there was nothing Cassie could do. It was too late to save Dinah, too.

  The piebald dog had Dinah in his jaw, waving her like a rag doll. Limmerfer had his claws dug in and rode the dog angrily, hissing and swiping, but despite the deep scratches and blood, the dog didn’t drop Dinah.

  “Hey, come after me,” I screamed at the piebald dog, “come on.” I had to try to save Dinah and Limmerfer.

  The bad dog jerked his head, flinging Dinah to the ground. His lips pulled back from big, bloody teeth as he growled and snarled at me, taking small steps. Limmerfer jumped free.As the dog leaped, I rolled with him, leaving my back open as he landed and spun, but I spun as well in a strong flying back kick that left me facing the dog again.

  The next time he leaped, although it was hard to manage, I met his belly with my sword, ripping him open from chest to anus; then, I had to roll sideways to keep the mess of his insides from falling all over me.

  The battle was about over now.

  Dana and Cory were bloodied from their own wounds and from killing. Coral was the least injured and had half dozen kills around him. Danny and Virgil were almost unscathed and had killed a dozen between themselves.

  I went
to Cassie who tended Pax, “How is he?”

  She shook her head sadly, “Not good, Alice.”

  “He’s not…I mean….”

  She nodded, tears on her greenish face, “say good bye.”

  “Hey, Pax,” I knelt in blood and dirt, “You did good, my friend.” My throat ached with the pain of sadness and sorrow. I couldn’t let him go. Not Pax. I felt tears running down my face and made funny sounds when I breathed.

  He couldn’t speak as blood bubbled from the rips and tears on his neck, but he gave me a little smile. He pointed to me, made a motion that looked like he was saying to go on with the mission, and then he made a fist. Kick ass, he seemed to say.

  “You bet. I’ll get this done for sure. Thanks for your help.”

  He made a seesaw of his hand.

  “No, you did great. We were outnumbered,” Coral said.

  “I love you, Pax.”

  He touched his heart to tell us he loved us, too.

  Dana wailed loudly, letting her emotions go.

  Everyone came to stand close to Pax, pat his shoulder, and say a few things. He listened and smiled, but his eyes filled with tears. In a few minutes, he stopped responding to us, and his eyes went dull; he was gone. Danny knew there was a bubbling liquid fire a few yards away off the road, and they took Pax’s body to set it in there so that so he would burn away and not be eaten by animals.

  We also put Dinah’s little body into the fire. Cassie cried terribly hard for the child. I felt we had lost special people; it left holes in our group. It left holes in my heart.

  We wanted respect for their remains but knew that was only an empty shell. Danny said Pax would be reborn on earth and have a new chance. That was good and fair, but it also made me very sad because I would never know Pax now. I felt bittersweet about that part. He said Dinah was gone. Just gone. It made me queasy to try to understand that, and Virgil said we were simply not capable of understanding the nothingness of which they spoke, and that was normal.

  Death often was fine for the ones dying, but was awful for those of us left behind to mourn. I cried a long time, and so did Dana and Cassie. The men wiped their eyes often and pretended it was fumes of sulfur that bothered their eyes and made them water. I knew better. Even Limmerfer meowed sadly.