Camp McClane

by Grant Fieldgrove

  Time to test this bad boy out.

  Carl placed a large squash he found on the side of the road, probably dropped from a delivery truck, on an end table on the far wall then walked the length of the room. He snapped his razor whip towards the vegetable, missing it twice. “Shoot. Come on, man. Focus.” On the third try, the razors caught, digging themselves into the yellowy flesh of the vegetable. A flick of the wrist and his target was demolished, the top half being separated from the bottom with such force that it banged against the back wall before landing with a wet thud.

  Carl threw his arms up in celebration. “Heck yeah!”

  The celebration was cut short by an endless vibration in his pocket.

  A pager.

  The boss wanted to see him.

  “Dang it.”

  Carl closed his eye, still gripping the whip, and in a sudden flash, was gone, the razors falling harmlessly to the floor.

  The first time Carl had been sent here was completely against his will. He had been murdered and quite honestly, he would have preferred to have gone on living.

  His parents and he were driving to Crystal Falls Lake, located right near where Camp McClane is set up now, and on the radio they had heard the news of a Satanic rock group, Hell’s Fire, all dying when their small plane carrying them to their next gig crashed into a mountain. It was a horrible fiery death whose irony was not lost on, well, anyone.

  Carl had heard a few of their songs and didn’t love it and didn’t hate it. His parents however, thought it was garbage and had a few unkind words to say when they heard the news. Carl thought it was kind of fucked up to speak ill of the dead, but by now he had learned to let his parent be outspoken if they wanted, because to argue with them was pointless.

  Cut to three hours later and Carl himself was dead, along with his parents. They had gotten a flat tire in the woods and had set off on foot when they got lost again. They got so lost they stumbled upon a brittle, gray haired old man, who, at the time, seemed harmless enough.

  Boy, were they wrong.

  With a club he had formed out of a fallen tree, the old man had completely caved in the side of Carl’s dad’s head before he had any idea what had happened.

  His mother screamed, turned to run, but it didn’t matter. The old man removed a blade from his pants and chucked it, hard, hitting the woman in the spine. She fell hard, hitting her forehead on a rock occupied by a frog.

  The frog croaked twice, then went back to his business of searching for lunch.

  Carl stood frozen; he couldn’t feel anything below his neck, he couldn’t even be certain if he had pissed himself.

  It didn’t matter, because the bat connected with his skull and it was lights out.

  When he awoke, he was in Hell. Like, for real Hell, not Fresno, California or anything like that, and it didn’t take long for this realization to come to him.

  But, come on, why the hell was he in Hell? He was only seventeen and he hadn’t done anything wrong. Christ, he had never killed anyone, never hurt anyone, and he never even did any of those stupid things the bible said not to do but people ignore, like have sex before marriage, or whatever it was.

  Christ, he was a virgin for fuck’s sake. A dead virgin. Was there anything more annoying than that?

  Instead of fear, Carl felt anger. Anger at never getting laid, anger at being in Hell, anger anger anger, Marcia Marcia Marcia.

  He sat up, took a look around. Fire everywhere. How cliché.

  “Thanks brother,” a voice from behind him had said. He turned to look and it was none other than the son of a bitch who had just murdered him.

  “What?” Carl had said, shocked.

  “I’m punching out. I said thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “For being done. I’m retiring with a perfect record. I was worried there for a second when your mom took off, thought maybe my aim wasn’t as good as it used to be, but nope, blammo, right on!”

  Carl’s face went bright red, but the old man couldn’t tell as everything down here had a red tint. Carl tried to lunge at the man but found he was restricted. He was bound to the ashen ground with chains, chains that were surprisingly not hot.

  He couldn’t figure out the science of that, but it didn’t matter. All he wanted to do was ring that old bastard’s dangling pussy neck.

  No dice.

  He would come to find out that the man in the woods had been haunting that turf for upwards of a hundred years and had finally gathered enough souls to earn a cushy retirement in a new development of Hell where the best of the best resided, complete with special privileges the run-of-the-mill assholes could only dream of: a bed not made of bones and farts, a television set with the latest of Beta cassettes, and a nice view overlooking the Lake of Almost Babies.

  Carl had wondered what that lake was, he thought of all kinds of horrible things, but in the end, it just turned out to be a lake of spunk. Big deal.

  What really chapped Carl’s hide was why he was there in the first place. As it was explained to him by Satan’s secretary, some big-titted ex-whore who once gave Jack the Ripper a tuggy in the back of a horse-drawn carriage, was that the devil had made a deal with God.

  Here is what the deal basically broke down to:

  Carl Langer was the last person murdered by the infamous killing machine, Mason Gamble, before retiring for good, which left Satan in the sticky spot of finding a replacement.

  In all honesty, Satan was fully expecting that old bastard Mason to fuck up and force him to stay in his position for much longer, but the old man had done well and earned his retirement fair and square.

  Usually when someone retires, which doesn’t happen often, but when it does, he’s replaced by someone similar. The guy with the hockey mask had been replaced like seven times, that burnt asshole just recently got replaced by another burnt asshole, and people noticed and weren’t thrilled. The doll and that leprechaun though, they’re still going strong.

  And don’t forget about the guy in the William Shatner mask. He retired after twenty-three years on the job and was replaced by a new, buff upgrade that Satan was sure would impress.

  He didn’t.

  Not even a little bit.

  Oh well.

  So now it was time to find a replacement for Gamble and it had to be someone good. Every time he replaced a retiree with a similar version, nobody liked it…so he had to find someone original.

  Yeah…original. That was the ticket!

  But on top of that, the new guy had to have so much built up rage that he could easily be manipulated into doing the job well… and wouldn’t you know it, poor ol’ Carl Langer the virgin was just the guy.

  Sure, he was a little young and sure, he had dumb red hair, but still, with a little bit of training, this kid could go places.

  The only problem was that Carl Langer was scheduled to go to Heaven, not Hell.

  Satan had called God on his rotary phone to see if they could work out a deal, and wouldn’t you know it, there was, in fact, a deal to be made.

  Things were definitely coming up Satan that day!

  As it turned out, Jesus’s favorite band, Hell’s Fire, had recently perished in a gnarly plane crash and, while all the members of the band along with the doped-up pilot, were all scheduled to be Hell’s newest residents, God had told Satan that if he would let Hell’s Fire go to heaven to play for Jesus’s birthday party every year that Big J was into them, he would gladly let Satan have the little ginger boy.

  Turned out there was a reason Jesus kept his hair long.

  Jesus liked to fuckin’ rock!

  The deal was made.

  Hell’s Fire, sans heroine-addicted pilot, would go to Heaven, and Carl would stay in Hell.

  All of this was explained to him by the bimbo at the front desk but he was told he would have to see the big man before he heard the official job description.

  Carl never had a job before and just in case it wasn’t bad enough being dead and in Hell, now
he had to work.

  He waited and waited outside of Satan’s office, in an uncomfortable chair made of metal dildos, until the huge red doors finally parted with loud groans and screams from the faces protruding from them.

  He stood at the entryway, not knowing what to do, when a voice boomed from somewhere in front of him.

  “Enter.”

  Apprehensively, Carl stepped in.

  Carl found himself standing at these same doors once again, only this time he was not afraid. Not afraid in the least. In fact, he was pretty annoyed about being called right now, talk about the worst possible timing, but when the boss calls, you have no choice but to go.

  The big-titted secretary had long since retired, and was now replaced by Casey Anthony, her soul already sentenced to a life of mundane hell down here amongst the worst of the worst.

  In fact, there were a lot of souls down here on loan.

  Was it loan, or was it lay-away? Carl didn’t know, but he was fairly certain Casey Anthony was still alive up top, as well as Jodi Arias, whose mouth was currently, and permanently, wrapped around the toilet shoot, as pile after pile of undead feces was forced down her gullet. Carl looked away, unamused.

  “Hello, friend,” a familiar voice from behind him said cheerily.

  “Oh no,” Carl mumbled. “Hey Bill.”

  “Hey hey hey!”

  “What do you want?”

  “Would you like to try some tasty Jell-O pudding?”

  “There is no Jell-O down here, Bill, you’re delusional.”

  “How about some Kodak film? Hey hey hey.”

  “People don’t use film any more, Bill.”

  “I’ve got to get back on the T.V.”

  “There is no T.V. down here, Bill.”

  “I’m America’s favorite dad, hey hey hey.”

  “You’re a monster in Hell, Bill, and there are no sitcoms down here.”

  “There’s T.V.s everywhere down here, hey hey hey.”

  It was true, there were a lot of televisions, but they only played one movie on repeat, over and over and over for a decade at a time before even Satan got sick of them and demanded them changed. When Carl first arrived, the movie was Love Story, and he remembered how Satan had scattered handgun’s all throughout his kingdom, as he forced his subjects to watch this smatzly shitfest over and over, and laugh as, one by one, people tried blowing their brains out.

  Of course, all that caused them was more pain, because really, you can’t kill something that’s already dead.

  When Carl had checked in after his “I heard you like to get nailed” killings, it was Jesus Christ Superstar, and he could vividly remember all the gunshots her heard; it was like Fourth of July in Washington D.C.!

  That trip down here was memorable for another reason, too. After getting torn a new asshole by his boss for basically killing everyone too quickly (he had learned that the more scared people were, the more valuable their souls were, or some such nonsense, he wasn’t really paying much attention), but that’s when Satan had told him to shut up while working. He said he dug the mask, recently forged from a woman’s ribcage, but that no one likes a wise-cracking killer, the strong and silent type was much more effective.

  Only problem was, Carl was not strong. He was still a skinny little ginger. He had had an idea though. He asked Satan to make him ripped! He said all the best killers were ripped, and referenced that dude over in Crystal Lake for comparison.

  Satan had told Carl that that fella had worked hard for his rippled, masculine figure, by lifting dead trees, dead bodies, and any of the dead weight he could.

  Carl sulked enough to annoy Satan and poof, instant rip! So much rip, in fact, that his skin burst and fell to the floor. It would take seven days for it to restore itself.

  Still, that was a good trip.

  On his trip in the mid-nineties, it was another dud, The English Patient, a movie so dull, living humans were as close to Hell as possible without actually being dead.

  Today, it was even more bottom of the barrel. Another Academy Award winner, this one even worse than the Ralph Fiennes disaster from last time; the smug, the incomprehensible, the self-serving, the pompous, the worst of the worst, Birdman, with Michael Keaton and an all-star cast all slated to be residents of the underworld within twenty-six years, due solely to their work here.

  “Yeah,” Carl said to Bill, “but there are no sitcoms. The T.V.s aren’t down here for amusement.”

  “I could go for a nice cool Puddin’ Pop! Zipzopzoopitybop.” Bill said, while using his sweater to wipe the sweat from his face.

  “Look dude, I’ve gotta…stand…over here…now… Good seein’ ya.”

  Bill was still talking nonsense and Carl simply turned around and gave him his back. Carl pounded on the door, which was actually some guy’s nose, until the door opened.

  “Freaking finally.”

  Carl stepped in and saw his boss, lord of the underworld, Satan, sitting at his desk, reading the latest Nicholas Sparks book.

  “Real tear-jerker, this one,” Satan said.

  “They’re all the same. Look, why did you page me?”

  The pager, a product long dead to everyone except Satan’s employees. Satan had said, time and time again, that pagers are much more reliable than cell phones, and it’s a step up from what everyone else gets, so Carl should be happy.

  Carl didn’t care one way or the other. Every other resident of Hell was issued an Android phone, as it was the official phone of assholes, deadbeats, whores and murderers… Basically, it’s just another form of punishment dealt from the hoofs of Satan himself.

  The more Carl thought of it, the more he appreciated the pager.

  “Okay, fine, but I’m really busy up top, what do you need?”

  “Oh, ya know,” Satan said happily, putting the book down and resting his chin on his folded hands like a lovelorn teenager. “Just checkin’ in.”

  Carl sighed. “You could have checked in without me having to come down. I’m really busy up there and I have a lot of work and I don’t want to screw this one up.”

  “I have total faith in you, boyo.”

  “And I appreciate that, I really do.” Carl looked at his boss, with his ridiculous tail and even more ridiculous pitchfork. What the hell was there to do with a pitchfork down in Hell? Was there hay that needed forkin’? He didn’t understand. “But, it’s a lot of hard work, and it’s stressful, and with all the pressure you put on me, what with the threat of permanent death, it’s pretty freaking scary.”

  Satan laughed. The threat of permanent death was a good one. He had thought of it after Mason retired. He had told Carl, on his first day of training, that if too many humans got the better of him, his contract will be null and void, resulting in Carl living for all eternity watching a shitty movie, swimming in semen, eating flushed turds and who knows what else.

  This sent Carl into a panic, which caused him to kill his first bunch way too fast. But, over the years, he had learned to toy with his prey, string them along as long as possible, resulting in the plumpest, tastiest souls Satan ever had.

  Bottom line though, still, was that it was stressful as hell and Carl did not want to swim in jizz!

  “Look, the less time I’m down here, the more time I’m up there. I don’t want to be unprepared and I certainly don’t want to die because of some easily preventable error. So, is there anything else?”

  The more Carl thought about all this, the more he realized that it was really, really stupid. His job was to guard a portal to Hell, which no human had ever actually found, by killing everyone who came near it, while collecting frightened souls from his boss to eat? Really?

  If this were a movie, it would be straight to Redbox! Oh well, though. Carl would do what needed to be done as many times as it needed to be done, until he could retire in Los Flamas, next to Mason Gamble, and all other hellish royalty.

  “Fine fine, my boy, just thought you’d like to hang out a little and chat. Ya know, sho
ot the breeze.” Satan was standing now, his hairy hoofed feet clanking on the marble floor as he stepped towards Carl.

  With his hands placed on Carl’s shoulders, Satan said, “Honestly, these new residents are killin’ me. That one asshole out there with the sweaters keeps talking about being back on television and the other black fella with the football brags non-stop! He brags more about killing two white people in Brentwood than he does about the fucking Heisman trophy he won. They’re driving me crazy!”

  “Sorry, boss. Look, I’ll finish up up top and I’ll come back down and we can chill for a while.”

  Satan laughed so hard he started coughing. “Chill! I get it! Wicked zinger, boyo! Wicked!”

  Carl rolled his eyes and poof, disappeared from the underworld.

  Mort sat on the floor, his back resting against a sofa. In front of him was a glass table with his iPad and keyboard set up in a makeshift workstation. He was typing away. Behind him, Dave was doing recliner sit-ups, repeatedly leaning back in his chair, then up again.

  “Yeah. Feel the burn, baby! You've got to want it! Work it, stud!”

  Jimmy plopped down on the floor next to Mort, leaning over to look at the iPad screen. “What are you writing, anyway?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on. It’s not one of those bullshit, self-published children’s books, is it?”

  “No. God no. I have talent, thanks.”

  “Well, then, come on. Tell me.”

  “No. It’s nothing...”

  Jimmy bent down closer to the screen and caught a glimpse of a few words before Mort snatched the iPad and pulled it out of sight.

  “From Here to Eternia?” Jimmy snorted. “What the hell is this fuckshit?”

  Mort sighed. “Fine. It is erotic He-Man fan fiction.”

  Jimmy grabbed the iPad from Mort’s hands. “Gimme gimme.”

  “Come on dude. No.”

  Jimmy ignored the pleas and began reading. "Orko rubbed his gloved hand across Princess Adora's sopping wet lady-hole and said, ‘I'm magical in more ways than just being able to fly, ya know?’” Jimmy eyes went wide. “Holy shit, man!”