“Why am I in hell? I’m a martyr. I should be in heaven for serving the Holy Catholic Church and the Jesuit order. Did we not help bring down the false Church of England and its evil Protestantism?”
Satan shook his head. “‘Why?’ For attempted murder, for the Gunpowder Plot. For choosing one group as good and another as evil and trying to kill those who disagreed with your religion. Religion brings me many damned souls who sinned in one of its manifold names. Protestantism, Catholicism: all ‘isms’ are meaningless in hell. Here are only the damned. And you, Guy, are surely damned.”
“But is there no appeal? No hope of reversing this damnation?” Fawkes demanded, only then realizing that his body was no longer broken, that his neck turned on his shoulders, that no wound afflicted his flesh.
“None. Or not yet. You may someday appeal your case, but first you’ll pay for your sins in life. Thou art damned, Guy Fawkes, to hell!”
*
Anton Szandor LaVey awoke, lying on a black tile floor in an elevator rapidly descending. He sat up, running his hands over his body, across his shaven head, and down his Mephistophelean goatee, not quite believing he was feeling anything at all. His last memory was being in a hospital bed while a nurse told him he would pass very soon.
“But pass to where?” he had wondered.
LaVey was the founder of the Church of Satan. He’d died, he was sure, to awake in an … elevator? He held no belief in heaven, or any afterlife, really – heaven or hell – especially not in any Christian or biblical or Dantean or Miltonesque sense. Why should human animals be punished for behaving as nature dictated? LaVey found man to be nature’s most imperfect, incomplete creation. Sin, like god, was just another invention of man, designed to keep the teeming hordes compliant and guilt-ridden.
The elevator came to a sudden lurching stop; its doors opened. LaVey looked out into some kind of basement dimly lit by flickering fluorescents. The air in his nostrils was hot and dry. He stepped out of the elevator; its door sighed shut behind him and it disappeared. Where it had been, only basement remained.
“Well, hello there, tall, bald, and handsome,” said a sultry woman’s voice from behind him.
He jumped, startled.
A pair of arms in black full-length formal gloves wrapped themselves about his chest and locked tightly around him. Long silky hair brushed his neck. Moist lips kissed the edge of his mouth. Sweet game of seduction.
He knew this game well. Hell, he’d even written a book about it. Who was this mystery woman? He shifted to get a better look at this wanton minx.
Arms still wrapped around him, she wriggled around to face him. She was about his height. Buxom, full-figured curves filled out a slinky black evening gown, slit up both sides. Black nylons and a garter belt were visible on her thighs; six-inch stiletto-heeled boots sheathed her legs to just above her knees. Flame-red hair flowed in waves down past her shoulders. She had a beautiful, pale face, with high cheekbones and a strong chin. Bright blue eyes stared at him.
When LaVey opened his mouth to ask who she was, she planted her lips on his and kissed him ravenously. He reciprocated. Their tongues intertwined.
Her tongue flicked the roof of his mouth and probed deeper, to the back of his tonsils, and then kept going, down his throat. He gagged and fought to disengage, pushing against her arms to free himself. The long wet tongue worked its way further and further down his esophagus, choking him. Desperately, arching his head back, he broke from her deadly embrace.
He heard a slurping sound. As the woman stumbled back, she was retracting her black tongue, forked like a snake’s and two feet long.
“What the fuck was that?” LaVey demanded.
She replied in soft demurring tones, “‘Fuck.’ To you it’s profanity, but to me it’s exercise.” She giggled lasciviously, grabbing her ample breasts and, pushing them up toward him, offered herself once more.
“I’m all for that kind of exercise my dear, but your tongue damn near killed me. Where did you get that tongue? Surgery? Some serpentine fetish? Who are you, and where are we?”
The woman slid the gown off her body and onto the floor, revealing a red patch of kinky hair covering her mound, wherein something sinuous was writhing.
“I’m the Welcome Woman, Harlot Supreme, and this is hell!” she proclaimed with a haughty cackle. Her features began to shimmer and alter, warping into those of an old hag with rows of needle sharp teeth and black eyes. Long pointed horns erupted from the top of her skull. Her body swelled and bulged, gross with fat. The black nylons and garters stretched over her legs and the knee-high boots split, falling to the floor. Her breasts became flaccid; her wizened nipples split open and blood spewed from them; her feet curled into cloven hooves, and coarse black hair sprouted from her skin to cover her legs and buttocks.
“Welcome to hell, Anton!” the grotesque creature screamed.
LaVey uttered a strangled cry as a long black tongue shot from her vagina and pulled his face into the cleft of flesh between her hairy thighs. The stench of sulfur and brine was stifling.
“Kiss me, my darling,” she moaned.
Anton LaVey had no choice. No woman in life had ever been able to dominate him. But this was the Harlot of Hell, infernal dominatrix. She was physically repulsive and her stench made him gag and cough, but he reveled in his subjugation. If this was hell, it suited him just fine.
“His Satanic Majesty has told me so many sinister things about you, Anton,” she whispered, gyrating her pelvis against his face. “Now, Anton, you will bestow upon me the Devil’s Kiss to prove your eternal loyalty to me and to His Satanic Majesty, the devil.”
The harlot let him go and lay back on the floor, then turned over and thrust her corpulent buttocks up to him. She farted noxious fumes into his face. Despite his nausea from the reek, LaVey put his lips to her anus and quite literally kissed her ass.
“The Devil’s Kiss is a binding pact in hell. Anton Szandor LaVey, you are truly one of the privileged damned, now and forever. Perhaps someday soon you will be numbered among the Devil’s Children, Satan’s own intelligence officers,” she told him, her teasing smile revealing deadly teeth.
A diabolical grin spread across LaVey’s face as he imagined what he could achieve in hell as a true servant of the devil.
“Hail Satan!” he proclaimed.
*
“All rise!” the bailiff announced. “The First Appellate Court of Hell is now in session, the Dishonorable Judge Roy Bean presiding in the case of Guy Fawkes versus Hell.”
Everyone in the courtroom in the Hall of Injustice stood up as the judge entered. Tall, thick-middled, with a haggard, white-bearded face, he was a man once handsome but not aging well.
“Where in hell is my gavel? Bailiff! Get me another one, pronto!” Bean ordered in a voice that had swallowed too much tobacco smoke and whiskey in life and afterlife.
“Yes, Your Dishonor, right away!” The bailiff scurried to replace the judge’s small wooden gavel. Bean eyed the replacement judiciously. “Hrumph! It’ll not give me as much bang for my buck as my old one, but it’ll have to do, I reckon.” Judge Bean banged it on the wooden sounding block of the bench. “You insufferable bastards may be seated!” he declared.
“Counsel for the Appellant may approach the bench.”
Icelandic lawspeaker Eyjolf Bolverksson, wearing a fine linen tunic and a rich scarlet cloak upon his shoulders, strode to the bench, case notes in hand.
“State your case before the court,” Judge Roy Bean told Bolverksson.
“Your Dishonor, my client, Guy Fawkes, brings forth an appeal of his sentence of damnation in hell.”
The Judge responded, “Why does Mister Fawkes think he doesn’t belong in hell? What evidence substantiates this claim?”
“Your Dishonor, my client maintains that the actions resulting in his untimely death by hanging were undertaken by him in the interest of the Holy Catholic Church against an unjust and false Protestant Anglican Church of England. He
believes he should have been martyred and granted sainthood by the Catholic Church, and thus should have been sent directly to heaven.”
“Did the Catholic Church exonerate this man and grant him such martyrdom after his death?”
“No, Your Dishonor, it did not. However, we shall prove his lack of canonization to be an oversight on the part of the Catholic Church. We maintain that my client’s martyrdom is irrefutable.”
“Do you have any witnesses to support your client’s claim to innocence and martyrdom?” Judge Bean asked.
“Yes, Your Dishonor. Appellant would call Robert Catesby, a peer of Mister Fawkes, to the witness stand.”
“Approach the stand, Mister Catesby – and be quick about it. I ain’t got all day,” said Judge Roy Bean.
A middle-aged man, six feet tall with the refined features of a nobleman, approached the stand.
“Mister Robert Catesby, be warned: perjury in this court will not be tolerated. If I suspect you of lying, we will obtain the truth from you through torture. Is that clear, Mister Catesby?” asked the judge.
“Yes, Your Dishonor.”
“And that goes for the rest of you damned souls!” Judge Bean added.
“Mister Catesby, sit down, damn you.”
Catesby took his seat in the witness box.
“Council for the Appellant, you may examine the witness.”
Eyjolf Bolverksson approached the seated witness. “Mister Catesby, I believe you know Mister Guy Fawkes, is that correct?”
“Yes sir, he was an associate of mine in life. A good friend,” replied Catesby.
The lawspeaker continued, “And you were both devout Catholics in life, were you not?”
“Yes, we were. I still am, even though I’m damned,” Catesby added defiantly.
“So the Gunpowder Plot of November, Sixteen Hundred and Five, was a response by you and other angry and frustrated Catholics who were mistreated by the Protestant Church of England, which by then held powers and allegiances previously enjoyed by the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope?”
“Yes. Something had to be done about King James and the House of Commons’ mistreatment of Catholics.”
“What was your solution to the problem?” Bolverksson asked.
“Myself and twelve other faithful Catholics committed to destroying the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Hall, Westminster Abbey, the House of Commons and House of Lords, along with King James the First and all of the British parliament members. If successful, we would have rid England of an unjust king and wiped Protestantism from the country. It would have been a complete coup. Catholics once more would have controlled the throne and the parliament, as God intended.”
“And was Guy Fawkes one of these faithful Catholics?” Bolverksson asked.
“Yes. Mister Fawkes was a co-conspirator in what became known as the ‘Gunpowder Plot,’” admitted Catesby.
“What would you say was his involvement in the plot?” inquired Bolverksson.
“Fawkes was to ensure the gunpowder was properly mixed and emplaced undetected in the cellar under the House of Lords,” said Catesby.
“And Mister Fawkes performed these tasks successfully?”
“Yes, he did, but unfortunately our plot was uncovered. One night, on the fifth of November, as Guy Fawkes was checking the powder, the authorities discovered him leaving the cellar. Finding thirty-six barrels of gunpowder, the guards arrested Mister Fawkes. Fawkes was questioned and tortured. When the police tried to arrest me and my fellow conspirators, I and some of my cohorts were shot and killed, the rest captured and put to death by order of the king. Had we succeeded, the Catholic Church would have lauded us as heroes.
But we failed, and history is written by the victors,” stated Catesby.
“So your failed plan to overthrow the King and the Anglican Church resulted in Guy Fawkes’ trial and execution by an unjust government?
“Counsel will refrain from prejudicial statements,” Judge Bean instructed. “The just or unjust nature of the British government in this era is immaterial. Witness, answer the question.”
“That is correct,” replied Catesby.
Bolverksson took a step toward the judge. “Should failure be considered just cause for damnation? We maintain that it should not. Thank you Mister Catesby. You may step down.”
Judge Roy Bean asked, “Does Appellant have any other witnesses?”
The lawspeaker called Eyjolf Bolverksson answered, “No, Your Dishonor we do not.”
“Then sit down, damn it. Will counsel representing hell come forward? And don’t dawdle! I’ve got a full docket.”
William Jennings Bryan, wearing tan slacks and an open-collared white shirt, ambled toward the Judge’s bench. Perspiration stained his shirt’s armpits and shone on his face. He held a small electric fan, which worked fitfully, and then only when he shook it violently.
“Your Dishonor, I will show this court why Mister Guy Fawkes has been damned to hell, and why he should remain here for all eternity.”
“Get on with it Mister Bryan. Who is your first witness?” demanded Judge Bean.
“Your Dishonor, I call James the First, former King of England,” Bryan declared.
Fawkes gasped as James I, an august figure, tall and resplendent in regal robes, and finely woven silken clothes, proceeded to the witness box.
“James the First, former king of England, tell the court the charges of which Mister Guy Fawkes was found guilty by due process of the day, resulting in his execution by hanging,” said William Jennings Bryan.
“Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators amassed some thirty-six barrels of gunpowder in the basements beneath the House of Lords; enough explosives to blow up the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Hall, Westminster Abbey, myself, my family, and all the members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons! His act was treasonous. His intent was to murder every high official in England so his Jesuit Catholics could take over the country,” replied James I, formerly James VI of Scotland, in a resounding voice. “Fawkes shall always be remembered as a traitor and a terrorist. Mister Fawkes also took his own life, leaping from the gallows scaffold rather than face the torturous execution that was his due.”
Fawkes rose and, before Bolverksson could stop him, proclaimed, “That’s a Protestant lie, Your Dishonor! James the First is the traitor to the people of England who believe in the sanctity of the Holy Catholic Church and the laws of God and the Pope. It was James the First who took my life that day. My neck was broken by the providence and mercy of the Lord God almighty, and his son Jesus, may they both be praised, Amen!”
Judge Roy Bean leapt to his feet, banging the makeshift gavel on the block so hard that the handle broke. The gavel’s head flew up into the air and landed on the floor with a thud. “Order in this Courtroom now! Guy Fawkes, you stand in contempt of court! I’ll not allow you to obscenely praise Satan’s opponents in this Hall of Injustice. Furthermore, based on this witness’s testimony and because of your outburst, I hereby deny your appeal. You are damned and you will remain eternally damned, without possibility of redemption! This court is now adjourned! Now, you damned bastards get out of my sight before I have you all flogged!”
*
“Mother Mary, Jesus, and God Above! That didn’t go very well at all,” sighed Guy Fawkes, putting on his tall, wide-brimmed hat as they were leaving the courtroom.
Eyjolf Bolverksson winced and said, “Please watch your language here. So much for finding a judge sympathetic to your politics or to the Catholic Church.”
“Hrumpf! In hell? This godforsaken place is full of Protestants and pagans. Four hundred years I’ve been here suffering, waiting for Jesus to set me free; hoping that one of the popes would declare me a martyr for what I tried to do for the Catholic Church in England!” Fawkes said, exasperated.
“Don’t get snippy with me, Guy. I’ve been here a thousand years myself. Because of the things I did in life, I hold no hope for personal salvation. So I try to help ot
hers gain redemption through the Injustice System.”
“For you help, I’m grateful, Eyjolf. I let my anger and frustration get the best of me. This whole ordeal has me mightily vexed.”
“I understand,” Bolverksson replied. “Hey, New Hell’s not so bad, really. Hell isn’t all like the Irish Monks described it: lakes of fire, pits of vipers, eternal suffering and torture. Okay, so it is pretty hot here, but after a lifetime in Iceland I welcome the warmth to defrost these cold old bones.”
“It reminds me of summers in Spain, fighting Dutch Prot-estant reformists and trying to start a rebellion in England,” said Guy Fawkes. “I was young and idealistic. We Catholics thought we could save the world from the evils of Protestantism – or at least save England.”
Bolverksson nodded. “England always needed a good kick in the ass! My ancestors once did a fair job, though more for riches, land and slaves than for religion. But in the year of Our Lord One Thousand, my people took Christ into our hearts and became peaceful, God-fearing folk. Catholicism was good to my country, though we never truly abandoned the old ways and our beloved ancestral gods. We just added the ‘Father, Son and the Holy Spirit’ to our pantheon. It worked well enough.”
They reached the elevators in the Hall of Injustice, New Hell’s tallest skyscraper. Bolverksson paused and looked at the shiny steel doors with trepidation. “Uh … maybe we should take the stairs. My office is only a few floors up.”
Guy Fawkes agreed, and they climbed the adjacent stairwell to the sixth floor. When they reached the door to Bolverksson’s office, Fawkes saw the gold numbers on its door: 666.
“Surely you jest?” Fawkes breathed.
“Great isn’t it?” countered Eyjolf the lawspeaker. “I worked hard to get this suite. It’s in very high demand.” Bolverksson opened the door and led Fawkes into a sparsely decorated but neat office, nodding to his secretary as they went through to Eyjolf’s inner office.
“Let me just check the hex machine for any incoming documents.” Bolverksson walked to the machine and pulled a piece of paper from the printer tray. Fawkes followed.
Lawyers in Hell Page 45