The Apocalypse and Satan's Glory Hole!

by Jonathan Moon

  A cry from inside pulls at Death. Something familiar, as though he were remembering an old song.

  He picks his way through the rubble. As one of the Horsemen, he has a few tricks up his sleeve, but inhuman strength was never one of them. Instead, when he comes across a blocked path, he uses his scythe to cut through the obstruction like a hot knife through lard. He chops a column in half and jumps back when part of the floor above collapses.

  He waits for the dust to settle, then continues, climbing over beds and chairs. Something shakes in what used to be a closet, but he ignores it and moves on.

  He comes across the remains of tables, chips, money. People and body parts lie everywhere. There is a guy folded completely in half at the waist, crushed under a massive table. A loud groan comes from a giant rent in the floor. Death pokes his head under a fallen column and then weasels through a narrow gap where it meets the wall. Then he is through and staring down a tremendous gap in the earth like part of a plate under the ground has shifted.

  He steps to the edge and looks over it. The ground falls away into a vast valley of broken earth. It must be a five-hundred-foot drop. Not that he has any plans to go over the edge. A hand is in view, and he follows it to a pale white arm clad in a dirty white sleeve.

  “Someone alive?”

  “Barely.”

  Death should drop the scythe and send this poor soul on to whatever awaits, but that familiar something needles him again. Like an old song he hasn’t head in years is suddenly pounding away in his head. For the first time in his long life, he reaches down and helps someone live.

  The guy coughs and pushes himself up on all fours. He sneezes a few times, wipes his nose on his robe and then blows his nose by blocking each nostril and exhaling until long strands of snot form a thick mucus on the remains of the floor. Death looks away.

  The man gets to his feet. He has a thick black beard and reminds Death of someone he’s seen on TV or maybe in a movie.

  “Thanks,” the man says and sits down. He brushes off his clothes even though the dust and debris are caked so thick the robe itself looks gray. He coughs again and looks up at Death. Death drops his scythe and falls to his knees.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” he mumbles.

  “Hiya.”

  “Lord, I …”

  “No more of that Lord shit. I am sick and tired of being nice. I have had it up to here!” He lifts his hand as far over his head as he can reach, then breaks into a coughing fit. “Do this, do that. Die for people and all for what? Do you know how bad it sucks to die?”

  “Can’t say that I do. I see enough of it, though.”

  “Well it ain’t no cakewalk, junior. Ever had nails driven into your flesh? Trust me, you don’t want that. No one wants that shit. Hurts like hell. Like fucking hell!”

  “What happened to your eye?” A big blue bruise stretches up the side of his head. His left eye is swollen partially shut. It gives him a mean squint.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Chunks of the building crumble and fall into the valley. They slide down the side, dislodging other rocks as they go. The remaining lights flicker as power wanes in the building. Death looks up at the tilted ceiling, wondering if it is about to collapse on them. Now that everything is different, he is pretty sure he can be killed. Maybe that is the answer. Maybe he can seek solace in oblivion. With the dead walking, no one to collect their souls and the only man capable of putting things right standing in front of him looking like the world pissed on him … again … well, he is pretty much convinced that everything is fucked.

  “So what now?”

  “Now? We get out of this forsaken place and do something I have wanted to do for a couple of thousand years.”

  “Have a drink?” Death chuckles.

  “For starters. Then I want to kick some ass.”

  “Road trip!” Death smiles for the first time in several thousand years.

  The Demons of Hell 78 are Unleashed upon the World

  They slip silently from the pit more quickly than human eyes can see. They scatter once they feel the warm dry air through the holes in their shells and realize they have stumbled into freedom. They speed through back alleys and seedy bars, then slow down and rest. Their square shells lower to cover their large callous feet. Their shells are square and seven to eight feet tall. Most humans foolishly regard them as extra-large refrigerator boxes.

  Large circular holes dot the shells, some high and some low and, of course, some right around the middle. Some holes have variously colored worn stars painted around them. Other holes are set in the center of big faded lips. Within minutes, all of the glory hole demons of Hell 78 are free from Hades and scattered across the world to prey on a very, very sinful mankind.

  One twirls at breakneck speed into the middle of a large herd of elephants in India. The group of Mahouts responsible for keeping the beasts clutter around the large box-shaped demon, completely unaware of its hellish origin and intent. They rub the smooth surface of the demon’s shell, and it vibrates softly under their touch. The lonely Mahouts need no words to explain the holes. The lips painted around them and the soft, sensual cooing sounds from within say enough. Three of them fish their limp pricks out of their robes. Others protest, but the men stick their dicks into the darkness of the holes.

  All three men moan and groan, lost in the throes of incredible pleasure. Their howls of euphoria startle the elephants, and they trumpet and stomp in place, some even rearing back on their hind legs. The men who chose not to partake argue about the star-painted holes. One gets on his knees and peers into the darkness. Without warning, a giant maroon cock thrusts from the box and through the kneeling man’s head with an explosion of brains and bone. The demon cock pierces the man’s skull, and his lifeless body hangs limply from the throbbing demon dong.

  The other two abstainers back up screaming, exciting the elephant herd into a stampede. The three men with their dicks in the glory holes try to pull them free, but sharp teeth sink into the flesh of their hard-ons. The mouths tear and bite at the men’s privates and tug them into the holes. The men scream and fight, but eventually all three are snapped in half as the mouths inside the shell eat them, dicks first.

  The remaining two Mahouts run in circles, trying to calm the massive animals. One steps in the wrong direction and is crushed to pulp by a big bull elephant, and the other Mahout is trampled under the herd as they rumble toward their home. The rampaging beasts stampede through the village, stomping every person and building flat in a matter of seconds. Left alone in the dusty field, the glory hole demon shudders and spins off somewhere else in a blur.

  Another glory hole demon spins across the ocean at fantastic speed. It crashes through large glass windows and lands in the middle of a busy Japanese office building.

  The businessmen abandon all restraint when big colorful dicks spring from the holes with stars painted around them. Before giving in to the full-on depravity usually reserved for bath houses (and bath houses only), the businessmen use their extreme problem solving skills to determine that if dicks flop out of some holes then, obviously, dicks should go into the other holes.

  Soon hundreds of men in business suits are climbing all over the glory hole demons. They hum and suck and flop in response to all the tiny hands, mouths, and cocks. Modestly dressed businesswomen are shoved aside or trampled as offices from other floors empty and men from all over the building converge on the glory hole demons.

  Soon, neighboring buildings are emptied of their male population, and the floor beneath the glory hole demon squeals from the weight of hundreds of randy Japanese businessmen. The air is thick with man musk and sweat. Then the building supports crack under the fleshy weight. The office building full of depraved men, crushed females, and one extremely satisfied glory hole demon goes as silent as a grave so each tiny splinter in the foundation can be heard. The building creaks and pops, then shifts so hard and fast that every window shatters.

 
The men scream, and the glory hole demon feasts on the small peckers thrust down its gullet. The demon chews and spins, flinging naked men across the crowded office or out the broken windows even as the building collapses in a screaming heap of stone, metal, and depraved businessmen. The force of the destruction shakes the ground and triggers a massive earthquake that destroys Tokyo in a few hectic, apocalyptic minutes.

  Other glory hole demons remain close to their doorway from Hell and end up in Reno or Vegas. They wait in dim alleys with their cocks hanging out, rubbing against passersby, humming and cooing from the holes with lips. A few wander blindly into malls and other businesses causing fellatio and chaos wherever they go.

  One shatters the front doors to the Greedy Cowboy Casino and spins through the lobby crushing bell boys and cashiers as it bounces from wall to wall until it bounds onto the main casino floor. It comes to rest at the end of a line of penny slots, each with two-tone lights spinning on top. People run screaming and panicking as zombies and demons stumble and fly through the broken windows. Across the crowded, bloodstained lobby, an elevator door opens with a bing. Out meanders a sweet old lady with a metal walker. She takes a few slow shuffling steps into the chaotic casino.

  She steps her walker then shuffles after it over and over again as people run screaming into the arms of the dead. This keeps the zombies distracted as she makes her slow but painstakingly straight pathway to her favorite row of penny machines.

  She loses a few minutes when she has to skirt two cocktail waitress zombies feasting on a lounge singer, but the detour leads her to a roll of pennies someone has dropped on the ground. When she bends down (slowly) to pick up the roll of pennies, a zombie wearing green and orange plaid lunges at her (also slowly) and misses, falling down the small flight of stairs behind her instead. She smiles and hurries her walker to the row of games. She is struggling to remember which one paid best last when she notices the taller, stranger machine at the end of the row.

  A bell boy who was thrown into a wall when the glory hole demon entered screams at her to stop, but the plaid zombie clamps his jaws down on the bell boy’s neck, silencing his fevered warning. The old lady squints behind her glasses, looking for the video screen on the giant slot box, but she sees none.

  “Must be a classic.” She shrugs and commences stuffing the entire roll of fifty pennies, one at a time, into a lip hole, her hands moving faster than her legs have in decades.

  The glory hole demon gags and shudders at the copper dissolving its throat like acid. The old lady, fearing that the machine is threatening to break down and steal her fifty pennies, punches her tiny but mongoose-quick fist into the same hole. Something clamps down on her fist, and she groans in pain.

  A massive deformed cock flops from the star hole above her and crashes down on her head hard enough to cave in her skull in with a squish. Blood and brain spurt from her ears, and she falls limply to the floor. Where she stood, there is now a great wide banner on the glory hole demon that proclaims, “The Daily Cunt proudly presents The End of the Fucking World!”

  Next Stop, Sin City

  The demon went down, sure. The girls did their best to take care of him, but they paid a terrible price. There is blood everywhere. Everywhere! Edwina is not squeamish in the least. She has seen and spilled enough blood to fill a few tubs, but this is her kind.

  Now she is pissed. Fucking pissed.

  Darla was the worst. Seeing her tossed through the air, her sturdy body crumpling as it struck the ground, rolling over and over. If Edwina had a big enough gun she would destroy the entire area. She would nuke it into oblivion.

  “FUCK!” she screams and punches the side of the truck.

  The monkey goes nuts, jumping up and down and pounding on the opposite wall. Bottles of flavored syrups, nuts and a container of dried-up maraschino cherries make a squishy mess as they smash to the floor.

  Goatboy perks up, walks to the mess and slurps at the floor. He hums a song as he moves around the truck, lapping at the spillage, little goat tongue popping in and out of his human face.

  “It’s good. You should try it.” He glances around the tiny space.

  Edwina is not all that tall, but she has to duck to keep from striking a low-hanging cabinet door that swings back and forth as the truck rocks like a ship in a stiff wind. She slams it shut and kicks one of the cabinets. A jar of crushed nuts flies off a shelf and crashes across Goatboy’s back.

  To everyone’s surprise, he not only howls in pain but stands on two feet so he can rub his back with a very unnatural-looking hoof-hand. When he meets Edwina’s gaze, she has the urge to pull her nine and shoot him in the grinning fucking face.

  “Don’t look at me!” she yells.

  “Sorry, love. Hey look! I can stand. Brilliant. Besides, you ‘ave a rather pleasant face. The parts that aren’t covered in blood. Then again, a few hours ago I didn’t even know what blood was, so I guess it’s not all bad. Maybe I can ‘ave a lick, yeah?”

  Phil farts and rolls over to stare at the wall. He sleeps on the side where his arm used to be.

  “If you bring your freak body anywhere near me, I will take my gun and fill you so full of holes that the one-armed monkey won’t miss a place to fuck you.”

  Goatboy closes his mouth after a moment and sulks to a corner of the ice cream truck. The man in the front seat hasn’t moved since he somehow made the truck levitate. Good trick, that. Maybe she can just jump out the ass end of the thing and say adios, mother fuckers. But she is a fighter, and she isn’t going to let this set her back. If her time with the ladies taught her anything, it is that she is stronger than whatever life can throw at her. She lives for challenge, not like the old days when she used to wait on Charlie hand and foot.

  In fact, if she saw Charlie now, she would plant the side of her palm in his throat with enough force to crush his larynx. Then he would gurgle and die before her eyes. He would fall to his knees and plead with her for his life, his hand pressed to his throat and tears streaming down his face. She would laugh in his face, and then she would kick it in.

  “Hi,” the man in the stained sweatshirt greets her. He stands and looks back and forth between Edwina and the toy microphone in his hand.

  “Yo,” she replies.

  “So, I saved you.”

  “You didn’t save shit. You didn’t fucking save me from SHIT!” She pulls the pistol from the holster in the back of her pants and takes one big step forward. She points it at his head and seriously considers killing everyone in the truck.

  “Okay okay! Fucking Christ!” He quivers.

  “Don’t kill him!” a voice shrieks, and the weirdest thing in her weird day happens. The little plastic face that she’d thought was a hallucination pokes over his shoulder and stares at her. Its razor-sharp teeth are set in a permanent grin. She aims the gun and pulls the trigger before she can consider what she is doing. She is prepared for the recoil, but instead the trigger slaps home with a hollow click. Empty!

  “Fuck!” She reaches for her pocket but doesn’t find a clip. She tries the other side, then starts patting down her body as she backs away.

  “Stop!” the little nightmare face hisses. “If you kill me, you won’t have a guide. I was sent by one of the good guys!”

  “What good guys?” She slides the clip out of her gun and checks it for another shell, but the damn thing is empty. The events of the last half hour are a blur, and she has committed one of the greatest sins, one of the things that Sue, the weapons expert, taught them never to do. She lost track of how many bullets she’d fired. She lost track of a lot of stuff.

  “Darla,” she sighs and drops her hand to her side. The gun thumps against her thigh, and she nearly drops it. Darla is gone, and now nothing is right in the world. Sure, it was fucked before the shootout at the asshole corral, but now everything is a big ball of nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” the man and the weird plastic head say in unison.

  “Just tell me what the fuck hell is going on
. Why do you have a talking toy on your back? Why do you have a monkey with one arm, and why the fuck are we in a floating ice cream truck?”

  “Well I wanted a house, but we had to get away from an army of demons and zombies. And don’t bother looking at me like I’m crazy. Because I’m not! I’m just as sane as you or Phil. Get it? Got it? GOOD!”

  “‘Sright. He’s not a crazy tosspot at all.” Goatboy chimes in. “’Slike this. He came down in ‘is truck, blasted the shit outta that cunt of a monster, and then took us up in the sky. Maybe ‘e’s an angel.”

  “I’m no angel, but Gabriel gave me all these toys, and he was an angel. Said he was an archangel. He didn’t explain how to use them; he just left them on my kitchen floor and wished me luck. Then he flew away and was shot down by a missile. He also drank my beer.”

  “Wait, like an angel angel? Like a guy with big wings come down from the fuckin’ ‘eavens?”

  “Why are you talking?! You’re a goat!”

  “Jealous, then? What about the thing on your back, mate?”

  “Crazy stuff happened to all of us. Can we stop the questions and just move along? Move the jingajangalang along? Let’s just accept that we are in the land of weird and I am your captain for the time being. I’m heading to Vegas to meet some people. Then we are going to stop the Apocalypse,” Chuzz yells at the assembled faces.

  “Sorry?” Edwina shakes her head. Stop the Apocalypse? This loser? Then again, he does have some strange weapons. Something tore apart that demon.

  “Nutter. Fucking nutter,” Goatboy grins. “I like you!”

  “Look, boss, you got a fan now!” the toy pipes up.

  “Everyone hold on. We’re leaving.”

  Edwina shakes her head. She looks around the tiny truck and finds a spot that is relatively clear of syrups and sundae toppings. She sits and slides her backpack into her lap. The rest watch her in silence as she extracts clips and bullets, a couple of handguns and various items designed to screw up someone’s day.