Lucifer's Lottery

by Edward Lee

“For narcotics. The Department of Addictions has devised delights that make de Quincey’s opiates and Poe’s liquor seem paltry. Few can rehabilitate themselves, but when they do, they’re forced into a Retoxification Center.”

  You watch the skinless queues trudge to a nearby fleshy alley, where an overcoated Imp in sunglasses waits to sell them various bags of cryptic powders. When one Human woman—who’d been attractive before her flensing—failed to produce sufficient funds, the Imp said, “A blow job or an ovary. You know the prices, lady,” and then he parts his overcoat to sport a large maroon penis covered with barnacles. “To hell with that,” she says, then sits down, crosses her ankles behind her neck, and sticks a hand into her sex.

  You don’t watch the rest.

  The Golemess turns onto another road called Scleraderma Street, where some of the structures have hair growing on their roofs; others have collapsed to ramshackle piles from some dermatological disease; one has broken out into shingles, another is covered with warts.

  And on another corner, you glimpse another sign: SKINAPLEX.

  “What’s that?”

  “The motion picture show? They’re rather similar here as in the Living World. And perhaps you’ll be satisfied to know that Fritz Lang and D. W. Griffith are still honing their art.”

  Now you can see the marquee, complete with blinking lights: TRIPLE FEATURE! THE SIX COMMANDMENTS—WITHERING HEIGHTS—ALL DOGS GO TO HELL.

  “Can we get out of here?” you plead. “I’ve had enough of skin-town.”

  Howard chuckles. “Save for the revolting B.O., it’s actually one of the more sedate Districts. You’ll be happy to know, however, that we’re merely passing through.”

  The last row of houses, you notice, are actually sweating. As you pass the District gates, more glaze-eyed denizens straggle in and head to the pillories.

  Now the road rises through a yellow fog so thick, you can’t make out the endless scarlet sky. “So now it’s the . . .”

  “The Humanus Viaduct. It begins at a lofty elevation and provides a spectacular view. Lucifer wants you to be fully aware of the immensity of the Mephistopolis . . .”

  Lucifer wants me . . . Your thoughts stall.

  “He hopes that you’ll want to return.”

  Now your monstrous lips actually laugh. “Fat chance of that! So far I’ve seen a town made of guts and a town made of skin! What, he thinks I want to move in?”

  “The immensity, Mr. Hudson, and in that immensity you’ll consider the value to someone of your very privileged status.”

  “I still don’t understand what you—”

  Howard holds up a pale hand. “Later, Mr. Hudson. There’s still much more for you to envisage . . .”

  The car chugs ever upward, and in the fog, you can swear you catch glimpses of horrid, stretched faces showing fangs in vertical mouths.

  “Gremlins,” Howard specifies. “Wretched little things. They live in fog, swamp gas, and clouds, and even are said to have cities in the higher noctilucent formations.”

  You spy more fangs snapping in a split second. “But-but-but—”

  “Nothing can do us harm, so you needn’t fear, Mr. Hudson.” Past the buxom driver’s shoulder, Howard points to a trinket of some kind dangling from the rearview mirror: a small metal Kewpie of a robed man holding a staff in one hand and an upside-down baby in the other. The pewtery detail implies that the baby’s throat has been slit, and its blood is trickling into a bucket. “We’re protected by the St. Exsanguinatius Medallion. It’s quite a potent Totem.”

  Great, you think.

  The car lumbers on, and Howard slouches back and begins to idly hum a tune, which seems aggravatingly familiar. In time, the name comes to you: “Yes, We Have No Bananas.”

  Finally, the fog expels the steam-car onto a high, rough-hewn mountain pass. You yell out loud when you peer over the side and see less than an inch of the cliff-road’s surface sticking out past the outer side of the tire. “There’s no safety rails!” you shout.

  Howard frowns. “That would hardly be logical in Hell, Mr. Hudson. Now, if you’ll put your consternation aside, I’ll welcome you to one of our attractions here: Corpus Peak. Corpus Peak is a man-made—er, pardon me—a Demon-made mountain. It is composed, in fact, of exactly one billion Demon corpses . . .”

  When the words finally register, you grind your teeth and peer once again over the side, and in a few moments it’s the image that begins to register, however grimly. The vast side of the “mountain” sweeps down hundreds of feet, and in it, you notice the rigor-mortis’d cadavers of Demons.

  “A-a-a mountain of dead Demons?”

  “That’s correct. The first billion Hellborn, in fact, to die under Lucifer’s initial scourge when he took over. All manner of demonic species: Imps, Trolls, Gargoyles, Griffins, Ghouls, Incubi, Succubi—everything. The Morning Star wanted his first monument to be symbolic. ‘Serve me or die.’ He liked it so much that he ordered the highest echelon Bio-Wizards to put a Pristinization Hex on the entire mountain. The corpses, in other words, will never decompose.”

  You keep staring at the twisted faces and limbs of the mountainside. Kind of makes the Hoover Dam look like Tinkertoys.

  “And below,” Howard adds, “the abyssal river Styx.”

  Only then do you let your vision span out, to a ghastly, twisting waterway of black ooze marbled with something red. “What is it called?”

  “The Styx!” Howard exclaims. “It’s the most renowned river in all of mythology! Surely you’ve read Homer!”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right. I forgot about that one. But I was thinking of the rock band.” You try to shrug. “Never got into them.”

  The noxious river is so distant you can’t see details but you can make out tiny things like boats floating on the putrid surface as well as swarming, dark shapes beneath. Every so often, some colossal thing breaks the surface, swallows a boat in its pestiferous maw, then resubmerges.

  You’re grateful for the distraction of still another sign: THE DEPARTMENT OF PASSES AND BYWAYS UNWELCOMES YOU TO THE HUMANUS VIADUCT. You envisioned yourself gulping when you get a good look at this “bridge,” which stretches miles from the top of the corpse-mountain, across the appalling river, to a polygonal black structure sitting atop another mountain (this one of pinkish rock). The sights are spectacular in their own horrific way, yet your thoughts can only dread what must be to come.

  The bridge—this Humanus Viaduct—is scarcely ten feet wide and consists of objects like railroad ties lashed together, one after another—countless thousands of them—which all comprise the spans of the bridge. A meager rope-rail can be seen stretching on either side.

  “We’re not driving the car over that, are we!” you object.

  “Why, of course, we are,” Howard says. “The view is thrilling, and it’s crucial that you be thrilled.”

  “No way, man! That bridge looks like something in a damn Tarzan movie! It’ll never hold us!”

  “Mr. Hudson, please, don’t worry yourself. Naturally the Viaduct has been charged by various Levitation Spells.”

  You try to feel reassured. You can see the rickety bridge sway in a sudden hot gust, and as the car rises to the gatehouse, your vantage point rises as well. Now you can see the surface of the links.

  And all at once, you don’t need to be told why it’s called the Humanus Viaduct.

  Atop the links of railroad ties exist a virtual carpet of naked human beings, who have all been lashed together as well. All these people—like the ties, thousands upon thousands—form the actual driving surface of the bridge.

  You can only stare when you rattle through the gatehouse and pull in. The Golemess robotically shifts the vehicle into a lower gear; then you lurch forward.

  “We’re driving on people, for God’s sake!” In a panic you look down. “And they’re still alive!”

  “Indeed, they are. Hell exists, in general, as a domain of all conceivable horror, where every ideology functions as an offense
against God. But in particular, it’s a domain of punishment. Hence, the ‘human asphalt’ beneath us.”

  They chug onward, narrow tires rolling over bellies, throats, faces, and shins. You watch the faces grimace and wail. “How come they don’t die?”

  “They’re the Human Damned—who cannot die. That is why they call it Damnation; it’s eternal. Only Demons and Hybrids can die here, for they have no souls. But as for the Human Damned, their bodies are nearly as eternal as their spirits. When your soul is delivered to Hell, you receive what we call a Spirit Body that’s identical to the body you lived in on Earth. Only total destruction can ‘kill’ a Spirit Body, in which case the soul is spirited into the Hellborn life form with the closest propinquity. It could slip into something as large as an Abhorasaur, something as commonplace as an Imp, or something as minuscule as a Pus-Aphid.”

  Men bellow, women shriek, as the steam-car rocks on. Rib cages crack and sink inward, bones snap.

  Yet in spite of the horror you’re witnessing, more questions spin in your mind. “Great, but I don’t have a ‘Spirit Body.’ I have a pumpkin—”

  “A Snot-Gourd.”

  “Okay, so what happens if this Snot-Gourd gets destroyed?”

  “An astute question but immaterial. Should your Auric Carrier be subject to mishap, your Etheric Tether would simply drag your soul back to your physical body at the Larken House. But I say immaterial since you are not, as yet, one of the Human Damned.”

  As yet, you consider. I’m not Damned . . . but they WANT me to be?

  The Viaduct sways back and forth as the car lumbers ahead. In the middle—with already several miles behind them—the bridge dips so severely that you feel certain it will break from the vehicle’s weight. Levitation Spell, my ass. But soon enough, you begin to ascend again, that queer black shape drawing closer. You think of a pyramid with a flat top.

  “So what’s with the pyramid-looking thing? A rest stop, I hope.”

  “A pyramid? Really, Mr. Hudson, you must’ve studied your geometry with the same zeal you studied Homer. It’s not a pyramid, it’s a trisoctahedron: a quadrilateral polygon bearing no parallel sides, also referred to as a trapezohedron. Lucifer is very much enamored of polygons, because in Hell, geometry is thoroughly non-Euclidian. Planes and the angles at which they exist serve as a heady occult brew. I wrote of such stuff and wonder now from whence the ideas arrived.” Howard seems to be trying to recollect something. “Gad, I do hope my Shining Trapezohedron in ‘Haunter of the Dark’ was born of my own creativity and not that of some sheepshank scrivener in Hell.” Suddenly a look of utter dread comes to his marbled face. “What a cosmic outrage that would be.”

  You still don’t know what he’s talking about, but in an attempt to divert your attention from the staggering height, you offer, “Maybe it was Lucifer’s idea, and he’s the one who piped it into your head.”

  “Impossible,” Howard quickly replies. “Fallen Angels, though essentially immortal, are completely estranged from creativity and imagination. Every idea, every occult equation and sorcerial theorem, every ghastly erection of architecture, and even every invention of social disorder—it all comes from a single source: the Human Damned.”

  This is getting too deep for me, you consider. Your pumpkin-head reels—or it would have, if it could. Now you think of ski lifts carrying skiers to the peaks, only there’s no snow here, just craggy rock pink as the inside of a cheek. As you near the black polygon, you discern that it’s about the size of Randal’s Qwik-Mart. Just when it appears that the steam-car would drive directly into the polished black side of the thing, an opening forms: a lopsided triangle that stretches from the size of a Dorito to an aperture sizeable enough to admit the car.

  Well, that was nifty . . . I guess. Relief washes over your psyche; the Humanus Viaduct is at last behind you. But now what?

  “Welcome to the Cahooey Turnstile,” Howard says, “a superior mode of entertaining your tour. The process saves us from driving for untold thousands of miles.”

  “What do you mean, turnstile?” you counter. “You mean like in a subway?”

  “Think, instead, of an occult revolving door.”

  A revolving door . . . to where?

  The aperture closes silently behind, leaving you to peer around the unevenly walled room of smooth black planes. It looks like something born of science fiction, save for the sputtering torches that light the chamber. Then—

  Whoa!

  A shadow moves. When the Golemess shuts down the steam-car, you see the hulking shape approach: a sinewy Demon with meat cleavers for hands and a helmet fashioned from the jaws of some outrageous beast. Below the forward rim of teeth like Indian arrowheads, two tiny eyes bulge, and there are two rimmed holes for nostrils but no mouth. No ears can be seen either but only plugs of lead that seem to fill two holes where the ears should be. Some manner of cured hide covered with plates make up the Demon’s armor. Reddish brown muscles throb when it regards the car.

  “What the HELL is that?”

  Howard answers. “The Keeper of the Turnstile, Mr. Hudson—an Imperial Truncator, of the genus Bellicosus Silere. It can’t hear or speak; it can only observe and act. The Imperial Conditioning is self-evident; note the spread jaws of a Ghor-Hound which suffice for the helm.”

  You notice it, all right, but don’t like the way it approaches the car.

  “Should the Truncator entertain even a single anti-Luciferic thought? Those jaws slam shut and bite off the top of its head.”

  Hard-core, you think. “And its his job is to—”

  “Anyone or thing who enters the Turnstile without authority,” Howard says, “will be diced into bits, tittles, and orts.”

  Just as the sentinel’s cleaverlike hands raise, the Golemess lithely leaves the car and shows it a sheet of yellowed parchment.

  The guard nods, steps back, yet oddly beckons the Golemess with one of its hooks. In the torchlight, you wince at the stark beauty of the clay-made creature, the flawless curves, the high, tumescent breasts and jutting gray-plug nipples. The Golemess follows the Demon to a cozy corner, and drops to its knees.

  “What’s that all about?”

  “It’s customary for authorized guests to give succor to the sentinel,” Howard says with some relief. “Another toll, so to speak. I can only thank the Fates that this particular Truncator is of the heterosexual variety.”

  You get the gist as you watch the Golemess unbutton a front flap on the Demon’s armor, revealing its penis, if it could be called that.

  “You gotta be kidding me!” you exclaim. “That’s it’s-it’s-it’s—”

  Howard sees fit to not respond.

  The limp shaft of the Truncator’s penis looks like six red arteries grouped together, perhaps as thin as six-foot-long lengths of aquarium tube. You wince worse at the scrotum, which looks more like a cluster of Concord grapes, but even more appalling is the Demon’s glans: a pink, lopsided sphere of shining flesh at the end of the corded shaft, tennis ball–size, with not one but half a dozen urethral ducts.

  You look away when the Golemess begins to . . . render oral “succor.”

  Howard grabs the stick on which your head is affixed and climbs out of the car.

  “So . . . what now?”

  “Time to charge the Turnstile,” Howard says. “It’s quite a fascinating apparatus which harnesses cabalistic energy lines that exist in the Hex-Flux—Hell’s version of electromagnetics—and effects what we refer to as Spatial Displacement—one of Lucifer’s favorite cosmological sciences.” And with that—which you understand none of—Howard approaches a black-plane wall. There, you see a circle of engraved notches; at each notch there’s a small geometric etching.

  “So this is a revolving door through space and time?”

  “Just space,” Howard corrects. “There is no time in Hell. The use of this facility will give you the opportunity to see a variety of the Mephistopolis’s landmarks, which we hope will impress you.”

&nbs
p; Impress me, you ponder, enough to stay? Is that what he’s talking about?

  Howard touches one of the etchings, then—

  A great, nearly electronic hum fills the black room.

  How do you like that jazz? you think.

  The configuration increases in size until it’s as large as a typical doorway. Yet a sheet of black static is all you see beyond the threshold. That’s all you see, but what you hear is something else altogether:

  Screams.

  “Shall we go, Mr. Hudson?” Howard asks, holding your head-stick like an umbrella.

  You feel stunned, half by curiosity and half by dread. “What about the Golemess? Shouldn’t she go with us?”

  Howard veers the stick aside, to show you the corner. “As you can observe, Mr. Hudson. The Golemess is . . . detained.”

  “Oh.”

  Howard smiles and adjusts his spectacles. He steps through the uneven doorway of black static and takes you through . . .

  Even though you don’t have a stomach, a nauseating sensation rises up. Stepping through the egress feels like stepping off a high window ledge; you expect a deadly impact but none arrives. Instead you hear a crackling that sounds more organic than electric. Fear seals your eyes and you scream, plummeting . . .

  “We haven’t fallen even a millimeter, Mr. Hudson,” Howard chuckles. “It’s merely the nature of the concentrated Flux we’ve just traversed.”

  Your head feels overly buoyant when you open your eyes. You leave them open only long enough to see that you are on a cacophonic street clogged with monsters, steam-cars, and carriages drawn by horned horses that look leprous. Flies the size of finches buzz around sundry corpse-piles on corners, a sign stuck in each pile: RECYCLE BY FEDERAL ORDER. You notice the sidewalk as well as the walls of most buildings are made of roughly crushed bones and teeth hardened within pale mortar. One storefront window boasts TORSOS: HUMAN & HELLBORN—ON SALE, and another window has been streaked on the inside with blood: OUT OF BUSINESS.

  The sheer noise prevents you from ordering your thoughts: the clang of metal, the sound of hammer to stone, shouts—“Come back with my ears, you Imp fuck!”—vehicular horns that sound more like the brays of tortured animals.