by Edward Lee
“Pandemonium in sound and vision,” Howard says, wending down the stained sidewalk with your head-stick in his hand. “Take the opportunity to look around.”
This is the mistake.
As far as “looking around” goes, there’s nothing to see save for horror and revulsion. In no time, you find that when you dare look at something, your psyche is arrested by some adrenaline-packed inner scream—perhaps the sound of your soul rebelling at the wrongness of this place.
A city, a city, you keep thinking in a panic. Hell is a city . . .
You can only look for a second at a time, in grueling snatches that demand an alternating surcease. Each “snatch” shows you something either horrific or impossible:
—blood-streaked skyscrapers rising higher than any building on Earth, each leaning this way or that. When one collapses in the distance, before the churning bloodred sky, hundreds leap off corroded balconies with wizened shrieks—
—street gutters gushing with lumpy muck over which dilapidated Demons and Humans—obviously homeless—hunt for tidbits, while packs of cackling Broodren—Hell’s children—stalk through the sidewalk horde hunting for the elderly or the defenseless to quickly eviscerate so to make off with their organs—
—Arachni-Watchers, like spiders the size of box turtles, crawling up walls and across high ledges. A cluster of eyeballs form the body, ever watching from all directions for citizen behavior in violation of current Luciferic Laws. Psychic nerve sacs at the body’s core immediately transmit real-time hectographs of infractions to the nearest Constabulary Stations—
—streets, gutters, and alleyways aswarm with indigenous vermin such as Bapho-Rats, Caco-Roaches, Brick-Mites, and Corpusculars, all hunting for the unsuspecting to infect, to ensile with larva, or to eat—
—shapely She-Demons—some brown, some black, some spotted—chatting inanely behind a salon window as trained Trolls paint their horns and administer pedicures with their teeth—
—sewer grates belching flame, while beneath the iron grills faces strain, screaming, charred fingers wriggling in the gaps. Over some grates more Broodren roast severed feet on sticks—
—hot-air balloons floating in and out of soot-colored clouds overhead, each suspending iron-bolted baskets from which dog-faced Conscripts dump buckets of infectious waste, molten gold, or Gargoylic Acid onto the masses below. The skin of the warped balloons reads SATANIC NOBLE GAS FLEET—
—more storefront windows passing by. LIVE SEX WITH THE DEAD SHOW! LIVE PULPING SHOW! LIVE EYE-SUCKING SHOW! LIVE HALVING SHOW! When you peer into this latter window, you glimpse destitute Demons and half-breeds being drawn slowly across tables fitted with band saws, while spectators applaud from rows of theaterlike chairs—
—and Broodren, Broodren, and more Broodren—the hooligans of the Abyss—shifting stealthily through the throng with eyes bright and fangs sharp, absconding with whatever they can tear away from passersby: purses, wallets, skin, pudenda. One Broodren runs off with half of a Troll’s face, only to be palmed flat into the sidewalk by a vigilant Golem—
—and a final dizzying scan of the noxious city’s skyline: a sea of smoke, sinking rooftops, and screams; endless rot-encrusted buildings atilt; mile after mile of crackling power lines dipping from rusted towers decorated by corpses hanging from gibbets; evil winged things gliding through the mephitic air, forever and ever—
—and ever and ever . . .
. . . and then the “snatches” end.
“Of course, acclimation takes a while,” Howard mentions. “But you’ll scarcely take in anything with your eyes closed most of the time.”
You’re too afraid to take in another glimpse; it’s all too tumultuous because you know that every impossibility here is utterly real. You open your eyes, then, to slits, careful . . .
“Here’s something you’ll find interesting . . .” Howard approaches a business establishment with a saloon-style swing-door as an entrance. The sign reads: LOODY’S MAM-MIFERON TAPROOM.
“Taproom!” you exclaim. “Beer?”
“Regrettably not, Mr. Hudson. Kegs of lager aren’t on the offering, just kegs—so to speak—of milk.”
“Milk?”
“Mammiferons . . .”
You enter the narrow bar. Various Demons and Humans sit about slate tables sipping from crude metal cups.
Howard points to the craggy brick wall behind the bar top. There is, indeed, a row of “taps” as one would expect in a beer hall but . . .
Are those . . . BREASTS? you ask yourself.
“Mammiferons,” Howard repeats. “They’re Hexegenically manufactured; particularized genes are spliced and then enspelled, for the desired result.”
All you can do is stare.
Six carriages of flesh hang along the wall, each sporting two bulbous breasts as large as basketballs. Veins pulse beneath the stretched, translucent skin. At first you think they must be torsos of preposterously endowed Human women but then you recall what Howard said about their “manufacture.” Betwixt each pair of breasts there seems to be an organic “chute” of some sort, and each rimmed chute yawns open as if in wait of something.
“It’s a wall of boobs!” you have no choice but to yell.
“The Mammiferons exist to produce milk in these more upscale taprooms.”
The metal gird that surrounds each enormous nipple reminds you of the connector on a car battery, and affixed to the top of each gird is a tap.
You watch as a shockingly attractive werewolf yanks down on a tap and fills a cup for a demonic customer.
“The barkeeps are Lycanymphs,” Howard elucidates. “Erotopathic female werewolves, oh, and look.” He points to one of the organic chutes between one of the pairs . . .
The bar’s janitor—some manner of ridge-browed Troll—lackadaisically drops a shovelful of sloppy refuse into the chute. The chute closes, pauses, then gulps.
“They’re brainless,” Howard goes on. “You can think of Mammiferons as living beverage dispensers. Miss?” he asks of the furred attendant. “A cup of the vintage, if you will.”
The voluptuous She-Wolf holds a metal cup beneath one of the massive teats, works the tap, and fills it up with slimy off-white milk.
“All we need do is feed them garbage and they produce milk for eons . . .” Howard smiles at the cup. “I must have some sustenance, lest exhaustion supervene the necessary ambling to come.” Howard drinks the cup of dense milk. “Such a treat!”
Yet all you can do is gawp at the row of preposterous, sodden breasts on the wall.
Hell really is a screwed-up place . . .
The feisty werewolf pours more drafts from the papillic taps.
“Howard?” you ask. “Can we get out of here? This is too much for me.”
“As you wish.” Howard takes you back out to the hectic street, and turns. “This is the ‘artsy’ District, though the insinuation, like all else in Hell, is quite false. It’s all petulantly commercial, I’m afraid.”
You pass some sort of café that reminds you of Starbucks, but the cups of coffee look more like cups of mud. Trendy Hellborns yak pretentiously, batting their eyes. When you pass what appears to be a bookstore, Howard exclaims, “Drat!” and then you spot the window sign that announces BOOK SIGNING TONIGHT! EDGAR ALLAN POE WILL AUTOGRAPH YOUR COPY OF HIS LATEST RELEASE, THE RISE OF THE HOUSE OF USHER!
“I can’t abide to miss a signing,” Howard laments. “But duty does indeed call.”
Marquees of lights blink around the next corner, and suddenly your inhuman ears pick up a punchy beat behind a low, crooning voice that sings, “Hardheaded shovel, stone-cold ground, six feet under’s where I’ll be found, so don’t you, step on my blue-suede shroud . . .”
“Hey, that voice is very familiar!” you insist and when your head-stick passes the little honky-tonk’s front door, you glimpse a flaming stage before a packed house. On the stage itself a man in a pompous white suit fringed with silver locomotes about, jerking his pelvis. He’s got heav
y black sideburns and horns in his head.
No! you think. It can’t be!
Or . . . can it?
“Six for the money, six for the show, six for Lord Lucifer—go, cat, go!”
No!
“I’m not attuned to that particular genre of music,” Howard says, “though the singer seems to be very popular here. However, Mozart plays with regularity, and so does Paganini. In fact, the former’s latest opera, Gloria de Satonus is marvelous.” But then Howard seems to catch himself in an oversight. “Oh, I suspect we’ll be rephasing soon; I haven’t been counting—”
“Counting what?”
“My steps. The Turnstile is programmed to rephase our location every 666 steps—”
“I never would’ve guessed,” you groan.
“Don’t scoff, Mr. Hudson. The Imperfect Number is quite a powerful force of Nether-Energy. As God proclaimed seven to be the perfect number, he unwittingly empowered the imperfection of one digit lower. Lucifer embraces it. In fact, when God cast his Once Favorite off the Twelfth Gate of Heaven, Lucifer, the Morning Star, plummeted in the configuration of the number six. Through that number, in one manner or other, all occult science is activated—the Senarial Science. You’re about to behold more examples.”
You suddenly grimace as the crackling black fuzz of the Turnstile shreds the sights before you. You feel the pressure drop, and again that feeling of falling recurs to the point that you wail, when—
PUNITARY FILLING STATION #5096—HUMANS ONLY, the next sign reads. NEXT LEFT.
You shake off the vertigo to find yourself being walked into a compound supervised by figures in policelike garb. Every six of the figures is joined by a hooded monk with an aura of luminous black mist. “The Constabularies are the federal police,” Howard says. “They’re mostly Human-Demon Hybrids who undergo extensive training and Spirit Manipulation. And the hooded gents are Bio-Wizards, in the event of, shall we say, civil disobedience.”
As usual, you’re duly confused. “That sign said filling station, but I don’t see any cars. They have gas here?”
Howard ruefully shakes his head no, and carries you farther . . .
“It’s a Human filling station, Mr. Hudson. Another demonstration of Lucifer’s execration for the Human Damned.” Then Howard gestures a prison wagon being drawn in by more unnameable horned beasts. Within the wagon’s iron bars, you can’t help but see the group of naked Humans. They’re either pleading for mercy, or down on their knees in desperate prayer.
“This Cove tends to Humans who have the audacity to continue to pray to God. It should go without saying: Lucifer does not approve of such behavior . . .” Now Howard points upward to a high water tower but when you look at it, you do a double take.
The tower reads, URINE ONLY.
“Every urinal in the District empties into that collection tank. It’s 66,666 gallons, by the way.”
You’re already getting sick in the contemplation; then your eyes follow several pipes leading from the tower’s base to six objects that appear almost identical to gasoline pumps in the Living World.
Six at a time, then, Humans from the prison wagon—male and female alike—are strapped to gurneys and rolled before the pumps.
You feel your spirit paling as you watch . . .
Equally identical nozzles are brandished by Imp attendants. “Fill ’em up!” a Constable shouts, and then the Imps part the jaws of the Humans and insert the nozzles down their throats. The handles are depressed, and bells begin to ring for each gallon dispensed.
The Human prisoners are promptly filled.
“Next!” shouts the Constable. “Keep ’em moving!”
“Exactly six gallons are pumped into each captive,” Howard adds.
The gurneys are moved off, to be replaced by more. Of the Humans already filled, their abdomens bloat. More Imps move now, holding objects that look like blowtorches but when the triggers are pulled, mist, not flame, shoots out. The mist is applied across the mouths and anuses and urethras of the captives, and before your own eyes, their lips and excretory orifices are impossibly sealed shut.
Howard explains further, in his piping accent, “You see, Lucifer wants them filled. And what they’re filled with—the urine of Hell—must remain contained; hence, the Flesh Welders. A gasified pontica dust provides the occult mist, which seals them shut. This way, the urine can never be voided.”
Gagging, you watch more. The captives, now swollen as if pregnant, are roughed off the gurneys and shooed out of the camp, their mouths and crotches “welded” shut forever.
Then your eyes steal back to the hideous pumps where the next deposition of unfortunates are being filled. Each gallon dings a bell, abdomen’s quickly distend; then they’re sealed with the welder and moved on. A stolid efficiency.
“Why?” you rail. “This makes no sense! Why are they FILLING PEOPLE WITH PISS!”
Howard shrugs off your alarm. “Because the very notion pleases Lucifer. He quite simply thrills at the idea—he likes for his detractors to be filled. Wombs, bellies, bowels. By your abhorrence, I take it that you’d prefer not to witness the Excrement Pumps at the next compound?”
“Get me out of here!” you shriek.
“Fill ’em up!” the Constab yells again, and as Howard hastens you out, that steady ding-ding-ding of the pumps follows . . .
A mental fog veils your vision as Howard lopes away. You pass several Agonicity Transformers, which each contain a Human dangling from a trestle by his or her wrists. Wires threaded through tiny holes drilled in their skulls coil upward to sizzling capacitors. Constabs heave pitchers of boiling water on each “power element,” and the resultant rush of agony fires the pain center of the brain, which is then converted to occult energy and dumped into the local power grid. “Power without surcease,” you think you hear Howard comment, “made possible by the immortality of the Human Damned. It’s curious to ponder, eh? When God made the Human soul immortal, did he ever even conceive that some of those he condemned to Damnation would be utilized by his Nemesis as inexhaustible generators? Likely not!” More small compounds pass by and you can’t help but notice the signs: BONE MELTERS, FACE RIVETERS, BROODREN KILN, PENECTOMIST. The compounds are interestingly arranged throughout the Reservation, each intersected by quaint walkways, and it’s along these walkways that you notice chatty groups of well-dressed Demons and Hierarchals traipsing along. They stop by each compound and peer in with dark smiles, some fanning themselves, others looking more closely with objects like opera glasses. Finally your curiosity pushes past your loathing, and you propose: “All these Demons on the walkways . . . They don’t work here, do they? They look more like—”
“Spectators?” Howard says. “Indeed. Because they are. Punishment Reservations such as the State Punitaries prioritize not only punishment but also commerce. The societal upper crust is urged to patronize these areas. They pay admittance. In Hell, punishment exists as sport, and such places as this serve equally as amusement parks.”
“Oooo’s” and “Ahhhh’s” resound around the next bend where the sign reads: ROASTERY—BETS TAKEN. Several Coves stretch out in a line, while revolting spectators clamor to buy tickets printed with various numbers from small huts before each exhibit. Roastery? you wonder but can already smell something. “Step right up, folks,” a ghoulish barker announces before the first Cove. “Let’s watch and see which one of these despicable anti-Satanic insurgents can last the longest with a head-cooking.” Then you notice three grim-faced Imps lashed to iron chairs facing the audience. Horned attendants busy themselves at a large circular oven in which a considerable pile of small stones are heated till they are red-hot. Chain mail sacks are then filled with the stones and carried over with tongs. Atop the head of each Imp a sack is lain, sitting much like a hot water bottle. Spectators watch in hushed fascination as each Imp’s face billows and then they begin to let rip with soul-searing howls. Eventually, of course, their heads cook, but the one who screams the longest is the winner.
Bets are taken more excitedly at the next Cove where demonic mouths are filled with the scorching stones and held shut by unfeeling Golems. Worse was the last Cove, where three stunningly attractive Succubi have been hung upside down by their ankles, legs widely spread, and vaginas opened with retractors. It was into their vaginal barrels that more of the red-hot stones are deposited. For efficiency’s sake, a Golem with something akin to a bore cleaner for a cannon stands by and packs down each allotment of rocks. The first Succubi’s eyes immediately pop out from the jolt of pain, and the second heaves so hard her bones are heard snapping. The third merely shudders and screams, smoke jetting from her mouth. When the screams treble in intensity, nearby glass shatters.
“The winner!” revels the attendant.
“This is what rich people in Hell do for fun?” you object. “They bet to see which one lives the longest? Good Lord!”
Howard winces at the name. “I will add, Mr. Hudson, that the art of wagering was invented by Humans . . .”
“Then why aren’t Human beings tortured here, too?”
“These particular Coves function to judicially torture only the Hellborn, Mr. Hudson. All of the victims here have been convicted of terrorist activity or traitorous thoughts via a Psychical Sciences Center. But soon enough it’ll be my pleasure to introduce you to a facility for very select Humans only.”
You finally put the Roastery behind you, the revel of bettors fading in the background. “I don’t want to see anymore,” you say, drained. “None of it makes sense. Head-cooking? Filling monsters’ vaginas with hot rocks? Pumping piss into people? It’s hideous.”
“Well, certainly you understand that this is the intention in the Mephistopolis, Mr. Hudson. Notions expressly not hideous are conspicuously bereft.” Howard carries you through a gate exit manned by Ushers. Beyond this gatehouse steam-trucks empty hoppers of dead Hellborn onto conveyor belts that carry the piles into a warehouse marked, MUNICIPAL PULPING STATION #95,605.
Your vaporous mind feels like dead meat as the Turnstile’s black magic sizzles before your eyes, and next—