“Joro, we are about to get married. You didn’t even want a ceremony, but--”
“Well, I did, but then you said you wanted Charlotte to officiate it.”
“Yeah, because it makes the most sense.”
“We didn’t even invite my family. They are going to be so angry with me.”
“But your children are here?” I gestured to the horde of spiders that had somehow fallen into orderly rows behind us.
“Yes, but my parents aren’t, and neither are yours. I feel like we are eloping.”
“We can wait for your parents if you want. I don’t think mine will be able to make it.”
“Why? Don’t they approve of me?” Joro’s lower lip trembled.
“I haven’t even told them about you yet, we just met an hour ago.”
“But you didn’t call them? Isn’t our marriage important to you?” A single tear slid down her pretty cheek.
“I don’t think I have cell phone reception down here in Hell. Let me look,” I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and saw that I somehow had full bars. “Oh, I guess I do.”
“So we should invite them to the wedding. Unless you are ashamed of me,” Joro huffed.
“No, I’m not ashamed of you. Wasn’t it my idea to get married?” I couldn’t believe that she had forgotten.
“Yeah. I guess, sorry. I’m just emotional right now. This is a big day for me.”
“I understand. It’s okay,” I said.
“You do? Ohhh, Sherman, you are so wonderful. I can’t wait to spend the rest of your life together in bliss.”
“Rest of my life? Huh?”
“Yes, honey. My husbands never seem to last a long time.”
“She eats them,” Charlotte clarified with a sigh.
“No! Mean Charlotte. I never eat my husbands. My babies though, they just get so hungry when they are born.”
“Anyways, are you two done bickering? You sound like a married couple now, and I haven’t even started the ceremony.” Charlotte groaned and shook her head.
“Wait, I’m not so sure I want to do this now.”
“Why not?” Joro gasped, and her massive spider legs pranced angrily on the concrete next to me.
“I kind of don’t want to be eaten.”
“But I will give you so much pleasure before then. You’ll really enjoy it.” Joro’s voice took on the sexy moan that she had used when she had spoken to me outside my cell door.
“You’re a spider in the part that matters. You can’t even have sex,” Charlotte pointed out with a raised eyebrow.
“Oh, I can change back. One moment, please.”
Joro’s lower spider parts started to shift and shrink in size. The insect-looking limbs folded in on themselves and then took on a cream color before they turned the same white shade as the skin on Joro’s upper body. The change was remarkably quick, only five seconds, and then the beautiful Japanese woman stood naked before me.
Like. Really. Naked.
Charlotte growled, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the sleek curve of Joro’s hips, thighs, and calves. The Japanese woman giggled, and she slid her left hand over her thigh and hip to her stomach, and then she turned to face me while her fingers moved over a fine array of dark pubic hair.
My head was spinning, and my mouth was watering. I told myself that even though I was about to get married to this strange creature, and probably get eaten by her pet spiders once we had sex, I’d have to save my heart for my true love. Charlotte would understand my sacrifice.
“See, mean Charlotte. My fiancé likes me much bee--”
Joro never got a chance to finish her sentence. The succubus took a step toward the naked Japanese woman and thrust her clawed fingers through the spider demon’s human-looking skull. Joro’s face exploded like a rotten pumpkin, and I guessed that she died instantly.
Then Joro’s spider children screeched like a thousand angry car tires sliding across the pavement.
“I’m going to rip them to pieces!” Charlotte’s lioness growl filled the tunnel and somehow overpowered the screech of the dog-sized spiders.
My girlfriend darted past me with the speed of an Olympic sprinter, and she dived into the mass of furry spider rows as if it were a pool of tiger-striped water. For half a second, there was only the sound of screaming, tearing, shouting, and death. Then the spiders kind of shifted away from the succubus as if she was a lighthouse withstanding the ocean waves. Her entire body was covered with a thick layer of spider gore, and she swung her arms around through the masses of arachnids as a farmer would cut wheat with a scythe.
There was a ridiculous mass of spiders though, and I feared that all they needed to do was attack my love en masse and she’d fall victim to their fangs or webbing. A few of them did attack, but not in a coordinated effort where the monsters swarmed her together. It was more like a kung fu movie where the spiders attacked her one at a time.
Her claws cut through them as if they were water balloons, her feet crushed them as if they were made of Styrofoam, and she tore through their ranks in a crimson spray of fury.
Her eyes glowed the red fire of an erupting volcano.
It soon became apparent that the spiders had lost their chance of victory. Maybe the sudden death of their mother had left them confused, or maybe the succubus’ suicide attack had caught them off guard. Whatever the reason, the last four of the beasts seemed to realize that they were about to die, and they turned to scurry away. It was too late though. Charlotte pounced on one, and her feet punctured its carapace like a drill. Her wings flapped a single beat, and she jumped to the side to elbow slam the second. Its head popped off, and black guts poured out of the hole like a caulking gun. She stepped to the third and punted it through the air as if she was kicking a football field goal. The Yorkshire Terrier- sized arachnid flew through the air, separated into a few pieces, and smacked against the ceiling with a splat of ooze.
Maybe the last one had hoped to escape, but the enraged succubus ran after the creature, snagged it by one of the rear legs, and then smashed it into the ground as if she was wielding a mallet. I was positive that the spider died on the second strike, but Charlotte continued to swing the bloody mass of arachnid into the ground.
“Sherman!” Smack.
“Is!” Smack.
“Mine!” Smack.
“And!” Smack.
“You!” Smack.
“Can’t!” Smack.
“Have!” Smack.
“Him!” Smack.
“You!” Smack.
“Fu--”
“Charlotte!” I yelled at the girl.
She stopped mid shout and swing and blinked her glowing red eyes at me. There wasn’t a square inch of her skin, clothes, or hair not covered in sticky spider gore, and she looked around the lit tunnel with a bit of confusion.
“Oh, looks like it is over,” she sighed and then tossed the body of the spider away from her.
“Are you okay?” I stepped toward her and thought about checking to see if she’d been bitten by one of the monsters, but I didn’t even know where to begin to look. It was like she’d just stepped out of a pool of brownish-red blood.
“Yes. Thanks,” she sighed and looked down at her clothes. “I think I need a shower though.”
“Are there showers at Satan’s place?” I asked, and I realized that the question sounded completely ridiculous.
“Of course, why wouldn’t there be?” she gave me a confused look and then pointed to the discarded battery pack. “Can you carry that for a bit? I’m kind of tired, and we probably have another mile and a half to walk.”
“Uh, yeah, sure.” I grunted as I hefted up the battery.
“Good job with the wedding idea. I wouldn’t have thought of that,” she said.
“Thanks, but you got her to change into her human-like form,” I said to her with a smile. I didn’t quite want to admit that my plan had actually been to marry Joro, let Charlotte escape, and then let the spider demon kill me
. It had been a terrible idea.
“I thought of that after you freed me to officiate the wedding. I guess we are a good team, huh?” She smiled at me, and the glow of her eyes seemed to soften a bit.
“Yeah. I really like you and think that we--”
“So, I know I said some stuff while I was beating that last spider. Ummm, just forget about it okay? I was just mad at them. Don’t look too deeply into it. Understand?” she asked.
“When you said that I was yours?” I asked
“It was heat of the moment stuff. I mean, I’m just taking you to Satan. You belong to him. I don’t want to get attached or anything. Understand?” The smile had dropped from her face.
“Yeah. I guess. I know you don’t want to--”
“It’s just complicated. So let’s keep going.”
“Oh, okay. Ummm, will there be any more demons that try to kill us?” I asked after we had taken a few steps past the wall of webbing.
“Of course, but that is okay. Nothing ever stops me from finishing a mission.” She smiled wickedly at me, and her eyes pulsed a darker shade of red.
Chapter 4
Charlotte had been wrong about the other demons. Maybe it was the flashlight, or maybe it was the layers of disgusting gore that dried to a cakey mud that served as a warning. For whatever reason, we didn’t see or hear a peep from anything else hostile during our walk toward Satan’s lair.
Charlotte had to take the battery from me after ten minutes of walking. I had tried really hard to bear the weight, but the cube was just too heavy and the walk too long. She seemed to recover most of her strength by that point though, and she walked with the heavy cube dangling from her pointer finger. As if it were an empty cardboard box with a packing-tape handle.
“Another parking garage?” I asked as we seemed to exit the dark tunnel.
“Yep. He likes cars.”
“Wow,” was all I could say in reply. I knew little about automobiles, but I did recognize Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and the other major sports car brands. This parking garage seemed to be even larger than the one we walked through earlier, and every single slot was filled with a different model of the kind of car I’d normally see on an auto magazine cover.
Dozens of different makers, hundreds of different models, all sorts of different years, but the one thing all the cars had in common were the colors: they were either red or black.
“Those are his favorite colors, of course,” Charlotte answered the questions that had popped into my mind.
“There must be thousands of cars in here,” I gasped. “They look like they are brand new.”
“I don’t think he drives them. He might not even know how to drive. Satan just likes that they are expensive. He loves to acquire beautiful, expensive, rare things.” She let out a laugh and pointed deeper into the garage. “Let’s go. We are late. He’s going to be mad. We don’t want to make him mad.”
“Are all the keys in the ignitions?” I gasped as I looked through the window of a dark red Ferrari and then turned to glance inside a black Maybach.
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Couldn’t someone steal one?” I thought about the hundreds of flying demons I’d seen above ground and the four police-uniformed ones that Charlotte had killed in the other garage.
“Oh, Sherman, no one is going to steal from Satan.” She laughed as if I’d just asked her what color the sky was.
“How would he know? There is no one down here.” I glanced around the massive garage. It was endless rows of perfectly polished sleek lines of black and red.
“Cameras.” The succubus pointed to the joints of the concrete columns, and I saw that each one had a security camera facing in various directions.
“Oh. I feel dumb.”
“That’s okay. You are a mortal. This must be a bit overwhelming. Like I said before, I’m a little surprised you haven’t gone insane yet, but you have surprised me a bunch so far.” She gifted me with a smile, and I felt my cheeks warm with a tingle.
“I have?”
“Keep walking. We’ve got another half a mile before we get to the elevator.” She pointed down the garage again. Her hands had long since changed back to be human looking, but they were still covered with the dried blood of a hundred dead spiders.
“Can’t we take one of these cars? It won’t be like stealing. We’ll leave it in the garage.” I pointed at a black two-seater Jaguar convertible that looked as if it were mostly engine.
“Hmmm,” she considered, and then looked down at her body. “I’ll ruin the seats. He might forgive us for using the car to get to him faster, but he’ll really be pissed if I ruin the seats.”
“Yeah. I guess you are right.” I sighed, and we continued our walk for another few feet.
“Do you even know how to drive?” she asked suddenly. “At school, you said you didn’t have a car, just a bicycle.”
“I have my permit, but I’ve never actually driven,” I admitted. My parents hadn’t been interested in helping me learn on any of their cars or in getting me lessons, but I did like tests, and I’d aced my learner’s permit one so I could say that I had done it.
“Ahhh, so I’d have to drive.”
“Yeah. He has so many…” It seemed like every car was more fantastic than the last. There also didn’t appear to be any order to the vehicles. There were older models of different makes and colors parked beside completely different-looking years and makes. I was even seeing duplicates of the same car.
“He likes them. All of them,” Charlotte chuckled.
“Do you really think he is going to kill me?” I asked, and as the question left my mouth, I felt my heart begin to race.
“Yes. Probably. I’m almost positive. Sorry,” she said with a shrug, but I noticed that she didn’t look at me.
“I’m taking one of these cars,” my voice cracked as I stopped walking.
“What? No.”
“He’s already going to kill me. What does it matter?” My voice cracked again, and I felt my legs start to tremble.
If Charlotte was correct, then I only had another fifteen minutes of existence left. In the past day, I’d experienced more than I would have ever dreamed possible. I had found out that most people couldn’t actually see the creatures that I could. I had found out that there was an epic secret battle taking place on Earth. I had finally found the courage to talk to the girl I was in love with, and then I’d even kissed that girl.
Yep. I could probably die happy now. I had realized long ago that I would never have love, but now I’d been able to experience it. Satan couldn’t take those memories from me, and if he was going to kill me, then I wanted one more awesome story.
“I’ll say it was my idea, so you won’t get in trouble.”
“That isn’t how it will work though--”
“Let’s just do it. I can say we didn’t want to be late. He’ll forgive us.”
“Ha!” she laughed loudly. “Sherman, this is Satan. Lord of Evil. King of Lies. Deliverer of Punishment. He doesn’t ‘forgive’ you for using one of his cars. He’ll just add it to the list of reasons why he should devour your soul.”
“I don’t care. That car looks cool. I’ll take that one.” I pointed at a black supercar that had a vermillion-painted trim on the bottom. The same color was also on the wheels, and the vehicle looked like a strange combination of sleek lines and bulbous curves.
“No. Not that one.” Charlotte shook her head.
“Why not?”
“That is a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport World Record Edition. It has an eight liter, sixteen cylinder, quad turbo engine that delivers over a thousand horsepower. It does zero to sixty in two and a half seconds and can reach a speed of two hundred and sixty-seven miles per hour in fifty-five seconds. That car will kill you.”
“Wow! You know a lot about cars. I’m surprised,” I said as I smiled at her.
“Why are you surprised?” Her perfect eyebrow arched.
“Ummm. I dunno. I mean, girls d
on’t really seem to like that kind of--”
“So, because I’m a girl I can’t like cars?” She growled the question.
“No, it’s not like that--”
“Shut up.” Her eyes glowed a dangerous magma color, and she stepped toward me. “And get in. I’m driving.”
“Uhh, okay.” I moved to the passenger side of the black and vermillion supercar and opened the door. The interior was the same orangey-red color, and every surface seemed to be made of leather. The seat was even lower than I expected, and the sides cocooned my body comfortably.
“Seatbelt,” Charlotte commanded as she slid her perfect ass into the driver’s seat.
“Got it.” I plugged the harness thing together over my chest, and Charlotte fingered the starter button of the supercar.
“What about your seatbel-- Ahhh!” I screamed as she flipped the lever on the center console and slammed her right foot down on the gas pedal.
The car chirped as it blasted backwards like a rocket. The restraints dug into my chest as my head lurched forward, and I gasped when the succubus slammed on the brakes suddenly. My skull flew back into the headrest, but the comfy leather cushioned the impact.
“Girls don’t like cars,” Charlotte growled as she threw the gearshift down a few clicks.
Then she slammed her foot on the pedal, and my stomach was left on the ground next to the smoking tire tracks.
“Meeeerrrrhhhhaaa!” I screamed through clenched teeth.
It felt like my skin was trying to peel off my face, and the parked cars turned into a psychedelic rush of dark red kaleidoscope lines. I couldn’t even lift my arms, turn my head, or even breathe. My ribs felt as if they were squeezing my heart and lungs.
Then Charlotte slammed on the brakes and twisted the vermilion steering wheel hard to her right.
I half expected the supercar to cry out a death scream and for us to crash into one of the parked vehicles. Instead, the Bugatti grabbed onto the ground with surprisingly sticky tires, and we twisted through a break in the row of cars. Charlotte yanked the wheel in the other direction, and I almost slammed my face into the window.
02- Satan! Page 4