02- Satan!

by Michael-Scott Earle

  There weren’t any save spots.

  “Sherman…” Charlotte’s head was lying against my chest, and I glanced down to see a bunch of her guts hung out of her open torso. Some of it was getting on the steering wheel, but most of it was hanging over my legs and dangling into the foot well of the car.

  “It’s okay, Charlotte. Don’t talk. I’m going to save us.”

  “Get to Satan. Okay?” I almost couldn’t hear her whisper over the sound of the giant engine.

  “That is where we are going. I just need to--” The air shimmered up ahead, and I let my foot off the gas so that I could steer around the oncoming fireball. I knew I wasn’t driving nearly as fast as Charlotte had, but I managed to dance the Bugatti away from Divyia’s lobbed ball of teal bar-b-que. I could do this.

  Just think video game. I am great at video games.

  “I’m not going to live. Sorry, Sherman.” Her face seemed to nestle onto my chest.

  “No, we are going to make it. You’ll be okay. Satan will fix you.”

  “Ha. Stupid boy.” She let out a chuckle. “Promise me you’ll get to him?”

  “Not without you,” I said as I punched on the gas again and drove past a crater in the road. I spotted the end of the driveway in the distance, and I realized that I didn’t know which way to even turn on the main road ahead.

  “You need to. Please do it for me. Goodbye, Sherman. I kinda liked you.” Her eyes were no longer glowing red. They just looked dull and bloodshot.

  “No, no, no. Don’t die, Charlotte! You already died once! I don’t want to lose you again!” I took my foot off the gas and pressed on the brakes. I didn’t know where to go once I got to the end of the road, and I didn’t even care now. I didn’t want to live without the beautiful succubus girl.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.” Her left arm reached up to stroke my cheek, and her perfect lips twisted into one last grin.

  I kissed her.

  I didn’t know why I did. Maybe I was just being selfish. Maybe I wanted one last memory of her lips touching mine. Maybe I thought that she would like it since she had said that she did when we walked through the dismal parking lot of Hell. It was totally unlike me. I never thought I was the kind of guy who would make the move. I always wanted to be the hero who kissed the girl, but if anyone, Charlotte was the hero of this story, and I was just her damsel in distress.

  Her lips tasted wonderful despite the blood, and I felt her mouth respond to my kiss. Her lips opened slightly, her tongue pushed against mine, and she moaned a sound of pleasure that filled every single cell of my body with desire.

  The world stopped.

  I forgot about Divyia trying to kill us. I forgot about Satan. I forgot about Hell. I forgot about the smoking half wreckage of a car we were trying to escape in. There was only Charlotte. She was everything. The beginning. The end. The middle. I didn’t want anything to happen after this moment, and our lips seemed to connect our minds, bodies, and souls in a way that joined us together in immortality.

  My world turned to darkness, then light, and then all the colors spun through my vision. There were colors that I didn’t even know existed, but I suddenly saw them, and understood them. They became a kaleidoscope of endless joy that no mortal would ever understand, and I knew that as soon as I stopped kissing Charlotte, I would lose the enlightenment.

  Then the kiss ended.

  “Wow,” Charlotte and I said at the same time.

  Her eyes had changed, and they burned so brightly that I had to blink and look away from them. I gasped when I saw her chest. Her organs were somehow back in her body, and her perfect, creamy skin looked unharmed. I almost wondered if I had imagined the damage, but her school uniform was now almost completely nonexistent, and what was left of her bra couldn’t have covered up a mouse. She was naked, healed, and sitting curled up in my lap.

  Right on top of my really hard--

  A growl sounded from a foot away from me, and Charlotte’s weight suddenly disappeared. The driver’s door was open, and I turned to see my girlfriend rip her talons across Divyia’s striped face. The attack surprised the rakshasi, and the tiger woman staggered back.

  Charlotte didn’t stop with that single strike though. It was just the first attack in a series of combo punches, kicks, claws, and wing attacks. Divyia tried to block the strikes, but the succubus was almost faster than I could see, and every time the tiger raised her paws to block, the half-naked winged girl struck somewhere she was open.

  In a handful of seconds, the rakshasi was covered with hundreds of leaking scratches, had a broken left arm, and had retreated from the side of the Bugatti. It was clear that Charlotte had the upper hand in the melee against one of the tiger demons, but I guessed it was only a matter of time before Divyia was able to teleport away and launch her powerful fireballs.

  “Enough!” the rakshasi screamed and then faded from view. The woman appeared thirty feet behind Charlotte and pushed her right arm out toward my girlfriend. The globe of teal molten magma shot toward the succubus like a fast-pitched baseball, but the winged girl just smacked the projectile aside with one of her wings.

  “What? How did you--” Divyia’s voice cut off as Charlotte suddenly teleported next to her. My girlfriend wrapped her arms around the other woman’s neck and then pressed her lips against her mouth. The tiger demon tried to push the succubus away, but it was too late, and Charlotte wouldn’t let go of the other woman’s neck.

  Or release her lips.

  Charlotte’s pinkish-purple wings expanded and seemed to grow bigger. They got so big that I almost couldn’t see anything other than her wings when I looked out the broken window of the Bugatti. Then they wrapped around both women like a blanket, or a leathery cocoon. I heard the sound of Divyia trying to scream, but it sounded muffled.

  Then the wings seemed to tighten.

  The muffled screaming stopped, and the cocoon kind of twitched a little. Ten seconds or so passed, and I wondered what I should do. Should I get out of the car? Should I try to help Charlotte?

  Then the wings opened with the sound of a thunderclap. Charlotte’s almost-naked body quivered with power, and her tense muscles glowed with a teal outline. My girlfriend screamed with something that could only be described as ecstasy, and a pile of bones fell to the ground at her bloody feet.

  Then the bones turned to dust.

  “Are you okay?” I whispered with some fear.

  “Yesssssssss,” she moaned and then walked toward the Bugatti with a lavish swing of her hips.

  I put the car in park and scooted out of the driver’s seat. My ass fell into the passenger’s spot before she could open the door. She didn’t look at me when she slid into her seat, and when she shut the door behind her, the supercar trembled.

  Then my glowing girlfriend shifted the car back into drive and rolled us slowly to the end of the private driveway. She made a right at the turn, and I saw the nest of Satan’s towers far in the distance. I turned to look at her after a handful of minutes, but she just kept her burning eyes on the road.

  “Charlotte, are you--”

  “Shhhhhh,” she raised her healed right arm and pushed a finger against my lips without looking. “Let’s have quiet time until we return. I need to relish this.”

  I opened my mouth to ask her what she was relishing, or to ask her if I could give her my shirt to wear, but then I closed my lips. She’d tell me what was going on soon. I had watched enough anime and had read enough comics to know that sometimes women needed their space.

  I waited patiently, tried not to gawk at her mostly bare breasts while she drove, and finally decided to just stare out of the window of the supercar, trying to ignore the pain in my wrists.

  I would probably feel more agony once Satan had his way with me.

  Chapter 7

  The drive took about forty minutes, and Charlotte did over a hundred the entire way there. The freeways in Hell were surprisingly well maintained, and there were no other cars on
the roads beside us. My girlfriend didn’t talk during our trip, and I noticed the teal glow around her muscles fade a bit every few minutes. By the time we parked the ruined Bugatti back in Satan’s garage, she had started to look normal.

  “Get out,” she ordered as soon as she had parked the supercar next to the elevators in the garage again.

  “Okay,” I said as I opened the door with a painful gasp. “I’m surprised that our car was able to make it back here with the front all damaged.”

  “It is a mid-engine car. The front is the trunk, and has a crash cage,” Charlotte answered blankly.

  I nodded at her words and followed her back to the door of the elevator. Something seemed wrong with the succubus. Or at least, she wasn’t acting like she had during the earlier parts of our trip. She seemed more aloof than usual, and she wasn’t making eye contact when I spoke to her. Maybe she was mad that I had kissed her?

  She pressed the button for the elevator, and the doors dinged a few moments later. We stepped into the lift, and I gathered my courage to speak again.

  “Thank you for saving me,” I said.

  “You are welcome.” She stared straight ahead at the doors of the elevator.

  “Did I say or do something to make you mad, Charlotte? If so, I’m really sorry.”

  “No. You didn’t,” she answered.

  “But you seem upset--”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Okay. I am sorry that I kissed you without asking. I just--”

  “Don’t tell anyone you kissed me.” She turned to me, and her eyes glowed the color of the Bugatti’s vermilion paint.

  “Oh, ummm. Why?”

  “Pretend it didn’t happen. Forget about it. The story is that I rescued you from the rakshasis. They tried to stop us, but we escaped. Do you understand?”

  “So. I mean, the kiss--”

  “Didn’t happen, and nothing you saw after that happened. Do you understand?” She growled at me.

  “Ummm yeah,” I said with a sigh.

  “So tell me the story. Quickly,” she commanded.

  “The rakshasis were going to eat me, but then you came and rescued me. We drove away in the car. They tried to stop us, but we ran them over. Is that okay?” I asked.

  “Yes. That is the story,” Charlotte nodded and turned to face the elevator doors again.

  “Can I give you my shirt to wear?” I asked. I'd been trying to avoid looking at her mostly bare chest.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “It's just that you are pretty much naked and--”

  “I'm used to being naked. I like it,” she huffed.

  “Okay. It's just that--”

  “Are you going to tell me what clothes I can or cannot wear?”

  “Oh, no. I'm fine with whatever clothes you want to wear, I just--”

  “Because I am happy with my body. I like it just the way it is. If I decide I want to wear clothes, or not, that is my decision. I don't need a man telling me about what he thinks I should wear.”

  “I agree, I just thought you would want my shirt. That is all,” I said with a sigh.

  “Then what would you wear? Ugh. Humans,” she groaned.

  “It doesn't really matter about me. I want you to be happy,” I said as I looked away from her.

  “Oh,” she said.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her bite her lip. It looked like she was trying to figure out what she would say next, but the elevator dinged and opened to the lobby once more.

  “Walk behind me, in case there are a new set of guards,” she whispered when we exited.

  I saw what was left of the fountain. It was just a pile of obsidian rubble with dark blood bubbling to the surface. I wondered if Satan would be mad that the creepy fountain had been destroyed, but then I guessed that the Lord of Evil was probably angry all the time.

  The succubus walked across the lobby carefully, glancing in all directions. I half expected us to encounter another group of demonic guards, but we made it to the next set of elevators without interruption. The half-naked girl pressed the button to go down, and she stared at the closed doors.

  “Will, ummmm, Satan be mad that you used his car to get me?”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “But you wouldn’t have been able to save me without it. He has to see why you--”

  “Shhh. Sherman, reasons don’t matter.”

  The elevator dinged, and the girl stepped inside.

  Terror seized me.

  I didn’t want to meet Satan. I didn’t want him to torture and murder me. I didn’t want to face the Lord of Evil.

  I didn’t want him to get mad at Charlotte for saving me.

  “Hurry. We are very late,” she sighed and beckoned with a finger. Her perfectly shaped and pert breasts lifted with the movement.

  Maybe I should have been happy that I got to see Charlotte's beautiful body, but I didn’t feel it was a cause for celebration. I felt as if my girlfriend and I were marching toward our own funerals.

  I stepped into the elevator and the doors closed behind me.

  She pressed the button for the bottom floor, and the car descended a tad slower than freefall. I let out my breath when it first started moving, but after a few seconds I got used to the pace, and I was able to relax. Well, relax as much as someone with bleeding wrists could relax while taking an elevator car down into the pits of Hell to meet Satan.

  “Anything else I shouldn’t talk about with Satan?” I asked with a huff.

  “Just don’t talk about me. Don’t tell him that you have feelings for me.”

  “But why? I do care about you, Charlotte. I love--”

  “No! Definitely don’t say that. Sherman, just forget about me. Okay? I’ve accomplished my mission. You don’t nee--”

  “Was that all I was to you? A mission?” I choked out the question.

  Charlotte didn’t answer, but she crossed her arms over the tattered remnants of her bra, and I saw her mouth harden.

  The numbers on the elevator settled on ‘666’ and the doors opened with a ding.

  “Come with me, human,” Charlotte’s hands were in their ‘talon mode’ again, and I felt the nails on each of her fingers pinch into the skin of my bicep.

  She pulled me from the elevator and walked me down a long hallway. The design seemed similar to the lobby down below, errr, or above, but the black tiles, walls, and columns seemed to have a slightly reddish glow to them.

  Then we rounded a corner of the hallway, and I stood in Satan’s throne room.

  It was a massive space, and my eyes couldn’t take in the sheer volume of my surroundings. A great emptiness filled the room, but there were ten-foot burning braziers of Hellfire every ten or so feet to push away the darkness.

  When I looked up, I couldn’t see where the ceiling began, but there were thick links of chain descending from the darkness. At the end of each chain was a cage containing the bones of alien-looking creatures. There were hundreds, maybe even thousands of cages in the throne room, and the cages terrified me more than the thought of getting eaten had. Each of the skeletons was grasping onto the bars of the cage, and I wondered if they had been killed with some sort of burning fire or had died of hunger.

  Charlotte pulled on my arm again, and I let her drag me into the center of the room. There was a magnificent staircase there, and the dark steps were flanked by smaller braziers of dark orange fire. I looked up the steps, and then up the steps some more, and then craned my neck as far back as I could so that I might see the massive skull throne placed at the top of the stairs.

  Upon the throne sat Satan. The Lord of Evil.

  He looked enormous. The god must have stood ten feet tall. His skin was a dark red, and his black, bull-shaped horns were massive. His muscles pushed out at every angle, and his dark beard was magnificent. He held a glowing trident in his right hand, and a glowing crown floated between his horns.

  At the feet of his throne were at least a dozen succubi.

 
The sexy women were mostly unclothed, but a few wore tiny dark bikinis that did little to hide their amazing bodies. Some of the demon women had horns of various shapes, and they had skin colors ranging from the same red as Satan’s, to a blue color of the ocean, and all hues in between. The women clung to their lord’s feet, his legs, his arms, and they touched his chest affectionately. They writhed across him with delight plain on their faces, and the expressions, along with the moans, made me think that the mere touch of their master made them climax.

  “I have fulfilled my mission, Lord Satan. Here is the human Sherman.” As soon as Charlotte finished speaking, she knelt on the ground at the base of the stairs and pressed her forehead to the black marble tile.

  The massive man sitting on the throne focused his glowing evil eyes upon me, and the throng of beautiful demon women stopped their cavorting to look down upon me. My breath caught in my throat, and I heard my heart pound in my ears like the sound of a war drum.

  “You. Are. Late.” The voice boomed across the void of the throne room like a tuba.

  “I am sorry, Lord Satan. We were delayed,” Charlotte’s voice was surprisingly calm, but she didn’t lift her face from the floor.

  “I. Do. Not. Care. About. Your. Problems.” His voice boomed again, and I saw a few of the succubi lean to his ear and begin to whisper.

  Charlotte didn’t answer, and the silence stretched on for almost a minute. I could see the winged demon women glance away from us with boredom. A few of them began to touch each other, and then they started to kiss aggressively. The scene was more than a little distracting, and I tried to think about the fact that Satan was about to torture and kill me, instead of what was going on in my pants. As soon as I felt that I had my body under control, the group of women turned to look at me. They all gave me sultry grins, and one of them began to lick the fingers of her right hand while she stared at me.