In The Lap Of The Gods

by John B. Hendricks

  “First of all,” Aamon said. “Silver bullets are for werewolves, not demons.” He snatched the PPK from Fat Boy’s hand. “Secondly, Rugby has strict laws against the brandishing of loaded firearms.” He emptied the bullets into his hand and tossed the empty gun back to Fat Boy. “And finally, we are former minions of Lucifer, as he has abdicated his infernal throne. Right now we are AWOL from the clutches of the new boss, Lilith.”

  “Who are you guys?” Baldur asked.

  “I’m Absalom, this is Solly, and the man with the empty gun is Fat Boy.”

  “We’re on a mission from God,” Fat Boy said.

  “Excuse me?” Barbatos said. “God as in Jehovah? The Big Cheese? The Creator of us all?”

  “Yes,” Fat Boy said. “We’re going to stop Lucifer from destroying the earth.”

  “You three are going to do that?” Barbatos laughed. “Stop the former Emperor of the Underworld and his hardy crew of Norse Gods? He’ll spit you out and chew you boys up.”

  Fat Boy said to Absalom. “Go ahead, show him the chain.”

  Absalom put him knapsack on the ground and unzipped it. He grabbed the end of the silver and started pulling it out.

  “Blast!” Barbatos and Aamon said in unison, stepping back. “The silver chain of love. Lucifer told us about it, but we all thought he was making it up, you know, using it as an excuse for just getting his ass whooped.”

  “May I?” Baldur said.

  “I don’t think demons can,” Absalom said.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Baldur said. “I’m just a regular dead Norse god of light, purity, beauty, innocence, and reconciliation. I can handle it.” He gently took the chain out of Absalom’s hand. It glowed even more. He dropped it back into the bag.

  “Tell me your plan,” Baldur said.

  Absalom explained it to them. “We’re going through this portal to Heaven and get the drop on Lucifer, chain him up and force him to put a stop to the Remusian invasion.”

  “Why doesn’t Jehovah just do it himself?”

  “Mysterious ways,” Absalom answered. Baldur nodded. “Odin never explained himself very often either. That way, whichever way things turned out, he could say, yep, that’s how I planned it.”

  “I for one want Lucifer’s plan to work,” Aamon said. “Once the earth is cleared of mankind, Lucifer and Eve can start a new race and we demons can return from exile and roam Heaven and earth at our leisure, away from Hell and back to where we deserve to be.” He flexed his arms menacingly. “I think we should stop you.”

  Baldur touched Aamon’s arm. “Whoa, big fellow. Let’s not be popping people’s heads off here in the center of town.” He turned to Absalom. “These guys are Lucifer loyalists to the core. I’m afraid you’ll just have to stay here with us until this all blows over. We’ll put a good word in for you, right fellows?” The two minions shrugged their shoulders.

  Absalom took out the sheet of paper that Joe had given him. He made eye contact with Solly and Fat Boy, tilting his head. “Jacamar,” Absalom whispered.

  A portal dilated open just to their left. Absalom shoved Aamon quickly, sending him tumbling against Barbatos and they both hit the crowd in a tumble of arms and legs. Absalom grabbed Solly by the arm. “C’mon, we’ve only got ten seconds.” Fat Boy grabbed Solly’s other arm and they sprinted toward the portal, Solly’s knees drawn up so his feet wouldn’t drag the ground. After they dropped Solly through, they turned and looked at the two demons, struggling and cursing as they tried to get up. “One for the Lord!” Fat Boy yelled and stepped through. Absalom looked at Baldur and said “Sorry,” but a split second after he turned around, he felt a blunt force hit him square in the back, knocking him headfirst through the hole. I wish, he thought, that one of these times I could just step through one of these gates on my own volition instead of being knocked through by force.

  He laid facedown on a street paved with gold. He couldn’t move, a heavy weight pressing against him, holding him down. “Different gravity?” he thought, “or is this some kind of forceful avoidance of eye contact that is required in Heaven so I can’t gaze upon something I’m not supposed to look at directly.”

  “Sorry pal,” Baldur said, rolling off Absalom’s back. “But I had a few questions and you look like you might have some answers.”

  “Absalom!” Fat Boy said. “You are not going to believe this.”

  Absalom sincerely doubted that.

  Chapter 67[67]

  “So, what’s the plan, oh Great Leader?”

  Lucifer was pacing again. He had unleashed his tail and was letting it swing freely, adding balance to his stride. As promised, the Remusians were right on time and if things went to plan, the Earth would be cleared of humans in thirty days. Paradise was in the near future, and all that was missing was the first lady of humanity, Eve. What if Lilith took her to Earth, leaving her for the Remusian war machine to grab her up and take her back to Remusia as a breeding cow? Sure, technically, he was doing the same thing, but he loved her, not like the soulless Remusians, so his noble purpose put him at a higher level of morality.

  Lucifer stopped and sat on the ottoman, stretching his back out and popping it. That doesn’t seem ironic enough for Lilith. Taking Eve back to Hell, and hanging her out in front of Lucifer, just out of reach, pulling her away just before Lucifer could reach her. A cruel game that Lilith could drag out for an extended period, that was more Lilith’s style.

  Lucifer knew he had no choice. He had to go back to his former empire.

  They could backtrack to Wisconsin and make their way back to his original entry point, but that would take days and he wasn’t even sure if he could find the spot again. He had to think of another way.

  When people die, they go to Heaven or Hell, Lucifer thought. Or is it more complicated than that?

  There hadn’t been any death when he was around Heaven and he didn’t remember seeing any blueprints for a post-existence system. In Hell, people popped out of a single portal at different times, disoriented and dead. Was Heaven set up the same way?

  Something tickled his memory, some memo from a staffer. Raum was his name, yes, that was the minion. Sneaky bastard. A good guy. He wrote something about a change in the arrival patterns. A commonality, he had called it. Think Lucifer, think, Lucifer thought. Free associate. C’mon, you’re good with names.

  The guy who wrote Dracula, the Irish guy. Stoker. Renfield. Harker. No, BRAM Stoker. Abraham Stoker. ABRAHAM!

  It came back to him. According to Raum, before the 1st century, the only new arrivals had come out of a portal when the Great Flood had covered the earth. In the next couple of thousand years, there was only the occasional straggler emerging from that particular portal. After the 1st century or so, however, the damned started pouring out of a completely different portal in from a different location, the sheer volume overwhelming the demons in charge. Lucifer remembered pulling people off torment duty on the Flood victims and sending them to help process all of the new sinners. These new arrivals were different; a huge cross-section that represented all races that had lived post-Flood up to the current time. Raum hypothesized they had all been kept in a holding station of some sort for quite a while and had been released to their fates. Many of souls used a common phrase to describe where they had come from.

  “Abraham’s Bosom.”

  It made total sense. In the pre-Jesus times, apparently not much judging had occurred. The Flood guys were the worst of the worst, so they were easy to sort out. But the other people, well, how could you tell if an Incan or a Mayan was good or bad? Sure, they had human sacrifices, but they did it because they thought their particular gods would be pleased. In a theological way, how was that different from not eating meat on Friday? It appeared that the people that weren’t bad enough to go directly to Hell but not quite good enough to get into Heaven got stuck in a neutral area. The Bosom of Abraham.

  In the days after Jesus, the criteria got simpler. Jesus, yes or no. Since the inhabitant
s of Abraham’s Bosom had no idea who Jesus was, the place was cleared out, making way for the post-Jesus human flood of the unsaved that had forced the overworked demons to put in extra hours and take shorter breaks for a number of centuries.

  Lucifer picked up the directory from the counter and flipped through it to the map in the back. He went to the A’s and the first entry placed a big smile on his face. “Abraham’s Bosom. A8.” Bingo.

  “Listen up!” Lucifer shouted. “We are going to Abraham’s Bosom!”

  “That’s an odd name for a strip club,” Odin said, “but count me in. This place is a total drag.” The other gods nodded in acquiescence. Ragnarok could wait.

  Chapter 68[68]

  “This is one lousy strip club,” the Norse gods complained.

  It was a huge cavernous room hewn out of some sort of sandstone. Dust bunnies swirled around silently and the room had the vacant vibe of an abandoned inner city tenement. Abraham’s Bosom was a cold indifferent place, and nothing like Lucifer had imagined. Mankind was penned in here like sheep for thousands of years. Really merciful, Jehovah.

  “I’ve been in proctologist’s waiting rooms that were warmer than this,” Thor said.

  Lucifer nodded. He looked back where they had come from, down a long flight of stairs that could have easily been described as the stairway to heaven, golden steps, and handrails, a glittering testament to William Blake’s quote of “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” After walking down, the door at the bottom were anti-climactic. It was wide open. “Last one out of Heaven turn out the lights,” Lucifer laughed, slamming the door shut.

  It took them a long time to reach the front of the room. The Norse gods were cranky. They had been snacking intermittently on stuff they had snatched from Eve’s place, and any mead buzz they acquired from sipping on flasks was long gone and replaced with a back-of-the-neck throbbing headache. A few of them had scuffled on the way and they were all beginning to smell a bit. It reminded Lucifer of Wrigley Field in the later innings.

  The room narrowed as they got closer to the front. Lucifer could see could see a huge barrier stretched across the length of the room. It appeared to be a makeshift affair and was not like anything else they had seen. He slid his hand across it. Heavy-duty angel-made material. Unbreakable. Too slick to climb and too tall to be boosted over. You would need a big ladder to get over this monstrosity.

  Like the one laying on the floor a short distance away.

  “Are you ready to charge the very gates of Hell?” Lucifer shouted at the Norsemen.

  The gods gave a brief, hoarse hurrah that was far from heartfelt.

  Lucifer climbed up the ladder slowly, rung-by-rung. He hated heights. That damned fall from Heaven had given him the worst case of acrophobia ever seen. Don’t look down, don’t look down, he thought, mentally fusing his eyelids shut.

  Finally, his hand grabbed air. He was at the top. He peeked with one eye.

  Humanity roiled beneath him. Every race, creed, and color walking slowly under him, heads down, feet shuffling like teenagers on their way to the principal’s office.

  He looked straight out and saw hundreds of gates. The portals were clearly marked with digital plaques indicating where the portal originated and who was coming through it. Names and places flashed written in Old Angel and Lucifer enjoyed seeing the old script still in use.

  He looked to his left and laughed aloud. Flashing strobe-like in every language currently in use on Earth, the gaudy sign gave absolutely no doubt where the portal was headed.

  ENFER. HOLLE. INFERNO.

  This explains many things, Lucifer thought. This station has been abandoned for a long time and somebody put this barrier up to keep people out of heaven. Looks like a one-way ticket to hell, children of God. Lucifer crept back down the ladder very slowly.

  “Let’s look around,” Lucifer said to the Aesir. “There has to be some kind of processing center around here.”

  “Looks like a low-rent McDonalds ahead,” Frigga said. “Just one Golden Arch.”

  “It looks like real gold, Frigga,” Lucifer said. “Over 6 billion served, but not burgers.”

  The Wonderful Golden Arch shone brightly in the harsh light of Abraham’s Bosom. A series of video-screens sat in front of some chairs that formed a semi-circle around it. Lucifer sat down at one of the terminals.

  “What does it do?” someone asked.

  “It looks like automated Judgment,” Lucifer answered. “At least, that’s what it says on the desktop.” He touched the screen with his finger and it flickered to life. “Warning,” it read. “This station set up for the close calls using the original Jehovah criteria. Not programmed for post-Messiah use.”

  “Who’s up for judgment?” Lucifer asked.

  No quick volunteers emerged, so Odin thrust out his chin and strode forward. “I, Odin, son of Bestla and Borr, slayer of Ymir, Master of Valhalla, King of the Gods, will go first.” He strode briskly through.

  “Good,” the screen said silently. The Aesir’s reaction was mixed.

  “Wonder what the criteria are?” Frigga asked. “Apparently, infidelity does not weigh heavily in the calculation.” She swatted Odin across the helmet.

  “Looks like it’s still functional, although the accuracy make be in question,” Lucifer said, “so I’ll assume that everything is in order” He moved to the next screen and watched the names flicker. “These are the incoming poor lost souls on the other side of the barrier. Names, place of death, soul number.” Lucifer rolled his chair over to the next screen, “These look like the ones passing through the gate to Hell.” Red warning lights were flashing like crazy. “Righteous. Righteous. Warning. Saved. Saved. Saved. Do not proceed. STOP! STOP! STOP!” Lucifer looked under the station. Someone had wedged a King James Bible under a pedal marked “Open Hellgate.” So much for that safety feature, he thought. This is definitely not what they are teaching in Sunday School.

  “What about Baldur?” Thor asked.

  Lucifer’s brow wrinkled. “It looks like he didn’t have a chance to be judged, just like the millions of poor souls that have made their trek through life for naught.” The names continued to roll across the screen.

  “Then we must hurry,” said Odin. “The aliens that we saw on the television are surely part of Ragnarok. What else could explain their presence here at this time? It can’t be mere coincidence.”

  You got that right, Lucifer thought. He found the start menu and clicked on the “Find individual record” icon. The monitor went blue screen for a minute. Lucifer’s brow wrinkled. They had Microsoft in Hell. He figured these machines would at least be running Linux.

  The machine abruptly came back to life and Lucifer typed in Baldur’s name.

  “Baldur.

  Gate entry accepted. Non-believer.

  Current status. Damned.

  Current location. Under review.”

  Under review? Lucifer thought. He clicked through the help screens until he found an explanation for the code.

  “Under review. This code indicates that soul has been processed correctly, but is currently not located in proper designated area. A memorandum has been issued to the officer in charge.”

  Lucifer read the explanation again in disbelief. For whatever reason, Baldur was not in Hell. He looked at the Aesir. If he told them the truth, they would believe that Ragnarok had been averted and they would return to Earth to find the missing god. That would leave Lucifer without the forces he knew he would need to retrieve Eve. Add this to my volumes of lies, he thought sadly.

  “Looks like he’s down there,” he told them. “We need to press on.” He quickly typed in Eve’s name.

  “Eve.

  Gate entry declined. Believer.

  Current status. Chosen.

  Current location. Hell.

  His scalp itched and he scratched it roughly, trying to make it all go away. Hang on Eve, he thought. I’m on my way.

  Chapter 69[69]

  “Ev
e, let’s go for a little ride.”

  Two burly demons grabbed her by the arms and carried Eve out of the office. The demons were scaly and their skin felt like it was burning hers like a branding iron. She heard Lilith shouting commands and the snick of her whip added punctuation to her orders.

  “Just toss her into the trunk,” Lilith said. “I don’t have any need for her mindless jibber-jabber.”

  As she was flung bodily into a deep storage box, Eve saw a brief flash of sky. The lid slammed down on her head and her mind spun dizzily, engulfing her in darkness. She felt a strong jerk and forward motion. “Lucifer,” she cried silently. “My love.” She blacked out.

  Lilith leaned back into the depths of her velvet-ensconced seat. Her eight-demon Minion Guard puller the Royal Carriage at a pace much faster than any team of the swiftest horses on Earth could ever have matched and maintained. She would easily reach Lucifer’s cabana by day-end. She sipped the awful beer that the Beermeisters claimed was the finest they had ever produced. They were probably pissing in it again, she thought, which was fine. At least that gave the horrid concoction a little flavor. She chugged the balance.

  The plan was simple. When they arrived at the cabana, they would tie Eve to a chair. Lilith would then formally present her with the symbols of power, slap the crown on Eve’s head and the scepter into her bound hand, and head for the safety of the high ground and watch for Lucifer. After the deed was done, she would reclaims the crown and scepter and move on with her own master plan, the total domination of the entire Universe, including Heaven, Hell, Earth and beyond. “Hometown girl makes good,” Lilith laughed.

  “Faster!” she shouted at her guards. “Faster!”

  Chapter 70[70]

  St. Peter was tired of solitaire.

  For countless years, he had been sitting here at his post, admitting people to Heaven through the Pearly Gates, giving them a hearty slap on the back and an attaboy. He loved the faces, filled with awe and a touch of relief, as they stepped through the gates onto the outer highway of Heaven. It gave his afterlife purpose and he was glad to be able to try to square things with Jehovah with his service. He still felt a little guilty about his trifecta denial of Jesus and he could still hear that stupid cock crowing in the back of his mind sometimes.