Soul of Stone

by Leo Romero

  She grabbed hold of the blade with both hands and craned her head toward me, the veins in her neck bulging. She stuck out her tongue and flapped it rapidly on the air at me. She gasped and flopped back, a dreamy grin remaining on her dead face.

  I looked to the side. “Hmm, I guess it was.”

  I pulled out Excalibur and wiped the blade on her bare legs, surveying the carnage around me. My eyes fell on Killian.

  “Well done, Stone!” Draxil scolded me. “Now we cannot free Margaroth.”

  I ignored his jibes and stepped over to Killian. I grabbed his etched arm and pulled it out to the side. I brought Excalibur down at his elbow, snapping cleanly through meat and bone. I picked up his severed forearm and took it over to Margaroth’s cage just as he woke up from a peaceful sleep. He stretched, yawned, and laid his sleepy black eyes on me. I held Killian’s forearm near to the cage door. The etchings on the forearm glowed scarlet. There was a loud click, and the cage door creaked open.

  I smiled. “Not so dumb am I now?” I asked Draxil.

  Draxil grumbled something to himself.

  “What was that?” I said, cupping a hand around my ear. “Well done, Stone? You da man? Let’s hear it for Gabriel?”

  “Just get the dog and leave,” Draxil growled.

  “There’s gratitude for ya,” I said as I reached in a hand to pick up that pink thing. I went to grab it when it opened its little jaws and took a bite of the webbing between my thumb and index finger.

  “Ow, son of a—” I snapped, but was cut off as Margaroth hopped out of the cage and scampered over to my feet. I watched him in a stupor. He climbed up on my boot and started gnawing at my ankle.

  My eyes bulged. “Ow! You little—”

  Margaroth gnawed harder and pain shot up my leg. “Ow!” I yelled and kicked out my leg. The little bastard clung on, gnawing at my ankle like it was a bone.

  “Aw, Margie, you little scamp,” Draxil said in a disgustingly simpering voice. If he were standing next to me, I’d have slapped him.

  Margaroth chewed harder.

  “Ow! Why does the little asshole keep biting my ankle?”

  “He’s a hellhound, Gabriel, not a poodle.”

  “He’s a pain in the ass!” He bit my ankle again. “Ow! A pain in my goddamn ankles.”

  “He likes you. That’s his way of showing affection.”

  “By chewing off my ankles? I’m just glad he doesn’t hate me!”

  “Have trust in me when I say you are correct in that assertion.”

  He bit me again. I’d had enough. I snatched him up and brought him level with my face. He hung there, growling and snarling, trying his best to claw at me. “You are going in the pocket!” I told him and shoved him my jacket pocket. He disappeared in there for a few seconds, squirming. He then jumped out and scampered up my arm and onto my shoulder.

  I froze, expecting him to start chewing my face. He sat there obediently. Must’ve finally got the message. I turned my head to the side to meet his stare. He gazed at me in silence. He licked his lips and yawned, giving me a hit of his rancid breath. “Phew, Marga! What you been eating, boy?”

  He licked my cheek, and I quivered in revulsion.

  “Aw, he’s showing you true affection now, Stone,” Draxil said.

  “He can shove his affection,” I said, wiping the slimy saliva from my cheek. “Behave yourself!” I told him. He set himself on my shoulder, pushing his chin down onto it.

  Hmm. Good doggie. I looked around, my eyes falling on the dead flayer and his daughter.

  “We better get out of here, Stone,” said Draxil.

  I nodded in agreement. I went to leave when I spotted something peeking over a rack like a periscope. An eyeball on the end of a tentacle. Dickhead. The eye on the end of it caught me staring and shot back down.

  “Hey, come out of there!” I ordered. “Now.”

  Dickhead popped out from behind the rack, his whole body trembling. “Yes, oh gracious one,” he said, his head bowed.

  “Congratulations, Dickhead. You’re officially in charge of the kennels.” I slung Killian’s severed arm at him.

  He flinched in surprise but managed to catch the forearm. He stared down at it in repulsion. “Why thank you, your graciousness,” he said with a bow.

  “Have fun.” I marched toward the steps leading out. As I went past Dickhead, Margaroth turned toward him and yapped and snarled.

  I made it up to the torture yard, where our buddy in the stocks was waiting. I went over and pulled the scold’s bridle from his face, which was now a crisscross of scars and bleeding cuts.

  “Don’t play cards with him!” the guy blurted, his words hardly decipherable ’cause his tongue was so swollen from the treatment it had received. “He uses Decayed Ones’ magic to switch the cards.”

  “Thanks for the heads up,” I said, slinging the scold’s bridle away and walking off, Margaroth yapping at him too.

  “Hey. Hey. Hey!” the guy stammered after me. “Aren’t you going to let me out?”

  I opened the exit door and turned to face him. “Sorry, pal. You belong to Dickhead now.”

  The guy gave me a confused look. I sent him a grin and left the torture yard, scampering past the cages of barking and howling hounds. Margaroth yapped back at them as we went past.

  “Easy, boy,” I said, but he didn’t let up. The little bastard looked like he wanted to take them all on. Man, I had Scrappy Doo sitting on my shoulder. I was expecting him at any minute to start shouting ‘lemme at ’em, lemme at ’em!’

  I cranked open the steel shutter and hopped outside, throwing it shut behind me, leaving the Kennels and the crazed hellhounds behind.

  Chapter 19

  The hellbike was still waiting for us outside. I darted over to it. I went to get on when a tickling sensation went off in my mind. Margaroth was licking my ear again.

  “Hey, cut that out!” I said, yanking my head to the side.

  “So, you’ve retrieved Margaroth,” the waiting statue of Atazoth said to me. “Planning to battle an immortal, are we?”

  “Mind your own business,” I said back.

  Atazoth’s subsequent laugh was the hiss of steam shooting from punctured pipes.

  I ignored him and got on the hellbike. “All right, Draxil,” I said as I got on. “Are we blowing this joint? Please tell me we are.”

  “Unfortunately not.”

  “Son of a…”

  “We need to head to the Prison District and break Jagelon out of there.”

  “Okay, so back where all those cages were?”

  “Cages? Oh no, Stone,” he said with a laugh. “That was the Housing District! The Prison District is much worse than that!”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Satan must have handed Jagelon over to Baal, who imprisoned him.”

  “How are we gonna break him out?”

  “You think I have a plan?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Fool.”

  “Great.”

  “We have to get to the Prison District first before we can work out what to do.”

  Looked like we’d be winging it. I got the hellbike started up. The wailing souls encased within sang AC/DC this time. As I set off, I drew Bam Bam and shot a tentacle off Atazoth’s head.

  “Worm!” he shouted as I sped away, the middle finger of my free hand fully erect for him. I left the SOB with a blast of hellfire from my tail pipe and hit the streets of Hell, Margaroth sitting obediently on my shoulder, enjoying the ride. I entered a new derelict area where I joined the main highway. Burned-out buildings flashed by in an orange-gray blur, the hellbike roaring beneath me, the wind whistling by.

  I made it about halfway through the highway when a squadron of Baal’s soldiers came marching around the corner.

  “Look out, Stone!” Draxil warned.

  I cut an immediate right, coming off the highway and dipping between a couple of buildings. I came off the throttle and walked the bike along, delving into th
e shadows where it was safer. The clang of the soldiers’ blade-legs grew louder behind me as they marched by. The sound drifted off into the distance as I moved through the shadows and into the thicket of buildings. I soon found myself in Violence’s version of the Loop. A forest of decrepit skyscrapers, their skeleton-like lattices on display, swallowed me. I got on the throttle once more and took it slow, weaving in between the buildings, the flames licking away at their roofs and facades, lighting the way.

  More naked people cowered in the shadows, their eyes lighting up once they saw the hellbike approaching. A man and woman tried to jack me, one diving in from each side, hoping to knock me off and steal the bike. I caught a glimpse of them at the last second: the desperate gleam in their eyes, their teeth clenched in anger. Margaroth leaped off my shoulder and landed on the face of the one to the right. I brought the bike to a stop and whipped my head around. “Marga!”

  The guy screamed and threw his hands up to his face as Margaroth got hold of him like an Alien facehugger. He gnawed and clawed at the guy’s head with his tiny fangs and claws. The guy spun away, screaming, trying his best to slap Margaroth off, but the hellhound was dug in.

  The woman sneaked up on my left and threw out her sharp, dirty nails with a feral scream, managing to scrape them down my face. Hot pain raked along my cheek, and my instinct was to pull out Bam Bam. I aimed and fired, hitting my attacker point blank in the chest. A big hole was blown out of her, and she crashed onto the rocky ground. I stared at her with hot eyes, my breathing ragged.

  Man, I just killed her. Guilt rose inside me.

  “Don’t worry about her, Stone,” Draxil told me. “Her soul cannot leave Hell. She’ll reform in another Circle to be tormented.”

  “That what happened to Killian and his delightful daughter after I killed them?”

  “Certainly. They’ll be forced back through the Circles, probably punished for their weakness in dying at your hand.”

  A scream made me spin. Margaroth had chewed off the guy’s nose. All that was left was a gaping hole.

  “By mose,” the guy said. I looked down at the ground to see Margaroth playing with his nose, knocking it from paw to paw.

  I let out a laugh. “Serves you right for sticking it in my business, pal.”

  The guy let out a howl of rage and steamed in, arms waving wildly.

  “Shoot that devil already!” ordered Bam Bam.

  “Yes maam,” I said, and coolly aimed and fired. The guy was slung back under the impact to bleed out on the ground. Meanwhile, Margaroth was now chewing at his nose.

  “Enough games, Stone,” said Draxil. “Get moving.”

  “Come on, Marg, leave the nose alone.”

  Margaroth swung a paw at the nose, sending it rolling away. He dashed over and jumped back up onto my shoulder where he rubbed his wet snout into my neck.

  “Ew!”

  I got the bike going, and we hit the backstreets of Violence once more, hoping to avoid the auspices of Baal’s legions. We weaved between buildings, lost in the forest. I kept my eyes peeled for any more bike jackers, Bam Bam held in my hand the whole time, warding them off. Whenever one got close, I’d aim, and they’d soon slink back into the shadows. We passed through the heart of the forest of buildings where we met that river once more as it snaked its way around the whole Circle.

  “Across the river is the Prison District,” Draxil informed me.

  “About time,” I said. I crossed the bridge and was forced to bring the bike to an abrupt halt. A giant, pulsing wall of flab was blocking the way. I looked both ways; that rippling wall stretched high and wide.

  “What the hell is this?” I asked.

  “The belly of Baal,” Draxil answered, and I realized to my disgust that he wasn’t kidding. It was a belly. A giant belly: bright red in color and dotted with giant warts.

  “That’s Baal?”

  “Indeed. The lazy oaf lies here at the edge of the Circle.”

  I slapped the handlebars in frustration. “Frickin’ A. So how do we get past?”

  “Get past? No no, we must go in!”

  “You what?”

  “Yes, the Prison District is inside his belly.”

  I puffed my cheeks in exasperation. “And you’re telling me this now?”

  “Yes. Now before you begin your whining, go inside.”

  “You want me to go inside a Prince of Hell’s belly?”

  “It’s where he keeps his prisoners, so yes.”

  I looked up and down and around. That belly just sat there, expanding and retracting as Baal breathed. “How about we just kill him?”

  “Good idea. Be my guest.”

  “Okay.” I got off the bike and moved up to the belly. I aimed Bam Bam and fired. The pellets in the slug sank into that red skin, and that was that. “Great.”

  “You cannot kill Baal in Hell, you fool!”

  I holstered Bam Bam. “Looks that way.”

  “You need to go into his belly via his bellybutton.”

  I slapped my thighs. “Of course! Go through the demon’s bellybutton. Why not! Lead the way.”

  Margaroth yelped from my shoulder.

  “Be thankful it’s his bellybutton and not somewhere else.”

  I clasped my hands together as if to pray. “Oh, I’m forever, truly grateful!” I faced that bloated wall of flab once more, and the bile in the pit of my stomach churned. A sound in the near distance made my ears prick. The clang of metal. Baal’s soldiers.

  “Get moving, Stone. Use your etchings.”

  “Oh man, I won’t forget this!” I sucked in a deep breath and stepped right up to that flab, getting my etchings lit. Baal’s bellybutton was a giant black hole of musk and rot. The flesh was worm-like, twisting and rippling in and out on itself. I got up close to it, and I wanted to puke. Even Margaroth was making a retching sound.

  “You and me both, buddy!” I said to him as I reached out a trembling hand, aiming the tips of my fingers between two massive flaps of black bellybutton skin. They parted slightly in response to my etchings, and my hand sank in. Revulsion suffused me. I turned my head to the side. “Ugh!”

  “Grow a spine!” Draxil scolded me.

  “It’s all right for you in there!” I said as my whole hand sank into the warm flesh. A sucking sensation took over, and I was pulled into Baal’s belly. My arm vanished and then the rest of me followed, those flaps of skin sucking and slurping as they ushered me in. The world turned slippery and meaty, Baal’s flesh rubbing against my cheeks.

  Please forgive me my trespasses!

  Rancid flesh rippled past me in a disgusting wave as I passed through Baal’s bellybutton and into the Prison District waiting beyond.

  Chapter 20

  I was spat out the other side of those meat curtains like a piece of chewed bubblegum. I just about managed to stay upright, Margaroth digging his claws into my shoulder. He briskly shook his head, no doubt trying to shake off the aftereffects of passing through Baal’s bellybutton, which were nausea, disgust, and an all-round icky feeling.

  “It’s all right, buddy,” I said, giving him a little pat on the head. “We’re here now.” I looked around. We were in a long cylindrical tunnel, the walls, floor, and ceiling of which were pulsing flesh, riddled with repulsive black veins. A glow from beyond the wall was permeating the tunnel, lighting it up in a soft haze, accentuating the fleshy colors.

  “We’re in his intestine, aren’t we?” I asked out loud, wanting to throw up.

  “How did you know?” asked Draxil.

  “Oh, just a wild hunch. We are in his belly after all.”

  “Revolting, isn’t it?”

  I lifted my boot; it came off the floor with a soft squelch. My sole glistened with rancid juices. “Oh God!”

  Margaroth let out a groan of discomfort. If the hellhound didn’t like it in there, then you knew it was bad. He scampered off my shoulder and into my jacket pocket to hide.

  A distant rumbling echoed through the tunnel. “
What’s that?”

  “His stomach is growling. Maybe he’s hungry.”

  “Let’s hope he doesn’t get gas any time soon.” I got moving, taking tentative steps through the tunnel, my feet squelching on the sodden ground. My head rolled in its socket as I took everything in. “Can he feel things?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I pulled out Bam Bam, aimed at the intestine wall, and fired. The tunnel tremored, and a loud groan reverberated down the tunnel and back again.

  “Ha, guess he can!”

  “Enough games, Stone!” Draxil snapped. “Although, give him another from me.”

  I duly obliged. The ground rocked, and that groan of pain echoed past us.

  Draxil cackled in delight. I smiled to myself as I made it to the end of the tunnel. I rounded the corner; it opened into a huge cylindrical chamber that rose up into a dim distance. I was guessing it was Baal’s stomach. Ahead of me was a pit of steaming green bile that reeked of rotten eggs. I spotted a few skulls and bones floating in that muck, bleached white. Baal’s gastric juices, no doubt. I didn’t wanna fall into that. A bridge of fibrous sinew led over the pit. I looked up. Similar bridges spanned the pit all the way up in a crisscross formation. Floating spiked balls with a huge eyeball at their center roamed on the air, a luminous glow emanating from them, lighting the place up a sickly green color.

  I noticed something sliding across a bridge up high. A scarlet-red, amoeba-like creature with squid-like tentacles and glassy, yellow eyes. In its grip were a lantern, a metal rod, and a bell.

  “Prison guards,” Draxil told me. “We need to avoid them. Use your hide and seek magic.”

  I used dark magic on myself and melted in with the shadows. I stepped up to the bridge ahead of me, careful not to slip on the slick sinew. Baal’s surrounding stomach wall was constructed of beehive-like hexagonal cells that sprawled up, each one housing a different prisoner. I narrowed my eyes and peered into the cells. They were populated with demons as well as unidentifiable creatures with multiple heads and feelers. They skulked in the corners of their cells, emanating rage and despair in equal measure. I looked up that wall. “Where’s our man?”