“Why?”
“You need a game plan.”
“And you have one.” Of course he would, she thought. One where he would undoubtedly set her up, sacrifice her to the Masters.
“You can’t face them alone.”
Gloria raised her arm, swept it across the cavern. “Does this look like I’d be alone?”
Vlad shook his head, and then winced. “Them?! They’re no match for the Masters! Even in mass numbers they couldn’t win. The Masters aren’t ordinary demons, Gloria. They’re gods.”
“And I’m a goddess.”
“These humans made you a goddess. The Masters have always been as they are. One goddess fighting a dozen gods? Do you really like those odds?”
“I don’t believe the Masters will fare any better than the rest of these demons. Their might is in their cunning and their seductiveness. They aren’t fighters.”
“Yes, and neither are you. You are as they are and they’ve been at it far longer. Do you really want to bring all these humans to meet the Masters? How long do you think it would be before they wooed all your precious followers away from you? They have been at this game for untold eons. You’re new to this. You aren’t even very good at it yet. “
“But I have something they don’t. I represent change. They’ve been running hell for untold eons, as you say. It’s going to be hard for them to convince anyone that things would be better staying as they are then with me in control, not after what my fellow humans have seen and experienced here.”
Vlad looked her up and down.
“But they are not ‘your fellow humans.’ Not anymore. You’re not human anymore, Gloria. You are just like the Masters now, a god as you have anointed yourself. How are you going to convince your humans that you are any different from the Masters? And what makes you think you would be, with the reins of hell in your hands? The power of billions of souls? Power corrupts and ultimate power corrupts ultimately. As you said, you’re a god now.”
Vlad was once again smiling that cocky vulture’s grin that made her feel like she was something on the menu.
Gloria paused. What would she do with that much power? What would she become? What had she already become?
“And what are you, Vlad? Are you a god?”
“I was created, same as you. Don’t you see? They can take that away.”
“Then why haven’t they?”
Vlad opened his mouth but shut it quickly. He cocked his head, as if considering her question.
“What I think,” Gloria said, “is that they think all of these souls were brought to hell by me to satisfy their request. I also think they can’t undo what they’ve done to me. They just figure they can keep me under control.”
“Or take the humans from you regardless of whether you intended them to or not.
Like I told you, they are the master seducers, the master planners, the master schemers and manipulators. They are always ten steps ahead.”
“Either way, Vlad,” she said, stepping closer to him. “I really need to see those
fuckers again. If I’m wrong … well, it’s better to find out, now isn’t it? I’d hate to have false hope.” She smirked at him. She was ready for this.
A young girl staggered forward. She was no more than a teenager, with her face torn away, clawed down to the ectoplasmic bone, slowly regenerating, her vagina a ragged bloody hole that looked as if it had been cored out with a knife. “Goddess,” she said, collapsing to her knees, “we have found the Masters.”
A chill raced up Gloria’s spine.
“Bring everyone.”
The other humans looked around, uncertain.
“Everyone?”
“I want every soul in hell here now! Send the word. Bring them all!”
Vlad was still smiling, Gloria tried her best to ignore him but she would have much rather smashed every tooth in his face. Then she noticed something she hadn’t before. Vlad was sweating. This was more than his usual unctuousness. Beads of perspiration were rolling down his forehead.
The heat in the caverns had increased dramatically by legions of damned souls. But the increased heat and humidity was nothing for a demon, certainly nothing for a Master. Either Vlad had not been made as she had been or he was nervous, more than nervous, terrified.
The girl kneeling at Gloria’s feet pointed the way and Gloria began to remember as they walked. It was all beginning to look familiar. The millions of feet behind her sounded like thunder as they marched through hell toward the Masters’ lair. They rounded a corner and Gloria stopped dead in her tracks. Behind her, her millions upon millions of marching feet came to an abrupt halt.
“Gloria. My sweet, Gloria.”
That voice was like warm butter and honey and syrup and it made Gloria’s legs weak. “Madria.”
The demoness stood alone in the corridor. Her arms, all six of them, were spread in welcome. Her midnight skin made her almost invisible in the darkness of the tunnel. The only thing Gloria could see clearly was that smile, every bit a predatory as Vlad’s but sensual in a way that Vlad’s could never be. Those obsidian eyes reflected the little light in the tunnel and swirled it across the surface of her retinas in that hypnotic kaleidoscope of colors.
She came to Gloria and Gloria embraced her. They kissed and Madria’s twin tongues slid into Gloria’s mouth, licking her lips and tongue and then slipping out of her mouth and down her body, over her nipples and between her thighs. Gloria moaned and nearly swooned. Those smooth slippery hands overwhelmed her with sensations of pleasure. Madria’s skin was somehow cool despite the unfathomable heat of inferno. Her skin felt luxuriously soothing against Gloria’s. Soon Gloria felt herself being carried away, losing herself in the demoness’s embrace. Madria’s penis was slowly pushing its way inside her, and Gloria wanted to feel it so badly, wanted the beautiful demon to make love to her right there on the floor. She reached up and grabbed Madria’s enormous breasts. The nipples were as erect as the penis pressing against Gloria’s labia and they were already dripping with sweet, creamy milk. Gloria remembered how that milk had tasted, how gloriously intoxicating. She wanted to suck them, drain them dry, while Madria’s hands and tongues and beautiful throbbing hard cock brought her to orgasm after orgasm. Then she heard the grumblings of the humans behind her.
Vlad had been right, the Masters could turn this all around in an instance and wrestle control of these souls away from her unless she could show them she was not like the other demons. Gloria backed away from that soft silken embrace before Madria could penetrate her and held the beautiful ebon demon at arm’s length.
“Madria, take us to the Masters.”
“Us?” Madria asked. “Are you with them?” she asked, looking beyond Gloria at the battered and bleeding souls in varying states of regeneration, amassed behind her. Madria laughed. “Or are you with us?”
She embraced Gloria again, this time quickly running her six hands over Gloria’s face, throat, breasts, and up between her thighs.
Gloria shoved her away again with all her mental and emotional might. “No! Take us to them now! Or I’ll have them tear you apart.”
“Still choosing everyone else over me, Mother?”
“What did you just say?”
“You heard me, Mother. Don’t you recognize your own flesh and blood?” Madria asked, stepping back so that Gloria could get a better look at her. “Although truthfully, none of my flesh or my blood is what it once was. I doubt we share a single cell in common any longer.”
“Angela?”
“Oh, not anymore. Not for a very long time and not ever again. But yes, that’s who I was. Now, I am Madria, your lover, a Master of the inferno.”
“You’re a pawn, same as always, Angela. And I have no more time to waste on you and your games. Take me to the Masters or I will order my people to rip you apart.”
“But don’t you want to fuck me again?” She began to laugh and Gloria smacked her to the floor. Madria rose quickly and charged, and Glori
a merely stepped aside and let the humans engulf her, sucking her into their midst and dragging her back into the tunnels, where more and more humans stretched for hundreds of miles through the caverns. Madria struggled and fought, but the farther back into the tunnels she was dragged the weaker she became as the humans dismembered her bit by bit as they passed her along. Her screams were terrible and seemed to go on without end.
Gloria had long ago ceased to care. She had done all she ever could or would for her child, and now it was time to cut the apron strings. “Good-bye, Angela.”
Gloria turned and continued to walk, following the corridor, now surer than ever that she was headed in the right direction. When she looked over at Vlad, the smile had left his face.
The Masters’ corridor came into view abruptly. One minute they were stumbling along in darkness and the next they were in the huge, brightly-lit antechamber, standing before those magnificent, beautiful demon-gods.
“Welcome home, Gloria.” Mephisto stared at Gloria, unfazed as thousands of humans flooded the antechamber carrying swords and tusks and clubs and axes, prepared for war.
“You know why I’m here, Mephisto.”
“You’re here because I summoned you. You’re here because I made you into the glorious creature you are and sent you back to earth to bring more souls to hell, and you have done your job beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. Anyone’s but mine. You have done precisely as I knew you would. You are here because I wanted you here.”
Gloria felt a twinge of doubt. She looked around at the thousands of humans crowding the chamber and the hundreds more still pouring in, the millions more she knew were clogging the tunnels for miles in every direction, and she regained her confidence, her composure. With them behind her she was unstoppable.
“It’s over, Mephisto. There are no more Masters in hell. Not after today. I want Satan. Take us to him.”
They all laughed. All of them, except for Gloria and the humans that now surrounded them waiting for Gloria’s command. Beside her, even Vlad was laughing. Mephisto looked at her like she was some lost imbecile who somehow did not get an obvious joke.
“I told you before, there is no such being. At least there wasn’t … until now.” Mephisto knelt before her, prostrating himself at her feet. All the other Masters followed suit.
“Satan!” they all cried as one by one they bowed to her.
“What? No!”
As Mephisto had said, she had fulfilled her role perfectly.
One of the Masters, the one with the rows of breasts that went from beneath his collarbone down to the nest of penises seething between his long girlish thighs, rose and crossed the room. The humans parted to let him pass. He disappeared among them for a moment, and then reemerged carrying a crown of horns, massive black ram’s horns that curled in a great semi-spiral. He handed the crown to Mephisto, who rose and placed it on Gloria’s head.
“You are now the ruler of hell.”
“Hail, Gloria!” the crowd roared.
“Just like that?” Gloria said to Mephisto. “No fight? No protest?”
Mephisto shrugged. “As I said, there is nothing that I did not foresee. Nothing that I did not plan. We made you what you are. We made you for a purpose… and this is it!”
“Hail Satan!” the crowd echoed.
But Gloria wasn’t finished. She had promised them more. She had promised her followers that there would be no more division between heaven and hell. No more judgment. No more good and evil. No more punishment. She had to finish it. Perhaps this is what the Masters had created her for? Why she had been put through so much. Perhaps this was her destiny? To end the rule of gods, devils, angels, and demons over mankind.
Gloria thought about it for only a moment before deciding her next move. “We’re going into the tunnel. To heaven.”
“For what?” Mephisto asked. His smile was unnerving. It was the same smile he had worn when she had called out Satan, as if he was humoring a confused and ignorant child.
“To take it over. To remove him from his thrown.”
“And which him are you referring to?”
Gloria was growing impatient. “God!”
“Ahhhh. God. How can you be sure he’ll be there? And Gloria … how do you know he even exists?”
Gloria faltered, confused, uncertain. “How do I know? Be-because of all of this! How can there be a hell if there’s no heaven? Besides, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the tunnel. I’ve seen the angels above the Lake of Fire catching humans and taking them to heaven.”
“And what does all of that prove?”
“That God exists! That heaven is real!”
“It proves nothing. What indication has this God you are looking for ever given you that he is capable of creating anything perfect? What indication has he ever given you that he is capable of creating a paradise? Because he created Earth? Hell? What?”
“But there has to be. The tunnel?”
“It goes somewhere, a place they call heaven, but it’s not what you think it is. It’s no paradise, and there’s no Jesus waiting for you. Just more dead souls and more of us.” He broadly waved his muscular arms, indicating the rest of the masters. “Only in more … comely manifestations.”
“The angels?”
Mephisto smiled.
“Bullshit! You’re lying! There is a God. There has to be.”
“There may be. But if so, just like on earth, he chooses not to show himself.”
“You’re a demon, a devil, a deceiver. Why should I trust anything you say?”
“Why should I lie to you now? You’ve won. You’re the ruler of all you survey. You are Satan.”
“No!” Gloria ripped the crown from her head and tossed it to the ground. She pushed her way out of the chamber, shoving humans and demons alike as she ran back through the tunnels toward the one that led out of hell.
The souls of the damned were packed so densely into the tunnels that Gloria was swimming through them, blind, unable to see inches in front of her, groping and pushing her way through the endless waves of humanity, fighting against the tide. Hours passed before she reached a part of the tunnel where the crowds had thinned. Gloria picked up her pace, heading in what she hoped was the direction of the tunnel. She had to find it, had to prove Mephisto wrong.
She passed dismembered demons, just pieces here and there, chunks of flesh still living and breathing and pulsating, still writhing in agony on the cave floor. As she ran farther, she passed Madria/Angela’s decapitated torso. Some of the humans were having their way with her remains. A slick sheen of semen covered her breasts, and globs of it leaked from her vagina. They cast hungry looks at Gloria and for a moment she feared she would be attacked as well, before some other humans nearby recognized her and bowed to her. Gloria could only imagine what they had done with Angela’s head, what they were likely still doing with it somewhere. She wasn’t sure the humans were any better than the demons had been. Now the lunatics were running the asylum.
Gloria struggled her way back to the huge chamber and the entrance to the tunnel. Some brave souls had already charged the tunnel and were making their way toward heaven. Gloria followed them.
She didn’t remember the tunnel being quite so long, but now that she was desperate to get to heaven it seemed as if it was twice the distance it had been before.
Finally, Gloria emerged into that soft white light and followed it to the field where she had seen her mother. Her mother was there again and so were all the other damned souls who’d made the journey with her and their loved ones. Gloria stormed past them all. She could hear her mother calling to her as she ran across the field. Angels came from nowhere to try to stop her and soon she was running full speed, slashing angels open with her claws as they tried to stop her. The skies turned black with angels hurtling through the air in pursuit of her.
Gloria ran harder, faster, head down, demanding every ounce of speed and endurance her demonic body was capable of. She ran until the field ended and
she came to a vast city. Gloria kept running deeper into the city.
When she finally came to a stop, her demon body spent, unable to give her anymore, Gloria finally looked around and began to scream. “It can’t be. No. It can’t be. No. No. Nooooo!”
The angels grabbed her, pulling her away, back across the fields, back to the tunnels. But it was too late. She had seen it. Homeless people crowding the sidewalks, drug dealers and addicts doing their transactions on the streets, police officers patrolling in cars—and prostitutes, prostitutes working the corners. It was exactly the same as Earth.
There was no paradise.
“Where is God?” Gloria demanded of the angels who still bore her aloft, flying her back across through the tunnel, back to hell. It made no sense at all. Everything she’d been through, all the pain, all the struggle. What did it all mean? What was the point?
“Where is he?” Gloria cried as she struggled in their grasp. “Where’s God? Where is he? Where’s God!”
If they knew, they never said a word.
About The Authors
Wrath James White is a former world class heavyweight kickboxer, a professional kickboxing and mixed martial arts trainer, distance runner, performance artist, and former street brawler, who is now known for creating some of the most disturbing works of fiction in print.
Wrath is the author of The Resurrectionist, Succulent Prey, Yaccub’s Curse, Sacrifice, and Pure Hate. He is also the author of Voracious, To the Death, Skinzz, The Reaper, Like Porno for Psychos, Everyone Dies Famous in a Small Town, The Book of a Thousand Sins, His Pain, and Population Zero. He is the coauthor of Teratologist with the king of extreme horror, Edward Lee; Orgy Of Souls with Maurice Broaddus; The Killings and Hero with J. F. Gonzalez; and Poisoning Eros I and II with Monica J. O’Rourke.
Wrath lives and works in Austin, Texas, with his two daughters Isis and Nala, his son, Sultan, and his wife, Christie.
Monica J. O’Rourke has published more than seventy-five short stories in magazines such as Postscripts, Nasty Piece of Work, Fangoria, Flesh & Blood, Nemonymous, and Brutarian and anthologies such as Horror for Good (for charity), The Mammoth Book of the Kama Sutra, and The Best of Horrorfind. She is the author of Suffer the Flesh, the collection Experiments in Human Nature, and Poisoning Eros I and II, written with Wrath James White. Her new novel What Happens in the Darkness will be released later this year from Sinister Grin Press. She works as a freelance editor, proofreader, and book coach. Her website is an ongoing and seemingly endless work in progress, so find her in the meantime at www.facebook.com/MonicaJORourke.
Wrath James White presents Poisoning Eros I & II Page 23