by Tim Hawken
I considered what he’d just told me. Even if I was dead, I’d have to be careful not to fall in harm’s way.
“Of course you’ll have to be careful!” The Devil snapped. “You’re in Hell, Michael; there are more predators down here than prey. Bear in mind you can fight back. Most demons are still so steeped in the idea of their earthly body that they can be knocked out the same as they could have during life. A sharp blow to the head, strangulation, goring; anything that would have caused unconsciousness on earth will do the same in Hell. Not for all though. Not for all,” he added as an afterthought.
The traffic-light turned green and we sped forward again. The next block we came to, there were normal looking businessmen dressed in button-down shirts, milling in and out of buildings. Most were carrying briefcases, likely heading to their next meeting somewhere in Hell City. They looked like they were simply content to carry on with their lives like they were up on Earth, delving deeper into the greed and facelessness of multinational corporations. I thought of the thousands of millions of souls who now lived in Hell, all at varying stages of corruption, and all suffering the guilt of their sins. I wondered if my parents were out there somewhere. I could be driving past them right now and not even know. I’d never even laid eyes on a picture of my mother or father.
I could see we were getting closer to the suburb of Smoking Gun. The lights slowly grew brighter and less red. Greens, yellows and blues lit up the skyline, the whole world taking on a neon glow. Whores walked the streets, dressed to impress in lace-topped stockings and high-heels, many wearing nothing at all. Some pulled ‘tricks’ off the main drag into the nearby brothels or dark alley-ways, to ply their carnal trade.
Drunken gamblers stumbled from building to building aimlessly, like mindless drones getting drawn in to the succubus casinos, whose games slowly squeezed their souls of all innocence, driving them closer to being true demons. The whole place made me feel sick to the stomach. It didn’t seem like this was a place of reformation.
The car slowed and pulled up to the curb in front of a large building with an unkempt sign over the entrance that read, ‘Sloth’s Lounge’. Satan stopped humming and his eyes snapped open.
“Oh good, we’re here!” he said happily, opening the door and letting the heat bubble into the car. It was like a vice clamping around my body. “Just push through it,” Satan said as he calmly slid out of the limo and pulled me out onto the street.
Everyone around us stopped. A few of the demons closest to us bowed down onto the pavement, groveling at our feet. One was covered in black scales, and another had sagging, pink skin, bald all over, like a Sphynx cat. They wailed in satanic prayer as The Devil looked on unimpressed. One seemingly normal person turned and ran off screaming, while others simply stared and whispered.
The Devil buttoned up his jacket and laughed. “This is what it’s like to be famous, Michael, some people love you, some are scared of you and the rest are just plain jealous.”
Satan took me by the arm and we walked through some extremely grimy doors into a smoke filled room. I looked through the haze to see beanbags strewn all over the ground, bodies laying askew everywhere. Televisions were bolted to every possible piece of space except for the floor. Even the roof was covered in flickering screens. Zombie-like creatures slept all around us. The ones that were awake stared at the screen closest to them, some eating food and others drinking strange concoctions of god-knows-what. They were slurping and spilling the liquid over the carpet and themselves with each sip.
No one so much as looked at us, like they couldn’t be bothered wasting the energy. I peered closely at one person as we walked past and saw that his skin was in fact, peeling off his face. It was as if he was decaying as he lay there, eyes closed, breathing softly. A slightly more animated pair of souls sat against a wall playing a computer game. The words ‘World of War Craft Corner’ flashed brightly on a sign above them.
Satan picked his way through the minefield of rotting, barely-moving corpses, over to the bar where he took a seat. A large creature covered in long black hair, with three curved spikes for fingers, very slowly made his way over to us. After a painfully long time he got to where we were and said in a drawn out whisper, “Hellooo Mr. Assssmodeus, howwww are you? To wwwhat do I owwwwwe the fine plllllleasure of having you in my loouuunge?”
“Sloth, this is Michael,” he said in answer, then turned to me and added, “Sloth is the creator of this maze of malaise, this lounge of laziness. This is where souls who are too languid or too scared to do anything come to literally rot their existence away. They melt into beanbags and couches while they watch TV, play video games or just do absolutely nothing. Some of them don’t even bother to breathe anymore, since they don’t need to because they’re dead. ” He smiled. “This is a place of inactive sin, the sin of not making the most of your existence. For my money it isn’t as bad as killing or raping, but, according to God, a sin nonetheless. It’s actually kind of ironic that the only true sloth in here is the busiest. Hey, Sloth?”
“What’sssssss that?” The creature behind the counter asked, as if waking from sleep.
“Oh nothing,” The Devil smirked at me. “Fetch us two bottles of Heineken, Sloth, on the double,” he shouted, clapping his hands in command.
Sloth turned ever so slowly and shuffled towards the back of the bar to a fully stocked fridge.
“He’ll be at least half an hour,” Satan joked. “Everything around here takes a long time, since these souls have an eternity to do it.”
I looked around the room a little more. How could people do this to themselves? I thought, as one indolent soul finished a huge plate of nachos and then flopped back down on his back. I could smell the corroding flesh, wafting over to me from the floor, where the bulk of zombies lay. I scanned each television in the lounge for something interesting. Some programs I recognized, like Baywatch, but strangely the biggest television screen looked like it was showing the evening news.
“What’s that show over there?” I asked Satan, pointing to the huge flat-screen on the closest wall. “It looks like most TVs in here are playing pretty much the same thing.”
“Oh that?” Satan yawned, as if he was taken up in the spirit of the lounge. “That’s Earth.”
Unsure I had heard correctly, I pressed him. “You mean The Earth? You watch what we do on Earth?”
The Devil sat up in his chair, suddenly more alert. “It’s only one of Hell’s favorite past times!” he said, pointing up at one of the closest screens. “Look at how entertaining it all is! Just think about how well your pathetic attempts at ‘reality TV’ rate on Earth. We have the ultimate reality show running non-stop with no breaks for all of eternity. Every day we get new characters, multiple love plots, steamy affairs, hilarious games, and delicious murders. Not to mention when a war is on, which mind you seems to be all the time. Humanity is never more volatile than during wartime. Such a paradox: everyone so compassionate and loving to all in their own country, but all of that balanced out by the intolerance and hatred they feel for ‘the enemy’, who most of the time are almost exactly the same as them. The only difference between opposing sides is the fact that they worship a slightly different idea of God, or live on a piece of land the other side want or say belongs to them. The most hilarious thing of all: the majority of people on earth outwardly hate and oppose war, yet seem to be forever participating in it one way or another anyway, because of the manipulation of an elite few! I could go on for hours. This is one great show, Michael, the spectacle of Man!”
I couldn’t believe it. Yet there it was right in front of me. Now that I looked closer, it seemed like each television was following a certain person, or covering a specific event. They were subtitled underneath, explaining who each person was, and what they were thinking. I stopped watching, afraid I’d spark off another painful memory by seeing a person or a place that I’d known during my ‘life’.
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Satan said, looking
at me.
I jumped at his words, still getting used to him reading my thoughts.
“The memories will come to you like clockwork,” he said looking at his watch. “In fact, you’re just about due for another one.”
A low moan started to come from all of the bodies around us, growing slowly louder and louder until all in the room were sitting up, screeching and holding their ears, rocking back and forth. The noise grew to a fever-pitch. I looked at Satan, afraid.
“What are they doing?” I asked.
“It’s the guilt,” Satan frowned. “They can feel it coming.”
seven
I sat unmoving on a stool in front of the twinkling machine, my hand perched on the 20-lines button. Every couple of seconds, I put a small amount of pressure on my finger so the machine could suck some more of my money away. If I was lucky enough, the right row of icons would line up and I’d get a flurry of noise and light to remind me that I was alive. I wished I wasn’t.
Looking slowly around at The Riviera Casino, I wondered how many of these other people were like me; whiling away the hours with as little stimulation as possible, not wanting to sleep or to go home to a pitiful existence. The walls oozed forty years of cigar smoke, stale and rank no matter how much air-freshener they sprayed in the place. Like me, the building was a shadow of its former self. A few fresh coats of paint couldn’t hide the fact that The Riviera was well past its prime. The bling had walked out and moved to the other end of The Strip. I don’t know why, but it gave me odd comfort being somewhere that was slowly sliding into ruin. I felt at home.
Since that fateful fight, I’d crawled back up into myself. I had walked out on Coach, who refused to believe I didn’t want to fight for a living any longer. “It’s all you know,” he’d say to me. “It’s what you were born to do, you’re a survivor. Don’t run away from your talents.” But that’s exactly what I did. Even though I knew the people I fought signed up for it, even craved it like I had, I didn’t want to destroy another life.
I delivered a rare smile. Three pyramids meant I’d just received the special feature. I could now sit back and do nothing while the wheels turned in front of me and rolled out my fate. Little victories took away the pain for a short while. It wasn’t for the money, like most people think. The slots for me were for the feeling you get when everything falls into place at the right time to reveal a result you want. Only a minor win this time. I was almost out of coins.
The electronic spinning-wheel finally drained away the last of my money for the week, that is until my next welfare check kicked in. I looked at my watch: 2am. I’d been there for sixteen hours straight, no wonder I was so hungry. I picked up my warm, flat beer and staggered toward the exit, stiff from sitting down for so long. My body felt like a dead weight. A fat, white gut wobbled beneath my clothes. My fighter’s body had been drained into a beer bottle. I sucked down the rest of my bitter drink and tossed the plastic cup in the bin. Alcohol just didn’t seem to affect me anymore. It used to mercifully dull my mind. Now it was just another habit.
I walked into the freezing night and breathed in a mixture of car fumes and plastic culture. A crisp breeze chilled my face as I ambled, slowly up The Strip towards The Stratosphere. I looked around at the neon lights of the city, not really wanting to go home. It was a fake mess of concrete and polish all around me, towering above my worthlessness. I sighed. So my life had come to this nothingness, anonymity in a city of nobodies.
I pushed past the seedy pimps clicking strippers’ business cards at me and trudged towards my car. It was parked in a dirty car-park shoved between two beaten up all-you-can-eat buffets. They both had signs in the front saying ‘voted best buffet on The Strip’. It seemed everything in town had been voted the ‘Best in Vegas’ at some time or other. They all clung on to those accolades like they were Nobel Prizes. I almost tripped over a pair of legs protruding from a doorway to my right. Regaining my balance, I swore under my breath at a man who sat shivering beneath yesterday’s newspaper. He looked up at me with dirty-blue eyes from his hollow in the wall. He had a large, hooked nose that curved down, almost touching his top lip, and high-arching eyebrows, which made him look surprised, even though he was just looking at me with a blank expression. A tattered, grey wool beanie sat precariously on his head, like it could fall off at any moment.
“Could you please spare some change for an unfortunate stranger, kind sir?” he asked politely.
My frustration at the bum melted into a hot mixture of shame and pity. I’d been on the streets before. I knew how cold the winter nights of Las Vegas could be, chilling your bones to the marrow. When people think of Vegas they think of heat and lights, but the neon did nothing to cut though the bitter, close-to-freezing temperature in the dead of a January night.
“I’m sorry, friend,” I replied humbly. “Those damn slots took the last of my change.”
“I take VISA,” he said, breaking into a warm, gapped-tooth grin. “Just swipe your card in my machine here.” He held up an old plastic tape player next to him.
It was heart breaking. He was obviously a couple of forks short of a fondue set. I looked at his side where a half-torn teddy bear lay, placed purposefully upright and out of the dirt. My heart went out to this poor soul, down and out on his luck.
“I tell you what,” I said to him. “I’ve got a comfortable couch you can sleep on for the night and some cans of soup we can eat for dinner, if you’d be nice enough to join me.”
He actually shrank back into the doorway, as if he was afraid of my invitation.
“Why would you do that?” he asked, his voice full of suspicion.
“Because I have nothing else to offer,” I said simply. “You can take it up or not, but I’m no wolf, you can trust my hospitality. It’s better than a cold, tiled doorway for the night, isn’t it?”
I didn’t quite know why I was trying to talk him into it. I felt I owed him for some reason, not having had any money to offer when I should be able to toss him a couple of stray coins.
“Well, I guess I have nothing to lose really, do I?” He smiled again, picking himself and his teddy bear up. “Where are we going?”
I opened my sorry excuse for a car and jumped in the driver’s seat as the beggar crept into the passenger side.
“I’m not far. In North Vegas,” I said. “I have to warn you, it’s not too fancy, but at least it’s warm.”
“Much better than the frigid pavement,” he said trying to lighten the mood. “My name is Dante, kind sir, and you are?”
“Michael,” I said, holding out my hand.
He shook it with firm vigor.
“Pleased to make your kindest acquaintance, Saint Michael,” he smiled. “Thank you for showing some mercy on a wretched creature whom deserves none of it.”
“Oh come now!” I laughed as I pulled my car out onto the street and revved toward home. “Everyone deserves a bit of kindness every now and then, no matter what they think of themselves.”
He frowned sadly and looked out of the car window as a light rain began tapping on the glass, breaking up the low hum of the engine. I sat silently for a little while, not sure what to say to this stranger sitting next to me.
“Did you ever used to be someone?” he asked after a few moments.
“Excuse me?” I replied, unsure what he meant.
“I used to be someone,” he continued. “I used to be a successful family man. I used to be a father, a husband, an artist. I used to be someone,” he said, more to the lights outside than to me. I stayed silent, keeping my eyes on the road.
“I lost it all, though,” Dante continued. “I worked too hard, I didn’t sleep, or rest or pay attention to the outside world until it was too late. They tell me I lost my mind, but I don’t feel any different. My wife and daughter had to leave me because they couldn’t understand me. My wife said she couldn’t recognize me anymore, but I don’t look any different than before. They took me away, the men in white. All I’ve got of my ol
d life is my daughter’s bear, Virgil. He’s the only friend I have now, isn’t that right, Virgil?” he said to the bear in his lap, tapping it playfully on the nose.
I wondered if you could actually be crazy if you knew you’d gone insane. Could you really have lost your mind if you were aware that it had happened?
“I’ve never been anyone,” I answered. “I was born as nothing, with no-one and that’s how I plan to die.”
He looked at me with his melancholic, blue eyes. “Well that’s just horrible,” he said. “Surely there’s more to it than that, more to you. What about family?”
I shook my head, keeping my eyes on the road rather than looking at him with my shame-filled heart.
“No friends? No lovers?” he asked.
“None I care to think about,” I answered shortly.
“But we are nothing without love!” he gasped. “We cannot function without the driving gift that God has given all humans.”
“There is no God.” I said in reply. “There is only the devil. He is the only one I’ve seen proof of in my life.”
“How can you say that?” he exclaimed, almost jumping out of his seat. He wound down the window furiously and stuck his hand out in the wind. He pulled it back inside the car, white from cold and dripping with raindrops. “Where do you think this miracle comes from? Water, which falls from the sky that feeds the land? In the desert no less! Now don’t give me that nonsense about condensed evaporation forming clouds. This is from Heaven and nowhere else.” He licked his hand. “Mmmmm, it’s sweet.”
I remained silent, unwilling to argue with Dante. There’s no reasoning with the unreasonable, I thought. I steered the car into the gravel driveway of my apartment block, a square edifice of brick veneer that jutted out from unkempt gardens. I got out from the car and Dante followed, hugging Virgil to his chest. I rattled my keys to find the right one, feeding it into the lock. It turned and I swung the door inwards. I flicked on the light to illuminate the interior of my ramshackle apartment.