The Endless War That Never Ends

by Christopher Brimmage

  As God-Art was scrambling back up, a man chained to one of the stakes sat up and exclaimed around the ropes holding his mouth open, “Hey! Robot!”

  He had a wide face, wide nose, and fluffy dark hair. He yelled, “Hey! C’mon! Get me outta here, and I’ll do my shtick for ya. Look, watch!”

  The man pushed on his cheeks, shooting excrement from his mouth. “I’m a zit!” he exclaimed.

  He erupted in laughter. Then his smile faded and he appeared serious. “Now get me out! Please! I don’t deserve this!”

  God-Art tugged on Drillbot’s leash. But before he could be pulled away, snarls and growls sounded out across the valley. A three-headed mastiff appeared, its jaws slavering and its eyes red. It leapt atop the bound man and feasted on his entrails. The man screamed.

  Drillbot rolled toward him to help, but God-Art pulled back on the leash, holding Drillbot in place. “Remember what I said,” muttered the god. “We are here to rescue one person, and one person alone. These people earned what they got according to this place’s logic system, and we cannot interfere for everyone whom we pity.”

  Drillbot continued thrashing against the leash, determined to save the defenseless man from being mauled. Finally, God-Art yielded to the inevitable. He said, “Look, if I rescue the man from that damned three-headed beast, can we keep moving?”

  Drillbot nodded and stopped pulling against the leash. God-Art sighed. He reached his arm into his leather pouch and removed a slab of meat that appeared vaguely bovine. It was bleeding and raw. Drillbot could see the unmistakable stick of dynamite impaled through its middle.

  The beast looked up from the man it had been mauling and stared longingly at the steak. It licked its lips. Fire from the god’s flaming scalp flashed down onto the fuse of the dynamite, lighting it.

  God-Art tossed the meat at the beast, and its middle head swallowed the meat in one gulp. Its other two heads stared at God-Art with murderous eyes. It crept toward him and bared it gigantic fangs, but before it could pounce, the dynamite exploded in its stomach. Pieces of the three-headed dog flew up into the air and mixed with the excrement to rain down onto the gluttonous sinners.

  The beast’s chubby victim began to call out his thanks for the rescue. But when God-Art tugged on the leash to pull Drillbot away, the man realized he was not about to be freed from his bindings. He began yelling curses at the robot and the god.

  God-Art led Drillbot the final short distance to the hole in the middle of this Circle of Hell. This hole did not end in a sheer cliff with a ladder carved in its side as the previous ones had, but rather contained a winding spiral staircase that twisted downward around its edges. The pair used the staircase to descend into the depths of the next Circle of Hell.

  The staircase ended in another dark and cramped tunnel. Upon exiting the tunnel, Drillbot and God-Art found themselves standing atop another mammoth stalagmite in the center of another gigantic chamber. It looked nearly identical in layout to the Second Circle where the lustful had blown about in the storm, only it was a little smaller. And just like that previous chamber, a path wound around this stalagmite to the valley floor, and then weaved down through the great valley to a hole in the cave wall. This exit lay less than a mile away according to Drillbot’s calculations.

  As Drillbot rolled toward the path carved in the stalagmite, a gravelly voice to his left called out. Drillbot glanced over to see yet another giant similar in stature to Minos. This one’s face looked wolfish, its dark eyes beady. The top of its head was bald, and it had combed the sides of its curly gray hair up onto the top to cover the baldness. But it had done a terribly poor job. Sprawled at the giant’s feet lay piles and piles of designer suits and robes chased with purple stipes and renaissance-era attire colored with blues and greens and scarlets. The piles stretched to ceiling of the cave.

  The giant growled again. Its words sounded like, “Papé Satàn, papé Satàn aleppe.”

  God-Art elbowed Drillbot in the torso. He whispered over his shoulder, “Ignore him. He mutters gibberish just softly enough to draw you in and ask him for clarification, and then he takes your clothes when you get too close. He’s Plutus, the demon overseer of the Fourth Circle of Hell, which punishes the greedy and the miserly.”

  Drillbot nodded, deciding not to point out that he wore no clothes, and thus had no reason to be concerned about passing too close to Plutus. God-Art tugged on Drillbot’s leash, steering him on a wide path around the demon. As the pair followed the path around the stalagmite that descended to the valley floor, God-Art grinned and said, “If you’re wondering why he’s naked even though he steals everyone’s clothes, it’s because last time I got drunk with ol’ Minos and wandered around these depths, Plutus tried stealing my clothes, and I didn’t take too kindly to it. I tricked him into removing his own wardrobe, and then cursed him to feel infinite pain whenever he places any clothing upon his body. Kept his clothes in a trophy case in my chambers back on my reality, and I found it contained the added benefit of gold popping out of its pockets at random intervals. Pretty fun stuff.”

  And just when Drillbot was about to turn off his audio receptors once more, God-Art stopped talking, apparently done with his story. Drillbot smiled his version of a smile. The pair reached the bottom of the stalagmite, and as they followed the path through the surrounding valley and toward the exit of this Circle, Drillbot became confused at what he saw. Boulders continuously whipped into view and crashed into one another seemingly at random.

  Drillbot asked, and God-Art described what was happening, “Each soul in this Circle has been assigned a great boulder that’s been tied around its neck. The souls spend eternity attempting to roll these boulders over their fellow captives, hoping to squash them and take their heart’s desire: money.”

  And that’s when Drillbot noticed the people behind the boulders, pushing them. Drillbot watched one fellow with slicked black hair, angry eyes, and a bushy mustache that stretched the length of his lips roll his boulder ferociously over a bald man. “Hey-Oh! Rockefeller for the win!” he yelled.

  All that was left of the bald man afterward was a smear of blood and broken bones. However, a geyser of golden coins spewed from the corpse. It was like something out of the video game that the Ginny from Earth 945,003 had frequently played during brief windows of downtime between battles. The mustached man and three other surrounding souls dropped to their hands and knees and began greedily snatching the coins. They fought with fist and tooth and elbow for the gold.

  Meanwhile, another man with a close-cropped white beard and short white hair rolled his boulder into view. He scowled, and his wide face looked vaguely reminiscent of a Pitbull. “Hey-Oh! Never turn your back on ol’ Carnegie!” he screamed, and then he crushed all four of the scrambling men with his boulder. More coins erupted from corpses and more small battles broke out for the spoils.

  Scenarios just like this played out all along the path, and though God-Art and Drillbot found they needed to dodge a few times to avoid encroaching boulders, they made it to the exit at the edge of the Circle without any complicating incidents.

  They entered the tunnel and came to another winding spiral staircase. Its stone handrail was decorated with spiteful faces that had been carved in the rock. They looked so lifelike that Drillbot half-expected them to call out to him for rescue. When they did not, Drillbot sighed in relief.

  However, when they exited the staircase and entered the Fifth Circle of Hell, the sight before him caused memories of Rottomus the Bone-Handed to race through his processors, so he sighed in frustration.

  God-Art and Drillbot found themselves on the shore of yet another body of water, this one a wide river that stretched out so far into the distance that Drillbot could barely see the far riverbank. On the far shore stood a gargantuan medieval-style city with a stone wall surrounding it. The wall featured a tall wooden gate that allowed passage through it, and in front of the gate stood a stone tower with a signal fire burning at its peak. All along the surfa
ce of the river, naked men and women engaged in a constant writhing brawl, punching each other with fists and clawing at each other with teeth and fingernails. The water appeared a mix of murky blackness and crimson blood.

  God-Art shrugged at Drillbot. “This Circle covers a pair of punishments: the wrathful and the slothful. The slothful are under the water of this river—the Styx—and that is where we shall find Art.”

  Drillbot frowned his version of a frown. “[whir] There are so – CLACK – so many people. How are we ever going to find him in this – CLACK – in this mess?”

  God-Art smirked, and Drillbot felt the strong desire to drill the arrogant expression off his face. God-Art said, “Oh, do not give in to the despair permeating this place. The despair is a magical enchantment to which I had assumed you would have been immune, but you apparently are not. You amaze me more every second, you big, metal dolt.”

  Drillbot replied, “[whir] You still haven’t given Drillbot any – CLACK – any answers about what we are going to do.”

  God-Art smirked wider. “Just be patient. You shall soon see.”

  “[whir] Why could Drillbot not have been paired with the – CLACK – with the god of summaries and getting to the – CLACK – to the point?”

  God-Art frowned at Drillbot. He feigned a pain in his heart. “That one really hurts, Drillbot. You’re not such good company yourself, you know.”

  And with that, God-Art turned from Drillbot and got to work. He tapped the dusty shore three times, and the dust swirled up into the shape of a raft. Fire danced from God-Art’s scalp down onto the dust and consumed it. When the fire petered out, a wooden raft lay in its place. The god repeated the process of transforming dust into wood and formed from the dirt eight long, wooden oars. Eight gigantic spider legs then sprouted from the god’s back, each grabbing one of the oars. The god used the oars to bludgeon a few battling souls out of the way on the shoreline, and then kicked the raft into the open space on the water once they were removed. He climbed aboard and tugged on Drillbot’s leash, leading the robot up onto the raft. Brown water sloshed over the raft’s side as it bobbed under Drillbot’s weight.

  “Can you see below the water’s surface?” asked the god.

  “[whir] Drillbot can engage the – CLACK – engage the X-Ray receptors and the DNA spotlight in his telescopic eyes, and Drillbot can simultaneously run a function in his processors to search for – CLACK – to search for Art’s body structure and DNA code.”

  God-Art nodded. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said. “Do that and look for Art underneath the water.”

  “[whir] Affirmative.”

  God-Art paddled into the water. Drillbot noticed that the god used four of his spider legs to actually paddle, while he used the other four to knock fighting souls out of the way so that the raft could navigate up and down the river.

  The pair paddled upstream to where the river ended in a solid wall of rock, and then they doubled back, paddling downstream to its other end, also a solid wall of rock. In this manner, the raft navigated back and forth on the river, each pass upstream moving a raft’s length toward the far shore, and then moving another raft’s length on the subsequent pass downstream. The paddles grew increasingly crimson as God-Art was forced to use them more and more as clubs.

  “[whir] There!” screamed Drillbot. At this point, hours upon hours had passed, and the pair had traversed over half the river in their boustrophedonic route. They were nearing the point where the river ended in the downstream wall. Drillbot gestured at a spot below them at the bottom of the river. Beneath the river, Drillbot could see the unmistakable image of his former master. The body structure was an exact match, and Drillbot’s confidence increased when the image’s DNA registered as an exact match, too. Art was inside a giant fish’s mouth, slouched at a table along with five demonic figures. They appeared engrossed in a game of cards.

  The god leaned over the edge of the raft and stuck his head underwater. When he reemerged, he wiped his face on his robes and said, “That’s him, alright.”

  “[whir] What shall we do now?” asked Drillbot. “Should Drillbot dive – CLACK – dive in to retrieve him?”

  “Completely unnecessary. We’re on a river. We’ll go fishing, of course,” said God-Art. One of God-Art’s spidery legs handed an oar to his regular hands. He exhaled on the oar and rolled it in his hands. It stretched and elongated to a length of about a hundred feet and its end formed into a sharpened hook.

  God-Art used the spare oars to knock aside battling souls to create a fresh hole in the river’s surface. One soul who received a particularly strong smack across the head had bushy gray eyebrows that splayed outward above harsh blue eyes. A long nose jutted out over weathered and craggy cheeks. His gray hair hung loosely over his ears and drifted in lazy waves across his head. “Don’t you know who I am?” he demanded. He began scrambling up onto the raft, his eyes full of hatred. “Nobody hits me without suffering my wrath. I wiped my country free of its natives, and you think an oar shall best me? Beware the fury of Andrew Jacks-”

  God-Art did not wait for the man to finish his tirade. Instead, he bashed the man over and over with an oar until he lost consciousness and sank below the dark water. Once satisfied the soul was no longer a problem, the god shoved the hooked end of the pole into the river. His tongue lolled out the side of his mouth as he furrowed his brows in concentration. Soon, the thin wooden pole in his hands snagged onto something solid.

  “Got ‘im!” the god exclaimed. He yanked up on the hook, not knowing he was pulling up much more than he intended.

  Chapter 16

  AFTERLIFE IS MUCH BETTER DOWN WHERE IT’S WETTER

  NORMAL-ART SHIFTED IN his seat and tried to get comfortable. He sat on a craggy molar inside the mouth of a demon named Glub Glub, who belonged to a species of giant fish-demons that towered over nearly all other demons below the waters of Hell at thirty-feet tall and sixty-feet long. Glub Glub’s home lay at the bottom of the Acheron, which was much deeper than the Styx, and his presence in the Styx every Wednesday evening was a topic of frustration for the slothful and the wrathful, because many had to move aside or squeeze together to make room for Glub Glub. This often resulted in extra fighting for the wrathful up above, and extra sighing from the slothful down below.

  Normal-Art glanced down at the glowing cards in his hand. He held pocket kings, one a spade and one a diamond. It was his turn to bet, so he mouthed “raise” and slid his chips into the pile in the middle. One by one, he stared at each member of the card game and narrowed his eyes. Mava the Horribly Wicked frowned, and then he folded. Gertrude leaned forward. The minotaur’s black eyes gleamed despite the darkness of the fish-demon’s mouth. Her knuckles grew white as she gripped her cards tight. She slapped them down onto the heavy wooden table and folded.

  The fish-demon’s mouth jerked left and right. Chips toppled off the table and flopped onto ground, which in this case was comprised of Glub Glub’s tongue. The six poker players surrounding the old wooden table scrambled down to pick up the scattered chips and place them back atop the table. Art felt the table vibrate and watched the fish-demon’s uvula swing back and forth at the back of the beast’s throat. By now, Art had played so many times with this group inside of Glub Glub’s mouth that he knew these vibrations and the swinging uvula were signs that the fish-demon was speaking.

  A tiny demon that resembled a crawfish wearing a top hat translated for Glub Glub, as he always did since he had begun his parasitic relationship with the fish-demon centuries ago. The little red creature spoke, his tiny voice a squeak barely audible over the thrashing and screaming and bubbling sighs of the sinners outside the fish’s mouth. “Glub Glub says to control your anger or you can leave, Gertrude. You know by now that hitting the table stuck in Glub Glub’s gums like that causes Glub Glub incredible pain.”

  Gertrude looked down at her hooves and tapped them on the fish-demon’s soft red tongue. A sheepish expression clouded her face, and she mutte
red, “I am sorry, Glub Glub. I never meant to harm you.”

  The crawfish, named Red Red, nodded. “Thank you for your apology, friend.” Red Red glanced down at his cards and then continued, “Give me a moment to relay these cards to Glub Glub and find out what he wants to do.”

  Normal-Art leaned back on the molar and watched Red Red swim up to the roof of Glub Glub’s mouth. Red Red ensured his back was to the other players—concealing his pincers—and began tapping the roof of Glub Glub’s mouth in their own personal code to let the fish-demon know which cards he had.

  Normal-Art smiled. As a kid forced to attend his grandmother’s church, he had heard the story of “Jonah and the Giant Fish” dozens of times. He never thought in a million years that he would be playing poker in that same fish’s mouth—well, in this case, that same fish-demon’s mouth. It seems there was a bit of a misunderstanding on the part of whoever transcribed the story and began spreading it until it became canon to Normal-Art’s grandmother’s religion. Be that as it may, the setting was a lot less stressful than the preacher in his grandmother’s church had described it. Normal-Art smiled wider. Hell was a grand, delightful place.

  Red Red swam back down to his folding chair on the opposite side of the table from Normal-Art’s toothy perch. Red Red stood atop the chair, his face and top hat barely poking up above the flat surface of the table. The table vibrated and the uvula shook back-and-forth, and Red Red said, “You got it!”

  He joined his fellow demons in folding.

  “Is nobody going to pay to see the flop?” Normal-Art asked. The water drowned his words so they came out as a jumbled gargle, but the surrounding players understood, anyway.