The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade

by Aimee Bender

  Hell also has an incredible number of nurses, so many that it’s ridiculous. I don’t know why, but the bar is always full of them, guzzling fake beer and talking about how they wish they could go back to earth for just a second and pull someone’s catheter out really fast. There is only one small bar in Hell but everyone manages to hang out inside. The beer is nonalcoholic.

  I was complaining about this the first time I actually got to talk to the devil one-on-one.

  “You’d get dehydrated,” he mumbled. “Alcohol is a great idea if everyone wants a headache.”

  The devil’s voice sounds like that of a leprechaun who’s been smoking for centuries. He wants to quit, or so he says. He began telling me how he once put on a trench coat and went into an earthly gas station to buy nicotine gum.

  “I never had any luck with it,” I commiserated. I think that’s when he took a shine to me.

  Newcomers experience a placebo effect in the bar during their first couple visits, and I was no exception. As the night progressed, I started to feel intoxicated and my conversation with the devil took a turn for the worse.

  “And what’s up with the ceiling?” I added. “It’s like the inside of the biggest dead animal in the universe.” The walls are all bones and stretchy tendon.

  The devil put out his cigar and stood up. “It’s worked for a long time,” he argued. “Why change it now?” But from his expression I could tell he was hurt.

  A few days later there was a knock on my door, and it was none other than the devil.

  “You were right,” he nodded, “what you said the other night.”

  “I was drunk,” I offered. His eyebrows rose. “Though not technically.”

  “No, some things could be updated.” We began to gaze at one another. His eyes turned a fiery red that didn’t exactly scare me but was hypnotizing in an assertive way.

  I thought for a moment. “You could build a roller coaster?” I described my favorite ride ever, the Demon Drop, which plummeted straight down and made my stomach feel insane every time I rode it.

  He thought for a while and agreed it would be a good thing to try. “Thor could operate it,” he suggested.

  We had a raffle contest to decide what the ride would be called. The winner was Betty, a former Wisconsin housewife, who chose the name of SKULLKRUSH.

  As the ride was being built, the nurses wanted to know if they could set up a triage hospital next to SKULLKRUSH. “No one will get hurt,” I said. I put a supportive arm around Thor. The devil and I had outfitted him with a SKULLKRUSH uniform and nametag in preparation, just to get him into the role. As I looked to Thor for reassurance, he grabbed the devil’s lit cigar and crammed it up his nose.

  “Just in case,” they insisted.

  The hospital turned out to be very beneficial—Thor has his good days and his bad days. They’re actually the same day. He likes to ignite and smoke his own tail, and have seizures. Sometimes Thor will appear to be safely stopping the ride, but then at the last moment he’ll defecate into his paw instead and throw it at the riders just before they’re pulverized. Of course no one can die, but there is no shortage of mangling, reconstruction, and extreme transformation. The whole concept that energy can never be destroyed really works out in Hell. Physics, etc. Examples of this abound.

  There is Varmint Man, who lost a rib in a poker game. The hole it left was annoying, because Hell varmints waste no time packing up inside of cavities. I accepted an invitation from Varmint Man to try his yoga class, which wasn’t the best because of the twelve baby raccoons romping around in his chest hole. They were cute, but were demon raccoons, so they had green buckteeth and puss flowing freely from their eyes.

  After a wonderful date riding SKULLKRUSH with the devil (it was nice to feel the crazy stomach feeling while holding his giant claw), I spoke to him about Varmint Man and he was more than happy to help. He suggested we take Varmint Man dumpster diving to find something to seal up the chest hole. The dumpsters in Hell have unbelievable finds. I always thought I was hot stuff on earth, wading through the old éclair piles behind Dough Knots. I had no idea. We ended up outfitting Varmint Man with an elaborate series of copper piping: resistant to rodent teeth. I also found an intestine that had been stuffed with rat poison and fashioned into a noose. I decided to hang the whole thing from my chandelier. “You’re becoming more comfortable with entrails,” the devil commented. I liked the way he took notice of my growth.

  SKULLKRUSH turned out to be a very lucrative venture. The best part was how the devil and I had succeeded in it together. I’d always wanted to be someone’s right-hand go-to girl, and there I was.

  We were keeping the bags of profit from SKULLCRUSH in my house, but soon it started rotting. “Our money is beginning to smell,” I told him. He stared at me for a while, weighing whether or not to say what was on his mind. Finally he sighed and took my hand and said to get all the money together. His hands in mine give me that great feeling of dating someone my father would completely not approve of.

  We walked the bags down a long tunnel that was like an everlasting gobstopper of horrible smells: first dead cats then dead dogs then dead cows then dead whales until I couldn’t even take it. “This stinks,” I managed. The walls were boiling with blood.

  “We’re almost there.” He picked me up and put me inside a pouch in his stomach that I didn’t even know he had. Actually I’m positive he just tore his flesh open and let me hang out inside so I wouldn’t have to walk anymore.

  The inside of the pouch was wet and oozy and took me back to when I was little. Each time my family had to go on a long car ride, my grandma first sat me down on the toilet and poured warm water between my legs to make me pee. It’s something I was trained to do from the earliest age onward, and suddenly I found myself sitting in a warm blood-organ puddle. “Whatever you do,” I thought, “don’t pee inside the devil.” I think he felt it before I did, but suddenly we both got really quiet and it was the most awkward moment of my life. Or it would’ve been, if I weren’t already dead.

  I defensively took my boobs into my hands before confessing, just in case he was sore about the whole thing. “Sorry.” After it was still quiet for a moment I added, “I didn’t mean to.” For a second I thought I was going to faint from embarrassment but then he started laughing and so did I; I started laughing so hard that I cried. My tears were acidy and smelled like motor oil. I think my new boob ducts are connected to my tear ducts.

  Finally we arrived at the end of the tunnel, where the dead smell seemed to disappear. I wriggled out of his pouch then he reached down and did a squeegee-like wringing motion; all sorts of things splashed onto the ground and then the flap was instantly gone. It’s cute how he doesn’t make a big deal out of his ability to do such amazing things. Although he tells me I do amazing things that I don’t think are amazing at all, like have hair on my head.

  “Do you feel the air?” I asked, but he was already smiling. This was his coup de grâce.

  We’d arrived at a cave where cold air was literally blasting. Feeling cold after being hot for so long hurt somewhat; it made me realize that it probably was painful to breathe for the first time when I was born. I kept breathing the cold air and soon it started to feel pleasant, like stretching a muscle that’s sore.

  He flipped on a light switch. In front of us there were hundreds and thousands of rows of frozen liver and hair. After stacking the bags of money in the back, he nervously put one of his arm hooves against the other and locked their grooves together. “I’ve never shown anyone this place before.” He paused. “You can imagine how popular it would be.”

  “I won’t tell anyone. I promise.” I stretched out on a liver strip near the lip of the cave so only the top half of my body was in the freezer. I wanted to bask in the difference.

  “I know you won’t tell,” he said. “If I think about things in the future hard enough, I can see what will happen, and you don’t tell anyone.”

  This pleased me. To be honest
, I’ve never been able to keep a secret.

  We stayed there breathing cold air for quite awhile. It reminded me of the first time I smoked a cigarette. How strange it was to just breathe and feel better.

  “I should be getting back,” he said finally. “If I’m gone for too long, it’s not good.”

  I nodded. Usually in Hell it’s so hot that my skin is bright pink. But when I looked down I saw a very pale chest, and for the first time ever, the purple-green veins running through my acid boobs.

  “You can stay if you want,” he offered. “I can come get you later.”

  “No,” I said, “I’m ready.” It wasn’t true. I figured he’d know that I was lying to be polite. Hopefully, this would let him know how much I liked him.

  He grew wings and giant claws to hold me so the journey back would be faster.

  “I love this,” I said. “We should fly more often.” He seemed unsure. I pressed the issue until he admitted that he doesn’t like to grow wings and talons. He thinks they make his head look disproportionate. I had been pinching my nose because of the smell, but I let it go before speaking. I didn’t want to sound like some annoying mother-in-law from New Jersey.

  “I think you look really terrific,” I whispered, and his claw tightened just a little.

  Later that week he and I had such a good afternoon that we decided to go ahead and make a night of it. I tried to bake him some scones, but we got to talking and I forgot the oven and they burned. I’m horrible at baking and cooking. It was a point of contention between my husband and me before I killed him.

  “Let’s go back to my place,” he said.

  In my old life (we’re encouraged to do that, to call it an “old life” rather than “life,” as though it was left behind rather than taken), I did not do many exciting things. I never went on a real vacation, for instance. And I only remember swimming once when I was young. I certainly did not have sex with the devil.

  “Sex with the devil,” I said flirtatiously. I thought he’d like that but instead he completely clammed up.

  Maybe because his house is not an evil dungeon. I expected, as many women might, a type of Transylvanian sex-lair. This is not to say I wanted to be tortured, but pain is different and more relative in Hell, less “ouch” and more “I guess I don’t have anywhere else to be.”

  But his bedroom was plain and ancient. There was the usual smell of rot, which in Hell is not a visceral, unbearably fresh smell. Instead it’s like something died a while ago on its own and had never been found or cleaned up. It made me think of my husband. I imagined how much I’d freak out if the devil dragged my husband’s corpse out from behind the bed, or worse, if my husband was actually in Hell at that very moment, still bearing all the death-stains I’d given him, and he’d been following me and was going to jump out at us in the middle of our intimate evening and ruin everything.

  “I’m glad he’s not here, but why didn’t my husband go to Hell?” I asked. “I just always thought it would be the other way around, that he’d be in Hell and I’d be somewhere else.”

  We walked into a small cave that had a single torch and a bed, and the devil lay down and then gazed at me. I took the cue and curled up next to him.

  It’s amazing how perspectives can change. I was always on my husband to cut his fingernails, but the devil has the longest ones I’ve ever seen and they don’t bother me. They’re thick and very yellow—their color is very unimposing, like blood that has sat for several centuries whose weight has left only a quiet stain. They remind me a little of paper in a really old book.

  “Your husband was mean, but he wasn’t evil.” The devil’s breath on my neck was hot and brothy. He kissed me, and it was like being kissed by a pot of soup.

  “Are you saying I’m evil?” I was curious, not upset. Hell also has a Prozac effect—regarding nearly everything, I both care and don’t care at the same time. When you know you have an eternity to get over things, you tend to just go ahead and get over them.

  “You did an evil thing,” he said in a fatherly and chiding way that I liked beyond words. “Everyone’s capable of doing evil things.”

  When I took off my shirt his eyes grew panicked. For a moment I thought it was my weapon-breasts. “Will they shoot you?” I asked. “Or do they only do that when I’m angry?”

  He got up and pulled a curtain across the opening of the cave, then moved towards the torch. “Devil,” I whispered, “what are you doing?”

  “Don’t you want the lights out?” The way he said it, it wasn’t really a question.

  “I want to see you,” I whined. In a way, this was the biggest part of the excitement. The devil is millions of folds that I know somehow unfold. He is the largest insect in the universe, and a dragon and a goat and a man and a beard and skin that has been burnt clean.

  “I can’t,” he said. “Right now, I can’t.”

  I thought Hell would be all give or all take. But there’s just not enough room to plunder. We’re all here; we all have to go to the same small bar.

  Most importantly, we have to learn that we are wrong sometimes. That there was at least one time, in our old lives, when we were very wrong.

  I nodded and he blew out the torch. I couldn’t see him but I could feel him swelling, becoming fifty shadows almost as big as the room. My hand had been on his chest when the torch blew out, and now I felt his skin begin to slide up under my palm like he was a magic plant growing and growing; soon my hand was on his hip.

  I began to explore his bones with my hand; I felt far more bones than legs or wings. I tried to count with my fingers their hundreds of knobs and ends. He lay back down, though he hardly fit upon the bed, and coaxed me up onto him. His warm breath was coming from every direction at once.

  “This part is a little normal,” he said. But it wasn’t true.

  Afterwards he fell asleep quickly. I felt him shrinking back, his entire body receding and folding, everything tucking neatly into place. I listened to the deep years of his lungs and decided to have a cigarette. We are smokers, he and I.

  It’s true, the lighter was cheating. “Respect his wishes,” I told myself, “haven’t you learned anything?” But I was too excited to learn.

  When I clicked the lighter, years seemed to pass. I could see through all the parts of him. His skin now looked like a clear bat’s. In his wings, cells were beating far faster than I could see; behind his lids his pink eyes were spinning. His long tongue flickered in his mouth and his stomach was full of small limbs. He was a machine, a riddle. Looking at him, I felt that I was growing smarter every second. I was able to watch him like children watch fish.

  Then he woke up and caught me peeking.

  “I’ve been in love before,” I told him, meaning the other time was not one bit like this. I felt my ribs and my stomach begin to grow and unfold like his skin.

  He shot me a smile. Don’t go getting swept away, it said, a grounding look to tell me that Hell is different from my old life, but not as different as all that. Not so different that I couldn’t get hurt, or hurt him. He let me look on just a moment more, then the flame was blown out by a wind that came from nowhere.

  MR. PLUSH, DETECTIVE

  GARRETT COOK

  Until a month ago, my name was Hatbox. Then, I woke up as a teddy bear in a trench coat and fedora. I wasn’t just a teddy bear, I was worse; I was a teddy bear and a lowdown dirty private dick, the kind of gumshoe you hire when you want somebody found and don’t care if somebody else has gotta get lost. From a hearty six-one, I went down to three feet high, all because I needed money and Plush needed to be somebody else. When you got money, you can be anybody, which was lucky for the no-good, cuddly brown bastard that double-crossed me. Next time a teddy bear offers to pay off your gambling debts in exchange for your body, you’d better think twice. I sure as hell should have.

  Had I thought twice and not ended up as Jimmy Plush, I wouldn’t have been sneaking into the warehouse where Lillian Benzedrine was being held. I
f I hadn’t ended up as Jimmy Plush I wouldn’t be padding around, palms frozen onto the oversized-trigger of a custom fingerless forty-five.

  This was my eighth trip to warehouses like this in a month. Kidnappers are sloppy in this town. One look at the perpetrators said why. One of the two was a big guy, his face was clenched tight, his jaw square and he had a forehead you could serve a round of drinks for the house off. The other one, who looked like a ferret standin’ on its hind legs, wore a long tie decorated with hearts. I knew them well by now, Halperin’s men—Johnny Hideous and Skinny Valentine. Not much for brains or creativity, but I will admit that in the past they had been known to press their size advantage with some degree of effectiveness. In short, men who I’m embarrassed to say have literally knocked the stuffing out of me.

  But, lucky for me, I’ve gotten used to this body (as much as a guy can get used to being a teddy bear the size of a toddler) and being tiny and made out of plush and stuffing makes you quiet. Quiet enough to sneak up behind a huge bruiser and shoot out the back of his knee at point-blank range with a modified teddy bear .45. Mean enough to do it, too. If this warehouse had neighbors, Hideous definitely would’ve woken them up.

  “Jimmy Plush, I’ll teach ya! I’ll teach ya to sneak up behind me!”

  He was right. His falling to the floor writhing and screaming definitely taught me that I should sneak up on him. His partner reached for his gun, but I was quicker on the draw and shot him in the hand. Last time I’d encountered these two a week back, I was the one getting shot in the arm, while Hideous reached into me and started pulling cotton out. This was definitely a change for the better. Tangle with a couple of thugs nine times you start to figure things out.