by Edward Lee
Miss Dory squeals in delight, and you’re back on your tiptoes again; now she pulls your hand from your own crotch and places it between her legs. You begin to rub there, and she rubs you the same. The saw screams and screams in its teeth-grinding shrill; Wynchel is very meticulously encircling Floyd’s skull with the saw around where a headband might be placed. Your sex throbs harder when you notice that your brother has regained consciousness, his eyes maniacally wide, his heels and fists thumping the table, yet he remains helpless to do anything about it. You know he’s screaming through the gag but all you can hear is that hot, wonderful, delicious shriek of the saw as Wynchel manipulates the blade all the way around. Then—
Silence.
Does your heart stop? Have your lungs momentarily ceased to take in breath? Miss Dory’s grip on you tightens, and her hand pushes hard against your soaking crotch.
“Theeeeeeeeeere she comes,” Wynchel remarks when he removes the skullcap from Wynchel’s head. It comes off like a hat. “Reckon ya cain’t do no better’n that!” Floyd still shudders slightly on the table; the fact that he’s remained somewhat alive only deepens your horniness. You can’t help it—you whimper a delighted squeal.
The half dome of Floyd’s raw brain glistens a bright pinkish white. A fluid—not blood, since it’s clear—dribbles off the brain to the washtub on the floor. It seems odd that very little blood is in evidence.
Wynchel, ever one to stray off-subject, looks appraisingly at the skullcap. “Ya know, Dory Ann? Looks ta me like the top’a this scumbag’s noggin’d make a fine ashtray, huh? I’se could drop it in some lye water fer a spell, then give it ta ole Charlie Fuchson, ya think? You know how Charlie smokes them big ole stanky cigars? I say he’d up’n love this fer, say, a Christmas present!”
You don’t care about ashtrays or Charlie Fuchson’s cigars. You only want to see what happens next…
On one knee, Wynchel deliberates, eyeing the exposed brain. “Hmm, now—let’s see…,” and, next, he slips his fingers behind the brain, pulls it out some, and with his other hand slips his knife to sever the spinal cord. Instantly, the organ which once harbored Floyd’s personality as well as Floyd’s evil comes out in Wynchel’s hands like a loaf of pumpernickel. Now a steady stream of blood slides out of the brainpan and dribbles into the tub, pattering like rain on a tin roof. Wynchel stands up, ever chuckling. “Guess he’s dead now, huh? Ya think?” but then he peers more scrutinously at the glistening mass in his hands. “Wonder if’n there’s anythin’ still a-goin’ on in this here evil brain? Shucks, I shore hope so!” He laughs loud enough to shake the wooden walls. “Well, gals, now’s the time. You first, I suppose, Dory. We’s all neighbors so there ain’t no call ta be bashful…”
Miss Dory is visibly panting. You feel the fabric between her legs is drenched, and then she drops her sundress to the floor, her breasts achingly gorged, nipples like hot gumdrops. Wynchel pops a complimentary brow, clears his throat, then passes Miss Dory the brain. “All Marm Lewis said ya gots ta do is…well…rub it back’n forth over yer girly-works.”
You stand in utter, consummate shock as Miss Dory lies down on the wood floor. So delirious she is with desire that her tongue hangs out of her mouth and she whines dog-like as she spreads her bare legs wide and begins to rub the slick brain over her sex.
“There’s the ticket!” Wynchel celebrates. “This here’s what’cha call a header fer gals, Marla! Juss like Marm Lewis say!”
You look at him but cannot in a million years respond.
Already the application of the brain to Miss Dory’s inflamed vulva is goading her into a frenzy; she’s heaving on the floor, her buttocks grinding, her feet rowing the air in what appears to be ecstasy like none ever before felt by anyone.
It excites you seeing her do this, excites you to the point of vertigo, and you know it’s because that brain, that disgusting, despicable, filth-stuffed brain used to occupy your brother’s skull. Miss Dory’s eyes are crossing, she’s drooling, hitching, shrieking in an insurmountable bliss.
“Young as you is, Marla, ya probably don’t knows a whole lot ’bout headers, but, see, fer instance, when a fella’s fuckin’ a brain—don’t matter if it’s a man’s or a gal’s—when he get his nut’n starts to feelin’ his dick-snot squirt?”—Wynchel shakes his head and whistles—“Mm-HMM! It’s the dang best nut’a his life, better’n any reg-ler hob-knobbin’ he ever had. ’S’true, hon, cos I know from ’spearience. Now, no one know why a header’s a better nut, but it’s been spek-ah-lated that a brain’s chock full’a all these special juices that makes all yer brain cells work together. Anyway, we always wondered why’s havin’ a nut in a brain feel better’n havin’ one in a cunt—er, pardon my rough language, hon—but one time when we was throwin’ a header on some creeker we’s caught takin’ a shit in Morris Croll’s well, and we all had dandy nuts, we did, but then one’a us—’twas Doc Tidwell, now’s I think of it—the doc’s got hisself some learnin’, and he tolt us them juices in the brain even got a name—neural-transmitterers, er somethin’ fancy like that…Anyways, the doc, he say that maybe it’s them special juices that give ya a dandy nut, huh? Like when yer dick’s stuck balls-deep in someone’s head, well, that dick soak up some’a them juices whiles its goin’ in’n out, and that’s what give ya the best nut’a yer life.” Wynchel shrugs. “Stands ta reason them brain juices’ll work on gals, too, once their pussy soak ’em up—er, pardon my rough language.”
You’ve scarcely heard a word he’s said, your attention instead commandeered by all that inexplicable lust bubbling up from your groin to your head as you watch, watch, watch Miss Dory clenching nude on the floor and rubbing that warm, wet brain hard all over her crotch as if desperate to actually push it inside. With an inhuman agility, then, her body arcs off the floor, her hips jutting, and she shrieks long and hard, then collapses, drooling.
“Dang, Dory!” Wynchel chuckles. “When a gal makes more racket than a busted chainsaw, I guess that means she had herself a dandy nut!”
Miss Dory stares upward, panting like a parched animal. “I ain’t never felt nothin’ so good, ever,” she whispers, “and now you gotta feel it too, Marla,” and she reaches desperately up, pulls you down to the floor, and peels off your shorts. She splays your legs, licks your sex several times, then places Floyd’s brain there and begins to rub. The impossible sensations nail you in place as something indeed begins to seep into you through your sex, kindling every nerve and inundating you with pleasures you cannot imagine and those pleasures build up and up like steam in a pressure cooker as the brain slides up and down up and down up and down, and then you scream and Miss Dory grins and Wynchel hoots as your heels and fists pummel the floor and your orgasm breaks like a mudslide and for the first time in longer than you can remember, the pain is gone and you know it will never return, and then Miss Dory kisses you and cuddles you and whispers, “Marla, hon? With all the evil men there is in the world, we’s just gonna have ta have ourselfs more headers…”
“Yes,” you whisper back. “A lot more.”
THE CITY OF SIXES
Six minutes after he officially died, Slydes found himself standing agog on a street corner like none he’d ever seen. He stood as he had in life: broad shouldered, tall, dark dirty hair, and a bushy black beard. Blue jeans and work boots, and his favorite T-shirt stretched tight over his beer belly; it read ST. PETE BEACH - A QUIET LITTLE DRINKING TOWN WITH A FISHING PROBLEM. Slydes was a redneck, tried and true, a shitkicker. A badass. He’d seen a lot of—for lack of more elegant phraseology—fucked-up shit in his day, but now…Now…
This?
The wind screamed. Winged mites swarmed in the humid air and splotched red when he swatted them against his brawny forearms. What kind of city is this? the horrid question occurred to him when his gaze was dragged upward. Dim, drear-windowed skyscrapers seemed a mile high and leaned this way and that at such extreme angles, he thought they might topple at any moment. Twisted faces that couldn’t possibly
be Human peered out of many of the narrow windows, while other windows were either broken out or spattered with blood. The sky visible between each building appeared to be red, and there was a black sickle moon hanging between two of them. Slydes blinked.
A dream, it had to be. It was this notion that he first entertained. His Condemnation only minutes old, he couldn’t remember much. He couldn’t remember where he was born, for instance, he couldn’t remember his age, nor could he remember his last name. Indeed, Slydes couldn’t even remember dying.
But die he had, and for a lifetime of wincingly outrageous sins and wickedness, he’d been Damned to Hell.
So here he was.
A nightmare, that’s all, he convinced himself. A red sky? Office buildings leaning over at sixty-degree angles? And—
SWOOSH
A black bat with a six-foot wingspan and a vaguely Human face glided by just over his head. Slydes felt a stinking gust, then recoiled when the impossible animal shat on his head.
“Fucker!” Slydes yelled.
The bat—actually a Hexegenically created Crossbreed of one of several genera known as Revoltus chiropterus—looked over its leathery shoulder and smiled.
“Welcome to Hell,” it croaked.
Slydes stared after the words more than the creature itself. Hell, he thought quite obliquely. I’m not really in—
WELCOME TO ST. PUTRADA CIRCLE, HELL’S NEWEST FISTULATION & TRANSVERSION PREFECT, the sign severed his thoughts.
Slydes could only stare at the sign as the splat of monstrous guano ran down the sides of his face.
Hell’s Newest…WHAT?
At the corner another sign blinked DON’T WALK, and then a rush of pedestrians crossed the street. Slydes just kept staring…
He didn’t know what they were at first: People? Monsters? Combinations of both? A slim couple held hands as they strode by, flesh rotting from their limbs and faces. Several impish children wove through the crowd, with fangs like a dog’s and eyes as big and as red as apples. A Werewolf in a business suit and briefcase passed next, and next after that a fat clown with a hatchet in its face. To Slydes, the clown bid, “Hi, how are ya?”
Slydes could not respond.
If anything, the street was worse. Cars that looked more like small steam engines chugged by on spoked wheels, a smokestack up front gusted black-yellow soot and water vapor. Carriages and buggies rolled by as well, hauled along not by horses but by things like horses, whose flesh hung in dripping tatters. One carriage was occupied by a woman with skin green as pond scum who wore a tiara of gall stones and a dress made from tendons meticulously woven together. She fanned herself with a webbed, severed hand. In another carriage rode a creature that could’ve been a pile of snot somehow shaped into Human form. Then came a haulage wagon of some sort, powered by six harnessed beasts with festering carnation-pink skin pocked with white blisters; Slydes thought hideously of skinned sheep when they bleated and spat foamy sputum. A man perched behind them cracked a long, barbed whip—or…perhaps man wasn’t quite right. He wore a wool cloak and banded leggings like a shepherd of the old days, yet atop his anvil-shaped head grew a brow of horns. The whip cracked and cracked, and the bleating rose to a mad clamor. Slydes looked one more time and noticed that, like the bat, these bald “sheep” had faces grimly tainted by Human features.
“Oh my God, I am in some shit,” Slydes stammered. Things were starting to click in his head, and with each click came more and more fear. Did a tear actually form in his eye? “I-I-I,” he blubbered. “I don’t think this is a dream…”
“It’s not,” sounded a voice that was somehow raspy and feminine simultaneously. The woman who approached him was nude, and yet—he thought at first—checker boarded. Slydes squinted at her impressive physique, and then recalled women with similar physiques whom he’d raped and sometimes even murdered without vacillation. But this woman?
Every square inch of her skin was crisply darkened by black tattoos of upside-down crosses. Even her face, around which shimmered long platinum blonde hair.
“Slydes, right?” she asked. “My name’s Andeen, and I’m your Orientation Directress. You may not even realize this yet, but you’re what’s known as an Entrant.”
“Entrant,” Slydes murmured.
“And, no, this isn’t a dream. You should be so lucky. This is all real. Over time your memory will re-form.”
Before Slydes could mutter a question, his gaze snapped to another passerby: another impressively figured nude woman. Her arms, legs, abdomen, and face were but one colossal psoriatic outbreak. Only the breasts and pubis were without blemish.
“Rash lines,” remarked Andeen. “In the Living World you have tan lines, here we have rash lines.”
Slydes’ gaze snapped back to the tattooed woman. “Here…as in…”
“As in Hell. You’re dead, and for your worldly sins, you’ve been Condemned.” Her slender shoulders shrugged. “Forever.”
Slydes began to grow faint.
She grabbed his hand and tugged. “Come on, Slydes. We gotta get you out of this Prefect. It’s really fucked up here,” and then she tugged him down the street a ways and ducked into an alley. “We’ll lay low awhile, and try to get you someplace where your ass won’t be grass.”
“I-I,” Slydes blubbered. “I don’t understand.”
“Trust me, there’s no good place in Hell, but there are places that are worse than others. Like this place, St. Putrada Circle. You must’ve been a real scumbag to be Rematerialized here. Yes, sir, a real humdinger of a shitty person.”
“I don’t understand!” Slydes now sobbed outright.
“A Prefect is like a small District. And this one happens to be a Fistulation and Surgical Transversion Prefect. I’ll keep an eye out for Abduction Squads. They’ll Transvert anybody here, Humans and Hellborn alike, but Humans are the desired target. The Surgery Centers pay the most for Humans.”
Slydes looked cross-eyed at her.
“The short version. Every Prefect, District, or Town has to have an active mode of punishment, while there are some areas, known as Punitaries, that exist solely for punishment. But anyway, this Prefect uses Fistulatic Surgery to conform to the Punishment Ordinances. Fistula is Latin; it means ‘communication between,’ and Transversion is, like, re-routing things. That’s what they do here—they re-route your insides.”
Even though Slydes didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, he stammered, “Whuh-whuh-why?”
Andeen smirked. “Because it’s perverse and disgusting…the way it’s supposed to be. This isn’t Romper Room, Slydes. This is Hell, and Hell is hardcore. Eternal torment, suffering, and abhorrence is the name of the game. It pleases Lucifer, therefore, it’s Public Law.” She smirked more sharply this time. “Look, go over to that public wash basin and wash the bat shit out of your hair. It’s grossing me out.”
Dazed, Slydes noted the elevated stone basin only feet from the alley mouth. He dunked his head in the water, agitated the rank guano out of his hair, then seized up and jerked his head out when he realized what he was washing in. “That’s not water! That’s piss!”
“Get used to it,” Andeen said. “Unless you’re a Grand Duke or an Archlock, you’ll never get near fresh water. Only other way it to distill it yourself out of the blood of what you kill.”
Revolted, Slydes flapped the piss off his face, then noticed lower basins erected intermittently along the smoky street. “What are those things? They look like—”
“Oh, the commodes. It’s another Public Law. In this Prefect, it’s mandatory that everyone urinate, defecate, and give birth in public.”
Slydes’ bearded jaw dropped.
“And there,” Andeen pointed, “across the street. There’re the various Surgery Suites.”
Slydes’ crossed eyes scanned the signs over each transom…
RECTO-URINARY TRANSVERSION
URETHRAL-ESOPHAGEAL REVERSAL
UTERO-RECTAL FISTULA
And many, many
more.
Andeen’s evilly tattooed hand pulled him back into the alley. “And look, there’s an Abduction Squad. The clay men are called Golems. They’re like state employees, public works, police, security, stuff like that…”
Slydes watched with a cheek to the edge of the alley wall as a troop of gray-brown things shaped like men thudded down the sidewalk, each shoving along a handcuffed Human, Demon, or Hybrid. The Golems were nine feet tall, and walked in formation. Then they all stopped at the same time, and marched their prisoners into various Surgery Suites.
“And like I said, the State pays more money for Humans, so that’s why we gotta get you out of the Prefect.”
Slydes whipped his face back around, and repeated, helplessly now, “I don’t understand…”
“Once you’ve seen what goes on here…you will. Oh, and check out this chick.”
Slydes watched as a morose-faced nude woman who appeared to be half Human and half Troll staggered toward one of the street commodes. She leaned over, parted her buttocks, and began to urinate out of her anus, and when she was done, she turned around, squatted, then began to wince. Slydes winced right along with her as they watched the incredulous act. Long trails of feces slowly squeezed out of her vagina and dropped into the commode.
“See?” Andeen asked. “Oh, wow, and check this out! Here comes a Uteral-Oral Fistulation…”
A woman in a bloody smock labored down the street. She was covered with red-rimmed white scales…and obviously quite pregnant. She held a scaled hand to her bloated belly, and when she could walk no longer she stopped, leaned over, and—
SPLAT!
—out gushed a slew of amniotic water from her mouth. She maintained the uncomfortable position, and as her belly began to tremor, her jaw came unhinged. Her throat began to impossibly swell, and as her stomach shrunk in size, a squalling, demonic fetus slid hugely out of her mouth and flapped to the pavement.
“How’s that for the spectacle of childbirth?” Andeen jested. “Pregnancy is a big deal in Hell, Slydes. If Lucifer had his way, every single female lifeform here would be pregnant at all times. You see, the more babies, the more food, fuel, and fodder for Lucifer’s whimsy.”