Infernus (6 page)

"I suppose, my father, that you should torture me sexually for a thousand life cycles. Please do me this injustice."

Red hiked himself up into his son's sweating thighs and forced his great member inside.

The son wept red tears through sightless eyes.

And this horror was only on the first few rungs in an infinite ladder of The Dark.

*****

"Have you never wondered, never thought to ask to approach these walls, never wondered what they were made of, or what was behind them?" the demon asked after many lifetimes.

The vampiric satyr ran a hand over a wall. "It feels familiar."

"It should; the walls are made of bricks of clotted blood. Ever thought to put your ear against one and listen?"

The son did so, and he instantly felt something push outward, like an elbow, and heard countless, muffled screams. The son gasped.

"Yessss," the father smiled. "The walls are prisons, too. There are many millions trapped within.
Many
millions. Screaming, unable to breathe, unable to escape. No wasted space in Infernus, whatsoever."

"Father, I can
almost
see this one who sits, mindless, near the surface of the blood wall. His legs, I think, are drawn up to his chest as he's frozen in the bricks. He seems to be holding a thick cable in his teeth that sends great bolts of lightning into his brain. It's what gives off a light that surrounds him. He jitters like a marionette. His hair, what little there is, is standing up on end. Why does he continue to hold it in his teeth?"

Red gave his son a pitying glare. "Let others enjoy their version of Infernus. Don't be so self-righteous."

"How does one get chosen to live within these walls, oh Father?"

"Don't ask."

*****

"We now visit
The Lake of Rakes
!"

Red was pulling his son behind him by the hair on his head. As they made their way across the lake's ebony ice to the center, they noticed a silver, cold sun glimmering in the gray distance. Human buttocks were protruding from the ice. Lying all around these, on the surface, were flat metal paddles.

"Now, my son, we must blister all these bottoms if we are to appear fearless to the others in the outer regions. We must draw much blood."

"Is our behavior being observed by those in other Parks?"

"Of course! Did you not know that?"

"No, I did not."

"If they ever find you outside my protection, exposed as it were, they would rip you to shreds for your profound ignorance."

*****

A small voice spoke sweetly to the vampiric satyr. Its light words were high and innocent, settling gently into the ear of the screaming son. But the words it chose clashed together like tin bells, fashioned in a way that no mortal could fathom and stay sane.

"Ahhh," said Red. "Her/His royal highness has deemed you important enough to allow you to at least hear His/Her commandments." His eyes bled brown drops in horrid worship and slick clots splattered to the floor.

"Who is this most noble of creatures who caresses my ears with liquid words, Father?"

"It is the culmination of all evil that has ever lived/existed."

"It is a tangible representation of an intangible concept?"

"No, for it does live. It is a singular life form created from the life forms that created a personality. And the next time I hear you psychoanalyzing me in that wonderfully cute fashion, I shall split you in two and bake your insides for a few thousand lifetimes. Is that very clear, or what?"

"My lord, it is very clear. Is there anything that can be done to make it stop saying these things that so sweetly kill?"

"It is foolish to
think
those words, let alone
say
them. The creature, knowing She/He has pleased you, will continue to do so now for thousands of the lengthiest lifetimes. Only by convincing Her/Him that you are unimpressed at all, will you make Her/Him stop."

And it was so.

*****

Nothing of value, although they did talk, was discussed in the classroom between the Legend and the students, after this chapter. It would be of no interest here.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"THE HALL OF TABLEAUS"

"My son," shrieked the demon, "you must listen to the power of my words and understand my love for you." He pulled the vampire satyr to his massive chest and entered him from below. "I must pull you apart, my son, and lay you upon hot stones to broil for thousands of lifetimes."

And he did so. Dutifully, it must be said, Red watched o'er his son, after he had torn him asunder, and wept the entire time. And the blood tears fell upon the son's parts and baked the flesh hotter.

*****

After thousands of lifetimes, the demon glued the son together with his spittle. And the son cracked open his eyeless sockets and stared with (no) love and (no) pity at the father.

And such black horror was witnessed in Hell by crimson-jeweled lightning that hissed across the skies for thirteen nights.

In the blackest night, a constellation appeared to commemorate this initial tableau.

Then the demon spoke the ultimate blasphemy.

*****

[The following has been edited, by the insistence of the Sire demonologist, who has said, "No one must know such secrets. The complete text, including the second half, will remain buried in a desert (or mountain) somewhere on Earth. One day, the sayings will adorn many crowns, but not until The Day! These sayings will never be auditioned for a single person."]

[This then, is the first half of what is considered (by many scholars) to be "The Most Unholy Single Thing."]

The demon grinned and the look was one that no human eyes could see and live. "Did you know that only so-called 'heteros' inhabit my kingdom, my son?"

The satyr sang the truth directly into the demon's mind and there was...hemorrhage!

"Then you know why, also, my beloved! Yes, you are right. A 'hetero's' worst fear is being forcibly raped over and over." Both laughed over this for a while. Red gazed over a part of his park, and then said to his son, "This would not be torture for 'homos.'"

"That means-" began the son.

"No, you could not imagine the 'homo' section of Infernus. No one can." The demon grinned again, and black clots fled out of his mouth for a day's time. "The second thing, my son, is that there is a truth here that there never was another king other than our king."

"Oh, Father," bled the son's face, "can it be true?"

"It can, and is! Do you want to know who wrote their holy books - all of them? I'll tell you..."

[The following filth was ripped up by the woman Jane Millyberg, a fellow archaeologist of Anthony Begels'. In the next life, she will turn on a spit to be plucked and pulled by all who pass by her in Infernus for her rash foolishness. The narrative continues below.]

"And yes, my son, I will reward your attentive ways of late by showing you your crowning creation in all Helldom. The delicious descriptions the Children of Hell use, when they speak of it, would fill ten volumes of fresh obscenities.

"Look here and I will show you what you do to the one who sexually tortured you and oh so willingly sent you to me, perhaps a little before your time was up. This will occur on the very last day I train you. Look here. What do you see?"

The vampiric satyr scanned the demon ruler's urine stream. He was bathing his son with the hot liquid as he was often wont to do. It flowed constantly down through his leg pelt, and it was here that he searched for clues.

"My lord, I do see something." And it was true. "I see me, as an impossibly massive muscular machine, glittering golden, speckled scaled flesh as hard as diamond, rising up through exploding floorboards, and concrete and tile. I throw something through the floor that has no significance whatsoever, before I turn to the other. My log-like biceps are already grasping him and turning him around so I can painfully rip into him and permanently join my member to his intestinal walls. I rip through the weak mortal flesh with no resistance."

He had to stop for a few minutes as the father and son laughed until red tears flowed freely down their cheeks. "Oh, my lord, as I am mounting him from behind, the goodly doctor is looking back over his shoulder. His scream would shatter a mortal's eardrum, but I drive him deeper, popping and snapping ligaments and tendons in my terror-drive! Then, oh my, I tell him, 'I will always be with you and I will never stop pounding you, so get used to it. I will pound you into billions of infinite Earths.' We will go deeper forever, for this is my exquisite revenge upon the one who sent me to Infernus.

"Then I see, Father, I furiously pound the man, now dead and then quite alive again. He then suffers the final change in our eternal coupling. Oh, my father, must I say this?"

"You must, my son. I pray, don't make me tell you again."

"I open my mouth wider and wider, and as I do, my teeth grow longer."

"Your destiny, my beloved!" the demon bellowed, and his face burst into yellow flame.

"My teeth grow longer and thicker. I easily sink them into the top and base of his baking skull. I ride the wretch this way for all time. He never stops screaming; thus we become what is known in legend as 'The Scream.'"

"There is now a room I must show you, my son." The father led him into an illusion of a green forest where searing winds blew gracefully through the tops of the trees.

The Legend was mischievous and brutal about it. It is something his later students would come to expect, taking nothing he said for granted. It was now, he decided, time to tease them in this fashion for the first time.

"Students, I am now going to share with you a glorious story about a very singular tableau. It is in the beginning of The Hall of Tableaus, because it is beautiful and morosely innocent."

A student expressed his doubts. "I don't believe you."

"I have fashioned this creature I merely call 'The Tree' after J.R.R. Tolkien's magnificent creation 'Treebeard.' You will all love him very much."

The class was really in for it now. The Legend loved doing this sort of thing, with no apologies whatsoever. He quoted, from memory, this entire story of untold beauty.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

"A SINGULAR TABLEAU"

"My son, let me show you something so fierce that it is considered beautiful in my park of Infernus. The other ruling demons envy my collection of tableaus. I was blessed, because I rule well. Have I told you what the laws are that govern a few of the other parks?"

"No, and I was afraid to ask."

"As well you should be. I provide (for you alone) all you need."

"How much do you know?"

"As if you expected me to reply with any answer other than, 'Everything.' Now be silent while I entertain you. There is a silver demon that rules a park not many light years hence. Its roiling hideousness does not suit your training, so you were sent here. Souls there just roll around in a darkness that can be felt. They bite each other and scream and slice one another endlessly with their claws.

"Another ruling demon - his demonstrative, withering look would permanently liquefy you - is the black prince of The Kingdom of Burning Winds. His domain abuts mine on the eastern side.

"There are a million others to cover the more than ten billion hopeless souls inhabiting Infernus."

"My father," the son whimpered, "this knowledge boils my head further."

"As was its purpose!" The demon laughed. "Are you ready to witness this fierce tableau that many envy? It will burn away more of what is left of your tiny soul."

"Yes, my father."

The son's mouth was white with cancerous sores; pus freely flowed past his sizzling lips onto the frying stones at their feet.

"You have become quite the liar, my son."

"Yes," the son stated simply.

"We will pretend, for a moment, that the dream world was more than just that. As you can tell, we have entered the facsimile of a rich green forest. But only by the wildest stretch of the imagination could you believe it is a cool fall day, for we are toasting at a goodly rate. Now watch helplessly as the tableau plays out. You may laugh maniacally, but you can't help them or interfere or join in to torment them further because it is in the past."

"And nor would I
want
to interfere or help anyone, my father."

"You are learning, son. Now hold tight and observe."

Two teenage boys enter the emerald glade. A big boy, quickly packing muscle onto his yet childlike body, carried an axe; the other one looked frail and carried a pick. The grass splattered the boys' boots with dew as they fearlessly walked into a clearing. The yellow shafts of sunlight glittered among the garden.

The skinny boy, dressed in simple peasant greens (that matched the other boy's only in color) spoke up. His voice carried over the light breezes that played in the swaying tops of the trees. "I thought this was the place guarded by a hideous tree-demon. You told me-"

"Shut up!" the big boy said. "The witch said there was a living heart in the tree. If we could chop out the heart, we will have all the treasures hidden within it."

"If that were true, then why hasn't
she
done it?"

The big boy's cheeks flushed with impatience. "She said the tree magically prevents her from approaching this area. She guaranteed me (using her mortality as her pledge) that if she came here, the tree would crush her heart without remorse."

"Which tree do you think it is?"

*****

Red said, "My son, this is the part I love watching o'er and o'er!"

"I can't wait to rejoice with you, Father!"

*****

"Look!" the big boy said, pointing. "I'll bet this is it."

They both, attracted to its
differentness
from the other trees, approached it deliberately, slowly. They tried to take in the foaming evil rolling out of its gray heart, tasting it in the crisp air. The bark jutted out from some of the gray branches; some limbs were starkly white, but large strips of cracked ancient bark were hanging loosely there as well. Many of its branches and smaller capillaries were littered around its trunk and base. Thick, green/gray veins of roots broke the ground, and a few looped back into the loam, anchoring the imprisoned tree to the earth.