Текст книги "Infernus"

Автор книги: Mike Jones

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CHAPTER NIGHT

“BLOOD AND GUTS”

The demon’s elbow rested just below the man’s chin. The rest of his arm (including his forearm) was down his son’s throat.

“This proves my love for you, my son. Put your hands under my massive genitals, and hold onto those two black stones.”

He wrenched his goo-covered arm from his son’s throat instantly, shredding flesh in the process. The man wrapped his hands around the leathery black bags and gripped them tightly.

“Yes, that’s right, my son. Now burst them with your grip.”

The man squeezed until yellow blood flowed freely between his fingers. He bowed his head to the sizzling liquid trickling between his knuckles and lovingly lapped it up with a slave’s humility.

“Thank you, Father,” the man said.

Later, after they passed many miles along the shore of a boiling lake, they came upon a beach. They looked out across a sea of sand. Many humans lay roasting like meat on the burning grains.

“Let’s walk among them,” the demon said, and they did, entering the field of the flesh. “This one was known in life as ‘The Killer.’ No such proud designation can be given him; here he would be referred to simply as, ‘The Killed.’ ‘The Killer’ was possessed of a specialty – the eyes – it was his favorite thing to gouge out with a scoop in his dreams.”

Red drove one of his clawed feet into the eyes of the gaping head. He did this over and over and over…

“And this was a human with breasts,” the demon said as they moved on to another specimen. “It had a will to tell lies to anyone who would listen. So now, if any of our ears hear one word issuing forth, we all urinate on the top of the head. This is great humiliation to this creature of ego.”

And to prove it, he covered the protesting head (for five spaces of time) with his acidic urine. The man laughed at that and kicked it from behind for one thousand times. He loved to watch the bleeding head reel from the violent strikes, and loved hearing it make little mewling sounds.

“Son, I give you the gift of The Satyr.” The demon waved his great arms wide.

The man felt the changes and looked at his body. His legs began to cramp as they cracked backward and sprouted hooves. Black wire hair grew rapidly from his ankles to the tops of his thighs. The satyr’s arms thickened, becoming corded with large veins and matted with black hair. It flowed wildly across his chest and around his back like water. A black goatee instantly grew on his chin and he stood in glorious, handsome masculinity before his father.

“You will forever be ‘Satyr.’ It is a gift from your father, who loves you.” He approached the satyr. “Now your body is ‘suited’ for my affections. It has been strengthened to the point where I won’t rip you to shreds, although it was joyous for both of us, I know.”

The demon knelt before the satyr and sifted through the thick patch of pubic hair. “My son, I now, in sacrifice, take your member in me, and I will dine from you.”

And he did.

* * *

“Let me have some of your precious blood, my son.” The demon held out a hand. The satyr lifted one of his legs and placed a wool-covered hoof into it.

Red held it between his teeth and suddenly bit down, cracking the split hoof into four bloody pieces and pouring salty blood into his mouth. He pulled the hoof in further and sucked loudly.

* * *

“Oh, Dr. Mountfountain, you were coming along so well, too. Now, after three days, big Barney drags you back in a straightjacket after your failed escape attempt. Don’t you want to get better? What did you say, Barney? You ‘nailed’ him in the woods and now Dr. Mountfountain is a wide receiver? Was there blood? Ahhh, a virgin. Well, you go along now, Barney. I’ll do an extensive cavity search – I hope you didn’t leave any depositsbehind.”

Big Barney and the small man laughed quietly for a few moments.

After Barney left, the other doctor guided the bewildered Mountfountain onto a flat metal trough.

“The water is shallow, Doctor. I’m not going to drown you. I’m just going to lay you down in it, all right? I’m pulling off your pants now. My, aren’t you a big boy? I’m attaching two small clips to your testicles – oh, you baby, thatdidn’t hurt! The wire goes to this generator. Now with the added conductivity of the water, you’ll feel like a piece of -

… brrzzzapppp!…

* * *

The class was mostly quiet after this session. The Legend – although no one referred to him this way, and he would be unknown by this name until Infernus was, well… known by others later – packed up his things and left until next week.

CHAPTER TEN

“WASTING WITH TIME”

“My son,” screamed the demon in the satyr’s mind. “Do you know what my parting gift will be to you in three billion, trillion generations?”

“Why must there bea parting?” cried the satyr weakly in Red’s mind.

“The toils we pass through will have honed your body to invisible perfection. My final parting gift to you in three billion, trillion generations,” and here a blood tear fell hissing to the stony ground, “you will become ‘The Scream.’”

Satyr gaped. “Is such a treasure possible to attain?”

“Not only is it possible, but it is necessary. In your path to become Everything, you must literally become everything. Are you pleased?”

“More than pleased – my pain threshold just increased three greatness levels.”

“Then all is proceeding as planned,” gushed the demon lovingly.

* * *

The truth that the two shuddering, smoldering lumps at the bottom of the mile-deep shaft may yet discover was that nothing was done or said lovinglyhere. All was stated in the most naked horror imaginable. No love lay behind the intent. Rather, the satyr now knew that his body was being distilled and rarified so that he would lose the detritus of his individuality and become assimilated by “The Scream.” To be invisible, to scream forever and be, in essence, that scream made the two smoldering corpses shudder and clatter their bones together more violently. But, they could not wake themselves. They could never do that.

* * *

[This next section, considered by even some ardent Satanists as The Most Hideous Profane Thing, is survived in only phrases and a few pages of text. What follows is, according to the foremost expert, Doctor Helen Gaines, to be all that survives.]

The demon thrust his member into the cavity of the satyr’s spine, then folded the canvas of flesh back over the wound and made it heal, and went to pounding the mound of flesh…

“…with my son, place this between your lips and pierce it with your teeth. Swallow the pus and slurp down the rotted bits of flesh that come sluicing…”

…and the next thing he saw, or thought he saw, was a large man defecating fetuses into a rat-infested pit. The rats yipped like little dogs, eagerly awaiting the flesh of the mewling unborn.

And because he saw the hideous thing without the permission of his father, the demon rapped him across the face until the satyr’s teeth were flying everywhere…

…the satyr’s arms were lying motionless on the ground in front of him.

“This will please you,” said the demon. He picked up both heavy arms and began smashing the satyr with strong blows.

When the satyr regained consciousness, the demon was nowhere to be seen. He looked between his legs and saw one of his arms lodged in his arse.

[Thus ends this partial section.]

“Look, my son,” the demon said. “On our walk through my jurisdiction, we come across the bones of some whalers. If their bones are here, where do you suppose the other parts of their bodies rest?”

The satyr did not know and vomited on the rock floor in response.

“Well, that’s good, but not quitewhat I had in mind.”

The satyr stood next to him and gazed into a boiling black pool set in the floor.

“They are all lying on the bottom of this percolating pool, spineless, boiling, unable to move, unable to breathe… just screaming.”

The satyr stared into the pool in mock horror. The black boiling mass must be old blood, he thought. His reattached limbs grasped both sides of his handsome face in a grotesque imitation of terror. His mouth stayed open in its perpetual scream, and the satyr’s eyes were bulging. He really wanted to roar with laughter.

“It is funny, isn’t it?” the demon asked. “I only come to this exhibit to cheer myself.”

Red pulled all of the skin off the satyr in one mighty jerk at the back of the neck. He ripped the spine out of the nerve-exposed body and flung it to the ground.

“You must be purified even further, my son.” He prepared himself to throw the jelly-like mess of the satyr into the boiling pool. “I will only allow you to remain in here for one thousand times. I will then pull you out and we will continue our adventures.”

The demon slowly lowered the shuddering corpse – oh how it shuddered – into the pool. When the water reached his eyes, they popped and oozed a thick, green liquid.

Red released the jelly creature, then stood and urinated into the pool. He waited one thousand times.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“BLACK BALLED AGAIN”

“Now, my son, since your pain threshold has increased three greatness levels, we are going to enter the second level, or the next dimension of torture.”

“There are others?” the satyr asked casually, examining his reconstructed body.

“They are infinite,” the father said.

He mounted his son from behind. As the sound of pounding became deafening, the demon’s wings folded around them, and they vanished into another plane.

* * *

They appeared in a new place: The Second Level, or Stair of Torture. They watched a small hooded woman with a wooden bucket come to a boiling river.

“Look what she does,” the demon shrieked in (mock) surprise.

She lowered her bucket into the undulating crimson, and then set it down on the gray bank. She lowered her face into it and loudly slurped its contents.

“See, my son, what a great thing she does! She drinks all the foul deeds of mankind, for they boil in this great river. There is more to her sacrifice than meets the eye, and she does it for no one to see but her lord, her demon.”

Behind her appeared the largest, most muscular demon the satyr had seen yet, at least twice the size of Red. He glittered entirely of gold: his skin, hair and eyes. And he must have been pleased, for he snatched the woman up by her head and began beating her against an oaken tree thousands and thousands of times, without pause.

* * *

In another time, the demon showed his son a small cave. “Look at the theater and see the drama. Only one play is performed here, and the beings call it, ‘The Single Reverent Thing.’ Look within, my son, and tell me what you see.”

The satyr did so. “A young lad is walking down a street on a sunny day. From his right a bullet enters his brain, causing a huge hole to appear in the left side of his head. He falls to the ground and is still. Later he awakens and realizes the wound has healed.

“The lad wonders at the meaning of all that when a voice rings out above him. ‘Never tell anyone what happened to you today. Make it our secret and I will see to it that you have absolute dominion over all creatures, everywhere.’ The lad agrees.”

“Yesss, my son,” the demon whispered, red stains flowing down his blistered cheeks. “It is the only history lesson any of us here cares to learn. You would be wise to do likewise.”

In his ecstasy, the demon threw the satyr to the broiling floor and coupled with him for three thousand generations.

* * *

“My son,” the demon shrieked, “behold, another level!”

The environment flickered around them. When it righted itself, they were in a burning forest.

“Let me mount you in my joy. Let your jaws crack for screaming as I oppress my own kin.”

And he did. The satyr was sexually dominated within the forest of yellow flame-trees for a [thousand parts of] time.

* * *

On one of the rare occasions that Professor Delaney spoke, she asked the old man, “In your fiction, do you really propose that there is religion in Hell, uh, I mean, Infernus?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “But, only because it amuses me. Just a trifle to amuse others, not that there are such things, really.”

“Oh,” she said, momentarily satisfied. She crossed her hands in front of her, holding her wrists, and waited for him to continue.

“In fact,” he said, realizing there might be a need for clarification, “if I had followed the Biblical model, the book would have been boring. How could I have made an exciting adventure about screaming in the dark, for that is the Biblical model. No, I wanted my version to be exciting and fun.”

“It’s hardly ‘fun’!” said a student.

He looked to the rear of the class but could not determine who was speaking. He laughed. “And there will be more of religion. Actually, it’s coming up in the very next chapter. I have put hate cults there. They are eternally punished, also. For no other reason than it amused me.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

“TIN BELLS”

“Have you ever thought,” said the demon, “that there are laws here?”

“No,” the satyr said.

“When you dreamed that you lived on a world, and had a day-to-day existence, all creatures thought a being existed that was above all else. He was known as a creator or thecreator. Try to speak the name of this being.”

The demon’s sockets glittered and filled to overflow with black blood.

“You mean the… ” the satyr said.

“Yessss,” hissed his father, “sssssay the NAME!” He coaxed him and laughed.

“It’s… ” The satyr gritted his teeth and they cracked in the heat. “Uhhhh, his name is…” The satyr pulled on his lips and tore his skin from his face.

Red laughed until his sides actually split.

The satyr kept ripping the flesh from his own face.

* * *

“My son,” sighed the demon while holding the satyr’s head as he roped his entire member into the throat. “Do you know what the most evil thing in all the omniverse is?”

The satyr could not reply.

“It is yourheart, my son.” The satyr tried to squirm free to protest, but he could not break Red’s grip. “Well, think about it.” He ceased to snake his member down the throat, for the two cold black orbs lay under the satyr’s chin, roasting over burning embers. “You dreamed all this up – you would have to be the cruelest bastard that ever lived to do that.”

If that were true, the satyr was thinking, then you would be on the receiving end of my oversized member.

“And it is so,” the demon said.

And it was.

“You must become all things, truly,” Red said later, after he had spit the son out of his mouth.

* * *

“My beloved,” Red said, “I will give you another gift only because of my great love for you.”

He ran a finger over the hot teeth of his son and removed his canines. Two long bloody fangs emerged through the gums.

“You have now become a vampiricsatyr! A new glory has dawned!”

At this, the demon grew excited and split the satyr’s cheeks with the snap of his fingers on both hands. He lovingly watched the blood flow down his face.

* * *

“My son!” shrieked the demon as he ran his fingers through the vampire satyr’s exposed brain. “I need to show you a vision of the last days (that were) of Earth. It is a hotel in The Decadent City.”

The satyr saw in his head (the demon played among the hot fibers of his brain as if it were an instrument) the most opulent hotel of all time. As he imagined that he was approaching the front of the hotel, he saw marble columns wrapped in gold overlay. As he went through the great hall, he saw satin curtains and lamps made of pure silver hanging from the ceiling forty feet above the ground. It was the last, great hotel.

The corridor was well-hung with what seemed to be silk tapestries, all done in the deepest reds and browns. The walls were liberally decorated with gold torches.

A doorman, sharply dressed in a suit with finely pressed edges, stood waiting before a door. Another man approached and showed him a card key.

“What is your pleasure, this evening, my lord?” the doorman asked.

“I’d love to see you in my chambers in five minutes in red briefs,” the man stated matter-of-factly.

“Your pleasure is my desire, my lord.”

The vision ended.

“Alas, my son,” the demon said, “the last decade of man’s mortal age was his best. You could never have accomplished in thirty thousand lifetimes what we can do with these indestructible bodies. That age was the only elegant, decadent century of man.”

“Why do you say that, Father?”

“Because, for the first time in history (although each generation before it assumed that it was the first freegeneration), mankind had finally managed to believe that guilt was just a farce that got in the way of living. Mankind finally cast off the costs of doing anything it desired – there was no fear of reprisal, no fear of dire consequences.

“There is Dark Logic here, my son. Learn it well.”

* * *

“There is something in my park, my son,” the demon screamed in horror, “that you must see to believe. Come and I will show you what takes place at the temple.”

They walked through a few thousand meters of burning jungle and came to a golden door that led into a stony hill. They stood to one side and waited. A figure in a black hooded robe approached the wall and spoke. “Oh Lord of my worship, please grant me admittance to your righteously extreme level of torture. Please allow this unworthy creature into your chambers!”

A tiny hatch above the door opened. A bloody hook shot forth and sank rapidly into the supplicant’s skull. The hook then quickly withdrew and pulled the shrieking disciple through the hole, cracking his bones and bursting his innards.

“Do you mean… ?” began the vampire satyr.

“Yessss,” the demon said. “There is religion here, e’en here. There are faction cults here the likes of ‘Those who love to torture those who love to have their legs amputated.’ The most sought-after honor cult is the one called, ‘Dulling the soul through flames.’”

“Oh, my G-”

The demon’s empty sockets flashed red. “Never attempt to say The Betrayer’s name here! Now I must punish you.”

Red mounted his son from behind and slammed him for a thousand times.

Later, he grabbed a small gold demon, found squirming among roasting stones, and took it from behind. It began to shriek even louder and wriggle violently to twist out of Red’s grip. The large demon held him fast, though the golden demon was a shuddering blur.

“My son, sink your vampiric teeth into the buttocks and take the power he would willingly give none. Do it!”

The demon spread the buttocks of the small demon. The vampire satyr did what came natural and sank the two throbbing razors into the fat gold flesh. His teeth instantly popped the skin and he felt the power flow down his throat into his rotting belly as he drank the golden blood.

When he finished and the gold demon had been released to run back into the stone jungle, the vampire satyr rose with the new dripping canines. “What was that all about?”

“Only a vampire satyr can take a demon’s blood. You start with the small and eventually take over a big one like the golden beast who regularly mounts me. It’s the only way to evolve here. My purpose here is to see to it that you never cease to evolve.”

* * *

The small doctor had been observing him closely for the past three days. Dr. Mountfountain would probably rise to consciousness today. He was alone with the nearly nude man, both in boxer shorts. Dr. Mountfountain was lying flat on his back on a metal table.

He ran a quivering palm over the hairy thigh of the physician. “I’ve always wanted you, Doctor. Always. Even when we were in college, I would have given anything, anything, if you had just noticed me. Just once, but no, not ugly little me. Old me. But now you belong to me. I’ve already had more sex with you than I ever could have fantasized. Of course, you have been unconscious the whole time, but I pretended your hairy body was responsive to mine. And I will do it to you again and again.”

He ran his sweaty palm up the thigh to the impressive mound below his belly.

* * *

“Look, my son,” the demon sighed.

“What, my father?” the vampire satyr shrieked.

“Look at this puddle and tell me what you see.”

Red forced the head of the son into a position where he could see the black, liquid hole.

“I see a thousand pointless deaths: I see a child mindlessly murdering an old woman; I see the most shredded suicides… ”

“You see,” hissed the demon, “what tangible sadness looks like.”

“Are all the maddening injustices of mankind against mankind recorded here?”

“All save one,” grinned the father, red tears hissing down his cheeks.

“Which is that?”

“Yours. The cruelest stroke is that you made all this up. The reality of this consists in your continued belief in its reality! You even created the reality that says all reality is a dream of yours. What arrogance! What presumption! You are a deceiver! The Truth – even though it cannot be known or believed here – is that you and I are eternally dreaming in a pit, snuggling together and shivering from the horrors of it all. Which is real?”

“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. Manymillions. Screaming, unable to breathe, unable to escape. No wasted space in Infernus, whatsoever.”

“Father, I can almostsee 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 thinkthose words, let alone saythem. 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.