Текст книги "Infernus"

Автор книги: Mike Jones

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“THE MILLING MURDERERS”

“Look, my son, the end of The Hall of Tableaus. Was it good for you?”

“Yes, my beloved. Look!”

The demon entered his son from behind and they both gazed at a golden arch with purple veins running through it, encircled with carvings of the finest diamonds. It led into a garden legitimately thought at one time (before the souls crowded its borders and it became a city) to once be a mere tableau.

As the father filled the son with love, they both wept openly. It was as still as a freshly vanquished life.

“My son!” the demon screed into his son’s ears. “We now come to a pit in the vast park known as ‘The Milling Murderers.’”

“Is it so, Father?”

“Yes, it is. It is a vast land of Hate Cults. It belongs to people who invented religion in their dream world and then used it to slay their fellow man through the service to their egos. It is the only place in my jurisdiction whereas if you don’tparticipate to increase their horror and pain, you will replace them in their torment. You would have found out, anyway, if you had been patient enough to watch the various threads of continuity. This is the place where the religionists have been throughout eternity. Thankfully, they are unmoved by facts or discussion; their minds are closed to anything other than the so-called reality of their self-righteous world, which means that you can torture them most heinously and they won’t even believe it is happening to them. To escape their torment here, they dreamed of a world where they were superior to others. Their man-made religion allowed them to believe they could treat any mortal with contempt, or kill, or slaughter thousands in holy wars. Or, better and funnier, they thought they could oppress children or other mortals with breasts. Infernus is too good for them. Their reality is that they burn and burn, as they always have.”

“Suppose,” the vampire satyr replied, licking his blood-encrusted lips, “I do both. I mean, refuse to torment them, then torment them.”

“You are truly the most hideous son ever born by a father. And you are my burden to bear. Prepare for my mounting.”

The father tore the son open from behind and intercoursed the wound for many lifetimes. The son screamed throughout, as did everything else that died there.

“Now we may enter, my child.”

“It is indeed a large pit, Father. Look here at the entrance. What do I see? On the left side of the wicker, decayed gate, it looks like a corpse lying – is its eyes nothing but seething worms? Yes! With a long wad of cloth rolling out of its mouth.”

“This is delightful!”

“Oh, Father, it is so enigmatic! It has writing on it. It says: ‘Suppose that servant is wicked and beats his fellow servants. He shall be torn to pieces and assigned a place for hypocrites.’ Is that what this place is, Father?”

“Let us proceed and see, shall we? Your threshold of pain will be increased many fold by the time you approach ‘The Wall of Full Cycles’ on the other side.”

“Please do not tell me, Father, that this is a place of religion, for my fury at what these demons have done in the names of the gods is hideous.”

“It is!”

“Then I now see how unnecessary it is to make us participate here. It will be my pleasure.”

“And mine,” Red said, blood flowing from his blackened sockets in pride for his son. “Look at our first charade.”

“But wait, Father – you have not allowed me to say what scene is repeated over and over on the right side of this wrecked wicker gate.”

“Oh, well, if you must, you pus-born bastard, proceed!”

“There are seven or eight men dressed in flowing robes that are chained to a great chest.”

“And what sign is attached on the treasure chest, my son?”

“It says: ‘It was for freedom that you were set free! Do not become slaves to legalities again.’ What can that mean?”

“There never was a more stupid race than man, my blood-filled bag. Not only would this foolish lot lock up the freedom they were given in a great chest of rules and regulations, but they willingly kept their owneyes from seeing it. Watch what the approaching beasts do to them. You won’t stop laughing for many lifetimes.”

Indeed, large blood-encrusted harpies came with razor-sharp spoons. They fell on all the self-imposed victims with no delay or mercy, scooping the tongues and eyes out of the screaming creatures. The job was efficiently done, as it had been done billions of times before, and the bound preachers screamed with exactly the same measure as they had before the harpies fell upon them.

“Don’t worry,” said the father to his son. “They will heal and you will get to see this again before you fulfill your destiny as our (the only) world’s greatest horror – The Scream. I promised you. Isn’t this hilarious?”

The son was already rolling on the hissing floor, helplessly laughing/screaming.

* * *

“My son, look at this, the first episode of ‘The Milling Murderers.’ Now, this is not – I repeat – not a tableau. Not a viewing of something long past, long dead. This is actually happening as we speak, and as I remount you.”

A man was writhing face down on the floor of a metal room that glowed red-hot. Another man stood above him and poured acid from a bucket over every inch of his body. Anonymous mewls issued from the pudgy potato head as he screamed in horror and disbelief.

“How can you do this to me? I’m family!”

The torturing man tittered helplessly and kept pouring.

“My son,” Red said, “dare to answer me this: if there was another creator, would he have created something as hideous as that? I think not!”

* * *

Red kept feeding his massive bloody member into his own mouth. His son was whacking his father’s black orbs with a metal paddle. The father’s sore-encrusted sockets were constantly leaking a red fluid and the corners of his mouth quivered in weepy silence.

The member shivered as it began pumping huge draughts of syrup-thick goo down his fevered, raw throat.

* * *

“No, my son,” the demon said. “Look at it this way. I will rip this off-” Snap… tear… “-and feed it to you like-” Shove… rip… “-and make you eat this, too!” Rip… insert…

They looked down at the dismembered corpse. It was gazing up at them, helplessly, saying these words through weak lips: “When will you stop torturing me? Don’t you know I cannot protect myself? When will you stop torturing me?”

Its eyes were pleading up at them. The demon and the satyr wept with howls of laughter for a thousand lifetimes.

* * *

He vomited up a clotty mass and said to his father, “It’s like having two snow cones shoved into your eyes while you’re flying through the air at ninety-five miles per hour!”

“Yes, my son, now shut up while I tell you a hideous story. Once, there was a lie that we lived a mortal life before our entrance here. No idea is more foolish – the true and final horror that you must face is that you have only dreamed such nonsense.” Flatulence occurred. “You have always been here!”

Their screams continued as before, unabated.

* * *

The father watched as the son leaned over the gray-white corpse. The son popped a dry eye from a socket and threw it to the rock floor. It cracked open.

“You are the cruelest vampire satyr any father ever had.”

“I feel no remorse at all, Father.”

“My point exactly.”

They began laughing and continued to do so for many eons.

* * *

“Why do you fear to show me this next exhibit, my father?”

The son was standing before a heavy crimson curtain, thirty feet wide and thirty feet high, and he knew not how to part it.

“Because I fear, my son, that ye will ne’er stop laughing.” Red looked at his son lovingly and noticed bright orange flames playing among the blood-clotted flanks of his fur-coated legs. It was advancement, and the son was unaware of it.

“Show me, Father, show me!” His mouth blathered in his never-ending screams. His vampiric teeth bled freely, streaming down his beard.

“Very well, bastard son.” Red then addressed the curtain. “Open… now!”

The curtain parted slowly. The son was unable to take in everything he saw.

“Oh, Father, what is this?” the son screamed/whispered through his quivering mouth.

There was a portly man in the middle of the red-lit room. A great silver machine encased his backside. Long needle-like arms protruded from the sides and entered deep into the ribs of the sweating man, penetrating repeatedly while the unseen rear of the squid-like machination thrust into him much like the workings of a steady clock. His eyes squeezed shut for the level of pain unknown to anyone

“He has no legs, my beautiful, bastard son. Well, they had to be removed in order to fit him for the machine, which is by far the most necessary thing, as you will soon see.”

There was a dull black machine in front of the fat man. A large black pipe came from somewhere above the room and fed into the top of it. A thick tube then ran from the machine into the man’s mouth, which was constantly salivating and blubbering. His throat expanded as some unidentified product sluiced rapidly down his gullet.

Standing all around the machines, watching him, screaming but doing their best to look as if they were hysterically laughing, were ancient bodies. They passed around a golden key between the fifty-odd souls. When one received it, a body seemed eager and drooling to put it in a machines’ slot. It only caused one thing to happen to both apparatuses at once: they sped up in their intensity. As the old souls watched this, especially the silver rods entering the sides of the man in a blur, they laughed and laughed, and quickly let another have the key. The fun would quite literally nevercease.

“My son, listen to this wise tale of one of The Milling Murderers. This creature told the world (when he believed he lived in another world as a preacher of hideous dogma) that a creator came and told him that if this world did not give him many millions of [monies] for his ministry, that this creator would take him off the Earth and send him to this place.”

“Oh Father, surely no one-”

“Shut up or I shall scrape your soul raw, my beloved. Yes, the old ones believed this in that other dream. Actually, he was right here the whole time. So because he dared to have the dream that was nearly as mighty as The Mighty One (who is always here), he was given more pain. The pain that was given by merely blocking and unblocking his breathing was hooked to the entire sewer system of this world we love and live in and grow in. Can you imagine the exquisite delight we receive when we realize that for all [time] he is caught in that moment when someone drowns; yet, he can do nothing to make it stop? He is so preoccupied with struggling to breathe (which is a permanent, losing battle), that he, in his insanity, does not know that others here make it infinitely worse. He has always been as you see him here.”

“What is the machine behind him doing, Father? I nearly fear to know its meaning.”

“And well you should, bastard. He also dreamed he had a son that looked just like him. He dreamed that this foolish puppet-son took over his wonderful ministry and propagated even more slimy lies. The son has always been here inside what is called The Mounting Machine. You and I know that this filth had no son, but it vexes this hideous, religious creature to no end to think that he was responsible for bringing him here. We are endlessly delighted. We have permanently fused – made one flesh forever – the son’s mouth over the spewing, splattering buttocks of the ancient, sweating father, and he feverishly grips all his father can give. Do you know the grief this must bring the father, to know the great gift he has bestowed on his son?”

The father was right. The son nearly never stopped laughing over that one. His satyr sides split like rotted leather and his empty sockets burst rusty clots. The veins on his forehead throbbed and bled profusely.

“Hey, wait, Father! He is not a Milling Murderer. He cannot goanywhere.”

“I know, isn’t that priceless?”

They laughed again until a century of leap years were past.

“Let’s go to another exhibit, my son. Even more horrible than this one, if it can be believed.”

“It cannot, my father, it surely cannot!”

* * *

In a smoldering pit – in the bottom of a cavern – there were two quivering corpses. Some would say they were dreaming the dreams of the dead. They had shivered for mere hours, but it seemed in their fevered dreams that billions and trillions of eons had passed.

Under this intense heat, the quaking dreaming shapes were becoming ash-colored mounds. And still they slept, unable to awaken, unable to cry out, unable (more horrible still) to cease their dreaming.

The dream they shared would go on and on and on and on…

* * *

The session was interrupted when one of the young students asked what these mounds were.

The old man laughed in the nude. “Oh, come now, you’re pulling my leg. Anyonecan see what they are. Let’s get back to our story.”

“Of course. Yes, of course. Let’s.”

* * *

[Handwriting analysis has clearlydetermined that this next section was notpart of the original manuscript. The Greek is modern, not Koine Greek at all. The consensus is that a vindictive writer put his/her enemies in this tableau as an older type of fiction known as “revenge literature.” But, having said that, the editors have determined that it shouldbe included, because it is so much in keeping with the playful spirit of Infernus.]

“THE CLIFFS AT HINTZ-BALZER”

Through a narrow archway they crept. The satyr was amazed when it opened into a wide dimly lit countryside. Nearly swallowed by the weak light of an orange moon, he could barely see a large grassy expanse that ran up to a cliff. He could hear waves crashing loudly below them and to their left. A wooden sign, covered with gray vines, was posted just outside the archway.

“Oh, Father, I cannot read the sign. It’s too dim in here.”

“Pick up a handful of hot coals from the corridor we just passed through and read it.”

He obeyed and asked, “Is it always this dim, Father?”

“Yes. You’ll know why in a moment. Look there.” He pointed a talon at a cold, orange globe that hung in the distant heavens. It seemed to hang in the sky long dead, glaring accusingly at them. “Do you see that, son?”

“The moon is waning here, making everything glow orange.”

“It is alwaysorange here, my son, because thatis the sun. And it has been waning for many thousands of years now.”

“Surely not, Father.”

“It is so.”

The son held the glowing embers in his hand calmly, for no heat of such small consequence could affect him. He brought it nearer to the sign until he could read it. The vines partly obscured the lettering, so he pulled the dry, cracking fingers aside. As they gave way, he could smell a musty aroma, like earth and wood. When the coal illuminated the sign, he saw, tucked deep inside the vines, a skull, cracked and gray. He thought he heard, coming from the center of it, a woman weeping softly.

“Father, there is a skull pushed back, entangled in the vines. It is barely lit by the light. Maybe it was never meant to be discovered.”

“Sometimes, you are so dull of wit that I wonder if there really is any hope for you.”

“Surely there is not, my father. Surely not. The sign says: ‘The Cliffs At Hintz-Balzer.’ Were these cliffs of historical significance?”

“No, for when the preacher and his accomplice, the village idiot, dreamed of another world, as they have for thousands of lifetimes by now, their beautiful murders were never discovered. So clever were they.”

A few yards away, there were shadowy blobs, pale in this light, involved in heavy, hurried activity.

The father said, “Approach softly and you will see their gorgeous pleasure-quest.”

What the son saw was a man lashed with tight leather straps to a wooden wheel, clothed only in an opened long coat, completely exposing his nakedness. Seven or eight dwarves swarmed ceaselessly over his face and lower extremities. His eyes were punched with such force by two or three of them, that from a distance they could hear the smart thuds and bones cracking.

“But, Father, I cannot see – oh, Father, they are chewing off his… his genitals. I can see that the eyes and lower extremities heal instantly, then they, oh, Father, no man could ever-”

“It isn’t painful to me,” the demon said, “so it doesn’t concern me.”

“And near his feet is the head of a Neanderthal. A brute. Like the head of a gorilla. With its brain exposed.”

The son saw that in their haste to pound the man’s eyes into oblivion, and their failure at it, and the chewing of his lower extremities, they often stepped into the soft, green sick brain. It cursed and cursed and wished it could reach them. Every filthy thing spewed from its mouth, but it had no calming effect on the dwarves.

“But, Father, it can’ttalk if it is only a head. The voice box would-”

“Beneath the ground is where the rest of its nearly seven-foot frame exists. Be silent and I will tell you of their dream they believe was their world before.”

The son fell silent, eager to discover the answer to this enigma.

“When that world was not so old,” the father began, “the preacher cut a handsome figure in his long waistcoat and lengthy, straight black hair. No one ever suspected he had an accomplice in town, for they could not have been more different.

“This head believed he was the village idiot, and was never called anything other than ‘the ape, Jerrod.’ His heavy brow only caused the primitive villa to hate him more and fear him. He was never allowed to mix with the townsfolk or date their women. He was frequently chased through the streets by children throwing rocks at him and shouting, ‘Go up, you ape! Go up!’ He slept in barns and wept piteously.

“Every year a fair came to town and they loved it. But one year a very different wagon appeared. Its outside was painted bright oranges and reds, and was a festive wagon indeed. The occupants were dwarves, seven or eight in all. They put on plays, sang songs and played many wild instruments that delighted everyone in town, except one individual. The preacher was jealous of the people’s love for them, and became adamant with Jerrod the ape that they were cursed by God, and their small shapes were a sign of their accursed nature. He told the monster ape that it would be a grace to God if they were stolen away at night, locked in their wagon, and driven over the cliffs to be dashed on the rocks below.

“The village idiot always believed the preacher, for he was treated kindly by the man of God, so that is exactly what he did. When dusk fell, like this permanent dusk you see around you, all the dwarves were dashed to pieces on the rocks below and no one ever heard of them again. Both of them were idiots; they have never been anywhere but here.

“The preacher knew they would be seen in broad daylight, and in total darkness, the preacher and the ape would not have the satisfaction of seeing the dwarves destroyed on the rocks. They listened with glee to their screams and watched them flail as their broken bodies washed out in the ocean. The preacher and the ape laughed until their sides ached.”

“My kind of people, Father. But the preacher does not make sound as he-”

“It is true that they have been punching him in the eyes nonstop for many millennia, and they have been tearing off his privates with their teeth, and they grow back instantly, but this is not so for the tongue. They have torn the tongue out with their teeth and swallowed it many lifetimes ago. He does not have the satisfaction of begging them to stop, or of them hearing him screaming. It isfunny, isn’t it?

“Have you ever seen anyonestruck that hard in the eyes before, my son? And when one dwarf becomes tired, another takes his place. He doesn’t remember any time before this where his genitals weren’t being chewed. His poor sick mind constructed this fantasy to try to make sense of the complete senselessness of this. Nothing less. Pathetic, really. I have stood here many lifetimes completely silent, listening to their hungry munching and loud punching. Just wistfully watching.”

“Surely it is of a romantic nature, Father.”

“If you loved pleasing me, my son, you would drive your hooves into the ape’s eyes for many a lifetime.”

And the son did. In the dim, orange light, they went to their work, the father and son kicking energetically, repeatedly, into the head that sat above the ground. It cursed and screamed and begged, and they laughed so hard it soon made standing impossible.

The preacher shuddered, shivering in his pain, but could do nothing else, which made them laugh harder. The dwarves sped up their punching and munching, pleased but never laughing. They were much too serious and intent on their job for that.

A good time was had by all.

Thus ends the episode entitled “The Cliffs At Hintz-Balzer.”

* * *

They came to an open space and saw a man’s behind. The front part of his jerking body was lost within a fiercely glowing furnace. The heat was so intense that the son wondered if he had ever felt anything so wild in his life. It caused the machine to expand and retract without cease; probably intensifying the temperature to unimaginable heights the whole while. The son felt an internal giggle-fest coming on and satisfaction seethed within his shrieking chest.

A child-sized skeleton was whacking the bottom with the speed of a hummingbird’s wings. Red drew near and asked him to hold still for one moment. A strangely adult voice came forth from somewhere within the bones as it stopped whacking the pulped gray bottom.

“I will only hold for a moment. I must be about my eternal pleasure-quest.”

“Quick, son, read what is on the paddle. Quick, now, approach softly.”

The son did so and saw right before the skeleton began swinging again. “’Fathers, love your children and do not exasperate them.’ You mean-”

“Yes, my son. This creature dreamed of a world where he was a dogma deliverer and he had a woman who bore him this son. Foolish dreamer; he was only remembering his future. He only dreamed he killed the son so that he might feel better about being treated thusly here. He stripped the son of all his flesh in that other world, then poured salt on the wounds. What he really did was serve his ego and play like he was one of the gods. He thought, ‘If I kill the son in the dream state, maybe he will cease to exist in reality.’ How foolish.”

“Shall we find paddles and swing to our purpose, Father?”

“Yes, let’s.”

They found many paddles resting on the wall on the other side of the oven. The son chose one that said, “If you have love for another, they will know you!” The father snatched one that was covered with teeny writing. “Take the log out of your own eye first, then you will see the microscopic speck in your brother’s eye!” There the vampiric satyr son also found settings on the oven to increase the heat, and did so to an impossible level, then laughed. The father was already swinging the paddle with blurring speed against the man’s belly and exposed genitals. The son joined in and began applying the paddle to his backside. They enjoyed millennia doing this. It never grew tiring or boring. It was indeed a pleasure-quest.

“Is there anything that can be done,” the son asked, “to make this machine glow white-hot for many lifetimes?” He was smiling with a foot-wide grin.

The child-sized skeleton approached them and spoke matter-of-factly. “If you fill the iron beast’s stomach with metal ingots from that pile, I trust it will test the metal’s ability to endure for thousands of lifetimes.”

“Will the piglet squeal?” the son asked, his smile widening.

The child-skeleton grandly waved his arm around the room. “See. See.”

So the father and son filled the iron beast with metal bars until they were forced to withdraw from the roaring heat. The room instantly burned a violent gold as the heat could be felt, even in theirbones.

The piglet within, if it was possible, screamed even louder and more earnestly than before. His golden legs pumped furiously but futilely. This had happened many millions of times before, the father explained between belly laughs. And it was always greeted with exactly the same response.

The son saw radiant amber fissures ripping along the surface of the machine, thick golden veins running down the metal cylinder, pulsing, threatening to burst its seams, and nearly firing liquid ore upon the pleased observers.

All within the room burned glittering gold, but the broiling creature locked deep within the embrace of the iron beast shrieked and shrieked, and the father and son laughed louder and longer. Longer and louder.

* * *

“My son, look at this stupid woman. She thought she was doing her gods a great service by having other people put to death because they did not believe in her dogma church.”

“Oh, Father, this is almost hideous, if it weren’t so funny. Look!”

“What do you see, my golden son; for behold, that is what you are becoming!” It was true. The son’s skin was becoming shiny and gold. “It is from supping on the buttocks of the golden demon. It sets you up to be great in size and the most powerful of the demons here in the real world.”

“My father, it is of no consequence to me. What I see is this: the wench is revolving over heated rocks on a spit that has pierced her anus and protrudes from her mouth. Oh, how slowly she turns. Many bruised and broken bodies are gathered around her, and they are shoving long metal poles in all of her openings.”

“Yes,” Red said, stifling a snigger, “and making new ones.”

A swollen, bloated man (or woman) approached her spinning corpse and inserted a long fork into both of her orbital sockets. It plunged them in and out. Many others did the same. Her breasts were slit. Green pus ran out and splashed on the rocks, heating them hotter still.

“Is this good for her, my son, or can you think of other delicious things to do to her? She was, after all, a queen in her day when the Horse Nebula was first discovered in the distant skies.”

“I can think of something to do to her which will please me greatly.”

“Good, go to it with a hearty will.”

As the son approached her, she seemed to look helplessly at him with her shattered, ragged eyes. Pity, was it? The son grabbed her sweaty green locks that clung to her wet shoulders. He pulled with all his might, which was considerable. She couldn’t scream any louder, so she continued as before, unabated. The son felt the scalp give way and he threw the hair onto the rocks to watch them curl and smoke and stink.

“Bravo, son, you have done well. Come here.”

The son returned to the father’s side and had to wait until he could undouble from his laughter. “My son, I am permitted to give you a gift at this time. Sink your beautiful aching teeth into my shoulder and draw from a trueWell of Strength. Sup on your father’s Red blood and be even stronger than ordinary Golden demons.”

The son grabbed the father’s shoulder in his growing talons and steadied him as he bit into what tasted like the most delicious fruit of all time. He supped long and hard at this, and felt strengthened beyond description. The father, weakened, fell to the heated rocks, unconscious for a [fortnight] time and a few times. The son heard the head crack wetly and laughed. Completely void of any empathy, he shrugged his great shoulders, and waited for the father to regain enough strength to stand and continue the training.

* * *

“Look, my son, at the greatest preachers of all time.” Red pointed to a most heated exhibit. Before he could explain what he was seeing, the son was falling into a boiling pool of urine, laughing mindlessly. “Now, stop that, filth! I must tell you what it is.”

It was a garden of heated sand squares. Each square had diamond borders that rose from the floor only an inch or two. All preachers that occupied these millions and millions of shapes were bound, so it was irrelevant that little divided them.

“Look at thisfool, my son. He is suspended in space, connected by his arms and legs to the roof of this cave by chains. Imagine how it must be to die forever without the energy to even feel your dislocated sockets. But, even more horrible, he cannot move – his arms and legs are pulled up behind him, deliciously, hideously. He must silently face the message handwritten in the sand that is heated to seven million degrees below him. His mouth, all mouths of the enslaved here, are very crudely sewn shut with large embalmer’s hooks. See how his wounds are millions of years old, yet never healing, never scabbing over? What is the message written by a demon that hates him even more than I hate you? What does it say that heats his head and sears his eyes but he must read forever? It is cruel, but it must be read, and loudly.”

“Oh, Father-” The son fell to the ground and fitfully laughed until great blisters arose on his scalp and popped into pustules of thin liquid. “May I mount him and take his virginity billions of times for his foolishness? Oh, great, bastard Father?”

“Yes, you may, but I must warn you, his ‘virginity’ you speak of has been removed many billions of times ago. There is naught of it left.”

The son mounted the preacher and roughly forced his large member into the rotund man, and fell to raping him with a grace hitherto unthought-of, and he screamed the message out loud directly into the ears of the bastard that lay silently below him. He felt the chain pull on all the sockets and sinews of the roasting preacher who was baked into jerky. But no bone snapped as each thrust of the joyous vampiric satyr strained with all the hated power of his massive, muscular, rippling body.

Lo! There were e’en the beginnings of great gray wings that the son was unaware of and the father could not tell him. The father saw them peeking through the flesh of his shoulders.

“This is a participatory exhibit. All of Infernus’ multicolored demons have had their worst field day with this idiot child, and their unholy ilk.”

The son kept filling the preacher with his ever-growing member and shouting the sand-written message into his ears, as many have done many times. “All men will know you are my disciples if you love one another!”