Lucifer's Lottery (16 page)

You strain your memory, picturing a beaten paperback with a foamy green face and glass shards pushing through the head. “Oh, yeah! You’re the guy who wrote ‘The Shuttered Room!’ Wow, I
loved
that story!”

Howard’s bluish white pallor turns pink as he stares, vibrating in his spring-loaded seat. Then he hangs his head over the side of the open-topped vehicle and throws up.

“Are you, are you all right?” you ask.

Howard regains his composure, slumping. “Sir, I can tell you with incontrovertible authority that I most certainly did
not
write ‘The Shuttered Room.’ ”

“Oh, sorry. You know, I could’ve sworn that your name was on it.”

Questions upon questions still bubble up in your gourd-head, but they all stall with every glimpse you take of the nefarious street.
Panels
of guts raised like Sheetrock,
cinder blocks
of such butcher’s waste formed walls, sidewalks, and even entire buildings. You turn away as you drive past.

“And in the event that you’re wondering,” Howard mentions, “you’re able to traverse the Snot-Gourd by means of a Psychic-Servo motor. Your impulses engage the gears.”

You hadn’t thought about that, nor about how the steam-car itself is even being maneuvered. “Is it some kind of black magic that’s driving the car?”

“Not at all, and my apologies for failing to introduce you to our driver.” Howard leans forward and pulls back a webbed canopy before them, which reveals a hidden driver’s compartment whose bow tie–shaped steering wheel is surrounded by knobbed levers. Seated just behind the wheel is—

Holy SMOKES!
you think.

—a stunningly beautiful nude woman. Hourglass curves rise up to grapefruit-size breasts, which offer nipples distending like overlarge Hershey’s Kisses. By any sexist standard, she’s perfect in every way . . . save for one anomaly.

She’s made of clay.

“She has no name,” Howard explains. “She’s a Golemess. Dis-Enchanted riverbed clay is what she’s made of. Her male counterpart—Golems—are quite larger, while these female versions are manufactured more petitely, and to be sexually provocative.”

The wet grayish clay shines—indeed—as if a centerfold has been airbrushed. Her hair, however—on her head as well as between her fabulously toned legs—bears sculptor’s marks.

A Golemess, huh?
you think.
That’s a pretty attractive piece of clay
. . .

“Quite a comely monster,” Howard says, “though my detractors could hardly conceive of me making such an observation, I suppose. They said I was homosexual, for goodness sake, in spite of my having
married
a woman! Regrettably, though, love is quite temporary, and I’ll admit, her pocketbook was impressive to a poor artist such as
myself. But, more dread luck—barely a year after we were wed, she was dismissed from her lucrative position! We had to move into an absolutely
pestilent
rooming house in Brooklyn; one could scarcely distinguish between the tenants and the rodents! And forty dollars a month the slum barons charged!”

You hardly hear Howard’s odd aside of petulance, in favor of scrutinizing the Golemess’s astonishing features. She was what Randal would probably call a “brick shithouse,” and . . .

You could literally build one out of her
.

“Pardon my digression,” Howard says. “It’s just that I have so much rancor now—a sin, of course: wrath—but still . . .” Howard seems dejected. “I can scarcely believe that Seabury Quinn was the name of the day while I foundered on considerably lower tiers. Gad! Have you ever read his work? Let’s hope not. As for the Golemess, you may be wondering if it’s sexually
functional
, which I can happily or unhappily asseverate. Quite a lot in Hell is, for reasons that need not be expounded upon. The common veils of empiricism are no less prevalent here than in the Living World. So, too, are the notions of invidiousness. I was an atheist but hardly a
bad
sort, yet here I am. The circumstances which led to my Damnation are barely even explicable. You, on the other hand, are in quite another circumstance, hmm?”

Your pumpkin-face frowns; at least you are getting the knack of it now. But you barely understand your fussy tour guide. “Because I’m going to the seminary, to become a priest?”

Howard grimaces over a bump and another waft of organic stench. “Miasmal! Ah, but to respond to your legitimate query, you, Mr. Hudson, are more than just a priest-to-be, you’re one who is spiritually well-placed on the—how shall I phrase it?—the plus side of the Fulcrum . . .”

Your furry brow arches.
The Fulcrum
. . . The deaconess had said something similar, hadn’t she?

The steam-car, at last, pulls off the chunky pavement as the Golemess turns the wheel. A sign floats past:
TOLL BOOTH AHEAD
. You can’t keep your thoughts straight.

“I just don’t get it. The Fulcrum?”

“Think of the apothecarist’s triple-beam balance,” Howard tells you, “where the weights on one side are godly acts, and on the other side,
un
godly acts. Very recently, I’m told, you have tipped the scale to 100
percent
Salvation.”

“Howard, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“In spite of your
capacity
for sin—which all men and women possess—you’ve managed to clear the balance, from 99 percent, to 100. It is that achievement which has enabled you to win the Senary. You’ve tried with much diligence to lead a life that acknowledges God in the utmost, and when you
do
sin, you’re truly sorry and you make every effort to repent. It’s your own volition, Mr. Hudson, your own—and I emphasize—your own free will. That notion alone—free will—provides the summation of it all.”

The steam of your soul feels hot in confusion. “Free will? A triple-beam balance? Ninety-nine to 100 percent?”

“Your excursion several nights ago? The Scriptures state quite interestingly that ‘a whore is a deep ditch.’ ”

The line rings a bell in your bizarre head.
Those two hookers at the Lounge the other night
. . . “You don’t mean—”

“You had decided in your heart that you would partake in the delights of two ladies of the night? You even willingly ventured to procure the necessary funds, yet, at the last moment you decided to bestow those funds upon someone else, someone in grievous need . . .”

The redneck woman with the two kids at the Dollar General!
you remember.

“And what you hitherto purveyed was what God perceived as the ultimate act of charity, so said St. Luke,
‘Whosoever has two coats must share with one who has none . . . ’ ”

Your jaw, however awkwardly, drops. “I gave the money to the poor woman instead of the two bar whores . . .”

“Indeed,” Howard says, half smiling. “And that gesture suffices. Allow me to convey it this way: if you were to die right now, your soul would ascend to the Kingdom of Heaven in a most instantaneous manner, where you would live in the Glory of God, forever.”

You feel a vast echo in your psyche.

When Howard taps the shapely clay shoulder of the Golemess, the steam-car stops, and he looks right at you, probably for effect.

“Lucifer wants that 100 percent, Mr. Hudson, and he’s willing to pay
exorbitantly
for it . . .”

Your head seems to quiver. “I—”

“Of course, it’s much to take in, and it’s our good fortune that our previous time constraint no longer exists, so put your multitudinous questions aside for a bit, and enjoy the ride . . .”

You take the advice as the car clatters on, though you have to admit, there’s not much to enjoy. You seem to be leaving the Offal District through an archway in a great fortresslike wall of hardened organic waste via blocks the size of minibuses. Next comes a road of crushed sulphur, which grinds grittily beneath the car’s narrow tires. “Here a toll, there a toll, everywhere a toll,” Howard complains as they idle up to a shack whose single occupant is a man with a face axed down the middle.

“Toll,” the attendant somehow utters.

Howard hands him a canvas sack that contains something the size of a melon. The toll-taker peeks in, nods, then waves them on.

“What was in the bag?” you have to ask.

“The gonad of an immature Spermatagoyle. They sell
them to wealthy culinarists and executive chefs who carefully extract the seminiferous tubules. It’s a favorite dish of Grand Dukes, Barons, and the higher Nobiliary, for it’s the closest thing you’ll ever get to spaghetti in Hell.” Howard’s brow raises. “But I suppose you’re a bit of a culinarist yourself. It’s my understanding that you are an oysterman, yes?”

“I used to shuck oysters in a tourist trap,” you append.

“Ah, the fruits of the sea. I grew up in a veritable
nexus
of shellfish and crustaceans. Oysters as large as your open hand, and lobsters the size of infants.” Then Howard’s face seems to corrugate in aggravation. “And wouldn’t you know it? My iodine allergy prevented me from being able to eat
any of it!
”

Poor guy
, you think.

“And though you excelled in university,” Howard states the dim truth, “you might be interested to know that it was understandably forecast that I would surely do the same at Brown University, but—curse Pegana—my shattered nerves—thanks to a mother off her rocker—foreclosed the possibility of my even graduating high school. Lo, I would never be a university man . . .”

This guy really gets off track
, you think. “Where are we going?”

“The Humanus Viaduct, which runs from the Dermas District to Corpus Peak, crossing the Styx.”

DERMABURG
, reads a skin-toned sign that floats by.

Howard gestures the sign. “This District is made of—as you may have ascertained—skin.” And as Howard speaks the words, your Ocularus eyes remain peeled on the new surroundings. Row houses and squat buildings line the fleshy street, all covered by variously colored cuttings of skin. Some seem papered with dermal sheets as impeccable as the skin of the deaconess, while other edifices suffer from acne
and other outbreaks. The car, then, turns right at a perspiry intersection. You glimpse the sign:
FASCIA BLVD.

“A whole town made of skin?”

“These days, the majority of it is Hexegenically Engineered, save for the loftier real estate here, south of town, where
natural
epidermis is procured. Oh, there’s a City Flensing Crew now . . .”

You notice the activities on one corner, where a troop of beastly, slug-skinned things with horns, talons, and terrifying musculatures prepare themselves around a row of Humans pilloried nude. Cuts are made at the back of each victim’s neck, taloned fingers slide in, and then the entire “body suit” of epidermis is sloughed off, leaving the victim skinless from the neck down.

You wince as the beasts go right down the line.

“The attendants are called Ushers, a longtime pure-breed that serve as government workers and police,” Howard explains. “Human skin is much more valuable.”

“Ushers,” you murmur. “So they . . . peel the skin off and then—”

“Stretch it over wall frames.” Then Howard points again.

At the opposing corner, workmen congregate at a corner unit (more of the hunched, implike creatures) to evidently build an addition. But when two of them raise a wall frame, you see that long, banded-together bones comprise each strut rather than two-by-fours. After the frame has been erected, other workmen stretch skin over it.

As for the pilloried “victims,” you see that they’re actually willing participants; when released—skinless now—an Usher hands them some money, then sends them on their way.

“Lucifer prefers Hell’s denizens to
choose
to sell their skin, rather than merely taking it,” Howard says.

“They
sell
their own skin?”

“For narcotics. The Department of Addictions has devised delights that make de Quincey’s opiates and Poe’s liquor seem paltry. Few can rehabilitate themselves, but when they do, they’re forced into a Retoxification Center.”

You watch the skinless queues trudge to a nearby fleshy alley, where an overcoated Imp in sunglasses waits to sell them various bags of cryptic powders. When one Human woman—who’d been attractive before her flensing—failed to produce sufficient funds, the Imp said, “A blow job or an ovary. You know the prices, lady,” and then he parts his overcoat to sport a large maroon penis covered with barnacles. “To hell with that,” she says, then sits down, crosses her ankles behind her neck, and sticks a hand into her sex.

You don’t watch the rest.

The Golemess turns onto another road called Scleraderma Street, where some of the structures have hair growing on their roofs; others have collapsed to ramshackle piles from some dermatological disease; one has broken out into shingles, another is covered with warts.

And on another corner, you glimpse another sign:
SKINAPLEX
.

“What’s that?”

“The motion picture show? They’re rather similar here as in the Living World. And perhaps you’ll be satisfied to know that Fritz Lang and D. W. Griffith are
still
honing their art.”

Now you can see the marquee, complete with blinking lights:
TRIPLE FEATURE! THE SIX COMMANDMENTS—WITHERING HEIGHTS—ALL DOGS GO TO HELL
.

“Can we get out of here?” you plead. “I’ve had enough of skin-town.”

Howard chuckles. “Save for the revolting B.O., it’s actually one of the more sedate Districts. You’ll be happy to know, however, that we’re merely passing through.”

The last row of houses, you notice, are actually sweating.
As you pass the District gates, more glaze-eyed denizens straggle in and head to the pillories.

Now the road rises through a yellow fog so thick, you can’t make out the endless scarlet sky. “So now it’s the . . .”

“The Humanus Viaduct. It begins at a lofty elevation and provides a spectacular view. Lucifer wants you to be fully aware of the
immensity
of the Mephistopolis . . .”

Lucifer wants me
. . . Your thoughts stall.

“He hopes that you’ll want to return.”