Infernus

The statue, animated, was pointing in the distance with its left arm and tirelessly plunging a knife into its own chest, over and over again.

“What is this?” the man asked.

The gorilla drew him to his side with a massive, leathery paw and nuzzled his neck. He barely whispered into one of the man’s ears. “See the plaque on the pedestal? What does it say?”

“It says, ‘Man’s Best.’ What does that mean? ‘Man’s Best… Friend’? What?”

“No,” the gorilla replied gently. “This is the best that man can possibly do.”

The statue opened its mouth and spoke. “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you.”

It kept its left arm pointing in the distance, at an unseen enemy. It continuously plunged the knife into its chest with malicious intent. And glee.

“This is the best that man has to offer?” the black man asked.

“That’s right.” The gorilla laughed.

“We’re screwed.” The man sighed. “Poor statue, thanks for reminding us how doomed we are.”

“It’s not a statue,” the gorilla calmly replied, then laughed at the shock on his pupil’s tormented face.

The gorilla took the man there, coupling with him in a pitch-black corridor. The connecting cave drew dark, signaling that it had shown them all of its great and secret show.

“That tableau seemed vaguely familiar to me,” the son said, clearly confused.

“I don’t suppose I have ever seen the likes of that tableau before,” Red stated.

They moved on.

* * *

They approached a gray and brown cemetery with two small buildings in the middle of the entrance. A weak sun, unseen, flooded the area with an amber overcast.

A metal track suspended on waist-high wooden poles ran between the buildings and disappeared into large concrete arches on either end.

The father and son walked through the entrance and stood in front of the track.

“What is this, Father?”

Before he could answer, his attention was captured by five young blonde girls marching with rigid, militaristic steps toward the track. Their ages were mere years apart, and one looked identical to another. Each held a long, broad-bladed knife in their right hands.

A distant clacking began until a gray flat car — glowing bright red, as if heated — rolled into view from the building entrance on the right. (Its ride, therefore, was clockwise.)

A woman was securely lashed to the car with massive chains. She was dressed in a white linen dress trimmed with lace. Her hair was golden and fell about her shoulders in long curls. Her face was smeared with despair and resignation. She had to look over her shoulder at the young girls, for she was turned away from them. The chains pulled her down toward the car’s surface and left her back stretched tight and exposed.

Two things happened when the car clacked and clattered and reached the equidistant place between the buildings:

Flames roared from the building’s arch on the left, which sounded like an angry animal.

The young girls began penetrating her back with the blades. They ripped them backward and out, looping thin strings, slung here and there, and covered the five girls and woman with wet red. The woman’s only response was that she desperately tried to disappear into the metal car, though it burned bright crimson. There was no cry from her. The girls did not shriek with delight, but merely grunted with their efforts.

Before the car entered the flaming arch of the building on the left, two more things happened:

The girls stopped stabbing the miserable woman. They held the blades over their heads, shook them like savages, but made no victorious cry. Red strings were flinging all over and down on them.

Then the flames intercepted the woman. Her body instantly bloomed bright orange and she became a fat crackling jittering lump before she disappeared into the glowing hole.

“Father-”

“Aaaah, this is a beautiful scene,” said Red, ignoring the son as he was often wont to do. “Do you wish to pretend this has meaning?”

“Yes.”

“Very well.” He sighed. “She was asked, many, many years ago if she knew why she was here. Foolishly, she should have said that there was no good reason she was there/here.”

“No?”

“No. She believed she came from another place called ancient Greece, where she had been a queen. She said her name had been Gamoor, and she had, in a strange fit of maladies, drowned her five daughters in a large vat of boiling pig’s blood.”

“But, why this punishment, Father?” The son swept his arms toward the comedy playing out before them.

“This is the revenge that was set before her for believing such nonsense. No such thing ever happened. And there are no daughters. It was asked of five demons if they would pose as her daughters that she’d dreamt and torment her for all eternity. Naturally, they were only too happy to comply.”

“How long has this been happening?”

“It cannot be expressed properly for you to comprehend, but it’s close to billions of infinities.”

“This cemetery is somber and beautiful, Father,” the son said as the woman came out of the building on the right once more, whole and ready to begin again.

Father and son watched, enchanted, with blood streaming from their sockets like warm tears.

* * *

Red light weakly flared up from within a cave. An eternal play continued inside, ceaseless.

“My son, this is a bit of drama from your dream world. From the past, we have an infinite number of these little plays. Only the sweetest ones play here. The daintiest morsels are repeated!”

The son gazed at the scene until he perceived the point. He then laughed so hard that his pain threshold increased.

A little boy of four or five was dancing around a replica of an earth kitchen while his mother stood above him with a large carving knife. Down upon his weaving head and waving arms, always connecting with the child, never once missing. She didn’t laugh — she was much too busy.

* * *

“Look at this hideous tableau, my son. What do you see?”

“I see a dark room beginning to glow red. It throbs there, a bloody-looking room. There are two men in the middle, lying flat on their backs on the floor. Writhing, oh, my father, writhing like little babies; like spoiled babies… ”

The demon looked at the son and loved him. “Yes, they are burning, as we all are.”

“Two giant, blood-muscled canines break through the shattering door, and — oh, my father! — make me turn from this vision!”

“You may not!” screamed Red.

“Oh, the monster dogs shred the men and leap on them — their screams — they plunge their broad members into them, and frothingly rape them as they disembowel them! Oh, my sad, sick father, what have you done to me?”

“Shown you that the one thing mortals think they leave behind in death is their conscience — it is only amplified here.” The son could almost swear he heard a piano playing dramatically in the background. “We’ve-” the demon begins to weep piteously. “thought of-” sob “-everything!”

“Look! Another room, my father.” The son ignored Red’s emotion, for it seemed to him quite irrelevant. “It blazes up, glowing yellow. What is this?”

“Surely there is beauty here, also, Son. Let’s listen in, shall we? I think we are coming in the middle of a conversation. First, what do you actually see?”

“I see a dwarfish, bright blue demon, his limbs all cramped and crabbed to the point of being morosely disabled, standing hunched over before a woman burning like a torch. I can barely see her features as they are blurred beneath roaring flames.”