Infernus

The man and demon (who were now one) came to a tree where two men writhed as one.

“See this, my son, and know what this scene is.”

The man looked out of the demon’s eyes. He saw a man bent over at the waist due to the weight on his back. A full-grown man was welded to him, joined back-to-stomach, and he was always in the penetration position. He never stopped pounding him from behind.

“In life, my son,” Red said, “the man had an uncanny fear of being raped.” The demon looked at the man lovingly and they both wept at the idea of anyone fearing such loving attention. Great red teardrops fell on the man’s uplifted face as he gazed adoringly at his father’s caring visage. “But, as usual, he was only remembering his future. For here it is the only thing that he will ever experience. It is the only place he has ever been.”

When the man looked again from the demon’s eyes, he saw the man beneath the tree, the one being pounded from behind. The eyes of this one were registering unnamable terror, and after seeing the man inside the demon, they widened further.

The thought splattered like acid in the man’s decaying brain. “Others see my humiliation, and they are much entertained!”

“Yes,” thought the man, his anger burning equally hot, “unless you are me in a thousand generations.”

“We are all one, my son,” the demon said. “When you learn that secret, thankfully, your threshold of pain will be awarded an increase of three greatness levels. Then, the Eternal Baptism will be yours: for your scream will widen and your skull will crack — and that is the baptism known as ‘The Mark of His Father.’

“My son, I must show you another dream. Even though you are deep inside me, I will lean over this precipice and you tell me what you see.”

When Red leaned over the edge, the son saw a barrel at the bottom. But what was most interesting about it was that it was not still…

“Inside the barrel is what looks like molasses or oil. I can barely see something brown and wet, churning and churning; never stopping.”

“See this woman being lowered into the barrel by a long chain, connected to a hook that is buried deep in her neck? Yes, above us. Well, let me tell you about a dream she has over and over in this place. Every few [times] here, she is pulled out and then she is lowered again to suffer [many million infinities]. When she is not in the barrel, she has a very foolish dream. Would you like me to tell you so you can laugh and laugh many times?”

“Yes, oh Father, I would love it.”

“Well, look in this churning barrel and despair, because when she has a respite from it, and she is burning in this fire, she dreams of another world, quite limp and unconscious; I assure you. A hideous world, but not as hideous as this world, of course. She dreams she is a young girl and has a child thing and puts it in a garbage dumpster, and that is the end of that. But sadly, in that world, the child thing was not alone, for the dumpster had a few permanent residents. Big, juicy rats. The mother did not know this, for she had left there, and went to meet a boyfriend, and they had a wonderful lunch at a restaurant. She did not know. She could not hear the screams, or know the terror of that baby as it was bitten to death and devoured by those sharp teeth. But now she continues to dream the same dream. Now do you know what churns in the barrel? That it is not molasses or oil, but the oily pelts of hundreds of rats as they gnaw and chew her repeatedly. How horrible it must be for her.”

And, indeed, they laughed for a few lifetimes at the sight of her, as she was lowered into the barrel, red spit slinging hungrily, and snapping white bone shined and churned and disappeared beneath the surface.

* * *

“Now this clearly is a breach of protocol!” a young female student stood and cried, giving no one else an opportunity to speak.

“Why is that?” he said simply, knowing full well what she was going to complain about. He had heard this before.

Her face was crimson. “Abortion is absolutely legal in our State. You are breaching protocol and common sense by condemning it!”

“If you had been listening, Student, you might have noticed that this was a live birth the dear woman trashed, not an abortion. I think maybe you can put away your Lectro-Current magazine and listen more closely next time, especially since you pretend to know so much.”

“I can see why so many people despise you.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

“MORE LEGS IN THE PARK”

A woman was there when they had walked farther through great expanses of burning yards. She was barely visible beneath 17,000 layers of flame. She jittered and jerked, but could not free herself.

“I don’t know why she is here. I come because I love the memories of this light. Long, long before Bjorn blew across the night and threw out the Milky Way, I used to come here to dance at her light. I was new to her perfume then. I am her old flame now.”

The demon’s fathomless sockets gazed on her golden lights and he nearly loved again.

A PARENTHETICAL EPISODE

The demon walked and the man watched everything through his hot black holes.

“Look at this, my son. This exhibit is known in The Annals of Cruelty as ‘A Demon’s Abomination.’ There are a few things that even we cannot gaze at for long.”

A wasted man lay spread-eagled on the ground, facedown. Above him, pounding him with an enormous member, was another man. As the two bodies met, fifteen blades pierced them through. They writhed as they continued, unable to stop.

It cannot be truthfully said they were screaming, because with all that exists here, “The Scream” is The Base Unit. The Primary Law: “Nothing Ever Stops Screaming!”

“Can you tell, my son, which of them owns the blades that pierce the corpse of the other?”

“No,” he whispered in the demon’s head.

Red burst out laughing. “Neither can they.” He laughed for many times. “They will go on, blessedly, throughout eternity, in the heat, in the flames, in ‘The Burning,’ never ceasing in their stride. No horror can equal this. No mere man or demon can even imagine this, let alone look at it for long.”

It only increases in horror, thought the man, if you continue to think about it, which I choose not to do.

That’s true, thought the demon.

I will come out of you now, thought the man, and kiss your feet, Father.

Then it is done, thought the other. Out of the palms of his hands flew thick cords of silver that became glittering hooks. He plunged both into his own abdomen and savagely ripped (blurred) them sideways until his guts spilled onto the ground. “We call this, my son, ‘The Judas Solution.’ I cannot explain it to you, for it is an incredibly Holy Thing, and I would not anger the Chief of all demons by repeating the story of The Great Sacrifice.”

Burning and entwined in the gray and red entrails was the man, like a birthed adult. His eyes burst outward as the heat intensified. They bled out, dried up, healed over, opened, and behold, they were his eyes again.

ANOTHER PARENTHETICAL EPISODE

“Son,” said the demon, “you’re going to get your toast cooked.”

“My toast cooked?”

“No, your toes cooked.” Red grinned insanely. “Approach me.”

The man did so because he had no choice.

“Give me one of your feet.”

The man obliged. The demon pulled the man’s blackened foot into his mouth and his jaws glowed red with flames. The man’s toes blackened further.