Lucifer's Lottery

The deaconess had leaned briefly away, and returned.

Where did she—

She came back, but seemed intent on her watch. Hudson felt brainless now, his body nothing but an arrangement of frantic sexual nerves beginning to short-circuit. Then—

“Now, now,” she snapped abruptly and took Hudson’s erection into her mouth. Her lips stroked over it at a mad speed; Hudson was reeling—knowing the dreadful sin of it all, knowing that he must pull away and leave this evil place, but before he could—

His climax occurred like an ash can going off. The deaconess mewled as Hudson felt his ejaculation belt into her mouth, and when he was finally finished, he fell over.

The orgasm had beclouded him. The prostitute crawled to a corner, muttering, “Bunch’a nutty bullshit.” When Hudson looked again, the deaconess was spitting his copious ejaculation into the baby’s skullcap. It looked like a mouthful of thin yogurt.

“This really is some fucked-up shit,” the prostitute remarked, but then the deaconess was briskly approaching her.

“Up, up! Quickly.”

“Hey!” the prostitute squealed when the other woman’s hand grabbed her hair and lifted.

“The seed must be covered without delay—”

The deaconess held the top of the baby’s skull beneath one of the prostitute’s sodden breasts, and with her fingers she began to urgently milk the nipple. The white fluid sprayed out at first, then began to dribble. “As much as possible. Help me.”

The prostitute looked disgusted when she girded the breast with her hands and squeezed. The extra pressure trebled the volume of milk coming out. When the lactation began to peter out, the process was switched over to the other breast.

Hudson could only watch, head spinning.

“Good, good,” the deaconess murmured, transfixed. By the time the second breast had been exhausted, the skullcap was over an inch deep with milk.

“Now . . .”

Hudson stared, and so did the prostitute. The deaconess stood firmly with her legs parted. She lowered the skullcap to her crotch.

What’s she going to do?

The prostitute shrieked, and even Hudson yelled aloud in his stupefaction. A tiny glint showed him what the deaconess had produced: a razor blade, which she immediately slipped right up the middle of her clitoris.

Instead of screaming, herself, she moaned in what could only be ecstasy.

“Lady, you’re fuckin’ cracked!” spat the prostitute. Hudson looked away but something kept dragging his eyes back to the event. Two fingers were kneading the split clitoris, squeezing out blood. The blood ran right into the skullcap.

“There,” she announced when she was done. Between the sperm, the milk, and the blood, now the skullcap was over half-full.

“Can I go now?” the prostitute asked.

“Bring me that box,” the deaconess said, “and remove the stand, then, yes, you may be on your way.” She held the skullcap ever so carefully, so not to spill its macabre contents, while the sickened whore dragged a cardboard box to the room’s center, then removed a Sterno stand.

Hudson thought, Why do I think we’re NOT going to be cooking a Chinese pupu platter?

“Set the stand immediately below the hole in the wall, please.”

The prostitute’s pallid breasts depended as she leaned to do so. She glared at the deaconess, half in derision and half in nausea. “Look, I know that I’m one of the most fucked-up people to ever be born but, shit, lady. This shit here? It’s even more fucked up than me.”

“Go with the blessing of the Morning Star,” the deaconess said with a great pumpkin grin. “Take your money and your drugs and your hatred and despair, and give thanks as you revel in your curse. Spread your degradation in the glory of his name, sell your body to the lustful, and indulge yourself in reverence to him. Have more babies to leave to die in gutters, and spread more disease, and continue to let yourself be used as a reservoir of filth and an altar for every offense against God . . .”

The prostitute stared.

“One day, you will receive a wondrous reward . . .”

The prostitute raked up her clothes, then barged out of the room, and thunked down the stairs. A moment later, Hudson heard the front door slam.

The deaconess looked at Hudson. “Do you wish to continue?”

He wanted to say no with all his heart, yet something . . .

Something made him say, “Yes.”

“Good.” She smiled over the skullcap. “Let’s begin . . .”

Hudson sat mute in the chair as he watched her. It didn’t surprise him when she placed the skullcap atop the Sterno stand, though he couldn’t imagine why. From the box she also withdrew the strangest of objects: a foot-long cutting of ordinary garden hose.

A match flared as she bent to light the Sterno.

“Bubble-bubble, toil and trouble?” he misquoted Macbeth.

“These are powerful cabalistic components, Mr. Hudson.” The bleeding between her legs had ceased, leaving her pubic hair matted crimson and the insides of her toned thighs streaked. “What you need to know is that in Hell, ideas are objects, notions are material, symbols are tangible things wielded as tools or burned as fuel, and the waste of lust is the Devil’s favorite tool. Symbols of fecundity and creation when turned to waste become occult energy.”

“Milk, sperm? Come on,” Hudson challenged.

“Yes! What a great spoiler of God’s intent. Mother’s milk but from the teat of a mother who murders her babies. And sperm, sacred by God’s gift of procreation, but sullied when spilled deliberately outside of the womb—a harrowing offense. And now . . . blood . . . The blood of the chaste, virginity upheld to honor the chastity of Christ, and then spoiled for this atrocious ministration to bid the glorious and unholy power of Lucifer.”

Hudson looked perplexed at the skullcap sitting above the flame, and then he looked into the hole in the wall.

Just nighttime outside.

“Don’t get it.”

“You will, once you really see.” Her naked body gleamed, not merely from the profuse sweating but from excitement. The candlelight crawled. “It’s all science, or I should say sorcery, which serves as science in Lucifer’s domain. What we’re doing here is called an Ethereal Viewing. I told you, this house is a Bleed-Point; the horrors that occurred here have bruised the skin between the Living World and Hell. This rite will eventually nick that bruise enough that you’ll actually be able to see the Trustee, and converse with him, too.”

“The Trustee,” Hudson muttered. “A demon?”

“Possibly. I’m not sure. But I won’t be able to see him. Only you.”

“Why?”

Two perfect drops of sweat dripped off the tips of her nipples. “Because you’re the person who’s won the Senary. There’s not much more I need to say to prepare you.” She stood behind him and errantly rubbed his shoulders. “Just sit and wait . . . and reflect on the fact that very few people ever receive an opportunity such as this.”

Hudson jerked his head back. “But why? Why me? And don’t say it’s because I won the Senary!”

“Just be patient.”

“So . . . what? When all that crap in the baby skull starts to boil, the hole in the wall becomes a window to