Lucifer's Lottery

harm can come to me, that I’ll be returned intact . . .

And my opportunity to be the first in history to say no to their faces . . .

“I ask once more, sir. Do you choose to proceed?”

“Yes!” Hudson whispered.

Howard seemed to smile, however thinly. “A wise choice. I look forward to our coming discourse. Tell the Senarial Messenger I’m at the ready.” Then Howard stood up and came round the table. He turned the Snot-Gourd back around and held the side with the hole in it up to the hole in the wall . . .

The deaconess looked longingly at Hudson. “Do you have . . . any idea how privileged you are?”

A tour . . . of Hell. He wiped his face off in his hands. “I don’t even know how to answer that. Oh, and the guy says he’s ready.”

“Can you still see the Auric Carrier?”

Hudson looked back up. In the opening, the appalling fruit remained, showing the hole cut in it. “Yeah. It’s a . . . messed-up pumpkin, and there’s a hole in it. He called it a Snot-Gourd.”

“Hmm, all right . . .”

“But he’s blocking the hole in the wall with it. Don’t I crawl through the hole?”

“Oh, no. Via this ritual, nothing solid can move from here to there, and vice versa.”

“Then how—”

“Remember, nothing solid. Be careful; make sure the end of the hose doesn’t actually touch the intake opening in the gourd. Try to keep it a few millimeters away —”

Hudson shot her a funky look. “What?”

“It’s your breath that will be transferred from here to there,” the deaconess explained. “On this side, it’s just breath, but on that side . . .” And before Hudson could even plead for more information, the deaconess got him out of the seat and urged him closer to the wall. In her hand now she held the short length of garden hose, one end of which she moved toward his mouth.

His eyes flicked to the bubbling skullcap. “No way I’m drinking that crap!”

“Of course not. You breathe it—the fumes.”

When Hudson’s lips parted to object further, she placed the hose in his mouth.

“It’s time, Mr. Hudson. I’ll be waiting for you when you come back.” She pressed his shoulders with her hand, to gesture him to lean over. She held the other end of the hose into the faint steam coming off the Elixir. “Now. Count to six, then inhale once very deeply and hold it . . .”

Hudson’s lips tightened around the hose. I can’t believe I’m going to do this . . . And then in his mind he counted to six and took a hard suck on the hose.

The warm air tasted meaty in his mouth. The fumes made his lungs feel glittery.

“Keep holding it,” he was instructed; then the other end of the hose was placed in his hand. “Now, once you’ve lined the end up . . . exhale as hard as you can.”

Hudson’s cheeks bloated. Very carefully he manipulated the end of the hose to fit over the hole in the gourd —

—and exhaled.

Hudson’s soul left his body, and he collapsed to the floor.

PART TWO

GRAND TOUR

CHAPTER FOUR

(I)

Perfect, Gerold thought, and that’s exactly how it looked. He’d tied the hangman’s noose as though he were an expert, and when Gerold appraised it on the balcony of his second-story apartment—at three A.M.—he felt a comforting satisfaction. He secured the other end to his balcony rail.

Suddenly the moment was in his face.

How do I feel?

The warm night seemed to throb from without: insects issuing their endless chorus. The moon hovered, light like white icing.

I feel great.

In that instant, then, he realized that this was a great night to die, and Gerold was not only okay with that, he was ecstatic.

He’d bussed earlier to Home Depot for the rope after working his shift at the air-conditioning company where he processed calls and kept the books. “Can I have tomorrow off?” he’d asked the boss when his shift was done, only because he didn’t want to leave them hanging.

He himself would be the one hanging.

“In this economy?” the boss laughed. “Sure you can have tomorrow off.”

No more struggles, no more buses passing him by for the inconvenience of lowering their wheelchair ramp, no more pretty girls passing him on the street as though he didn’t exist.

His gaze stretched out into the moon-tinged darkness. Yes! A great night to die!

Someone in the morning, probably walking their dog, would see him hanging. Gerold knew he’d have a smile on his face.

He placed the noose about his neck and tightened it down. He felt no reservations. But when he put his hands on the rail, to haul himself up and fling himself off . . .

“Hey! You up there!”

Gerold was appalled when he looked down.

“Don’t do it!”

“Aw, shit, man!” Gerold yelled. Just down below, some old guy with a splotch on his head like that guy from Russia was walking his Jack Russell. “Nobody walks their damn dog at three in the morning!”

The dog yelped up at him, tail stump wagging. The old man had his cell phone out. “I’m calling the cops —”

“No, please, man! Gimme a break!”

“Don’t do it!”

In seconds, it seemed, he could hear sirens.

Quick! Now! Gerold grabbed the rail, his muscles flexing.

“What’s going on up there?” said the old biddy from the balcony below. She looked up, curlers in her hair. Across the way, lights snapped on in various apartments. Figures appeared on balconies.

“That young man above you is trying to hang himself!”

Gerold had himself half propped up on the rail, when he heard pounding at his front door.

You’ve got to be shitting me . . . He knew he didn’t have time now—the door exploded open and hard footfalls thunked toward him.