Lucifer's Lottery

“Your Auric Carrier is quite the top of the line.” Now Howard is cleaning his round spectacles with his shirttail. “You have the mouth of a Howler-Demon, the eyes of an Ocularus, the nose of a Blood-Mole, and the ears of a City Imp. Each represents a superlative. It is with only the greatest acuity that we wish you to perceive everything.”

“But, but—”

“Just relax, sir—if that possibility exists—and give your psyche time to acclimatize to the new environs, as well as the new vessel for your soul. There’s no rush—answers to all your questions will be furnished. Just relax . . . and behold.”

You try to nod. Relax? Good Lord . . . First, you focus on your immediate surroundings. You appear to be sitting in the elevated rear seat of a long automobile—that is, not actually sitting since you no longer possess a rump; instead your Auric Carrier has been mounted on a stick in this queer backseat. The clattering vehicle reminds you of pictures you’ve seen of cars from the 1920s, spoke-wheeled and long-hooded monstrosities like Duesenbergs and Packards. Yet no hood actually forms the vehicle’s front end; instead there’s a long iron cylinder showing bolts at its seams, and a petite pipe where one would expect a hood ornament. It’s from this valve that steam hisses out.

Howard talks as if he can detect your thoughts. “It’s a steam-car, the latest design, an Archimedes Model 6. It burns sulphur, not coal—Hell never enjoyed a Carboniferous Period.” The car rocks over more chunks of butcher’s waste. “The sulphur heats the blood and other organic waste in the boiler; steam is produced and, hence, mobility. Nothing like the motors of my day, I’m afraid, though I never liked them. Awful, soot- and smoke-belching contraptions. But this suffices more than, say, a buggy drawn by an Emaciation Squad.”

You don’t understand how your head—the Snot-Gourd—can turn upon the command of your will— I’m just a fruit on a stick!—nevertheless, it does, and now that you’re getting used to it you find the courage to look upon the more distant surroundings with greater scrutiny.

The street stinks, and then you spot a globed pole that names the street: GUT- CAN LANE. Mottled storefronts whose bricks contain swirls of innards pass on either side. You notice more signs:

SCYTHER’S

PAYCHECKS NOT CASHED

THYMUS GRINDER’S

TOE-CHEESE COLLECTOR

A chalkboard before a cafe boasts the day’s specials: BROILED BOWEL WITH CHIVES and BEER-BATTERED SHIT-FISH.

When the steam-car clamorously turns through a red light—Abattoir Boulevard—you detect buildings that appear residential, like festering, squat town houses whose walls are impossibly raised as preformed sheets of innards.

“I don’t believe this place,” you finally say. “Everything’s made of . . . guts.”

“Construction techniques differ greatly here from the Living World; where you utilize chemistry, physics, electrical engineering, we utilize Alchemy, Sorcerial Technology, Agonitical Engineering.”

“But how can they make guts and bone chunks . . . hold together?”

“Gorgonization, Mr. Hudson,” Howard replies and points past the vehicle’s rim. “Your masons pour cement into molds and allow it to dry, ours pour slaughterhouse residuum and Gorgonize it with Hex-Clones of the Medusa’s head.”

You see what you can only guess are demonic construction workers emptying hoppers of butcher’s waste into various sheet and brick molds. After which several cloaked figures with purplish auras walk slowly past the molds bearing severed heads on stakes. Each severed head has living snakes for hair. The horned construction workers are careful to look away from the process. Hoods are then placed over the Gorgon heads; then the molds are lifted, revealing solid bricks and wallboards fully hardened.

Impossible, you think. And everything here is made of it . . .

“Fascinating, eh?” Howard remarks as the car rattles on. “At any rate, untold Districts exist in Hell, to compose an endless city called the Mephistopolis. Lucifer prefers diversity to uniformity; therefore each District, Prefect, or Zone features its own decorative motif. You’ll see more as we venture on.”

Beyond, though, you have the impression of losing your breath when you see what sits beneath the bloodred sky. It’s a panorama of evil, leaning skyscrapers that stretch on as far as you can see.

“Hell is a city,” Howard explains, “which I didn’t find all that surprising myself. Why would it be? More and more the Living World is becoming metropolitan, so why shouldn’t Hell follow suit? Progress is relative, and so is evolvement, I suppose. Lucifer has seen to it that Hell progresses in step with Human civilization. It’s only the direction of the steps that are antithetical. It provides for a rich environment, and more so in this District than most others.” And then Howard’s nose crinkles at an awful smell that reminds you of the Dumpster at the restaurant where you used to shuck oysters. “It’s just that the smell is appalling, not to mention the clamor—a babel of filth and noise, a breeding pot of cheapness and vulgarity. This horror-imbrued place reminds me of New York City in 1924. Ugh! I hope you’ve never had the misfortune of visiting there, Mr. Hudson.”

You try to frown again but then think of something. “Hey. How do you know my name? I didn’t tell it to you back when we were doing the hole-in-the-wall thing.”

“An Osmotic Incantation apprised me of everything about you. Every aspect. It’s necessary, and part of my duties in this little side job of mine as the Trustee for the Office of the Senary.”

“Side job? But didn’t you say something about being a writer? That you worked in the Hall of Writers?”

“The Seaton Hall of Automatic Writers,” Howard corrects. “One of many, but my facility devotes itself entirely to the writing of fiction. This is my forte; my job, since my Damnation, is to produce copy—novels, novellas, stories—which a select group of Wizards known as Trance Channelers then communicate to fiction writers in the Living World via the process of Automatic Writing and Slate Chalking. It’s Lucifer’s way of influencing worldly art forms so, quite wisely, he picks the most qualified of the Human Damned for the task.”

A writer, you think, in Hell? “So . . . before you came here, you were a writer, too?”

“Indeed I was, sir, a writer of weird tales, and it’s been conveyed to me that my work has since risen to considerable acclaim. Just my luck, eh? Posthumous acclaim—now I know how Poe felt.”

“When did you die?”

“March 15, 1937—the Ides. Fitting that I should expire on the celebration day of the Mother Goddess Cybele. I penned a tale concerning that once but—drat!—my memory fails me. Something about rats . . . The Rats in the . . . House? The Rats in the . . . Tower?” Howard shakes his pale head. “Such are the pitfalls of Damnation. You’re not allowed to remember anything gratifying. But it was some ballyhoo called Bright’s disease that killed me—shrunk my kidneys down to walnuts—oh, and cancer of the colon. Too much coffee and soda crackers, I can only presume. It’s no wonder ‘The Evil Clergyman’ wasn’t very good.” As Howard straightens his tie, he appraises the orb of your head with something hopeful in his eyes. “Are you a reader, sir? Perhaps you’ve heard of me—my name is Howard Phillips Lovecraft.”

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