Lucifer's Lottery

pacifiers stick out from marvelously sloped breasts, and she grins fang-mouthed as her furred hands slip beneath her master’s sparkling trousers.

An uproar rises from the street as the Nectoport lowers to the bone-hewn pavement. It’s landing, you think. The Privilato stands hands on hips within the Port’s green-glowing oval, looking upon the ritzy crowd of uptown Demons in a way that reminds you of an old picture of Mussolini looking down into the town square from a stone balcony. The crowd in the street hoots and hollers, the females in particular nearly apoplectic with enthusiasm. “Privilato!” a corroded chorus rises. “Privilato!”

“Oh, dear.” Howard frowns. “He and his entourage are coming out.” And then he takes you back to an alley. “I’m just not attuned to boisterous crowds, never have been. Indeed, New York was stifling enough but this—this elephantiasis of nonhumanity exceeds my demarcation of tolerance.”

You barely hear him, squinting at the loud rabble. For some reason you can’t figure, this jeweled man—this Privilato—intrigues you. The glowing rim of the Nectoport’s aperture dilates, and before the Privilato can step out—

“Holy smokes,” you mutter.

“All Privilatos, too, enjoy a full-time detachment of bodyguards. Note the Conscripts from the lauded Diocletian Brigade.”

From the Nectoport, two formations of said Conscripts dispatch. Some wield swords, others brandish mallets whose heads are the size of fifty-five-gallon drums. Plated suits of Hexed armor adorn each troop, while their shell- like helms possess only slits to look through. The crowd’s uproar turns chaotic; then a horn blares, and one of the Conscripts raises a large, hollowed-out horn to his mouth like a loudspeaker. “Attention, all elite of Hell. A Privilato wishes to debark. Do not encroach upon the exclusion perimeter.” And then more Conscripts run lengths of barbed chain from the Nectoport’s mouth to the door of one of the shops on the street.

“The Privilato is about to step into your midst! Bow down and pay reverence to our esteemed favorite of Lucifer!” blasts the horn.

Most of the crowd falls to its knees, though many females in the audience can’t control themselves when the Privilato finally emerges onto the street. One shapely She-Demon in a gown of bone-needle mesh leans over the barbed cordon, reaching out with a manicured hand. “Privilato! I’m honored by your presence! Please! Let me touch you!” But once she inclines herself over the chain—

SWOOSH!

—a great curved sword flashes and cuts her in half at the waist.

But the crowd continues to surge forward. You actually groan to yourself when two more Conscripts unroll a red carpet before the Privilato’s jeweled feet.

Talk about the high life . . .

“Back! Back!” warns the loudspeaker. “Disperse now and let the Privilato enjoy a refreshment in peace!”

The Privilato comes forth, his robust concubines trailing behind. The crowd roars louder, which only doubles your perplexion. You look at the jeweled man and notice that, save for the jewels, there is nothing extraordinary about him. His long hair sifts around a bland, unenlivened face. His eyes look dull. Nevertheless he offers the crowd a smile and when he waves at them the uproar rises further.

Finally you object: “This guy’s acting like Kid Rock. What’s the big deal?”

Howard doesn’t answer but instead shoulders through the crowd toward the storefront. “You’ll be interested in seeing this, Mr. Hudson. One of Hell’s greatest delicacies. We’ll have to settle for watching through the window, of course.”

Hell’s greatest delicacy?

“Behold the ultimate indulgence, Mr. Hudson. One snifter carries a monetary value of one million Hellnotes,” Howard sputters. “And to think I fed myself for thirty cents a day on Heinz beans and old cheese from the Mayflower Store.”

The sign on the window reads: FETAL APERTIFS.

Now the crowd watches in awe as the Privilato approaches, his busty consorts in tow.

“Let me blow you!” comes the crude plea from a vampiric admirer.

The Soubrettes grimace at her, then one—the Vulvatagoyle—expectorates yeast onto the haughty fanged woman.

When one surgically enhanced Imp jumps the cordon and begs to put her hands on the jeweled man—

WHAM!

—a Conscript brings down his mallet and squashes her against the street.

“Back! Back!”

Even Howard seems awed when the glittering Privilato and his entourage pass by and enter the classy shop.

“The guy looks like a long-haired Liberace,” you complain. “Why is he so important? And what the hell is a Fetal Aperitif?”

“Something I’ve never partaken in—I’m not privileged enough, though I did have cotton candy once at Coney Island.” Then Howard smiles at you in the oddest manner. “Mongrel fetuses exist as quite a resource in Hell, Mr. Hudson. Akin to ore, akin to cash crops.”

The notion—the mere way he said it—makes you queasy.

“Economic diversification, by any other classification.”

“Baby farms?” you practically gag.

“Yes! Well put, sir, well put. Like choice grapes selected for the finest wineries, choice fetuses are harvested for this four-star aperitif bar.” Howard’s finger directs your gaze to the rearmost anteroom of the establishment, where you see a great tub made from wooden slats.

No no no no no, you think.

Worker Demons empty bushel baskets full of fetuses into the tub . . .

“I was always amused by the French cliche,” Howard goes on. “The idea that our shifty enemies in the Indian Wars would pile grapes into tubs and crush them barefoot . . .”

When the tub has been filled with squirming newborn Demons, a nine-foot-tall Golem steps in and begins to ponderously walk on them. Eventually the contents of the tub are crushed, and a tap drains the precious liquid into kegs that are then rolled aside to ferment.

Howard looks forlorn. “It’s supposedly delectable, not that I’ll ever receive the opportunity to sample it, not on my pitiful stipend. Lucifer has seen to it that the poverty which mocked me in life will continue to do so in death . . .”

Inside, the Privilato eyes trays of bizarre food placed before him by licentious servers. Wicked versions of shrimp and lobster (lobsters, of course, with horns), braised roasts of shimmering meat, steaming vegetables in arcane sauces. In spite of its alienness, it all looks delicious.

“You see, Mr. Hudson, the elite in Hell gorge on delicacies the likes of which would sink the banquets of Lucullus to tameness, and the wine? Splendid enough to green Bacchus with envy.”

You watch now as the Privilato raises a tiny glass of the evil wine and shoots it back neat. The occult rush sets a wide smile on his face, and he looks past the table, right through the window . . .

At you.

The Privilato nods.

You’re sure that if you actually had hands you would grab Howard by the collar and shake him. “Why are you showing me this stuff? And what’s the big deal with that guy in there? He’s got the best-looking girls in Hell for groupies, he flies around in a Nectoport, and he gets to drink wine that costs a million bucks a glass. Why?”

“Because,” Howard answers, “and I’ll iterate, the gentleman’s name is Dowski Swikaj, formerly a friar from Guzow, Poland.”

“Yeah?” you yell. “So what!”

“In the frightful year of 1342 AD, Mr. Swikaj won the Senary . . .”