Lucifer's Lottery

you want to know why he doesn’t?”

“I know why, Mr. Hudson,” Howard admits. “Because of his pride.”

“Right. He’s obsessed with being evil and disgusting and cruel because God’s the opposite of that, and Lucifer’s pissed off at God for throwing him out of Heaven. He’s like a little kid having a tantrum because mommy spanked him. I don’t want anything to do with this place, or him. Lucifer’s a dick.”

Howard’s brow rises in a defeated surprise. “Why not let me at least encourage you to take the final leg of the tour.”

“No reason to. My mind’s made up.”

“Then what harm can there be?”

You huff. “Well, what’s the final leg? Believe me, I don’t need to see any more piss pumps, baby factories, or Decapitant Camps.”

“The final leg is the Privilato Chateau that you would occupy if you accept the Senary. At least go and behold all the pleasures you’ll be missing.”

You pause. Well . . . Suddenly it begins to sound interesting again. But, “No. Why tempt myself to do the wrong thing when I’ve already decided to do the right thing?”

“Right and wrong are relative, Mr. Hudson, and in Hell they’re interchangeable. Consider the obvious imperative: in Hell there is no sin. You find trepidation in the prospect of temptation? So did Jesus during his forty days in the wilderness. Why not test your resolve as he did? You may think that you’re doing that now, but isn’t your faith only proven after you’ve witnessed the entire tour? Need I remind you that Christ took a similar tour after he died on Calvary?”

“I know that,” you say.

“Lucifer offered Jesus Privilato status, by the way, and he obviously turned it down. See all that Christ saw; face the same temptations he faced, in which case, if you still decide to turn the Senary down, you will have done what Christ did as well.”

“My thoughts exactly,” you tell him. I’ll become an even better Christian by seeing every temptation and STILL turning them all down . . .

You think a moment more, then say, “All right.”

Howard stands up. He seems relieved.

“Still think you can get me to change my mind?” you ask, a bit prideful yourself now.

“Irrelative time will tell,” Howard says. He pats sweat off his brow with a handkerchief embroidered, HPL. This guy’s really sweating bullets, you think.

Howard picks up your head-stick and approaches the circle of geometric etchings in the black wall. “And the tour goes on,” he murmurs.

For a reason you can’t define—and just before the Turnstile powers up—you look behind you and see the Golemess lying back on the floor, her knees pulled back to her sleek shoulders. Her back arches. Evil water breaks and gushes; then the enormous belly tremors, hitches, and collapses as it disgorges a slick Mongrel fetus with an accordioned face and arms where its legs should be. Puff-eyed, the demonic thing bawls as nublike horns appear on its bald head. It’s almost cute.

Almost.

The Golemess labors to her feet. Her elegant clay hands scoop the fetus up. The last thing you see before the Turnstile’s black static shifts you into another phase is the new mother calmly sliding her newborn into the fuel hatch of the steam-car’s boiler housing. Just as calmly she pushes the hatch shut . . .

. . . and you fall through that now-familiar combustion of morbid energy amid the crackling vertigo of scintillescent black static, and just as the Mongrel baby was pushed forth from the Golemess’s womb, you and Howard are pushed through space and some wicked substitute for time until . . .

CHAPTER SEVEN

(I)

The pallid censer smoke thinned from a rising, abyssal breeze, but even this far out in the Quarter Favius thought he could hear drifts of screams from the immeasurable city too far away to see. It brought delight to his horrid heart: the relief of the visual monotony, because for decades or centuries, the Great Emptiness Quarter and the Reservoir pit itself existed only in foul, glittery blackness.

But now?

So beautiful . . .

A new color to the terrain had been introduced: bloodred.

The bottom of the Reservoir was almost covered—not very deep yet—but covered all the same by the great scarlet gush from the sixty-six-foot-wide Main Sub-Inlets. Favius crudely thought the inflow into the Reservoir could be likened to a toilet slowly filling, only the toilet was the Reservoir itself and its tank was the Gulf of Cagliostro untold miles away. The Pipeway was running at full capacity now, the enormous pumping stations back in the Mephistopolis—at the harbor of Rot-Port—running at full tilt. Favius looked out across the impossible red vista, which churned and foamed from the force of the inflow. This close to the southern Main Sub-Inlet, the violent gush was almost deafening.

It’s finally happening, he thought. Had he been capable of the act, he might’ve cried in sheer joy.

The Conscripts under his command watched the outer perimeters, high and low, with great vigilance, always on guard for signs of an anti-Luciferic attack. Platoons of Golems marched along the ramparts, their horrid clay faces blank, the sounds of their massive feet thundering on the basalt causeway. And all the while, the sub-inlet gushed and gushed.

Exactly how long it would take to fill the pit to its six-billion-gallon prerequisite, the Legionnaire could not reckon, as time itself was unreckonable. Instead of counting seconds, minutes, and hours, then, he reasoned he could count depth. By the looks of the progress now, most of the pit had been filled to a depth of at least one foot . . .

Only sixty-five more to go.

Next, he stared directly at the sub-inlet’s great Y-connector, and in the waterfall-like expulsion of noxious fluid he knew he could see solid objects as well: detritus from the sea, scraps of old boats long since sunken by nauseating nautical creatures or artillery from vessels of the Satanic Navy. Corpses, too, were rife amid the inflow, but closer scrutiny showed him living creatures as well, siphoned all the way from the Gulf to here, via the Pipeway. Next, a school of Slime-Sharks burst through, followed by several twenty-foot-wide Gulf Nettles, their milky orb-heads oscillating above even longer barbed tentacles. An excited breath caught in the sentry’s chest when, in an instant, an immature Gorge-Worm was siphoned through—nearly a quarter of a mile long. Thousands of Conscripts surrounding the pit cheered at this astonishing evidence. The massive, gilled parasite churned in the shallow Blood-water, sidewinding like a snake in a shallow pool.

It was spectacular to behold.

The inflow continued to roar. Above, Dentata-Vultures and Caco-Bats flew mad circles over the Reservoir, inflamed by the Bloodwater’s meaty stench. Every so often, they shot straight down into the stew to snatch a buoyant delicacy on which to feed. When one of Favius’s Squad Leader’s—a Conscript Third Class named Terrod— approached, his armored hand extended to point into the rising gush.

“Commander! Praise Satan for this blessing!”

“Glory be to he who was cast out,” Favius replied.

“My heart sings for this great success, Commander, but we are all mystified—”

“As to what?” Favius’s voice grated.