Lucifer's Lottery

the bathroom.

Solid gold toilet. Solid gold sink. A claw-foot tub made of still more gold sits on the immaculate floor.

“Pretty nice bathroom,” you say.

“You’re welcome to partake in baths with pure water, or, if you prefer . . .” Howard snaps his fingers one more time.

Several large-bosomed and sultry She-Demons enter next, their bodies nearly as provocative as the half dozen counterfeit Pam Andersons in the bedroom, only these women have petite horns and various colored skin.

“What’s the big deal with these chicks?”

“They’re your Bath Girls, in the event that you don’t want to take a normal bath.”

You blink at Howard. “Huh?”

“Girls?” Howard addresses them. “Be so good as to show Mr. Hudson your surgical augmentation.”

All at once, then, the She-Demons open their mouths and stick out their tongues.

“Woe-boy!” you exclaim.

Each woman extrudes a tongue the size of a beef liver.

“Their tongues are huge!”

“Of course, they need to be. They’re Bath Girls. Only Privilatos, Exalted Dukes, and District Emirs are afforded this very expensive luxury—along with Satan himself, of course. Their sole purpose is to administer to you what’s known as a tongue-bath.”

You stare at the women’s tongues as much as you stare at the consideration. Tongue- baths . . .

“Anytime you so desire,” Howard says. “For eternity. It’s my understanding that the sensation is most stimulating.”

I’ll bet it is . . . I’ve got all these hot chicks here, that I can get it on with anytime I want . . . IF I accept the Senary . . . But then the reality sets in. “Look, I’ve never even had sex before but I’ve been told that a guy can only do it so many times before he gets worn out.”

“Ah, yes, refraction, the bane of all masculinity, but let us convene now on the north bulwark, and I will show you yet one more otherworldly benefit of Privilato status.”

The Bath Girls all wriggle their giant wet tongues as Howard moves you out of the chamber and onto a lofty balcony. From here you see the entire castle grounds, the inner wards, various stone buildings, intermediate towers. Birds that appear to be normal—falcons, doves, sparrows—sweep across the sky; while the sky is normal, too. Blue, with wisps of white clouds.

“How can . . .” you begin.

“Hallucinosis Transformers at the fringe of each Privilato estate provide the preferred environment,” Howard answers. “Should you so desire, Mr. Hudson, your sky will always look exactly like the sky in the Living World.”

“Incredible,” you mutter, but then you think of something. “There’s an awful lot of—what?—supernatural technology here—”

“The proper term is Occult Science or Systematic Magic.”

“Fine, but it’s still the opposite of science in the Living World, right?”

“Quite right. It’s antithetical. As I explained previously. The subjective on Earth is objective here. The blacks and whites of the Living World is the all-crucial gray area in Hell. The hard science of God’s green earth is magic in Lucifer’s kingdom.”

“All right!” you exclaim, “but that’s my point. If Lucifer can do all of this with Occult Science, then what has God done in Heaven with Godly Science?”

Howard seems taken by your observation. “I am quite regrettably unqualified to render an answer but I must speculate . . . It must be rather dull when compared to all of this.”

Really? You stew on the words. I’ll have no way of knowing, will I?

“But to return to our former topic—there,”—Howard points over the parapet—“the Satanic Chapel. You will have to attend Black Mass on occasion, but I would think that little to ask in view of what you’ll be receiving, hmm?”

The black church sits in the corner, past the courtyard proper, almost quaintly were it not for the high upside-down cross erected on its steeple. Several bosomy nuns busy themselves about the small building.

“I mean your previous question regarding, um, sexual refraction,” Howard goes on, “and your potential concern about the prospect of being ‘worn out’ by the bevy of sexually available women at your disposal.”

“Huh?”

“Privilato status entitles you to your very own personal aphrodisial farm. Note the garden, Mr. Hudson.”

You see the area of space, a great square of flower beds tended to by sultry women in white cloaks and hoods. Only their breasts can be seen through apertures in the cloaks.

“The women are Bio-Sorceresses, and they will suffice for your groundskeeping staff. Every Privilato gets his own rod of Orgia Extremus Root. The Bio-Sorceresses are occult chemists who pick the root at harvest time, extract the Inhuman Growth Hormones from it, and then further process a priceless Gonadotropic Elixir that not only abolishes sexual refraction between climaxes, but allows for massive orgasms that last for not seconds but the equivalent of a full hour.”

Your demonic mouth hangs open at the information.

“It should go without discourse that Privilatos spend most of their time engaged in one manner or other of licentious congress.”

Hour-long orgasms, you think.

“And for such occasions when you do long for diversity of a nonsexual mode . . . there, in the corner opposite.”

You follow Howard’s finger to said corner, and see a troop of well-weaponed Conscripts surrounding one of those glowing green holes you saw the Privilato disembarking before he took his entourage into the Fetal Aperitifs bar.

“The Conscripts of the famed Diocletian Brigade will serve as your bodyguards when you wish to travel, and for traveling, you have at your constant disposal your very own Nectoport,” Howard says.

For when I want to go out on the town, you think.

You must admit now . . . the possibility is sounding better and better.

“But wouldn’t I need money?”

“Ah. The filthy lucre!” Howard takes you back inside, through one stunning hall after another, and down myriad jeweled corridors. Eventually, he turns into another room.

Jesus!

The room’s ceiling causes you to look involuntarily up.

“The Unholy Coffer-Vault,” Howard says.

The room must be a hundred feet high and hundreds deep. It is filled with pallet after pallet of banded paper money.

“There must be a billion dollars here!”

“Six billion, Mr. Hudson, though not dollars. Hellnotes.” Howard’s focus drifts off. “I once wrote a longish tale entitled ‘Dreams in the Witch-House.’ I thought it was most abysmal, but a friend submitted it and got for me the unheard sum of $140. I’ve often wondered what that would be worth in Hellnotes.”

As usual, you don’t hear Howard; your attention, instead, has been highjacked by the airplane-hangar-size vault of cash.

That’s A LOT of MONEY!

“You also need to be apprized, sir, that once you’ve expended the entirety of this vault, Satan’s Treasurers will simply fill it up again.”

Now you’re getting dizzy looking at all of it . . .

“In spite of all of Hell’s horrors, there’s quite a bit for a wealthy man to do,” Howard goads on. “Especially one who will know wealth for eternity . . .”