Lucifer's Lottery

He stared at the chest hole, then looked back to Krilid.

Krilid nodded. “I offered to do it right off the bat but it wouldn’t work. See, it has to be a Human heart.”

Gerold’s mind revved like gears in a machine. He took off his life preserver, then took off his shirt.

“Good man,” Krilid said, having already picked up a tool that looked like a branch cutter. “But . . . it’s gonna hurt.”

“I would never have guessed,” Gerold mocked. He lay down flat, hands fisted. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Just do it. I don’t care how much it hurts.”

“You got balls, Gerold.” The branch cutters keened when Krilid opened them . . .

First: crack! as the curved blade slunked into Gerold’s solar plexus and then the sternum was separated.

Gerold bellowed.

Then: click, click, click, click, click, as all the ribs on the left side were snapped.

Pain? Gerold could never have conceived of such pain, but, What did I expect? He’s cutting my heart out! he somehow was able to think even over the insurmountable agony. But just as that same agony reached a terrifying peak . . .

It ebbed away, to numbness, and then Gerold’s spirit felt like vapor spinning round in a blender on the highest speed.

Meanwhile, Krilid severed all the necessary arteries and removed Gerold’s heart.

And he put it, still beating, into the hole in the Demonculus’s chest . . .

CHAPTER TWELVE

(I)

Hudson’s eyes snapped open like someone who’d just wakened from a nightmare of falling. He remained sweat-drenched in the attic chair, stewing in the insufferable heat. The hole in the wall met his direct line of sight, and through it all he could see was the straggly backyard tinted by moonlight.

The candles guttered all around him.

“You’re back,” whispered the deaconess, “from a journey only eleven people in history have taken . . .”

Hudson nodded and drew in a long breath. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?”

“No. It was the greatest of all privileges.” She stepped from the dark corner, her nude body shellacked in sweat itself. The macabre crucible of the baby’s skullcap remained below the hole in the wall, but the Sterno had long gone out.

“I can tell by your aura,” said the deaconess. “You’ve accepted the Senary.”

“Yes.”

“Praise Lucifer,” she sighed. “You will one day be a Privilato, the greatest thing to be in Hell save for Lucifer himself.”

“After I die, at age sixty-six. That’s what I was told.”

The robust woman handed Hudson a towel. He felt winded yet also content when he dried the sweat off his body and put his clothes back on. “I was also told something about six million dollars in cash . . .”

The deaconess grinned. “Such greed! How wonderful! But . . . first things first.” She handed him a piece of paper . . . and an ice pick.

“I guess this is self-explanatory,” Hudson commented. He didn’t like pain but considering . . .

MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT, read the contract, along with a simplification of everything he’d been promised. And all I have to trade for it is my soul . . .

He winced as he punctured his forearm with the awl, saw blood well up; then he ran the point along the blood.

Signing his name was harder than he thought.

“There.”

The deaconess looked awed at the sheet of paper. “You’re so, so privileged . . .” Suddenly she fell to her knees, hugging Hudson’s hips. “Please, I beg you. In my own Damnation, recruit me into your harem! I would be so honored to serve a Privilato! Please!”

“Sure,” Hudson agreed, “but . . . where’s that six million?”

Her smile seemed drunken now from what he’d just granted her. She kissed his crotch, and pointed behind him.

Two Samsonite suitcases sat on the other side of the room. This can’t be possible, he thought, but when he opened them, all he could do was stare for full minutes. Each hefty suitcase had been filled with banded one-hundred-dollar bills.

“There are six hundred bands, ten thousand dollars per band,” the deaconess told him.

Hudson grunted when he hefted each case. “It’s a good thing these suitcases have wheels.” But then another thought came to him. “Wait a minute. I can’t roll two big-ass suitcases to a bus stop in a ghetto, at night. I’d get mugged in two seconds.”

The deaconess’s bare skin glittered in the candlelight. “Lucifer guarantees your safety, not just in Hell but here also. From this point on, nothing can ever hurt you.”

“Really,” Hudson replied, not terribly confident.

“Oh, yes. In fact, you’ll be protected by not one but two Warding Incantations, which are quite similar to the occult bridle which protects Manse Lucifer from any anti-Satanic endeavor.”

“That’s hard-core . . .”

“I’ll demonstrate.” The deaconess wielded the ice pick.

Hudson’s heart skipped a beat.

“Any object turned on you as a weapon will be repulsed—” The deaconess threw the ice pick hard as she could right at Hudson—

“Shit!”

—but as it flew directly for his face, it veered harmlessly off and stuck in the bare-wood wall.

“Wow!”

“And any person who might attempt to assault you with his bare hands”—the nude woman smiled more mischievously—“will instantly have his blood removed from his body.”

Hudson recalled the bold but luckless insurgents’ attempt to bomb the Manse, and how their blood had been magically sucked out of every orifice.

He looked at her, at the contract in her hand, then at the suitcases. “I guess . . . all there is for me to do now is—”

“Go home, and enjoy the rest of your life here with your riches, knowing that many more riches await when you die and rise to the glory of Lucifer.”

So. That’s it, I guess. Hudson scratched his head. “What are your plans?”

“I will rise to that glory now, Mr. Hudson,” she said. “As your Senarial Messenger, I have but one more duty to perform: the execution of your contract.”

Contract in hand, the deaconess walked demurely to the chair, then stood on it.

“Hey! You’re not going to—”

“But I must, Mr. Hudson.” From a rafter she pulled down a previously prepared noose and calmly put it around her neck. “I’ll see you at your castle in the future.”

Hudson froze.

The deaconess rolled the contract into a ball, put it in her mouth, and stepped off the chair

THUNK . . .