Happy Hour in Hell

twenty: block

I SWEAR I would have managed to turn myself over eventually, but someone did it for me, scooping me onto my back as easy as a fry cook flipping a burger—not an association I wanted to make, believe me.

I was in a high-roofed chamber, the Punishment Level equivalent of a lifter station, but it was clear this station didn’t get many casual travelers. The ceiling looked like it had been liberally splashed with things meant to stay inside of people, which had then dried into stalactites. The cracked rock and dirt of the floor beneath me was splattered with dried black blood and scarred with the countless marks of prisoners and cages being dragged across it. The location was the least of my problems, though. The pressure of these depths was still so strong that it took long moments to lift my head and focus on the creatures surrounding me.

The last one who’d spoken, Baby Bear, looked more like a hairy washing machine than any cousin of Smokey’s, his already disturbing body made more so by all the bits of machinery that had been awkwardly attached to him with bloody rivets. The other two, who I’ll call Bird and Porcupine, were just as unpleasant in their own way: A cross between a stork and the victim of some terrible Third World, flesh-eating virus, Bird had feathered bat wings, a jaggedly sharp beak, and eyes that were only holes in the bird-shaped, partially exposed skull. Porcupine was even less humanoid, four-footed, with huge flat front claws like a badger and a series of bumps on his back which could have been heads, because they all had eyes.

“I’m . . . suh-suh-suh . . .” I was finding it really hard to talk because of the pressure in my head. Hard to think, too. On the plus side, the feeling hadn’t got dramatically worse since I’d been thrown out of the elevator by the mud man, and I was beginning to think the pressure alone might not destroy me, at least not right away. That was the only good news. “I’m somebody . . . important.”

Bird clacked her beak as those empty sockets looked me up and down. “Hark at the creature! Of course you’re important, little thing. You’re our num-nums!”

Porcupine growled and pushed at me with his front head. I couldn’t see a mouth, but even through the general stench I could smell his hideous breath. “Too much talking. Eat it. You two take what you want, then it’s my turn.” He reared up, legs spreading wide like a caterpillar climbing to a new branch, and I finally saw his mouth, which ran down the vertical length of his belly like an unfinished autopsy incision, lined with sharp teeth as if it was an ivory zipper.

I confess that I might have made a noise of dismay. Okay, I sort of squealed like a terrified pig—the unwilling guest at a very ugly luau.

Baby Bear folded one of his claspers around me, crunching muscle and bending bone. I shrieked again and rolled with it, since if I didn’t he was going to tear my arm right off. “Stop!” I wailed. “You don’t understand! I’m . . . I’m on an important mission. For the Mastema!”

A moment of silence followed this. Well, it would have been silence except a low growl was coming from Porcupine’s horrible red, toothy stripe of a mouth right next to my ear.

“Just eat it,” Porcupine said. “It’s talking shit.”

“No, I’m not!” It was so hard to think! “I was . . . attacked. While I was on the Mastema’s business. You don’t want to have that on your heads, too, do you?” I looked back at the more-than-necessary number of eyes regarding me. Baby Bear was drooling what looked like motor oil from a mouth full of crude metal teeth. Bird had tipped her skeletal head sideways as if thinking. “If you get me back on the lifter, I can make my report! You’ll all be rewarded.”

“Hah.” Porcupine dropped back down on all fours and shoved me with its lumpy head. “Now it’s really talking shit. Reward? Eating this little piece of gristle is our reward. Enough of this.”

“Hold a bit, dearie-dove,” said Bird. “Maybe we should take it to the Block. I know you’re aching for your nummies, but you shouldn’t ever fuss with Mastema business.”

Porcupine growled again, and Baby Bear echoed him. “Mastema business,” said the furry half-appliance. “Fuck ’em sideways. What have they ever done for us?”

“It’s not what they’ve done for us,” said Bird sweetly, still watching me with those empty eye holes. “It’s what they might do to us. Do you remember what happened in Lesser Organs? When they came for Mudlips?”

Both Porcupine and Baby Bear quickly took a step back, much to my relief.

“Can we eat some of it, at least, before we take it to the Block?” Porcupine whined. “I’m so fucking, scabbing hungry!” I could hear its stomach-incisors clicking together.

“The Block,” said Bird firmly. “But don’t feel bad, chummy—we still might get to eat it all. Maybe play with it a bit, too.”

“We’d better,” said Baby Bear.

I could barely walk, but it didn’t matter, because Baby Bear dragged me behind him like a toddler’s toy. I had no idea what the Block was. All I knew is that the needles on my Going To Get Eaten Now dial had temporarily swung back out of the red. I had a feeling that I might have been able to beat these things or at least escape them if we were someplace else, but here in the crushing depths it was all I could do to stay conscious and even slightly sane. It wasn’t just the feeling of pressure that was crippling me; everything I had felt on the way down, especially that singular, fearful . . . presence . . . was still in me like an awful sickness, a horror hangover that had me trembling, nauseated, and all but helpless.

The trio of demons dragged me down long corridors echoing with screams and less articulate noises, past room after room, each one a laboratory where new kinds of pain were devised and put to use. I saw prisoners torn, smashed, pulled to pieces, scalded with steam, boiled into nerve-spaghetti and then stretched on hot wires until the nerves vibrated like plucked violin strings in screams I could feel without hearing. On we trudged, through long stretches of flickering darkness, past horror after moaning, gurgling horror, until what little command I had over my thoughts began to slip again. It felt pointless to keep struggling, to try to stay sane. Why fight? Even if I got out of here somehow, Hell was practically endless, and I still had to walk right into my enemy’s stronghold and try to steal Caz right from under the grand duke’s nose, then escape him and all his power and somehow get back out of Hell again.

The word for that, it seemed pretty clear, was “impossible.” I hadn’t thought it was a great plan even before I got to Hell, but as my friends often tell me, I have a tendency to be way the fuck too optimistic.

At last, after I had been dragged past too many rooms full of shrieking meat to care anymore, we arrived at a desk in front of a big, black door. The female creature sitting behind the desk had a lovely golden-curled head like a postcard angel, but the rest of her body was a giant centipede’s, and she had to coil her segmented body around the arms of the chair to stay seated properly behind the desk. She eyed my captors with suspicion.

“Wha?” The golden centipede girl had the slurred voice of an ancient rummy or a punchdrunk fighter. “Wha you want?”

“We have to see the Block, lovely one,” said Bird. “We need to show him.”

“Nah gon’ habben.” I could see now that the reason the receptionist (or whatever she was) talked that way was because she had a mouth full of smaller centipedes. A couple of them fell out onto the desk and then began to climb their way back up her body, heading toward the mouth. “The Block do’ wanna be disthurh . . . disturh . . .” She paused to gulp down the ones who’d returned, then lifted a pincered claw to keep the rest from making an escape in the confusion. “Disturbed.”

“Oh, he doesn’t?” snarled Porcupine, but Bird waved a feathered claw.

“He’ll want to see this, sweetling. He truly will.”

Golden Girl stared at Bird for a moment, her head so completely human that I couldn’t help wondering if she’d looked that way in life, like a goddess of dawn. Then the reception-thing broke the impasse by slithering over the back of the seat and making her way, on all those tiny little legs, along the wall to the door, head waggling like the unstable burden it must have been. She pulled the door open a bit with her front legs and said something through the opening, causing several more little centipedes to tumble out of her mouth to the ground, where they began their long crawl back to, presumably, comfort and safety. Then the ruined goddess swiveled her golden head around to us and said, “It’s to go in alone. The rest of you lot stay out here.”

Getting up was hard enough. Walking was harder, and I couldn’t make it happen right away. Baby Bear finally gave me a shove, and I lurched through the door, catching myself in the doorframe so I didn’t go in on my face.

The room was dank and dim, only one tiny oil lamp on the desk for illumination. The thing that sat behind the desk seemed almost human at first glance, eyes, ears, and nose in most of the right places. His facial skin, however, had been peeled down and hung in a fringe around his neck, like a particularly horrible Renaissance ruff. His facial muscles and exposed tissue were white and red, like raw bacon, but his eyes were alert and disturbingly intelligent. He wore the remains of what looked like a fairly modern military uniform. He grinned at me, or at least bared his teeth. Every tooth was black and too big.

“So what are you?” Words like hot fat dripping. “Eat or punish?”

“Neither, great Block, neither!” I had no idea who this wet, red fellow was or what rank he held, but I wasn’t in a position to bluster. One look told me that this was the kind of minor functionary who ruled over his personal corner of Hell like a little tin god. “I am a traveler from the upper reaches—Snakestaff of the Liars Sect.” The Liars supplied Hell’s advocates, my usual opponents in my angelic business. I knew a little about them even before Lameh’s briefing, so I’d chosen them as my cover. “I’m on the Mastema’s business here in the lower levels, but I was attacked.”

“By Polly Parrot and her little crew?” He really thought that was funny. For a moment I had the insane hope he’d choke himself laughing, but then I remembered he was that color of red all the time. “Oh, good. Very good!”

“No, I was attacked by . . . hirelings in the service of my enemies, who were angry that the Mastema favored me with a commission.” I was improvising, but considering that my head felt like it was stuck in an industrial paint mixer, and that I’d just vomited out my brain, I thought I was doing pretty well. “My enemies cornered me in the lifter,” I went on, “but I was able to escape them here, on this level.” I did my best to sound calm and in control. “The ones who sent me will know how I was treated, both there and here.” Appeals to altruism weren’t likely to be my best approach, so I said, “Of course those who get in my way will be punished, but I promise those who help me will be remembered and rewarded.” It was hard to sound authoritative when I could barely stand and felt like a baked turd, but I gave it my best shot.

“Rewarded, rewarded. That has a nice sound.” The Block pushed himself back from his desk a little, which was when I noticed that he was tied to his chair with barbed wire; nothing remained below his ribs but a dangling length of nerves and backbone. Something like a large black slug clung to the end of the Block’s spine, and pulsed wetly as it sucked at it, like a French gourmet hungry for marrow. Every time it swelled I saw little ripples of pain cross the Block’s huge, raw face. It was nice to know he wasn’t having a lot of fun either. “Ah, but you see,” he said, “I have already been rewarded for my loyal service. I have been given the gift of memory, the gift of remembering all the other services I have performed, when I was alive and afterward.” The Block smiled again, although now I could see it was a grin of pain as the thing chewed and sucked at his spine. “What greater reward could I wish than the justice of the Highest and the opportunity to serve here?”

He was playing with me. I could feel it. Did he mean to let me go or keep me? Had he decided yet?

I let go of the doorframe, trying to look casual but mostly swaying. “Of course, great Block, you must have all you want. What could give you more pleasure than doing the Adversary’s sacred work here? Surely not even being transferred to a position of responsibility on a higher level could tempt a servant as loyal as you.” It sounds pretty sharp, but there were a lot of gasps and grunts mixed in as I struggled to stay upright. I was getting used to the insane pressure in my skull, but I sure hadn’t learned to enjoy it.

“Oh, it all sounds very important.” He gave me another one of those flat black grins as a wave of anguish rippled across his beet-red face. “Very important indeed. I’m sure you know important leaders.”

“Niloch, the Commissar of Gravejaw is a personal friend.” I hoped Niloch was too busy being a smoldering ash to ever tell this guy the truth. “And I don’t want to drop names . . . but there’s Eligor the Horseman. The grand duke, you must know him . . .?”

“Eligor?” His mouth tightened. “I am not fortunate enough to know His Grace, of course. But if he is a friend of yours . . .”

“Yes! Old friend. We’re like this.” I held up my hand, the two fingers side by side. “Just the other day he told me, ‘Snakestaff, when you’re back from this errand, you must come and stay with me.’” Which wasn’t altogether a lie—I was pretty certain Eligor would be very happy to put me up if he found out I was in town. It was just that the accommodations weren’t going to be even as nice as this place was.

“You have convinced me.” The Block’s face suddenly went darker, as though something was squeezing it in a huge invisible fist. When the spasm had passed, he said, “Come. Give me your hand.”

Almost twenty years of Earth life had made me a fool. I stuck out my right, just as if I was about to receive a congratulatory handshake and maybe even a small check. Bobby Dollar, Miss Fucking Congeniality. The Block’s thick, all too human hands closed around my wrist and yanked me forward. “There is a toll to pay, of course,” he said. Before I could get my balance he shoved my entire hand into his wide, black-toothed mouth, which felt worse than I can describe. Then he bit down.

I may not have been wearing my own body, and the demon body was obviously not remotely human, but I can tell you that it still hurt like an ungodly motherfucker to have my hand chewed off. Before I knew it I was down on my knees, whimpering and gasping as I tried desperately to stanch the blood pumping from the ragged end of my wrist. Block spit the hand back out. It lay for a moment on his desk like a bloated dead spider, then he lifted it and tore off three of the fingers, each making its own dreadful wet snap.

“Polly!” he shouted. The door opened. The bird-thing stood there.

“Yes, great Block?”

He tossed the fingers out to her as if he was throwing scraps to pets. I heard Bird and Porcupine and Baby Bear fighting over them, but I was in so much pain it seemed unreal. The Block raised the rest of the hand to his mouth and began tearing it apart and eating it in great, appreciative bites, the crimson muscles of his cheeks bulging as he smashed the bones between black molars. When he finished, he wiped most of the blood from his mouth and chin with the back of his meaty, hairy hand, then gave a small belch of appreciation.

“They will put you back on the lifter,” he said. “Remember that I could have taken more, Snakestaff of the Liars Sect. Tell your masters in the far heights that the Block could have sent nothing back but the head, and they still would have known everything they wished to know.” He gripped the edge of his chair with his two strong hands, lifting himself until the barbed wire stopped him. The slug-thing at the end of his ruined spine swung like the clapper of a church bell. I was too busy waiting to die from pain and nausea and fountaining blood to notice very much, but I heard him bellow, “This is my corner of Hell! I rule here! And if the great Black Master himself came to me, I would have my morsel of flesh from him as well. Yes, I would pick my teeth with his tail! Because I am Block the executioner! Block the butcher!”

He was still raving when Baby Bear grabbed me in his heavy claws and dragged me out.

I squeezed the torn end of my arm as tightly as I could while they dragged me back down those scream-echoing corridors, but I was losing blood very fast. I could feel my wrist bone digging into my good hand, but beyond that incredibly strange and painful sensation, I knew the rest of my body was slowly packing up its signaling apparatus and surrendering. As we reached the lifter even the wails of the tormented became muted, and the grotesque faces of Polly Parrot and her gang grew mercifully blurry. I felt a new pain, as though my stump was being sanded with broken glass: Baby Bear was licking the bloody wound. I slipped in and out of consciousness as we waited. It might have been a minute later, it might have been an hour, but the lifter finally arrived, groaning like an overloaded truck bumping down a steep hill. When the door opened, they kicked me a few times, then pitched me inside.

Already blood was pooling underneath me. The vibration of the lifter had almost shaken me senseless, and I seemed to be entering a long, black tunnel, crawling away from light and hope. I slapped my good hand against the wall, and as my other wrist started spurting again I tried to call out my destination. The words came in little wet blobs of sound, like bloody mucus: “The . . . Red . . . City.”

The lifter shook even harder, rattling me like a bug in a killing jar. Then the black tunnel of my thoughts collapsed around me.