“And yes, my son, I will reward your attentive ways of late by showing you your crowning creation in all Helldom. The delicious descriptions the Children of Hell use, when they speak of it, would fill ten volumes of fresh obscenities.
“Look here and I will show you what you do to the one who sexually tortured you and oh so willingly sent you to me, perhaps a little before your time was up. This will occur on the very last day I train you. Look here. What do you see?”
The vampiric satyr scanned the demon ruler’s urine stream. He was bathing his son with the hot liquid as he was often wont to do. It flowed constantly down through his leg pelt, and it was here that he searched for clues.
“My lord, I do see something.” And it was true. “I see me, as an impossibly massive muscular machine, glittering golden, speckled scaled flesh as hard as diamond, rising up through exploding floorboards, and concrete and tile. I throw something through the floor that has no significance whatsoever, before I turn to the other. My log-like biceps are already grasping him and turning him around so I can painfully rip into him and permanently join my member to his intestinal walls. I rip through the weak mortal flesh with no resistance.”
He had to stop for a few minutes as the father and son laughed until red tears flowed freely down their cheeks. “Oh, my lord, as I am mounting him from behind, the goodly doctor is looking back over his shoulder. His scream would shatter a mortal’s eardrum, but I drive him deeper, popping and snapping ligaments and tendons in my terror-drive! Then, oh my, I tell him, ‘I will always be with you and I will never stop pounding you, so get used to it. I will pound you into billions of infinite Earths.’ We will go deeper forever, for this is my exquisite revenge upon the one who sent me to Infernus.
“Then I see, Father, I furiously pound the man, now dead and then quite alive again. He then suffers the final change in our eternal coupling. Oh, my father, must I say this?”
“You must, my son. I pray, don’t make me tell you again.”
“I open my mouth wider and wider, and as I do, my teeth grow longer.”
“Your destiny, my beloved!” the demon bellowed, and his face burst into yellow flame.
“My teeth grow longer and thicker. I easily sink them into the top and base of his baking skull. I ride the wretch this way for all time. He never stops screaming; thus we become what is known in legend as ‘The Scream.’”
“There is now a room I must show you, my son.” The father led him into an illusion of a green forest where searing winds blew gracefully through the tops of the trees.
The Legend was mischievous and brutal about it. It is something his later students would come to expect, taking nothing he said for granted. It was now, he decided, time to tease them in this fashion for the first time.
“Students, I am now going to share with you a glorious story about a very singular tableau. It is in the beginning of The Hall of Tableaus, because it is beautiful and morosely innocent.”
A student expressed his doubts. “I don’t believe you.”
“I have fashioned this creature I merely call ‘The Tree’ after J.R.R. Tolkien’s magnificent creation ‘Treebeard.’ You will all love him very much.”
The class was really in for it now. The Legend loved doing this sort of thing, with no apologies whatsoever. He quoted, from memory, this entire story of untold beauty.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“A SINGULAR TABLEAU”
“My son, let me show you something so fierce that it is considered beautiful in my park of Infernus. The other ruling demons envy my collection of tableaus. I was blessed, because I rule well. Have I told you what the laws are that govern a few of the other parks?”
“No, and I was afraid to ask.”
“As well you should be. I provide (for you alone) all you need.”
“How much do you know?”
“As if you expected me to reply with any answer other than, ‘Everything.’ Now be silent while I entertain you. There is a silver demon that rules a park not many light years hence. Its roiling hideousness does not suit your training, so you were sent here. Souls there just roll around in a darkness that can be felt. They bite each other and scream and slice one another endlessly with their claws.
“Another ruling demon — his demonstrative, withering look would permanently liquefy you — is the black prince of The Kingdom of Burning Winds. His domain abuts mine on the eastern side.
“There are a million others to cover the more than ten billion hopeless souls inhabiting Infernus.”
“My father,” the son whimpered, “this knowledge boils my head further.”
“As was its purpose!” The demon laughed. “Are you ready to witness this fierce tableau that many envy? It will burn away more of what is left of your tiny soul.”
“Yes, my father.”
The son’s mouth was white with cancerous sores; pus freely flowed past his sizzling lips onto the frying stones at their feet.
“You have become quite the liar, my son.”
“Yes,” the son stated simply.
“We will pretend, for a moment, that the dream world was more than just that. As you can tell, we have entered the facsimile of a rich green forest. But only by the wildest stretch of the imagination could you believe it is a cool fall day, for we are toasting at a goodly rate. Now watch helplessly as the tableau plays out. You may laugh maniacally, but you can’t help them or interfere or join in to torment them further because it is in the past.”
“And nor would I want to interfere or help anyone, my father.”
“You are learning, son. Now hold tight and observe.”
Two teenage boys enter the emerald glade. A big boy, quickly packing muscle onto his yet childlike body, carried an axe; the other one looked frail and carried a pick. The grass splattered the boys’ boots with dew as they fearlessly walked into a clearing. The yellow shafts of sunlight glittered among the garden.
The skinny boy, dressed in simple peasant greens (that matched the other boy’s only in color) spoke up. His voice carried over the light breezes that played in the swaying tops of the trees. “I thought this was the place guarded by a hideous tree-demon. You told me-”
“Shut up!” the big boy said. “The witch said there was a living heart in the tree. If we could chop out the heart, we will have all the treasures hidden within it.”
“If that were true, then why hasn’t she done it?”
The big boy’s cheeks flushed with impatience. “She said the tree magically prevents her from approaching this area. She guaranteed me (using her mortality as her pledge) that if she came here, the tree would crush her heart without remorse.”
“Which tree do you think it is?”
Red said, “My son, this is the part I love watching o’er and o’er!”
“I can’t wait to rejoice with you, Father!”
“Look!” the big boy said, pointing. “I’ll bet this is it.”
They both, attracted to its differentness from the other trees, approached it deliberately, slowly. They tried to take in the foaming evil rolling out of its gray heart, tasting it in the crisp air. The bark jutted out from some of the gray branches; some limbs were starkly white, but large strips of cracked ancient bark were hanging loosely there as well. Many of its branches and smaller capillaries were littered around its trunk and base. Thick, green/gray veins of roots broke the ground, and a few looped back into the loam, anchoring the imprisoned tree to the earth.
“Let’s chop it!” the big boy said, leading them to stand directly beneath its mighty swaying branches.