Lower. Lower. Lower.
You close your eyes for you cannot watch the entire process, but you do hear the escalating shrieks and then the finality of the great SPLAT!
When your eyes reopen, the dizzy, headless woman is no longer pregnant, and already the demonic newborn is being spirited away in a barrow.
“Take me the fuck out of here!” you yell.
Howard rolls his eyes, scratching at some tiny red pocks on his face that appear to be ingrown hairs. “Really, Mr. Hudson—was the profanity necessary? And, truly, I regret your distress, but it’s necessary that you recognize the systematics that exist here. You must perceive Lucifer’s ultimate ideal of pursuing an order of faith antithetical to God.”
“Fuck that shit,” you cuss again, and now even you are shocked by the sudden use of the vulgar. “This sucks. None of this makes any sense—”
“Excellent! You’re beginning to comprehend!” Howard enthuses, taking you out.
“It doesn’t make any sense at all for Lucifer to go to all this effort to do all this evil stuff!”
Howard continues to beam. “Exactly! Because, antithetically speaking, the absence of logic is the perfect logic in a domain that must exist contrary to God!”
Your confoundment dizzies you when Howard finally wends you back outside into the creeping scarlet daylight, and as you move away from the Barracks, the wails of newborn Demons and the shrieks of women in labor follow you like an atrocious banner.
Still, details bother you, and now that the shock of your witness is past, you slowly observe, “They use their babies for the ‘gourmand market,’ and they use their mammary glands for demonic implants, and once they’ve had sixty-six babies, their headless bodies are sentenced to eternity in the Decapitant Camp. Have I got it right so far?”
“Quite,” Howard confirms.
“So . . . what happens to their heads? Earlier, didn’t you say something about—”
“An exclusive construction component!” Howard continues to be pleased by your attentiveness, but then—
The black static veil crackles and surges and—
Here we go again . . .
—you psychically plummet into the next stop on the tour . . .
“This, Mr. Hudson, is the second bird from the stone,” Howard intones.
You stare out, mortified, mystified, and transfixed all at once . . .
PART THREE
MANSE LUCIFIER
CHAPTER SIX
(I)
Krilid rubbed fatigue from his oblong eyes. He waited, sitting on the luminous rim of the Nectoport’s mouth within the sooty cloud he’d found at the prearranged coordinates. He still felt himself psychically recovering from the sheer vision of the Vandermast Reservoir. Just a great big empty black hole in the ground, he tried to convince himself. Why should the sight of the place fill him with such dread?
They haven’t told me everything. When will they? This isn’t fair . . .
He was serving God now, after all, but could God hear prayers from Hell? No salvation would be in store for him upon his Hellbound death, so . . .
Do I really need this?
But when he wiped his brow, which the Head-Bending had transformed into a warped cone, he remembered his true motives.
One way or another, I’ll make them pay for what they did to me, and if I die trying? So what?
When one was unfortunate enough to be born in Hell, there was not another Hell to follow in afterlife. Only the sweetness of nonexistence . . .
Krilid made a mental note not to forget that. His mood improved at once.
BAM!
More reflex than the awareness of danger flung his runneled hand up to fire the sulphur pistol. Blackish glop and curls of tentacles flew all about, some of the glop slapping him in the face. Frowning, he wiped it off on his sleeve. Great . . .
He’d almost sensed rather than seen the repulsive Levatopus that had crawled out of the clouds. Had he been a second late, the gravity-defying encephalopod might have wrapped about his head and driven its beak through his skull, to suck his brain.
Like a candle, he’d blown out his Hand of Glory—it would be needed later, and evidently there was a shortage of them. “Frugality of resources,” Ezoriel had phrased it. “Not one of God’s gifts to us may ever be used unwisely. Gifts taken for granted offend the Lord.” Krilid figured that was the Fallen Angel’s way of saying the Contumacy itself as well as all the other Anti-Luciferic Units were sucking wind and shit out of supplies.
His Troll’s belly squirmed; he was famished, and worse, thirsty. He smirked to himself for not retrieving the pieces of the Levatopus before they’d floated away. He could’ve squeezed the juices out of them, which were better than nothing. But then a bleak joy kindled in his nine-chambered heart at the familiar humming and then the verifying sound—
Sssssssssssssssss-ONK!
—and then a terrifying CLAP! cracked in the air along with several blindingly bright flashes like a camera flash, only the light was a gooey green.
The open mouth of another Nectoport now hovered just before Krilid’s.
The grand figure moved forward, and the lightlike voice: “Grace be unto you, Krilid.”
“And you, too, Ezoriel.”
Try as he might, the more Krilid stared at the Fallen Angel’s face, the more impossible it was to actually see. He could see the tall, chiseled body and its toned muscles, plus the straps of armor, and even the burned stubs of Ezoriel’s long-gone wings sticking out over his shoulders. Just never the face.
The perfect Human hand reached over into Krilid’s Observation Port, proffering a small vial. “Fresh, distilled water for you, Krilid. I regret the paltry volume, but . . .”
Krilid’s eyes nearly popped out of his warped head from the delight. “Aw, wow, Ezoriel! Thanks!” He took the vial and gulped it down.
“Only seven ounces,” the Angel’s voice sparkled, “but just as Lucifer finds such nefarious function in the number of his name—six—blessed fortune is found in the perfect number, seven.”
Guess that means it’s good luck. Krilid nearly felt drunk from the immaculate water. “God, that’s good.”
“God—oh, yes. His gifts are great.” A pause in the auralike voice, then a sniffing sound. “You expended a round?”
“Yeah. Levatopus. The clouds are crawling with the things.”
“I believe it’s their egg-laying season. But have no fear. God protects those who serve him.” Next, the Angel’s unseen eyes seemed to veer toward the Hand of Glory. “Ah, you haven’t forgotten the necessity to be austere with your implements. God smiles upon such disciplines.”