Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 01 (22 page)

The directions led us to a slick walled modern house on the appropriately named Bleak Street. It hung over the freeway on stilts like a creepy French clown. Its windows leaked faint illumination, seemingly from candles. I left Mr. Kim in the car again, though this time he seemed sheepish and disappointed. He was growing on me, like a stray cat.

I lightly rapped on the metal door. Trying to be quiet. So much so, I thought I wasn’t heard, until the
clip clop
of high heels came, and the door opened. It was wider than a regular door and spun on a central hinge like a revolving hotel entry. A woman answered it.

When I saw the tall black woman before me, the first thing I noticed was her amulet, the same as mine. Then I saw her face, those regal cheekbones and light brown eyes—she was smiling through plump
Shiseido
Red.

It was Liesl.

“Oh…my…God. Where the hell have you been?” I asked. It’s amazing how quickly one can move from happy to see, to…want to see dead. I was furious.

“Right here. What’s the problem?” she said, turning and clip-clopping back into the house. I noticed her attire. A fluffy white bathrobe stained a bright crimson in more places than not. Through a doorway to our left three similarly stained women lounged at a dinette set, smoking, drinking coffee, and flipping through magazines.

“Smoke ’em on the deck, ladies!” Liesl called.

“Well, seeing as how you’ve been missing for a week, now?”

“What are you talking about? I haven’t been missing. I’m not sure you’re aware—and how could you be, really—but this is the time of year when we multiply.”

“No,” I said, refusing to believe that this whole escapade was an elaborate mistake. One that could still prove deadly, considering. I started to whisper, “I don’t believe it. Where are the kidnappers, Liesl?”

A nerve throbbed on Liesl’s head, pulsing. Across her forehead a slash of red substance bled from her hairline. “You’re such a tweaker, Amanda. Did they come up with cloud for zombies, while I’ve been working?”

“Working?” I crossed my arms. Because really? What the fuck?

“This is the nursery for the little baby inkys and suckys,” she said in a horrendously mouthed baby talk, accentuated by a rapid clapping of her hands. “They are
so
cute, I just want to eat ’em. Want to see?”

She trod off down a hallway. I followed. Windows lined one wall, they looked out over Interstate 5. I flinched at the sight of the speeding cars, blurring past mere feet below.

The hall opened into a large vault of a room, its far end furnished with a row of seven bassinets, in its center, a mattress soaked in blood. There were leather binding cuffs and chains strewn about. In the corner to my right, two green garbage bags bulged. Even my barbaric nose could detect the subtle hints of iron and slick sweetness. I wondered what had gone on here. A feast? I noted the amount of waste and thought about the poor children in Ethiopia, although, on second thought they probably wouldn’t be interested in my idea of food. But, if you are hungry enough, who knows? I’m just being insensitive; of course, they’d eat it.

Liesl was standing by a bassinet, rocking it gently. When she looked at me, I gestured to the mattress and the bags in the corner. “Rough birth?”

She smiled. “Not particularly.” Her expression was flippant, eyes blinking rapidly, playing dumb. “Come look. They’re so lovely.”

And, they were rather cute little critters, which is a much more accurate word than babies, as these were more, well, crittery
108
. They were round, and long, like those kid toys,
Glo-worms
, I think they’re called. But their eyes brandished spiraled pupils and were dark red. They were wrapped in plush blankets, like breakfast burritos. The one I was looking at made kissy mewls at me, from a tiny mouth. It must have been a baby incubus, or—what had Liesl called them, inkys?

“This one’s already a flirt,” I remarked. “You’re right Liesl, they are precious.”

She gleamed with pride. “…and deadly dangerous, too. But mostly just cute.” She patted the closest infant’s belly, if that’s what it was.

I had learned so much, over the past few hours, but in many ways, more questions loomed. “Liesl?”

“Yep.” It was in her arms, now. She rocked gently.

“You’ve got to bring me up to date, girl. This is a lot to take in.” And, frankly the whole coming from Hell thing is sort of intriguing, don’t you think?

Unlike those other hambones, Liesl actually had a fascinating story, and a knack for the telling. It is quite rare to hear first hand accounts of Hell, particularly straight from a genuine devil’s mouth. They’re usually so secretive. So I wasn’t completely bored with her yammering.

Liesl elucidated the story with the poise and regal elocution of a debutante, pure finishing school, a real classy bitch.

An Excursion to Hell

 

The Moderately Interesting Tale of Liesl, Horny Little Devil Interlude Part Four: In Case You’re Keeping Track

“You’ve probably noticed an absence of red skin, horns and tail, and I can assure you, I have no pitchfork—because really, do I look like a farmer? The vermillion paste you saw is only for our rituals, to mimic the look of our former selves. You see, we slough that look in the transport process.” Liesl’s eyes wandered off, as though remembering. “I kind of miss the wings though; walking everywhere is so tedious, and these human shoes are pure torture.

“It comes down to this: I got lucky. I received a job offer that beat anything I could be doing in Hell. I have no regrets.

“I was born in a rural community far from the bustling Beelzehub of Hell. Which, if you haven’t guessed, is not the fire and brimstone pit the Bible beaters would have you believe. Oh, to be sure, it’s hot, sweltering even, but no more so than a rainy Vegas summer, or August in Orlando. What makes Hell Hell isn’t burning in a lake of fire, it’s constant work and no vacations. And, I was sick of it.

“Sick…of…it!

“It’s laid out like any other country, only on a much larger scale—imagine the population! The Beelzehub is at its center—a bustling metropolis that in its cynosure breaches the clouds and spreads out to its lowest storied buildings in a circumference the size of Texas. Two hundred highways stretch off across the desert dunes—where the heat can reach glassblowing highs—like spokes on a wheel to populous regions where villages are as big as Tokyo.

“Each village is assigned a duty, which is managed by the Undermastor, who reports to the Mastor of the specific Highway, who reports to the Liaison to the Synod Speaker, who reports to the Synod itself. From there it gets confusing. All you need to know is that they’re all in bed together, sometimes literally, and you can’t trust any of them.

“Despair, where I’m from, is more of a hamlet than a village, about the size of Los Angeles. It lies far enough from a main highway, that it gets few visits from the Undermastor himself. Our work was simple enough, though, requiring little effort and repetitive. Lower-level soul sorting has never been a priority to the Synod. They just let us do our thing, which was essentially job placement for petty criminals, political figures, and children who stepped on cracks despite clear evidence of its outcome. We spent what little free time there was fucking—that’s the number one leisure activity in Hell; second is masturbation; there isn’t a third.

“So it was a surprise to be called into my manager’s office one day, and come face to face with the Undermastor, who looks a bit like Kevin Spacey, I must say. Except for the crimson complexion and the skinned horns protruding from his forehead like a calf. He wore his wings down, and cloaked under a light black trench, which is the style in the Beelzehub, but in Despair it came off as elitist. My manager was shooed away and the honcho asked me to sit. The window behind me whispered with the etching of a sandstorm. He said he had a proposition.

“‘We’ve had our eye on you for some time,’ he said. ‘You’re a lovely girl, dedicated to your work, scored high on grey matter, omni-orgasmic, and seemingly impervious to distraction of any sort. These are amazing character traits for Earth, but here, quite an accomplishment. Satan himself couldn’t have conjured a more appropriate set of attributes.’ The Undermastor’s black eyes stared over the temple of his clasped hands, index fingers tapping his nose.

“I shifted in my seat. There seemed to be a question hanging out there. I thought I might be in recruitment for Satan’s League of Whores, which despite the title was not just a concept, but an actual pack of female demons sitting around in mud baths waiting for the Big Guy’s forked dick to twitch. Revulsion coursed through my flesh. I preferred to choose sexual partners, you see, and while that belief is not the norm in Hell, I planned on maintaining control of my own body.

“‘Liesl, how would you like to spend some time in a cooler climate?’

“I cocked my head. Cooler, I thought. Did he mean the hub? The League of Whores is said to have air conditioning. I cringed, my left stomach roiled.

“‘I’m of course referring to a tour of duty on Earth. Now, don’t answer yet. I know that life in the Corps sounds glamorous, but it can be very nasty work. Very nasty. You’d have to leave Despair and travel to the Beelzehub, immediately. I’ll give you a few minutes to consider your options.’

“The Undermastor strode to the nearby window overlooking the steaming factory floor. Thousands of thick pipes rose and curved like shower nozzles on either side of a wide conveyor belt. Steam rose from the open ends creating a shimmering haze. Souls ejected from each of them with a plop, turning from milky misshapen masses to corporeal form as they connected with the moving surface. Red arms snatched at the new arrivals with the efficiency of machines, tossing them through the air into various bins, marked deprogramming and trade school and upper management. From the sorters, workers sucked the dead up into huge vacuum hoses, delivering them to their assorted destinations. The workers were drenched with a feverish sweat that beaded on their red skin like white candy dots; nearly all flapped their fleshy wings to create a bearable breeze. This was a ‘sweat shop’ in the truest sense of the word, but the swing shift crew only had another ninety-seven hours until half-shift fuck-break. The home stretch.

“He started to move for the door. This was not a choice. It was like winning the lottery. ‘That’s not necessary. I’m ready now.’

“The Succubus Corps Basic Training Camp is a twenty-story building connected to the Great Mall of Indecency in Southwestern Dreary, a major suburb of the Beelzehub. The Undermastor was right; in addition to being more spacious than the factory in Despair, it was significantly cooler.

“In my first days at camp, I was assigned a partner and a tracker, Clevis, who you’ve obviously met. The job was laid out simply: Fuck humans, strip and deliver souls, increase our number through hybridization. That last bit I can’t go into specifics on. You’ve seen too much as it is and must promise to keep your mouth shut. I know you will.

“The trainings at SCBTC were minimally pleasurable exercises in human mating rituals. The complex utilized a recreation of an Applebee’s Restaurant, where we ran pickup drills and familiarized ourselves with your wonderful cocktails. I became enamored of strawberry margaritas from the first day. The sex act took a little getting used to, logistically speaking. Humans are so fragile and soft. I hate to tell you how many I broke just getting on top of them—the size differential had a bit to do with that, I think. Really tedious machinations, as you can imagine, but the unit orgies were amazing. They had to be, to make up for all the boring human sex.

“The orgy stadium was intentionally the most comfortable of spaces. The coaches made sure of that, and only the top one hundred grunts of the day got tickets. Needless to say, I was there every day. The floor of the place was a massive tufted cushion made from a slick vinyl-like material that was hosed and mopped off regularly to avoid the accumulation of noxious fumes that our fluids can sometimes generate—a little known fact, don’t spread it around. The ceiling expands to allow for various aerial positioning and for flying mounts. Just thinking about the room gets me going, a little bit.

“I remember this one orgy. It lasted nearly two hundred and twelve hours. I ran through every possible maneuver and left there sore from my asshole to my nasal passages. My red skin was raw to the point of purple. I needed a real hosing down after that one, and more than a few gauze pads.

“After training, our group was assigned to Seattle. We had a glorious graduation parade through the streets of Dreary. The citizens threw streamers of ash and blew stolen horns from the Lights, the angelic sound blistered in the heat, warbling. The wonderful smoky odor of a forest ablaze filled the air. The Liason to the Synod, herself, presided.

“We left for Earth the very next day.

“That experience wasn’t so wonderful, and I’ll leave it at that. I did mention the sloughing of our natural bodies rite? Dreadful.”

Despite Liesl sharing so very much of her personal life, she left some questions unanswered. I reached into my purse, digging for that hunk of plastic that had got me into all this in the first place, her cell phone.

“Liesl, if you weren’t in any kind of trouble, why did you text me the message?”

“What message?”

I pulled the phone from my purse and clicked on the saved message. “Help me” glowed. I handed it to her. “This one.”

“I didn’t send you that message. In fact, I lost that phone, before I was called away for the harvest.”

“The what?”

“Oh, no, this.” Liesl swept her arms about indicating the birthing. “When my other called to me, I had to drop everything. I guess that included my phone. I can’t be sure where I lost it.”

“Then I wonder who sent the message?”

“No clue, Amanda.”

Liesl busied herself tightening blankets. I sensed it was time to excuse myself, as I had a guest in the car. I looked at my watch. 2:30 A.M.

“I’m going to leave you to your mothering.” I turned to walk back down the hall. Then, turned back. “We could use some time to catch up. Is there a chance you can come to the opening of Mortuary on Saturday? I have a feeling it’s going to be eventful.”