Infernus (7 page)

"Let's chop it!" the big boy said, leading them to stand directly beneath its mighty swaying branches.

"It almost seems like..." The skinny boy chuckled anxiously. "...like it has a face."

The big one shouldered his axe and prepared to swing at the base with all his might. He grunted with the effort.

Then everything changed.

A great roaring tumult of snapping branches and twigs arose to splatter the boys' four eardrums. They both covered their ears -
too little, too late
. Blood trickled thinly between their fingers. The pain was mighty. Their ears rang.

When they looked up, they saw Doom staring in their faces; they shrieked while their sanity fled and hid. They stained the front of their pantaloons brown.

A stretched, splintered face hung above them. It quivered with unhinged evil and seared them with its gaze. What they now saw in its "eyes" was wrath, contempt, such unmitigated, shrieking, blood-soaked murder!

Its jaws, teeth and the wooden sinews of its visage cracked and threw splinters into their faces as it spoke. The voice thundered through the boys' bodies like hot shockwaves in solid bass notes. They desperately tried to shriek until their brains exploded.

"We can't have all this screaming," said the tree. "You'll bring the rest of those rat-bag villagers before I need them."

Its groping branches shattered their teeth as it searched for something within their mouths. Both tongues were ripped out while they stood quivering in place.

A great branch in the form of a "Y" came coolly snaking from behind its trunk and lifted the skinny boy into the air. Cradled by his neck, he hung to the side of the tree.

It creaked its trunk to look at the skinny boy, but spoke to the fat one. "You will not believe the ease with which I shall dispose of your companion, fat boy. Know two things: one, the death of the skinny boy will only be sudden for my immediate pleasure and your amazement; two, the length of time I will torture your baby fat body will be legendary, even by my standards. When the villagers find what profanity I have accomplished - of course finding drying strips of you in my branches won't hurt, either - they will run from this glade, filling their pantaloons, and will be too afraid to ever come here again."

The tree spoke softly, almost maternally. "You have been told about the living heart that lives within me. The witch who told you this is my slave. She no doubt told you some nonsense about riches untold that I'm supposed to have somewhere here. It is
her
heart that I have imprisoned inside that keeps me alive, boys. To kill me would free her to die in an instant. She has lived many hundreds of years now, and that's a long time, even for a witch. She's tired and wants to rest."

The tree turned its face to the big boy who still stood on the ground, quite insane. Within seconds, the tree had separated every part of the skinny boy from the rest. As the creaking and snapping subsided, little thumps could be heard when the parts thudded to the ground like soft drumbeats.

"Now," the tree said, with an expression that resembled unbridled affection (but wasn't quite), "do you have any idea what I am going to do with you, boy?" The tree lowered its face until it touched noses with him. The boy felt a gnarled branch scrape the seat of his pants. "Gasp! Right below your - Yes, boy! I'm going to do things to you that I have only seen in
my
nightmares. You, young foolish boy that once was, cannot imagine what those things might be!"

The tree shivered again with unbridled delight and began to drool sap as it slowly, slowly, oh, so slowly, went about his work.

*****

What the father and son savored in their viewing made them heave bile onto the forest floor for [days] segments of time.

As they walked out of the dream and back into the heated plains of Infernus, the son asked the father, "Can I come here often, beloved?"

"Not only can you, but each time you enter this blessed tableau, you will see a different rendering. Through the eons, there were only 1,176 of them. Shame, really."

"But, were they delicious, Father?"

"They were, indeed. The old ladies who foolishly stumbled into the clearing can be savored for [many times]. They were all uniquely dispatched and consumed, but the only singular one was-" [here Dr. Anthony Begels thought it best to edit out what your imagination has certainly already supplied]. "Of course, what we saw was the last one. The villagers had evolved to the point where their wrath was greater than their fear."

"Is that recorded in the tableau, Father?"

"Yes, but, wait...are you saying you would
like
to see that which would rip out your heart with sorrow and sadness?"

The son was drooling with anticipation.

"Go by yourself, son. I will wait here for you." The father soothed him. "It has now become that day, my child. Go look!"

The son returned to the tableau and looked, and felt himself falling into the illusion of it, disappearing and becoming the activity.

*****

The place all around the tree was covered with men and women in simple green raiment, waving every kind of sharpened silver. A bearded oak of a man stood in the clearing, apart from the others, and made his solemn pronouncement. "You, spawn of Hell - go back to the pit in which you were born. You will never again kill, after the sun sets this very day!"

All the eager, pressing bodies fell upon the tree with shrieks.

The tree shot its cracking, splintering face to the heavens and unleashed a scream so immense that all the ears of the villagers broke simultaneously. Nothing could deter or slow them down. They blurred together as their silver hacked the ancient bark and meat of the tree. Some of them missed and slashed the appendages of their deaf neighbors.

The demon twisted and tormented its trunk, then attempted to elongate itself to escape the tools in their hands.

And the villagers' shouts of hatred did not subside. Some wept in their single purpose. Before many hours had elapsed, they found a gray, beating heart, which they burned on the spot.

The tree became firewood. Then it became kindling. Then it became single chips before they stopped. And many [weeks] times after, when every root had been pulled up and burned in the clearing, the villagers salted the entire area and had their shaman pray a protective chant for their eternal protection. They were satisfied.

The son, filled with awe, returned to his father and wept as he said, "Was there ever a more completely delicious epic as that tome, my father?"

"Even if you could write it, my son, you could not do it justice. But you can come here as often as you like and saturate yourself with the beauty, wherewithal."

*****

Nothing of interest was said after this chapter, but the students glared at him, knowing they could never trust him again. And they always kept their guard up after this.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"ANOTHER EPISODE OF BANKRUPT BEHAVIOR"

"My son," said the demon as he bent to his work with passion, "is this not a delicious treat, for we are working together, and being together. What do you think?"

The vampire satyr lay still, unable to speak.

"Look, my son, the meat hook rises and falls with the blurring speed of a hummingbird's wing. Your eye socket, a mere ruin."

Crack! Split!

Red was laughing so hard that he fell on the burning earth and rolled around hysterically for days. The son barely moved; his massive hairy chest rose and fell with shallow breathing.

Later, the son felt a membrane growing over each shattered eye socket and saw (dimly) many things he wished he hadn't.

He saw a small red demon forcing a knobby blackened branch up the rectum of a young, surprised man.

He saw a squirming man who was trying to crawl away from a dwarf who had managed to imbed himself halfway up the man's arse.

He saw eternally starved serpents silently slurping up slimy fetuses in a boiling lake. And he did confess that this scene was actually pleasing him.

"Look, my satyr son, behold this horror of religion. Merely seeing this tableau will burn parts of your soul away for all time. You must experience this to become all things."

And this is what the son saw:

There were two diamond towers standing fast in the blackened earth; one would say that they appeared to be 110 feet high. No heat could affect them. They were elaborately carved with 3,000 human figures, jutting out at odd angles as if they were agonizing in the flames. A green demon, five times larger than any mortal, stood next to these glittering twin towers. He had a new arrival gripped around the waist with a massive fist. He was jerking the newcomer back and forth between the cruel towers so rapidly that he was no more than a blur, a confusion of arms in the painful rhythm of the nerves of the dead.

It made Red laugh so hard that many golden tears were falling from his sightless orbs. The large green demon's laughter kept him from seeing what he was doing; it was all instinct. There was snickering as well.

Red turned to his son after their shared experience and said, "This is what all beings ever created refer to as, 'The Single Most Holy Vision!' Spread your legs wide, my son, I must become one with you."

And it was so.

*****

"Another tableau, my son?" the father asked after he had sexually abused him for a [century] passing of a small time.

"Oh, my father, please, please me!"

A blister bug fell from one of the son's sockets. He picked it up and shoved it into his arse. He heard its shell crunch.

They stopped before a cave. The entrance was soaked in evil blackness that roiled out at them, inviting them to move closer with invisible tentacles. They obeyed its calling. Within, as a white light came up, a little drama was being played out.

The son observed a man, black as slate, standing within a room. He was nude, huge and burning. He stooped to walk under a stone arch into an adjoining cave.

A gorilla stood there staring at a statue that was baked red as clay in a kiln. Its right shoulder was low, for it was leaning on the burning floor with a sizzling fist. The gorilla, its coat shimmering cobalt blue, casually looked his way.

"Come here, my son," it said to the man, its eyes observing him with intelligence.

The statue, animated, was pointing in the distance with its left arm and tirelessly plunging a knife into its own chest, over and over again.

"What is this?" the man asked.

The gorilla drew him to his side with a massive, leathery paw and nuzzled his neck. He barely whispered into one of the man's ears. "See the plaque on the pedestal? What does it say?"

"It says, 'Man's Best.' What does that mean? 'Man's Best...Friend'? What?"

"No," the gorilla replied gently. "This is the best that man can possibly
do
."

The statue opened its mouth and spoke. "I'll kill you. I'll kill you."

It kept its left arm pointing in the distance, at an unseen enemy. It continuously plunged the knife into its chest with malicious intent. And glee.

"This is the
best
that man has to offer?" the black man asked.

"That's right." The gorilla laughed.

"We're screwed." The man sighed. "Poor statue, thanks for reminding us how doomed we are."

"It's not a statue," the gorilla calmly replied, then laughed at the shock on his pupil's tormented face.

The gorilla took the man there, coupling with him in a pitch-black corridor. The connecting cave drew dark, signaling that it had shown them all of its great and secret show.

"That tableau seemed vaguely familiar to me," the son said, clearly confused.

"I don't suppose I have ever seen the likes of
that
tableau before," Red stated.

They moved on.

*****

They approached a gray and brown cemetery with two small buildings in the middle of the entrance. A weak sun, unseen, flooded the area with an amber overcast.

A metal track suspended on waist-high wooden poles ran between the buildings and disappeared into large concrete arches on either end.

The father and son walked through the entrance and stood in front of the track.

"What is this, Father?"

Before he could answer, his attention was captured by five young blonde girls marching with rigid, militaristic steps toward the track. Their ages were mere years apart, and one looked identical to another. Each held a long, broad-bladed knife in their right hands.

A distant clacking began until a gray flat car - glowing bright red, as if heated - rolled into view from the building entrance on the right. (Its ride, therefore, was clockwise.)

A woman was securely lashed to the car with massive chains. She was dressed in a white linen dress trimmed with lace. Her hair was golden and fell about her shoulders in long curls. Her face was smeared with despair and resignation. She had to look over her shoulder at the young girls, for she was turned away from them. The chains pulled her down toward the car's surface and left her back stretched tight and exposed.

Two things happened when the car clacked and clattered and reached the equidistant place between the buildings:

Flames roared from the building's arch on the left, which sounded like an angry animal.

The young girls began penetrating her back with the blades. They ripped them backward and out, looping thin strings, slung here and there, and covered the five girls and woman with wet red. The woman's only response was that she desperately tried to disappear into the metal car, though it burned bright crimson. There was no cry from her. The girls did not shriek with delight, but merely grunted with their efforts.

Before the car entered the flaming arch of the building on the left, two more things happened:

The girls stopped stabbing the miserable woman. They held the blades over their heads, shook them like savages, but made no victorious cry. Red strings were flinging all over and down on them.

Then the flames intercepted the woman. Her body instantly bloomed bright orange and she became a fat crackling jittering lump before she disappeared into the glowing hole.