John Connolly - The Infernals aka Hell's Bells

Edgefast sighed. “You remember that time Duke Kobal 3lost his favorite ring?”

Brompton did. As demonic lords went, Kobal wasn’t the worst, which meant that, when he was sticking sharp needles into your flesh, or finding out just how many spiders you could hold in your mouth at once, he would always provide coffee and cake for everyone who was watching, and tell you how sorry he was that it had come to this, even as he tried to fit one last spider between your lips. Kobal had lost his best skull ring down one of Hell’s sewers, and it had never been found. Following this incident, a law had been passed requiring that all of Hell’s rotten vegetables, old food, unidentified limbs, and assorted demonic bodily waste products should be searched by hand before being swept into the Sea of Unpleasantness, just in case anything valuable might have been mislaid.

“Well,” continued Edgefast. “You know all that searching business?”

“You mean, going down on your claws and knees and raking through poo ’n stuff?”

“Yep.”

“With your nose right in it, so you could be certain that nothing slipped by?”

“Yep.”

“And with nowhere to wash, so you had to try and eat your sandwich at break by holding it right at the edges with your claws while hoping that you didn’t drop it?”

“Yep.”

“But your hands smelled bad so your sandwich smelled bad too?”

“Yep.”

“’Orrible. Just ’orrible.” Brompton shuddered. “Doesn’t bear thinking about. Worst job in Hell. Anyway, go on.”

“Well, that was me.”

“No!”

“Yes. Years and years of it. I still can’t look at a toilet without feeling the urge to stick my hand down it.”

“I thought you smelled a bit funny, even for a demon.”

“It’s not my fault. I’ve tried everything: water, soap, acid. It won’t go away.”

“Very unfortunate for you, and anyone who happens to be downwind of you, I must say. Well, this must be quite the promotion for you, then.”

“Oh, it is, it is!” said Edgefast fervently.

“Somebody likes you.”

Brompton nudged him. Edgefast giggled.

“Suppose so.”

“Oh yes, you’re quite the special one. Satan’s little pet!”

“Don’t know I’m born,” said Edgefast. “Happiest day of my existence, getting away from all that.”

Edgefast beamed. Brompton beamed back. Just then, a large slot opened above their heads, and the hourly emptying of Hell’s drains began, dousing the two guards in the foulest waste imaginable before coming to rest in a series of large, stinking pits at the base of the mountain. When the last drop had fallen, and the slot had closed, a small demon dressed in Wellington boots, and wearing a peg on its nose, entered the pits and began searching through the latest delivery.

“That was me once, that was,” said Edgefast, carefully removing a piece of rotting vegetation from his ear.

“You lucky, lucky sod,” said Brompton.

They watched the demon quietly for a time.

“Good of them to give us helmets, though,” said Edgefast.

“One of the perks of the job,” said Brompton. “Wouldn’t be half as nice without the helmets.”

“I meant to ask,” said Edgefast. “What happened to the bloke who had this job before me?”

Brompton didn’t get the chance to answer. A long, dismal road led through the pits and on to the dreary plain beyond. That road had been empty ever since Edgefast had arrived for this, his first day on the job, but it was empty no longer. A figure was approaching. As it drew nearer, Edgefast saw that it was a woman, or something that was doing a pretty good impression of one. She was wearing a white dress decorated with a pattern of red flowers, and a straw hat with a white ribbon around its crown. The heels of her white shoes made a steady click-click-click sound on the stones of the road, and over her left arm hung a white bag fastened by gold clasps. The woman had a very determined expression on her face, one that might have given pause to a more intelligent demon than Edgefast. But, as Brompton had correctly surmised, Edgefast was an enthusiast, and there’s no talking to enthusiasts.

The woman was now close enough for Edgefast to see that the dress was more tattered than it had first appeared. It looked homemade, with uneven seams, and the shoes were crude black boots that had been painted white and then carved so that the heels ended in points. The bag had a frame of bone over which skin had been draped, complete with freckles and hair, and the clasps were, on closer inspection, gold teeth.

None of these elements, peculiar in themselves, represented the strangest aspect of the woman’s appearance. That honor went to the fact that the only thing more poorly stitched together than her dress was the woman herself. Her skin, visible at her face and arms and legs, seemed to have been ripped apart at some point, the various pieces then sewn back together again in a rough approximation of what a woman might look like. One eye socket was smaller than the other, the left side of the mouth was higher than the right, and the skin on the lower part of the left leg sagged like a pair of old tights. The woman’s blond hair sat untidily on her head like a mess of straw dropped there by a passing bird. What he was looking at, Edgefast realized, was not so much a woman as a woman costume, which made him wonder what might lie beneath it.

Still, Edgefast had a job to do. He stepped forward before Brompton had a chance to stop him and stuck out his spear in a vaguely threatening manner.

“You know, I wouldn’t do-” Brompton began to say, but by then it was too late.

“Halt,” said Edgefast. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Unfortunately, Edgefast didn’t get an answer to that question, but he did receive an answer to his earlier one, which was what had happened to the chap who had held the guard’s job before him, for Edgefast was about to become intimately acquainted with his predecessor’s fate.

The woman stopped and stared at Edgefast.

“Oh dear.” Brompton pulled his helmet low over his eyes, and tried to make himself as small as possible. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh…”

Fearsome tentacles, dripping viscous fluid, erupted from the woman’s back, ripping through the fabric of her dress. Her mouth opened wide, revealing row upon row of sharp, jagged teeth. Long nails shot from the tips of her pale fingers, curling in upon themselves like hooks. The tentacles gripped Edgefast, lifted him from the ground, and then pulled him very, very hard in a number of different directions at once. There was a squeal of pain, and assorted pieces of what was once Edgefast were thrown in the air; one of them landed on Brompton’s helmet. He peered down to see Edgefast’s head on the dirt before him, a puzzled look in his eyes.

“You might have warned me,” said the head.

Brompton put his foot over Edgefast’s mouth to keep him quiet as the woman adjusted her now even more disheveled appearance, patted her hair, and then proceeded to pass through the doorway to the Mountain of Despair, untroubled by any further inquiries as to where she might be going.

Brompton tipped his helmet to her as she passed.

“Morning…”

He paused, trying to find the appropriate word. The woman’s dark eyes flicked toward him, and he felt a coldness enter his belly, the kind of coldness that comes just before someone rips you into little pieces and tosses your head at the nearest wall.

“… miss,” he finished, and the woman smiled at him in a yes-I-am-so-pretty-thank-you-for-noticing way before disappearing into the murk of the mountain.

Brompton breathed a sigh of relief and lifted his foot from Edgefast’s mouth.

“That really hurt,” said Edgefast as Brompton began picking up his limbs and placing them in a large pile in the hope that Edgefast could be put back together in a way that might vaguely resemble what he had once been.