Mike Jones - Infernus

…and the next thing he saw, or thought he saw, was a large man defecating fetuses into a rat-infested pit. The rats yipped like little dogs, eagerly awaiting the flesh of the mewling unborn.

And because he saw the hideous thing without the permission of his father, the demon rapped him across the face until the satyr’s teeth were flying everywhere…

…the satyr’s arms were lying motionless on the ground in front of him.

“This will please you,” said the demon. He picked up both heavy arms and began smashing the satyr with strong blows.

When the satyr regained consciousness, the demon was nowhere to be seen. He looked between his legs and saw one of his arms lodged in his arse.

[Thus ends this partial section.]

“Look, my son,” the demon said. “On our walk through my jurisdiction, we come across the bones of some whalers. If their bones are here, where do you suppose the other parts of their bodies rest?”

The satyr did not know and vomited on the rock floor in response.

“Well, that’s good , but not quite what I had in mind.”

The satyr stood next to him and gazed into a boiling black pool set in the floor.

“They are all lying on the bottom of this percolating pool, spineless, boiling, unable to move, unable to breathe… just screaming.”

The satyr stared into the pool in mock horror. The black boiling mass must be old blood , he thought. His reattached limbs grasped both sides of his handsome face in a grotesque imitation of terror. His mouth stayed open in its perpetual scream, and the satyr’s eyes were bulging. He really wanted to roar with laughter.

“It is funny, isn’t it?” the demon asked. “I only come to this exhibit to cheer myself.”

Red pulled all of the skin off the satyr in one mighty jerk at the back of the neck. He ripped the spine out of the nerve-exposed body and flung it to the ground.

“You must be purified even further, my son.” He prepared himself to throw the jelly-like mess of the satyr into the boiling pool. “I will only allow you to remain in here for one thousand times. I will then pull you out and we will continue our adventures.”

The demon slowly lowered the shuddering corpse — oh how it shuddered — into the pool. When the water reached his eyes, they popped and oozed a thick, green liquid.

Red released the jelly creature, then stood and urinated into the pool. He waited one thousand times.

“BLACK BALLED AGAIN”

“Now, my son, since your pain threshold has increased three greatness levels, we are going to enter the second level, or the next dimension of torture.”

“There are others?” the satyr asked casually, examining his reconstructed body.

“They are infinite,” the father said.

He mounted his son from behind. As the sound of pounding became deafening, the demon’s wings folded around them, and they vanished into another plane.

They appeared in a new place: The Second Level, or Stair of Torture. They watched a small hooded woman with a wooden bucket come to a boiling river.

“Look what she does,” the demon shrieked in (mock) surprise.

She lowered her bucket into the undulating crimson, and then set it down on the gray bank. She lowered her face into it and loudly slurped its contents.

“See, my son, what a great thing she does! She drinks all the foul deeds of mankind, for they boil in this great river. There is more to her sacrifice than meets the eye, and she does it for no one to see but her lord, her demon.”

Behind her appeared the largest, most muscular demon the satyr had seen yet, at least twice the size of Red. He glittered entirely of gold: his skin, hair and eyes. And he must have been pleased, for he snatched the woman up by her head and began beating her against an oaken tree thousands and thousands of times, without pause.

In another time, the demon showed his son a small cave. “Look at the theater and see the drama. Only one play is performed here, and the beings call it, ‘The Single Reverent Thing.’ Look within, my son, and tell me what you see.”

The satyr did so. “A young lad is walking down a street on a sunny day. From his right a bullet enters his brain, causing a huge hole to appear in the left side of his head. He falls to the ground and is still. Later he awakens and realizes the wound has healed.

“The lad wonders at the meaning of all that when a voice rings out above him. ‘Never tell anyone what happened to you today. Make it our secret and I will see to it that you have absolute dominion over all creatures, everywhere.’ The lad agrees.”

“Yesss, my son,” the demon whispered, red stains flowing down his blistered cheeks. “It is the only history lesson any of us here cares to learn. You would be wise to do likewise.”

In his ecstasy, the demon threw the satyr to the broiling floor and coupled with him for three thousand generations.

“My son,” the demon shrieked, “behold, another level!”

The environment flickered around them. When it righted itself, they were in a burning forest.

“Let me mount you in my joy. Let your jaws crack for screaming as I oppress my own kin.”

And he did. The satyr was sexually dominated within the forest of yellow flame-trees for a [thousand parts of] time.

On one of the rare occasions that Professor Delaney spoke, she asked the old man, “In your fiction, do you really propose that there is religion in Hell, uh, I mean, Infernus?”

“Oh yes,” he said. “But, only because it amuses me. Just a trifle to amuse others, not that there are such things, really.”

“Oh,” she said, momentarily satisfied. She crossed her hands in front of her, holding her wrists, and waited for him to continue.

“In fact,” he said, realizing there might be a need for clarification, “if I had followed the Biblical model, the book would have been boring. How could I have made an exciting adventure about screaming in the dark, for that is the Biblical model. No, I wanted my version to be exciting and fun.”

“It’s hardly ‘fun’!” said a student.

He looked to the rear of the class but could not determine who was speaking. He laughed. “And there will be more of religion. Actually, it’s coming up in the very next chapter. I have put hate cults there. They are eternally punished, also. For no other reason than it amused me.”

“TIN BELLS”

“Have you ever thought,” said the demon, “that there are laws here?”

“No,” the satyr said.

“When you dreamed that you lived on a world, and had a day-to-day existence, all creatures thought a being existed that was above all else. He was known as a creator or the creator. Try to speak the name of this being.”

The demon’s sockets glittered and filled to overflow with black blood.

“You mean the… ” the satyr said.

“Yessss,” hissed his father, “sssssay the NAME!” He coaxed him and laughed.

“It’s… ” The satyr gritted his teeth and they cracked in the heat. “Uhhhh, his name is…” The satyr pulled on his lips and tore his skin from his face.

Red laughed until his sides actually split.

The satyr kept ripping the flesh from his own face.

“My son,” sighed the demon while holding the satyr’s head as he roped his entire member into the throat. “Do you know what the most evil thing in all the omniverse is?”

The satyr could not reply.

“It is your heart, my son.” The satyr tried to squirm free to protest, but he could not break Red’s grip. “Well, think about it.” He ceased to snake his member down the throat, for the two cold black orbs lay under the satyr’s chin, roasting over burning embers. “You dreamed all this up — you would have to be the cruelest bastard that ever lived to do that.”