Lucifer's Lottery Read online

  “How’s that for the spectacle of childbirth?” Andeen jested. “Pregnancy is a big deal in Hell, Slydes. If Lucifer had his way, every single female life form here would be pregnant at all times. You see, the more babies, the more food, fuel, and fodder for Lucifer’s whimsy.”

  Slydes leaned against the wall, moaning, “No, no, no . . .”

  “Yes, yes, yes, my friend. And if you think that was bad, get a load of this guy. Remember what I said about pregnancy?”

  Slydes’s gaze involuntarily veered back to the street. This time, a Human man stumbled along. He wore a wife-beater T-shirt and stained boxer shorts dotted with Boston Red Sox insignias. If anything, though, his stomach looked even more bloated than the woman who’d just delivered a devilish baby through her mouth.

  Slydes stammered further, in utter dread, “He’s not—he’s not—he’s not—”

  “Pregnant?” Andeen smiled darkly. “Male pregnancy is a fairly new breakthrough here, Slydes. And you can bet it tickles Lucifer pink. Teratologic Surgeons can actually transplant Hybrid wombs into male Humans and Demons. It’s a trip. Watch.”

  Slydes watched.

  Grimacing, the bloated man stepped out of his boxers and squatted. Amid boisterous grunts and wails, his rectum slowly dilated, then—

  He shrieked.

  —out poured a gush of what looked like squirming hairless puppies, with tiny webbed paws and little horns in their heads.

  “Ah,” Andeen observed, “a brood of Ghor-Hounds. Pretty rowdy, huh?”

  “Rowdy!” Slydes bellowed. “This is FUCKED UP! That guy just pumped a litter of PUPPIES out his ASS!”

  “Yeah. And watch what he does now . . .”

  Gravid stomach gone now, the exhausted man abandoned his litter on the sidewalk and trudged over to one of the street commodes. What, he’s gonna take a piss? Slydes wondered when the man poised an understandably shriveled penis over the commode.

  The answer to his question, however, would be a most resolute No.

  Now the man’s cheeks billowed. He began to grunt.

  And his penis . . . began to swell.

  “Ahhhh,” he eventually moaned as the penis, next, began to disgorge firm stools. Quite a number of them squeezed out and dropped into the commode. When he was finished, he pulled his boxers back on, and at the same time caught Slydes staring agape at him.

  “What’s the matter, buddy? You act like you never saw a guy take a shit through his dick before.”

  “In case you’re wondering,” his hostess said, “the procedure that guy underwent is called a Recto-Urethral Fistulation . . .”

  Slydes reeled. When he could regain some modicum of sense, he glared back at Andeen, and howled, “This is impossible! Women can’t have babies out their mouths! Their mouths aren’t big enough! And men can’t shit turds through their cocks! Their peeholes aren’t wide enough! It’s IMPOSSIBLE!”

  Andeen seemed amused. “You’ll learn soon enough that in Hell . . . anything is possible. Now come on.”

  Dizzied, aghast, Slydes trudged after her. She walked fast, her high breasts bouncing, her flawless rump jiggling with each stride. “Once I get you out of this Prefect and on one of the Interways, you’ll be a lot safer. Believe me, you don’t want to hang out here.” She grinned over her shoulder. “You’re damn lucky I’m an honest Orientation Directress, Slydes.”

  “Huh?”

  “There are a lot of dishonest ones. They’d tip off an Abduction Squad and turn you in—for money, of course.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just come on. I know, you’re confused right now, and you can’t remember much. Eventually it’ll all sink in, and you’ll be all right.”

  Slydes sorely doubted that he would ever be all right, not in Hell. But he did feel some gratitude toward Andeen for endeavoring to get him out of the abominable Prefect. Anywhere, anywhere, his thoughts pleaded. Take me anywhere because no matter how bad the next place is, it can’t be as bad as this . . .

  “Here’s the shortcut out, and don’t worry about the gate.” She lifted something from beneath her tongue. “I have the key.”

  Thank God . . . Slydes followed the lithe woman down another reeking alley whose end terminated in a chain-link gate closed by an antiquated lock. When Andeen finnicked with the key, rust sifted from the keyhole.

  That thing better open, Slydes fretted.

  “I guess the hardest thing to get used to for a Human in Hell is, well, the insignificance. Know what I mean?”

  “Huh?” Slydes said.

  “No matter what we were in the Living World, no matter how strong, how beautiful, how rich, how important . . . in Hell we’re nothing. In fact, we’re less than nothing.” She giggled, still jiggling the key. “Do you follow me, Slydes?”

  Slydes was getting pissed. “I don’t know what’cher talkin’ about! Just open that fuckin’ lock so we can get out of here!”

  She giggled but then frowned. “Damn. This bugger’s tough. Check the alley entrance, will you—”

  “All riiiiiiiii—” But when Slydes looked behind him he shrieked. Proceeding slowly down the alley was a congregation of the short, dog-faced, implike things he’d seen previously on the street. They grinned as they moved forward, fangs glinting.

  Slydes tugged Andeen’s arm like a child tugging its mother’s. “Luh-luh-look!”

  Andeen’s tattooed brow rose when she glanced down the alley. “Shit. Broodren. They’re demonic kids and they’re all homicidal. The little fuckers have gangs everywhere—”

  “Open the lock!”

  She played with the key most vigorously, nervous herself now. “They’ll haul our guts out to sell to a Diviner; then they’ll screw and eat what’s left . . .”

  “Hurry!” Slydes wailed.

  Suddenly the pack of Broodren broke all at once into a sprint, cackling.

  When they were just yards away—

  CLACK!

  —the lock opened. Slydes peed his jeans as Andeen dragged him to the other side. She managed to relock the gate just as several Broodren pounced on it, their dirty, taloned fingers and toes hooked over the chain links.

  “Jesus! We barely made it!”

  Andeen sighed, wiped her brow with her forearm. “Tell me about it, man.”

  “What now?” Slydes looked down a stained brick corridor that seemed to dogleg to the left. “How do we get out?”

  “Around the corner,” Andeen said.

  They trotted on, turned the corner, and—

  “Holy motherfuckin’ SHIT!” Slydes yelled when two stout gray-brown forearms wrapped about his barrel chest and hoisted him in the air.

  Tall shadows circled round in total silence.

  Slydes screamed till his throat turned raw.

  “One thing you need to know about Hell,” Andeen chuckled, “is that trust does not exist.”

  Five blank-faced Golems stood round Slydes now, and it was in the arms of a sixth that he was now captive.

  One of them handed Andeen a stack of bills. “Thanks, buddy. This guy’s a real piece of work. He deserves what he’s getting.” Then she winked at Slydes and pointed up to another transom. It read: DIGESTIVE TRACT REVERSAL SUITE.

  “For the rest of eternity, Slydes,” she intoned through a sultry grin. “You’ll be eating through your ass and shitting out your mouth.”

  “Nooooooooooooo!” Slydes shrieked.

  The Golems trooped toward the door, Slydes kicking and screaming, all to no avail.

  “Welcome to Hell,” were Andeen’s parting words.

  Slydes’s screams silenced when the suite door slammed shut, and Andeen traipsed off, greedily counting the stack of crisp bills. Each bill had the number one hundred in each corner, but it was not the portrait of Benjamin Franklin that graced each one, it was the face of Adolf Hitler.

  PART ONE

  THE SENARY

  CHAPTER ONE

  (I)

  Six words drifted across his mind when he entered the bar:

&
nbsp; A whore is a deep ditch . . .

  It was a line from Proverbs, one of many that warned men of the power of lust. Hudson had studied the Bible with great zeal—and he still did—but what would seem strange about that? He’d graduated from Catholic U. with a master’s in theology, and within a month would be entering the seminary. No, what might seem strange, instead, was his presence in this bar, a place known to be a whore bar, or at least that’s what he’d heard.

  His first name was the same as his last—Hudson—something he’d never understood of his parents, who’d both seemed distant or distracted since the time his memories commenced. He didn’t get it. They were dead now. They’ll never get to see me ordained, and I’ll never get to ask them why they named me Hudson.

  Six tiny cracks could be seen in the long bar mirror, but why would Hudson count them? Obsessive-compulsive? he wondered. How could he really ever know? His contemplations itched at him. He knew why he was here, and was slightly discomfited by the patrons. The bar was simply called LOUNGE; that’s what the tacky neon said outside, and aside from its notoriety as an establishment that condoned prostitution, his friend Randal had warned that the place catered essentially to “white trash.”

  So . . . what does that make me?

  His reflection in the mirror looked like that of a bus bum. Unkempt, hair in need of cutting, eyes open wider than they should be as if used to looking for something that wasn’t there.

  When he glanced down the long, dark room, he counted only six customers—three men, three women—then he noticed they were all smoking. Tendrils of smoke hung motionless in the establishment’s open space, like slivers of ghosts. Hudson didn’t smoke. He’d never even tried because he recalled a childhood sermon: “Your body is a gift from God, and any gift from God is a temple of God. When we inhale cigarette smoke into our bodies, it’s the same as throwing rocks through the stained-glass windows of this very church. Desecration . . .”

  Hence, Hudson never lit up. He did drink a little, however, and not once did he consider that the same minister who’d given the smoking sermon had never added alcohol to his list of substances that desecrated one’s God-given body, nor that said minister had died years later of cirrhosis.

  “I ain’t kiddin’ ya,” one redneck with a Fu Manchu affirmed to another redneck with a bald head. “I know it was the same ho’ who ripped me off a year or so ago. But she was so fucked up on Beans the bitch didn’t even remember me!”

  “What’chew do?” asked the bald one.

  “Jacked her out’s what I did—”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Think so?” Fu Manchu pulled out a blackjack, jiggled it, then put it back in his pocket. “Jacked her out right in the car, gave her a poke, and took her cash but ya know what? All the bitch had on her was six bucks . . .”

  The bald one looked suspicious over his Black Velvet and Coke. “You didn’t jack no one out, man.”

  “Buy me a drink if I prove it?”

  The bald one laughed. “Sure, but you can’t prove it.”

  Fu Manchu flipped open his cell phone. “I love these camera phones, man.” He showed the tiny screen to the bald one. “What? Ya think all that red stuff’s ketchup?”

  The bald one slumped and ordered the guy a drink.

  A real highbrow crew tonight, Hudson thought.

  One of the women—a middle-aged blonde—had drifted over to the cigarette machine. Very tan, in a clinging maroon T-shirt and cutoff jeans. She’d knotted the T-shirt to reveal an abdomen whose most obvious trait was an accordion of stretch marks. Lots of eye shadow. Veiny hands. Too weathered, Hudson judged.

  “Hi, honey,” she said in a Marlboro-rough voice and as she headed back to her stool, her hand slid along Hudson’s back. “Come on over, if ya want. I mean, you know what this place is all about, right?” But before Hudson could even dream up an answer she was already back in her seat.

  Indeed, Hudson did know what the place was all about—that’s why he was here. Prostitution that was not quite the bottom of the barrel. He could afford little more. His conscience squirmed amid his blooming sin. Obviously she’d struck out with the other men in the bar.

  Yeah, but the weathered ones know what to do . . .

  “Another beer?” asked the barkeep. He was a ramshackle rube with a circular patch on his gas station shirt that read BARNEY.

  “Yes, please.”

  The keep leaned over, as if to relay a confidence. He had shaggy hair, and a pock on his cheek that looked like a bullet scar, and he was probably sixty. “Don’t worry, it’s all cool. I know you ain’t a cop.”

  “What?” Hudson questioned, dismayed.

  “I can tell at a glance, you ain’t got the look.” The keep grinned. “ ’N’fact, ya look more like a priest.”

  Terrific, Hudson thought.

  “And you been sittin’ here a while, right?”

  “Yeah, an hour, hour and a half, I guess.”

  “I figure you must know what the Lounge is all about—” He jerked his eyes down toward the old blonde. “Like she done said.”

  Hudson’s chest felt tight. “I-uh-” One of several TVs showed a baseball game. “I’m just in to watch the game.”

  “Sure, sure,” the keep chuckled. He pulled out another bottle of beer and set it down next to five empties. Hudson paid for each beer one at a time, for in establishments such as this, tabs were never run.

  “I kinda look the other way, got no problem with what a gal feels she has to do for money—” Then the keep winked. “As long as there’s a cut for me. You wanna get some action in the bathroom, that’s cool. Just make sure you slide me a ten first, ya hear?”

  “Uh, uh-sure,” Hudson blabbered.

  “Ya been here a while now so I thought maybe ya didn’t know the deal.” The keep winked again. “But now ya do.”

  “Um, thanks for filling me in . . .”

  The keep leaned in closer to Hudson. “But as for Thelma over there—”

  “Who?”

  “The blonde.”

  Hudson glanced over, and suddenly found that the woman’s burgeoning bosom possibly nullified her beat looks. “What about her?”

  “She’s been around the block more times than the mailman, get it? Just some neighborly advice. She fucks like a champ but if you make any deals with her . . . wrap it—if ya catch my drift.”

  Hudson flinched when a toothy grin floated just to the right side of his face. It was Fu Manchu. “Wrap it? Shit, man. Thelma’s cooch is toxic. She’s got stuff up there that can melt a triple-Trojan like one’a them Listerine breath strips.” He elbowed Hudson. “You do her? Put a scuba foot on your pecker.” He and the barkeep broke out in laughter.

  Hudson couldn’t have been more uncomfortable. “Thanks, uh, thanks for the pointers, guys.”

  Hudson gazed up at the TV. Tampa Bay led New York six to nothing, but the sound was down. He glanced aside, pretending to be looking for someone. Two more women—younger but nearly as weathered as Thelma—sat apart at the far end, one brunette with a ludicrous mullet and a shirt that read DO ME TILL I PUKE. The other, a rusty redhead, wore a T-shirt that claimed NO GAG REFLEX. Well, there they are, Hudson thought. So what am I doing? When am I going to make a move?

  But Hudson hadn’t noticed the other man—he must’ve just come in. Young but somehow despondent, a false smile that looked on the verge of shattering. He was in a wheelchair. Those two prostitutes must know him, Hudson figured, for they both stood stooped, talking to the young man. Their grins could be described as vulturine. The man shook his head; then Hudson overheard him say, “I can’t anymore.” Then the redhead said, “Pay us twenty each to try. We’ll give ya lots of time.” But the man in the chair shook his head and wheeled away.

  “Fuckin’ cripple,” the redhead whispered to her cohort.

  Oh, what a bounty of goodwill in the world, Hudson thought, and then that’s when it occurred to him: he’d seen the man before, in church.

  Another TV hung
just above the brunette’s head, also silent: a dashing evangelist in a huge stadium. Hudson could read the closed-caption blocks as the revivalist’s mouth moved.

  WHEN YOU STRIVE TO NOT SIN, WHEN YOU MAKE THAT EFFORT, GOD HOLDS YOU IN SPECIAL FAVOR. GOD PUTS HIS SHIELD OF PROTECTION OVER YOU. SO TO STAY IN GOD’S FAVOR, WE MUST ALWAYS STRIVE NOT TO SIN. WE MUST DO EVERYTHING WE POSSIBLY CAN TO RESIST THE TEMPTATIONS THAT LUCIFER THROWS BEFORE US . . .

  Hudson’s eyes lowered—in shame. No shield of protection for me today, he thought to his beer.

  Sin was everywhere. And he needed to know it before he could absolve it, just like Monsignor Halford had said . . .

  I know I shouldn’t be here but I’m staying anyway, he realized. I’m here to pick up a hooker . . . and that’s what I’m going to do because I’m not strong enough to walk out . . .

  He did good deeds. He felt he had true compassion. He gave to charities, he gave to the homeless—even though he was poor himself. Above all, he believed in God, and he could only pray that God’s mercy was as everlasting as the Bible claimed.

  AND MANY OF YOU MIGHT BE THINKING RIGHT THIS SECOND, “BUT PASTOR JOHNNY, I’M A GOOD PERSON, I GO TO CHURCH, AND I TRULY DO STRIVE NOT TO SIN . . . AND I’M TRULY SORRY WHEN I DO SIN . . . LIKE LAST WEEK WHEN I WENT TO THAT PORNO STORE, OR THE WEEK BEFORE THAT TEEN-SEX WEB SITE, OR THE WEEK BEFORE THAT WHEN I PICKED UP THAT PROSTITUTE . . .

  Hudson stared.

  IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE EASY, MY FRIENDS, AND LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING. IT WASN’T EASY FOR JESUS EITHER.

  Hudson’s soul felt stained black. He’s talking about me. Maybe Halford was wrong, but if I believe THAT, then how can I believe in the infallibility of the church?

  AND SOMETIMES WE WANT TO CHALLENGE GOD, WE WANT TO SAY TO HIM, “GOD, YOU’VE GIVEN ME THESE DESIRES BUT TELL ME IT’S A SIN TO ACT ON THEM. WHY? IT’S NOT FAIR!” The evangelist seemed to look directly at Hudson. BUT HERE’S WHY IT IS FAIR, AND PLEASE, MY DEAR FRIENDS, LISTEN TO ME. IT’S FAIR BECAUSE GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD THAT HE GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON . . .