Infernus (2 page)

Yellow braced himself with legs spread wide and pulled the red buttocks apart. The man stood, in shock and horror, and heard a tremendous cracking and snapping, and then Yellow stopped. He drew up from below his belly a member even more swollen and rotten - looking like Red's - and allowed it to squirm through the wide pulsating anus. Yellow closed Red's ass around his wet member and began pounding it into him.

Yellow reached around Red's middle with both arms and ripped open his belly. Ecstasy followed as Yellow pounded Red from behind while running his hands through the steamy, spilling bowels.

In a moment (he had known the whole time, really), the man realized, in profound sadness, there was no Yellow demon, only Red.

And Red was providing this nightmare to the man.

*****

Later (when time seemed to pass, but
that
is illusion as well), a wooden-looking dwarf came to Red and jumped up on his heavily-muscled leg.

The demon grunted as he punched his hand liquidly into the dwarf's spine. He played his fingers in and out among the stringy tissue (the man felt it tear through his soul and was not puzzled). Red found the right nerves. The puppet's right eye twitched uncontrollably and his teeth chattered. Apparently Red was shredding a few nerves in the process. The dwarf's mouth clicked out of time with the words; Red's voice sounded from within.

"Oh, foolish thing that once was a man,
look at me
, and lose the last vestige of hope you might have kept. I am ever-present." The dwarf's mouth, smeared with red liquid, opened and closed, but the voice was still not his. "I am ever-present in your existence, because I am you. In one thousand generations, you will regret seeing your younger self, and despair of a path I cannot exit. Know that, and despair! Your sense of identity is on trial here. Never anything else."

A thin, angular burning man came to stand before the demon. Red's words shimmered like blades in the sun. "Fall to the ground, thin man. Shrivel up and leave us."

The man fell as a skeleton and instantly became like paper, then blew away in a breeze.

"Come here," spoke no one. Red presented his armpit to the man. "There is no time here, my beloved, but for one thousand centuries I command you to lick this sweat-filled armpit. You may begin now, my son."

As the man licked the vast armpit, his penis rose straight into the air in humble gratitude. The man felt Red's fingers break the surface of his back with gentle insistence.

Shivering nerve-shatterings that might have resembled orgasms racked both their bodies as Red's hands snapped nerve and muscle. Enduring this moment, over and over again, for a thousand centuries.

Not even
The Encyclopedias of Madness
could remotely describe the pleasure of being united with your own personal demon. As a gift, like a starburst in the brain, Red gave the man the knowledge that he had been the demon sent to keep him on his lifelong path. His own father/lover to share for all eternity.

And this, too, he came to find out in the end, was a lie.

"Yes, my beloved." When his black empty slits smiled down on the man, red tears fell and sizzled down his cheeks like running sores. "I coveted you many millions of years ago. When I knew that you were going to be 'in flesh,' I watched and ached and loved you from a distance.

"It was me that inspired the boy to push you off the wagon so you would jump onto the rusty nail when you were four. I kissed the crust of the scab, because of my desire for you. I led the other, when you were but a mere man, to throw you to the ground that broke your foot. I kissed the sweaty foot from below and you had a sense that someone was there, didn't you?" The man humbly nodded. "I command you to always love your Fire Father, and always wash me with your tongue."

*****

"Dr. Mountfountain, your shock therapy is progressing rapidly. You hardly ever tell me anymore of actually living the lives as demons of Hell.

"Now, that
is
what we agreed upon, isn't it? Oh, you just have dreams of Hell - you've been...ahhh, I see; you've been deceiving me all along." The little doctor paused to consider this. "I see. Carl, strap him in. Yes, Judy, throw the switch."

...brrrrrrzappp!...

*****

The room was silent for a moment, making sure he was finished. Then it erupted. Many voices said things like, "Why would you even
want
to write a book like
that
?" "How horrible!" "The government should string you up for that."

Professor Delaney stood and walked to the middle of the class, her plastic shoes clacking on the hardwood floor. "Class! Class!" She clapped her hands. "Now, really. One at a time. This
is
a University, not middle school. One at a time."

The nude man stood grinning at them, pleased with himself.

The same big, beefy young man spoke. "If this were a former time, you would be hauled off to jail for writing a story like that. It's shameful, at best."

"Yes, it is," the man said. "I agree with you." Slowly, he began putting his clothes back on.

A young woman, who identified herself as Student Mortensen, spoke. ""Chapter One" does not lead anybody to believe the novel will proceed in that manner. You told us before that you made this up. That it was fiction." **

"It is," he said. "Confused? Good. I intend to tip over every preconceived idea you have about conventional narrative. To you, young lady, I would repeat what C.S. Lewis wrote in the beginning of
Mere Christianity
. 'To
hell
with your standards.' I forge ahead with my own. Just wait, folks, until we get to the end of Chapter Eight. You are really gonna wanna hang me then."

"Maybe we really will hang you."

"And not hear the
end
of the story?" He laughed. "How tragic!"

He put on his clothes and left.

**See appendix, at the end of the book, for an explanation of this mystery.

*****

The next week he came back, stripped off his clothes, quite unashamedly, stacked them neatly again, laid out a rug on the hardwood floor to sit on, and read four or five chapters in a row. A student, Dante, recorded for posterity that when one student objected to the shortness of the chapters, the nude model remarked that his records only showed them as fragments, not in their entirety. Many students reminded the man that he had proclaimed, more than once, that he had written them himself, not found them somewhere.

The old man seemed to enjoy laughing at them.

CHAPTER TWO

"THE CANTATA OF PAIN, OPUS 10"

A smile appeared on the handsome face of Red. His voice raked through the man's brain like a claw. "Do you know what arouses me, my child?"

A puff of smoke hung in the air between them.

"No, my father," the man said weakly.

The impossibly-muscled demon sat upon a thick throne. His two black orbs rested on the marble like massive rocks. He began pumping his member into the base of his beard. The orbs were dragged upward in their leathery sack and then quickly released to fall with a wet smack on the stone.

He rolled his head with pleasure and began to breathe heavily. He tightened his grip on the member and jerked it upward. The orbs kept slamming onto the stone, countless times, always the same.

"What really arouses me is when my son shoves his head up my ass as far as he can and...yes, that's it, like that, my only son...and then breathes in the soul of his father. You can hear the sound of my great testicles slamming even in there, can't you, my son? Yes, you can. Now, because you have done this great favor for me, I will do something for you. I will give you the present of always having the presence of me living inside you for eternity."

Of course, the man knew that he was unable to do any such thing.

*****

(In the time of the great explosion of the twenty suns - no Earth time can coordinate your understanding; here was a momentous occasion, the man was sitting in the soul of another. There are no separate identities here, only illusions of such things.)

The new arrival, a young lad of eighteen or so, spoke from blackened, smoldering lips, little puffs of smoke finding their way out now and again. "My, what is going on here? I will never again be me, will I? I will always be this entity of three."

"Be happy, harpy. There are others who will do more than we, but you must awaken to this knowledge later. It's no good thinking of it just yet. A green demon, your father/trainer will arrive soon. We (my father who occupies me) are only torturing you until he comes; to let you know that this is all there is. It amuses me to be in you, yet controlling you. It is orgasmic. And I will help him torture you when he arrives."

CHAPTER THREE

"FALLEN LEAVES ARE ALREADY DEAD"

The young, baking Spanish woman ran wildly through the crowd of frying, milling villagers. The demon and his trainee watched from a hill that leaned over the village. The woman flailed her arms as she screamed into all the brains of Infernus.

"Don't you see, my many relatives, this man you
think
is the killer, whose name we cannot speak, is allowing you to feed your inability to see the truth. Lo, the sun sinks. I must work my mischief. You are all doomed. You've known all along. I will now express myself."

She spread her arms high toward the blazing crimson sun. All the villagers fell to the ground like paper kites with no wind and disintegrated. She fell as well, and scattered harmlessly behind them.

CHAPTER FOUR

"LESSONS TO LEARN"

Red, radiant in sweat and erotically glorious, spoke bile into the man's mind. "My son, approach me." His phallus was erect and stood straight along his heat-stretched jawbone.

The man, who no longer was the man he had been many thousands of centuries ago, walked in a regal fashion to his father.

"Lick the hair that is on top of my feet, slave."

And he did, for three million generations' worth of time. It has been said by some demon lords that soon (again the reference to time) there will be an inability to communicate anything in such concepts. These sayings must not be said in the first person or punishments will follow. For even thinking them.

In a standard generation (what the man is experiencing at this "moment") the demon is describing (for the man) three sets of a dozen little plays called collectively
The Writhings
. He performed them upon a surface of the man's skin for many millennia. The plays enabled all to feel the pain at once. It was exquisite.

ONE LESSON

A woman, who was skinless, asked Red and the man if they knew where The Domes of Wares could be found.

She bled while standing there.

They ignored her, for she was full of foolish talk.

"Ah," said the demon. "Watch these large black stones slam hard on the rock. I shall now cover myself like a blanket." A great viscous liquid exploded into his beard and continued flowing until his whole body was lost in the glue of it.

The man walked over to his father and began licking as an animal will when it wants to remove afterbirth from its young.

"For doing that service," the demon said, "I will grant you a present. Feast from the part of my body of your choice. I will let you eat me."

The man, who was now one with Red, pulled a large dark foot into his lap. With effort, he drew it to his lips. The toe pushed past his ragged gums and shattered teeth. He tasted the dry saltiness of the digit before he began to gnash through it. Red gasped, but else, said naught.

The man moaned as he sucked the blood through the wound. He swallowed the toe and it fell, hissing, into his empty stomach. He loved his master even more.

"My son," the demon began, with blood dripping from the corners of his mouth. "Now we are one, and ever will be for eternity. My love to you."

As the man heard these words echoing through the flames, he realized that Red was digging into his once-human flesh with a burning metal scoop. Great round balls of cooked meat were being brought forth from his hips to the lips of the other.

ANOTHER LESSON

"Water sports, my son," the monster belched. "Now that I have wet you down thoroughly, come and enclose your father's ass with your mouth." The man did as his lord dictated. "I will fill your guts with the eternal stench of my gases."

And he did. He consummated the marriage of their souls by filling his son with the gases of his bowels. The man's head caught fire as a result. He fell unconscious to the blazing floor and remained that way for one thousand years.

And even though the demon dared to sodomize the man hundreds of thousands of times, nothing could be done to rouse him.

A THIRD LESSON (BUT BY NO MEANS A
FINAL
LESSON)

With an absolute lack of expression on his stone face, the demon grabbed the man's hair at the back of his head and drew him close. Red's poisoned tongue played over the man's face.

"My son, I want to teach you another lesson. This one thing I know - you must crawl to me on your hands and knees in profound humility."

The man looked at his body as it obeyed and noticed that it was the same as that of the burned bodybuilder he had seen earlier (only a moment ago and realized...).

Later, after he had taken all Red had to offer, the demon said, "Anytime I want you to do
anything
- anything at all - you will do it, at once. This is my total and singular commandment. Obey me in love, my son. Or fear!"

*****

If truer eyes could pierce the deceptive veil for even a moment, they would have seen two smoldering corpses lying at the bottom of a blackened, mile-deep shaft. One body, shivering uncontrollably in its nightmare-soaked sleep, was of a large, muscular man in his late thirties. The other, who had been there first and joined later by the other, looked to be the quaking body of a slim, red-haired youth, no more than fifteen or sixteen. But, there
was
no light there, no one
could
see them, nor could
they
see each other. They were eternally sleeping, unable to awaken or end this dream. They were both quite incapable of telling anything to anyone. Their true desires were unfulfilled; they wanted to stop this programmed dream. If that were only possible. That would
almost
be bearable.