Wrath James White presents Poisoning Eros I & II (11 page)

But now—she was free.

*

Gloria crept cautiously out of the cave, trembling
with every step, afraid the demon would awaken and drag her back
inside. She reached the mouth of the cave and looked back over her
shoulder at the sleeping demon. Then she ran, as hard and fast as
she could down the long dark passage that led away from that
torture chamber, unsure of where she was going. Dashing without
direction through a vast labyrinthine honeycomb of caves and
tunnels. Just trying to put distance between her and the demon.
Gloria fled, stealing down the corridors, the only light on the
pathway small human skulls fitted with dripping candles, hands
caressing the cold, wet stone walls. From every corner came screams
and wails, pleas for mercy, the hideous laughter of broken minds
that had lost all hope and reason. Sounds of whipcracks, of
acetylene blowtorches popping into life, chainsaws, thuds like
something hard hitting something squishy. Her mind raced,
imagination working overtime.

There was an exhilaration coursing through her as
her naked feet pounded down the corridor and her sweaty, blood and
semen soaked body parted the dense humid air. She was scared,
terrified, but she was free. She almost felt like laughing, like
shouting, but she was still in hell, still in danger.

She wrapped her arms around her cold, naked flesh,
repressing shudders. Nothing was following her at least; glances
over her shoulder confirmed that.

Up ahead: brighter light. She wished there was some
place to hide in the corridor, but the walls climbed endlessly, and
she couldn’t see any alcoves. So she had to press on, and hope that
whatever was ahead wasn’t worse than the torture she had just
escaped.

A hundred feet ahead, she came to the entrance of a
cavernous room. In the center was a bubbling river of lava.
Thousands of people were thrashing about in it, clawing at the air,
trying to reach the bank. Every time they moved, they were whipped
back into place. As the fiery lava consumed their feet, they sank
lower, until it dissolved their calves, thighs, torso, until
nothing remained but a screaming head, begging for help as their
flesh and bone melted down into that boiling sludge.

Naked souls shrieked in agony in that boiling lake.
Their flesh had already been melted away and now only their spirit
remained, burning there for all eternity, or until one of the
demons took an interest and singled one out for special attention
in the caves.

The demons controlling the room were as horrible and
terrifying as the one that bastard Vlad had sold her to. They were
massive creatures, adorned with chains containing dangling skulls,
some of babies, some of animals; ram’s horns, antlers, and tusks
sprouted from their foreheads, curlicues of sharpened bone, jutting
toward an intended victim. Huge, thickly muscled legs that ended in
hooves, talons, or claws, thick black toenails clacking on the hard
dirt floor.

Each carried a weapon more ornate than the one
before it. Clubs studded with what looked like gigantic fishhooks,
swords of sharpened steel fitted with razors, cat o’ nine tails
made of thick leather and bulky chain, axes heavy with dripping
blood.

With all the horrible shrieks and screams and curses
from the damned, the demons were perfectly silent. Just like the
one she’d left back in the cave. Their eyes gleamed with lust and
passion as they meted out brutal punishment in mute ferocity.
Occasionally one of the demons would reach down into the boiling
lake to wrench free a bit of loose flesh or skin from one of the
burning victims before it was consumed by the flames. There were
piles of such liberated tissue along the river banks.

“Oh, Jesus,” she muttered into her hand, plastering
herself against the wall. Praying that nothing down there had
spotted her. Gloria could only guess what the re-appropriated
material would later be used for. She searched the room with her
eyes, hoping to find a place to escape, another door perhaps, but
the room was surrounded by stone walls. The only way in or out was
behind her.

The screams coming from this room—the pure anguish,
heart-wrenching suffering—tore her heart from her chest. What had
these people done to deserve this? What could anyone do to deserve
this?

Several feet away, a demon worked relentlessly,
using its razored claws to flay the skin from a woman’s body, the
layer of epidermis pink and pulsing and dotted with blood. Slowly
it tore away the dermis, first from fingertips, moving back to
wrists and arms, the skin separating in long, bloat-white strips,
and then moved to her shoulders, gouging claws into the flesh,
creating chunnels, something for it to grab onto. Peeled back
another layer, the flesh exposed now on her breasts and ribcage and
stomach. The demon continued until the woman was a throbbing mass
of blood-specked soft tissue and exposed nerves. It tossed the long
strips of meat and skin onto a large pile and then threw the woman
back into the burning lake. Then it reached in to grab another
victim.

Around the cavern, countless images of torture,
suffering. Gloria sucked in, searching for a breath that no longer
mattered. Her skin tingled as if attacked by insects. Several feet
away, a man dangled from the impossibly high ceiling. Chains had
been imbedded in his flesh, and he hung spread-eagle. The demon
beside him lifted its weapon, a long, slender knife shaped like a
cobra, its tip spread out as if the snake were about to strike.
With surprising agility and speed, the demon impaled the man’s
bowels and lifted, dragging the knife through his torso in a
fierce, upward movement. The man’s intestines spilled from the
jagged hole. His eyes rolled up, his face a frozen tapestry of pain
and fear.

Gloria turned for the exit, unable to watch any
longer, unable to accept what she was seeing. The exit remained
unblocked, unguarded, and she fled, stumbling down another
corridor, dazed and overwhelmed. She had escaped—but to what? There
was nowhere to go. Hell was everywhere.

A tiny exhausted voice echoed from a cave just ahead
of Gloria. “No! You can’t! You can’t do this! It’s not fair!” The
voice was familiar, though to Gloria it sounded broken and
defeated. Just like her own voice.

The one thing Gloria took comfort in was knowing
that she had saved her daughter, had sacrificed herself for Angela
and the baby. Though Angela turned out to be something Gloria
hadn’t expected … but it didn’t matter. Gloria would have given her
life a thousand times to spare her child this agony.

Yet that voice, the child’s voice pleading, the one
now screaming, was unnervingly familiar. And Gloria knew that there
were no real bargains in hell, that she had traded her life and
sacrificed her soul to damnation for nothing at all.

“Oh, God … Angela.” A mother knew her child’s voice,
especially if that child was in pain. Gloria could have picked that
sound from a chorus of thousands of crying children.

The crack of a whip followed the helpless little
whimper. Then came shrill screams. Gloria ran toward it, inside a
cave a few yards ahead.

Her daughter dangled from the ceiling by her arms
nearly twenty feet off the ground. Angela’s wrists were chained
together, and she was suspended from some type of pulley system.
The end of the chain was held by a fat, hideous creature. The
thing’s body was covered in the same type of gildings that had
covered the body of her demon, but this one was half the size.
Human size, not an arch demon. Not one of the fallen angels.
Whatever this thing was now, it had obviously once been a man.

A razor-barbed leash was gripped tightly in his
other hand, and he was whipping Angela to shreds as she dangled
helplessly nearly two stories off the ground. Her legs were spread
wide by chains shackled to each ankle and affixed to bolts on
opposite walls. Beneath her was a pyramid shaped sculpture lined up
perfectly between Angela’s legs. The tip of the pyramid was tacky
with bits of meat and gore.

“Oh no. No.” Gloria knew exactly what was about to
happen. She looked over at the hideous little demon holding the
other end of the chain … just as he let go.

“No!” Angela wailed as she plummeted from the
ceiling onto the tip of the pyramid.

The sound was like that of a machete cleaving
through a watermelon. Sharp and wet. The point of the pyramid
gouged up into Angela’s vagina, pulverizing the soft pink labia,
cracking the pelvic bone and jarring both hipbones out of their
sockets. The pyramid point split her sex wide open, drove deep into
her womb. A river of blood rushed from the vicious gash, which now
extended up to her bellybutton.

Angela’s eyes went wide. She opened her mouth as if
to scream but blood sprayed from between her lips in a wide arc.
All expression drained from the girl’s face, and her head drooped
towards her chest. If this were anywhere else, Gloria would have
thought the girl was dead. But she knew better. They had already
died once to get here. Death was a luxury they were now denied.

The little fat demon turned toward Gloria. It
grinned broadly, and licked its yellowing rows of fanged teeth with
a thick purple tongue that looked like some type of mollusk. Gloria
recognized him. Same red ring of hair and ridiculously comical
moustache. Same shark-toothed grin. Same black soulless eyes. Even
with all the hideous scars and horns and piercings, she still knew
him.

“Fucking Vlad,” she said through gritted teeth.
There, in hell, torturing her daughter. Now Gloria knew what this
had been about. He’d procured Gloria for that big hideous demon
she’d left behind in the cave, and in exchange he got to have
Angela. Gloria started toward him. He slowly hoisted Angela back up
into the air, her body dislodging from the pyramid with a hideous
sticky ripping sound that made Gloria’s stomach lurch. Blood
cascaded from between Angela’s thighs as she ascended once more
towards the ceiling.

“My little girl. What have you done to my little
girl?”

Her daughter’s head wobbled listlessly on her limp
neck. Pain had destroyed her mind. She looked like a lifeless
marionette, and her suffering wasn’t over. It would never be over
as long as she was in Vlad’s hands.

The skin on Gloria’s neck bristled. From behind her,
something was coming, fast. Something large, something pissed.

Lumbering down the corridor, filling up the entire
passageway with its bulk, was
her
demon. She cried out, and
moved back away from the cave where her daughter had been hoisted
into the air to be dropped again onto the point of the pyramid. She
threw herself against the wall of the tunnel, afraid to move,
nowhere left to go. All she wanted was to melt into the stone, to
disappear from this room. All she wanted was to not have to face
that demon again.

She searched, hysterical now, for a place to
hide.

There was nothing.

The demon reached out and casually snatched her up,
wrapping one gnarled, taloned hand into her nest of filthy, greasy
hair. It yanked her from the wall, pulled her down onto all fours.
The beast headed back toward the cave, dragging Gloria behind. She
tried to fight its grip but it was like trying to pry open the jaws
of life. She beat at its unyielding flesh with her tiny fists until
her own knuckles bruised and bled.

“No! No! Let me go! Oh God, please just let me go!
Don’t hurt me! I can’t take anymore. I can’t. I can’t!”

The demon ignored her. It didn’t scold or
threaten—it said nothing. It barely appeared angry. There was no
need to threaten. Gloria knew exactly what she was in store for.
Her knees chafed and tore as she was dragged back to the cave,
kicking and screaming the entire way.

*

Gloria was back in the cage. Her demon had not
punished her yet, had simply shoved her back into her prison and
collapsed onto his rotting bed of human hair and flesh. There was
no hurry. He had all of forever to make her pay for trying to
escape, for being a sinner, for being born. Soon he was fast asleep
and Gloria was alone again with her thoughts.

Tears dripped from her face and splattered onto the
floor of the cage, sizzling and turning to steam. Gloria wanted to
be strong but this was all so hideous, so terrible, so unfair. She
had fucked a lot, used the body God had given her not as a temple
but as a toilet, a receptacle for semen, drugs, and alcohol. She’d
been a whore, a sinner, weak, gluttonous, lustful, proud. She’d
taken the Lord’s name in vain, committed adultery. She’d done every
terrible thing she could possibly do to herself. She’d given
blowjobs to horses, donkeys, and pigs. Let them fuck her in the ass
and ejaculate inside of her. But there were much more terrible
sins. Sins that seemed much more befitting the type of punishment
she was being subjected to.

She hadn’t murdered anyone or stolen from them.
She’d never raped or molested anyone. She had defiled herself but
she’d hurt no one else. How could she deserve to spend eternity
being raped, tortured, and mutilated? What kind of God would allow
such a thing? Gloria moaned and wept herself to sleep.

When she woke, the demon was staring into her
cage.

“God, no! No! Don’t hurt me! God, please don’t let
him hurt me!”

“Stop saying that! There is no God! Not for you
and not for me
! He has abandoned us both.”

The sound of the demon’s voice startled Gloria. It
was the first time he had spoken since she’d been in his
possession, and despite the harshness of his words and the powerful
volume, an obvious attempt to sound menacing, his voice was like
music.

That’s why the arch demons never speak … they still
have the voices of angels.

“Why do you say that?” It was a stupid question, but
Gloria wanted to hear him speak again. Something about his voice
gave her hope. A creature with a voice that beautiful had to have
some good in it. Hidden beneath those adornments of tattoos and
piercings and scars, beneath the hideous body art, those brands,
burns, and surgical modifications, there had to be some sympathy
and compassion. Some divinity.