Wrath James White presents Poisoning Eros I & II (17 page)

“I promise, I’ll never let anyone hurt you
again.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,
Mother
.”

Gloria winced. The bitterness in Angela’s voice
wounded her.

As they made their way back into hell, with the
light from heaven fading in the distance behind them, they saw
others walking up through the tunnel in the opposite direction.
Each shared physical traits that clearly marked them as related.
Mother, father, and three children. Their scarred and filthy faces
were filled with the same mixture of fear and enthusiasm that had
no doubt been on Gloria and Angela’s faces when they first made
their way toward Paradise. Seeing Gloria and her daughter
returning, looking dejected, seemed to diminish the family’s
already waning enthusiasm.

“Di-did you see him?” the father asked, reaching out
for Gloria like a starving man reaching for table scraps.

Gloria brushed him away. She hadn’t forgotten what
had happened to her the last time she’d felt sympathy for one of
her fellow citizens of damnation. Now she trusted no one.

“No,” she said. “He wouldn’t see us. Good luck to
you though.” Gloria kept walking, hugging her daughter tight.
Angela clung to her mother’s side, staring nervously at the
family.

The man’s eyes widened in fear as he watched Gloria
and her daughter head back toward inferno. “He wouldn’t see you?
Why? What did they tell you?”

“They said we’re damned,” Gloria said. “We’re all
damned. That’s why we’re here. This is just another method of
torture, as far as I’m concerned. Just another way to give us hope
so it can be crushed again. We’re going back where we belong, back
to the only place that will have us.”

They wandered away, and the man and his family stood
in the dimly lit tunnel, clearly petrified to move forward.

The light of heaven was almost a memory as Gloria
and Angela walked deeper into the gloom.

Gloria stopped suddenly and her daughter looked up
at her quizzically.

“What’s wrong, Mom?”

“Why are they here?” Gloria glanced back. “How could
an entire family wind up in hell?”

Gloria yelled into the tunnel. “Hey! Hey, wait!” She
jogged back and found them waiting. “What did you do?”

“What?” The puzzled man studied Gloria’s face.

“How did you get here? Why is your entire family
here?”

“We died together in a plane crash.”

Gloria was almost frantic. Everyone was looking at
her like she’d lost her mind, but insanity was so common in this
place that her anxiety seemed almost pedestrian.

“But why did you all end up here? Why didn’t you go
to heaven? You all couldn’t have been bad people. At least the
children—”

The father stared at the ground, refused to meet
Gloria’s eyes. “Because we were atheists. We didn’t believe in God.
We denied him.”

“So you were sent here? Your entire family? But
that’s not right. How could God do this?”

“We didn’t believe.”

“No! That’s not right. Kids can’t be blamed
for—”

“We have to go. Maybe he’ll take us now. After all,
we can’t possibly deny his existence now, right?”

“But … how long have you been here?”

“I don’t know.”

“What year did you die?”

“Nineteen forty-three.”

Gloria’s mouth dropped open. They’d been suffering
in damnation for more than sixty years just for not believing? It
was so cruel she couldn’t wrap her mind around it.

“We really need to get going. I don’t want the
demons to catch us. Not when we’re so close.”

Gloria and Angela watched the man and his family
walk off into the light. She held her daughter as they walked back
toward hell, more determined than ever to find a way out. They
wouldn’t spend eternity there.

It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair.

*

By the time they fully exited the tunnel, a group had
gathered at its entrance. She recognized their frightened,
apprehensive looks and knew that seeing her and her daughter walk
out did nothing to embolden them.

“Did you see him?”

“What was he like?”

“Why didn’t he take you?”

“She must be a murderer or Satanist or
something.”

“Why didn’t he take you?”

“I’ll bet she murdered babies back on Earth.”

“She must have been a child molester or
something.”

“Maybe she committed suicide. They say that’s an
unforgivable sin.”

“Why didn’t he let you stay?”

Gloria had to fight her way through the small angry
mob, trying to protect her daughter from their questions.
Terrified, confused faces, all wanting answers, none wanting
answers.

The crowd turned vicious. They tore at Gloria’s
hair. Someone slapped her. Someone else punched her in the stomach.
Angela screamed as they attacked her, too. They were knocked to the
ground and the crowd moved in to kick and stomp them. Angela’s
screams grew louder and Gloria crawled over, using her own body to
protect Angela’s.

Gloria took the brunt of the attack, her ribs
bruised, head bloody from the assault.

“Why are they so mad?” Angela screamed. “Why are
they hurting us?”

Gloria tried to respond but a boot smashed down on
her mouth, shattering her

teeth. She coughed and spit blood as she was stomped
again. Her eye was squashed and sunk down into her skull. They
pummeled her with rocks plucked from the cave floor. It felt as
though every bone in her body was being mashed to bits.

Gloria screamed, the pain in her ruined face and
head unbearable, but she knew that screaming was a huge
mistake.

Then, the sound of thunder as demons poured down the
corridor and into the chamber. More than a dozen filed in, their
skin a gruesome tapestry of scarified flesh decorated with animal
horns and teeth, metal and bone, grafted into their skulls, torsos,
and limbs like the demon that had held Gloria captive. Fallen
angels self-modified into hideous monsters. They each stood more
than seven feet tall, stooping with their backs scraping the cave
ceiling. Their mouths were filled with jagged shards of metal,
bone, and stone filed to sharp points. A profusion of fangs and
tusks, glinting in the flickering torchlight was embedded in their
gums in no discernable order, the insane artistry of some demented
orthodontist. They grinned and snarled, gazing with sadistic,
undisguised lust and cruelty upon the frightened humans, their
intentions etched into their twisted flesh as plainly as the scars
and tattoos that adorned them. Quickly they fanned out to block
both exits, cutting off all avenue of retreat. The trapped humans
began to cry and pray and beg. Some of them simply laid on the
ground, curled into fetal positions, shivering with fear, waiting
for the blows to fall, for the pain to begin.

Massive clubs and axes swung with lethal ferocity at
the fleeing humans, mowing them down like blades of grass, hacking
everyone to pieces. Some of the demons simply scooped up the
fleeing souls and shredded them with their teeth and claws,
literally chewing them up and spitting them out. Still others took
the opportunity to satiate their savage lusts, raping and
sodomizing anyone they could get their hands on even as they
eviscerated and dismembered them.

Gloria had never seen such wholesale slaughter. She
doubled over, dry heaving, unable to regurgitate with an empty
stomach. The screams were deafening. She clamped her hands over her
ears, trying to block out the din, then added her own screams to
the chorus.

Body parts flew in every direction as the demons
tore the mob apart. Bits and pieces hit Gloria in the face and
smashed against the cave walls. Gloria tried to crawl away from the
carnage, dragging her hysterical daughter with her. Their only hope
was that the demons wouldn’t notice them escaping, would be too
caught up in their apparent glee at attacking the humans who were
still mobile.

They hid in a nearby hole carved into the cave wall,
barely able to conceal themselves in the small opening. They
dragged the remains of other human on top of them, hiding beneath
severed limbs and organs. So far the demons hadn’t seemed to
notice. Gloria glanced over as a demon beheaded the last human. Not
that that would pose a problem for any of them—they would all
regenerate, and knowing the demons’ behavior the way she did, they
would wait patiently so they could attack the humans all over
again.

The demons were laughing. Standing over the body
parts and laughing, pointing at chunks of human meat strewn
throughout the cave, still hideously alive. Unable to die despite
the grievous injuries they’d suffered. They watched the undulating
limbs, heads, and torsos, the beating hearts and expanding and
contracting lungs that had been ripped from ruptured chests with
ghoulish glee. Taking delight in stomping them into pulp, relishing
the sounds of cracking bone and squishing meat and organs.

Some were still furiously copulating with the
dismembered bodies, forcing the hideously wounded souls to submit
to intercourse and anal penetration, forcing them to perform
fellatio, raping their headless necks, eviscerated stomachs and
eyeless skulls along with any other orifice they could find or
create. Lubricating their malformed phalluses with the blood of one
before sodomizing another in an orgy of violence that seemed to go
on forever.

“Watch,” one said, its bulbous head topped with a
profusion of horns, antlers, and tusks, wobbling as it laughed. It
picked up a woman’s head, her eyes blinking furiously, her tongue
trying to work despite her head no longer being attached to her
vocal cords. The demon snatched various body parts from around the
cave and pressed them together, like trying to fit the wrong pieces
into a puzzle. But the limbs began to reattach and regenerate as
piece by piece was added, until the demon had created its own type
of human.

The human-thing stood on mismatched legs, its male
torso supporting its female head. The other demons followed suit
and created their own human hybrids.

The small human mob that had attacked Gloria and
Angela were herded out of the cave, some crawling on distorted
limbs, others trying to walk on arms that had been assembled where
legs should have been. One had had his head reattached backward and
screamed hysterically when he realized it was permanent.

“We’re okay,” Gloria whispered through her shattered
mouth, her arms tight around Angela’s shoulders. Her face was
already beginning to regenerate.

Her daughter’s eyes were squeezed shut.

“It’s okay to look. They’re gone.” Gloria made sure
to keep her voice as quiet as possible.

Angela looked at her mother and shook her head. “You
look horrible. What did they do to you?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I’m so scared.”

“Me too.”

“That could have been us!”

Gloria nodded. “I know,” she whispered. “But you
have to be quiet. Very quiet.”

Angela nodded. “Serves them right. For what they did
to us. They deserved that!”

“No one deserves that, Angela.”

Angela scowled. “They were disgusting. Horrible and
disgusting.”

Gloria cradled her daughter’s head against her
shoulder. “Try to relax. Get some sleep.”

The need to sleep—along with every other bodily
function—no longer existed, yet like breathing or gasping for
breath when pain became too much to bear, the overwhelming desire
to curl up in a warm cozy bed, bundled beneath a comforter was
something Gloria yearned for. As it was, she would accept curling
against a rock and shutting her eyes, hoping dreams would take her
far from this place. But there never were dreams, never the solace
of escape. Only nightmares, asleep and awake.

When Gloria opened her eyes, Angela was staring at
her. “How can you sleep?”

“I told you, I—”

“But it’s not real! And you’re putting us in danger.
How can you be so selfish?”

Gloria excused the remark as teenage angst. And
stupidity. And a young lifetime of living with a degenerate
father.

“What would you like us to do then?”

Angela scowled, huffing her indignation.

“Picnic, perhaps? Take a walk along the shore?”

“You know what I mean,
Mother
.”

Gloria always wondered why her daughter didn’t
finish that with
fucker
. “All we can do is hope to survive.
We have no place else to go. Not yet anyway.”

“There has to be someplace. You said so
yourself.”

“Where else do you have in mind? I’m open to
suggestions.”

“You’re the mother. You’re supposed to know these
things.” She sobbed, wrapping her arms around her knees, hugging
herself for comfort.

There were moments—moments of weakness where Gloria
knew she didn’t belong here, knew she could escape, could desert
her daughter and escape into heaven if she desired. And it was
tempting … she’d even convinced herself that once there, she might
be able to plead with them, convince them to allow Angela in as
well. All she’d have to do is leave Angela behind. Angela, the girl
who had betrayed her in life, had subjected her mother to an
eternity in hell.

Gloria hadn’t exactly been a saint on earth. She’d
done what she’d needed to do to survive. But she didn’t deserve
this, and heaven seemed ready to forgive her transgressions,
including sacrificing herself for Angela’s baby, which had amounted
to committing suicide, despite the selflessness of the act.

“Can we go now?” Angela whined. “Find some food or
something.”

“You’re not hungry.”

“Yes I am!”

“When’s the last time you ate?”

The girl shrugged, scowled, turned away. “I had a
cheeseburger.”

“Months ago. You don’t need to eat. These bodies
aren’t even real, not real flesh anyway, despite being able to
touch and feel. There’s no
need
to eat. Do you
understand?”