City Infernal (2 page)
Authors: Edward Lee
A well-dressed woman in a smart bonnet taps by on elegant high heels. She’s wearing a fur-lined trench coat of patterned human skin, and diminutive horns sprout from her smooth, angled forehead. The woman is an uptown She-Demon.
“Can you spare some change, ma’am?” the head asks.
The man holding the head extends a cadaverous hand, and before the elegant She-Demon walks on, she gives him a shiny twenty-five-cent piece.
The coin is embossed not with the face of George Washington but the face of serial-killer Richard Speck.
“Thank you,” the severed head says to the She-Demon as she traipses away.
They recycle here.
Hybrid Trolls comprise a municipal reclamation crew, transferring any manner of corpse from the streets into the huge back bins of several steam-powered Meat Trucks. Eventually the trucks will chug past the front gates of the Industrial Zone, emptying their wares into the collection hoppers of a typical city Pulping Station. Blood will be drained for distillation, flesh fileted for sustenance, bones dried and ground for cement. Good value, to say the least.
Barges manned by Golems float atop the brown, lump-ridden surface of a river called Styx, pumping raw sewage into the city’s domestic water reservoirs. Great furnaces burn raw sulphur for no other purpose than polluting the air, but vents in the furnace silos recycle the intense heat to keep the local prisons roaring hot. The hair of the human dead is used to stuff pillows and mattresses for the demonic elite.
Even Souls are recycled. When one body suffers suf ficient destruction, the Soul is transferred to a lower species. Endless life in eternal death.
Most cities run on electricity, but
this
city runs on horror. Suffering serves as convertible energy; terror is the city’s most valuable natural resource, where it is tapped as fuel. Industrial Alchemists and civic Warlocks use their advanced means of sorcery to harness the synaptic activity that constantly fires between neurons, the greatest production of which comes from pain. In the humming Power Plants, the city’s least useful residents are impounded, hung upside-down against long stone slabs and systematically tortured. The torture never ends—as they never really die. Instead they just hang there, often for centuries, convulsing from ceaseless pain, the energy of which is fed from their exposed brains to the vast power converters.
this
city runs on horror. Suffering serves as convertible energy; terror is the city’s most valuable natural resource, where it is tapped as fuel. Industrial Alchemists and civic Warlocks use their advanced means of sorcery to harness the synaptic activity that constantly fires between neurons, the greatest production of which comes from pain. In the humming Power Plants, the city’s least useful residents are impounded, hung upside-down against long stone slabs and systematically tortured. The torture never ends—as they never really die. Instead they just hang there, often for centuries, convulsing from ceaseless pain, the energy of which is fed from their exposed brains to the vast power converters.
A single human Soul can generate enough power to light a city block—forever.
Decapitation, evisceration, and summary dismemberment are chief among its public-service skills. Its claws swipe with the efficiency of newly honed scythes. Its jaws, rowed with canine-like teeth, can bite through an iron pipe—or a human throat—as though it were a tube of cardboard.
It is called an Usher, one of several demonic species bred specifically for urban riot control and to counter problems with public disobedience. In a more accurate sense, it is a police officer.
Here, though, the police do not exist to protect and serve. They exist to maintain terror through unimaginable atrocity. Ushers are frequently dispatched in battalions to indiscriminately maim and/or execute citizens en masse.
They keep the populace on its toes.
Sharpened horns curve outward from its anvil-shaped head. It has holes for ears and chisel-slits for eyes, and its skin can be likened to the skin of a slug, darkly spotted, exuding a mucus-like slime.
It eats voraciously.
Its blood is black.
Gumdrop is an ordinary mongrel, part human, part demon—the product of infernal prostitution. She lives in one of the immense public housing complexes in the Ghettoblocks. Her features are attractively human but her skin is green-pocked with white bumps. Her breasts are robust and multi-nippled.
Like mother, like daughter: Gumdrop, too, is a prostitute. Her pimp is an obese Troll named “Fat-Bag.” Fat-Bag keeps her in line through any conceivable act of degradation and physical violence. He also keeps her hopelessly addicted to drugs, and around here, the drug of choice is called Zap, an organic distillate that is injected directly into the pulp of the brain via a long hypodermic needle inserted into a nostril. Fat-Bag keeps the ’ho down hard.
She is a streetwalker. In hundred-hour shifts, she walks the decrepit avenues of Pogrom Park, soliciting any species of customer. When she’s lucky, a Grand Duke will pick her up. Grand Dukes pay well.
When she’s not so lucky, Broodren rip her off and gang-rape her.
It’s all just a day in the life of a prostitute in Hell.
But today she’s even less lucky. When she awakes, craving drugs, she rises from the stained mattress that serves as her bed and immediately falls to the floor. She screams when she sees what has happened to her. A Polter-Rat scurries away, barely seen. While Gumdrop slept, the creature ate all the flesh off her feet, leaving only bare bones.
How will she walk the streets now, with no feet?
Tough luck for Gumdrop.
Fat-Bag will wear her out with some kink tricks and then sell her body to a Pulping Station.
The sky churns dark-scarlet. The moon is black. It has been midnight here for millennia, and it always will be. The scape of the city stretches on in a never-ending sprawl. Fires rage, rumbling, beneath the maze of streets. Smoke and steam rise from between endless buildings and skyscrapers.
Just as endless are the screams, which fly away into the eternal night only to be immediately replaced by more of the same.
It is an incontestable cycle of human history, 5000 years old:
Cities rise, then they fall.
But not
this
city.
this
city.
Not the Mephistopolis.
PART ONE
ETHERESS
Chapter One
(I)She dreamed of utter darkness, of dripping sounds, and screams.
But first—
The embrace.
The strong hands stroking her body through the hot black satin.
I’m ready,
she thought.
I’ve never felt like this before....
she thought.
I’ve never felt like this before....
Her breasts pressed against his sculpted chest—she could feel his heart beating deeply within, and it seemed to beat for her. Their souls seemed to fuse through each ravenous kiss, and soon she felt tingling all over, flushed with heat and desire. She didn’t flinch when he pushed up her black blouse, popped the black bra, and smoothed his hands over her breasts. The sensation shocked her; she rose up on her tiptoes to kiss him harder—
Then—
The lights flicked on.
The screams exploded.
The blood splattered in her face.
And she saw it all again. Over and over. Every night of her life....
The club’s sign—GOTH HOUSE—giowed eerily in dark-purple neon. It was a familiar sight, a landmark for her eye. The line out front wound halfway up the block—another familiar sight—which proved the establishment’s popularity as the best Goth club in D.C. There were many, of course, and many more had come and gone over the years, along with every incarnation and reincarnation of the movement. Everything else seemed to change, every aspect of the city and even the world.
But not this.
Not Goth House.
For Cassie and so many like her, the club was a sanctuary, a cultural anchor for the strange ship they all elected to sail, not simply the next big thing in the club craze. Cassie thanked God for that. In a pop society that changed in eyeblinks, where every other week brought some new version of Eminem-like hatred excused as the language of a culture or facile teenybopper tramp-glamour divas with shiny pants and blond hair who couldn’t even read music, the symbolics of Goth House never wavered. The dark music and dark styles of passionately dark minds. Here, Bauhaus reigned, as they had for two decades. There were no Dixie Chicks, no Ricky Martin. There were no Spice Girls here.
It would be an hour’s wait at least, and Cassie Heydon and her sister were three years shy of the posted requirement: YOU MUST BE 21 OR OVER TO ENTER.
Cassie frowned.
It’s not who you know, it’s who you....
The thought needn’t be finished. She knew what her sister was doing; she could see her shadow in the alley kneeling before the fat, slovenly bouncer. Due to this talent, and her willingness to utilize it, Lissa had already gained quite a reputation at school. This just made it worse.
It’s not who you know, it’s who you....
The thought needn’t be finished. She knew what her sister was doing; she could see her shadow in the alley kneeling before the fat, slovenly bouncer. Due to this talent, and her willingness to utilize it, Lissa had already gained quite a reputation at school. This just made it worse.
“I do it all the time,” she’d told Cassie earlier. “It’s kind of fun and, besides, it’s the only way we can get in. You
do
want to get in, don’t you?”
do
want to get in, don’t you?”
“Yes, but—”
“You don’t want to have to wait in
this
line, do you?”
this
line, do you?”
“No, but—”
“All right already. Leave the rest to me.”
There. The matter had been settled, with Cassie’s objections diffused. She tried not to think about the image of what must be going on now. Instead, she stood at the curb, tapping her high-heeled foot as dusk lengthened over the city. Distant sirens could be heard in this murder capital of the east, mixed with the collision of music pouring into the street from other clubs. At a strip bar just a block away, a former mayor had picked up prostitutes to smoke crack with. After doing jail time, he’d been re-elected. Only in D.C., Cassie thought with an amused sarcasm. If she peered between the high-rises just right, she could see the White House juxtaposed against dilapidated rowhouses that provided area heroin addicts with their shooting galleries. Another landmark, grandly lit, spired for all to see: the Washington Monument. Just last week another terrorist had tried to blow it up with dynamite strapped around his chest like a girdle. This happened at least twice a year, and along with the drive-bys, the road rage, and the politicians who acted more like mafia lords, nothing shocked the populace by now. It was, at the very least, an intensely interesting place to live.
Come on, hurry up,
she thought, still anxiously tapping her foot. Another glance into the alley showed her her sister’s gestures hastening, the head of the kneeling silhouette moving back and forth faster and faster. Even if Cassie had a lover—something she
hadn’t
had ever in her iife—the act she was witnessing now, in the alley, wasn’t something she thought she’d ever want to do. Or maybe love would change that some day.
she thought, still anxiously tapping her foot. Another glance into the alley showed her her sister’s gestures hastening, the head of the kneeling silhouette moving back and forth faster and faster. Even if Cassie had a lover—something she
hadn’t
had ever in her iife—the act she was witnessing now, in the alley, wasn’t something she thought she’d ever want to do. Or maybe love would change that some day.
Yeah,
she thought coldly.
Some day.
she thought coldly.
Some day.
A few minutes later, Lissa’s shadow was standing up again. It’s
about time!
Cassie thought. She was waving Cassie into the alley, whispering, “Come on, we have to go in through the back.”
about time!
Cassie thought. She was waving Cassie into the alley, whispering, “Come on, we have to go in through the back.”
The alley stank; Cassie grimaced when she stepped through, hoping not to sully her brand-new black stiletto heels, and she hoped that the squeaking sounds she heard weren’t rats. A syringe cracked beneath her sole.
Re-buckling his dumpy pants, the bouncer winked at her.
Not a chance, fat boy,
she thought.
I’d rather hang myself from the Wilson Bridge.
Muffled music trebled in volume when she followed Lissa in through the back door.
Anti-Christ, Superstar,
someone had spray-painted on the door, and
Lucretia My Reflection.
A few quick turns down a few corridors, and they were in the middle of the jam-packed club. The throng of black-clad figures danced wildly to the ear-splitting music. Tonight was “oldies” night: Killing Joke, Front 242, .45 Grave, and the like. Cassie always preferred the material that founded the movement rather than popified stuff that was now ending it. Salvos of blinding white strobelights turned the dance floor into shifting freeze-frames. Stark flesh and bands of black. Vampiric faces and blood-red lips. Inhumanly wide eyes seemed never to blink. In cages high overhead, Goth girls danced through deadpan expressions, in varying states of undress. Couples kissed voraciously in secluded comers. Waves of grinding music made the air concuss.
Not a chance, fat boy,
she thought.
I’d rather hang myself from the Wilson Bridge.
Muffled music trebled in volume when she followed Lissa in through the back door.
Anti-Christ, Superstar,
someone had spray-painted on the door, and
Lucretia My Reflection.
A few quick turns down a few corridors, and they were in the middle of the jam-packed club. The throng of black-clad figures danced wildly to the ear-splitting music. Tonight was “oldies” night: Killing Joke, Front 242, .45 Grave, and the like. Cassie always preferred the material that founded the movement rather than popified stuff that was now ending it. Salvos of blinding white strobelights turned the dance floor into shifting freeze-frames. Stark flesh and bands of black. Vampiric faces and blood-red lips. Inhumanly wide eyes seemed never to blink. In cages high overhead, Goth girls danced through deadpan expressions, in varying states of undress. Couples kissed voraciously in secluded comers. Waves of grinding music made the air concuss.
Cassie felt immediately at home.
“Over here!” Her sister tugged her by the hand through more pressing bodies. As they edged further away from the crush of dancers, heads began to turn.
Of course, Cassie thought, rather morosely.
She and Lissa were identical twins. The only telling them apart was a minute detail: they’d both dyed a white streak in their matching straight black hair, Cassie’s on the left, Lissa’s on the right. The only other noticeable difference was the petite barbed-wire tattoo that encircled Lissa’s navel, while Cassie had a petite half-rainbow around hers. But it was Lissa who always insisted they dress identically whenever they snuck out to a club. Identical black-velvet gauntlets, identical short black crinoline skirts and black-lace blouses. Even their stiletto heels and kidskin wrist purses were identical. It drove their father nuts, but even Cassie was beginning to get bored with the novelty; that and it never seemed to draw any attention to her, just to Lissa.
She didn’t dwell on that; it was a rumination that, she’d learned long ago, led to nowhere except the heart of her own lack of confidence and self-image. Her secret envy of Lissa sometimes bubbled up to quiet hatred ; she’d never understand how two people who looked so alike could possess such opposite personalities. Lissa the out-going Guy Magnet and Party Chick, Cassie the dour introvert. Five years of psychotherapy and a few months in a mental ward gave her only enough edge to keep going at all. But it wasn’t just Lissa, it was everything. It was the world.
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