Lawyers in Hell (43 page)

Crowley’s eyes turned up in his head as he searched his memory.  “Yes, I do believe he was.  We chatted before the tournament and he came up to congratulate me afterward.”

“At that time, I suggest Captain Lewis was testing the compulsion stone, putting it in your pocket and then retrieving it later,” Adams postulated.

“Conjecture.  You have no proof,” said Lewis.

“Not of your actions during the earlier tournament, but I do have a witness who saw you put the stone in Mister Crowley’s pocket today,” said Adams.  With that, Walter Gibson pushed his way through the crowd to stand on Crowley’s side of the table.

“You put it in his pocket, sir; you are good with your hands, but not good enough that I didn’t see you do it.  Should I be called upon as an expert witness, I will definitely testify to what you did,” Gibson said.

“Yet Crowley, not I, was the one using magic.  Club rules clearly state that anyone influencing games unfairly will be expelled, and your client is in possession of a magical instrument of influence,” said Lewis.  The smug look on Lewis’ face irritated Adams no end.

“Actually, no – Mister Crowley wasn’t using magic.  You just claimed he was, Captain Lewis.  Do you have it, Walter?”

Gibson held up a folded piece of paper.

“This is a copy of a writ, signed by Judge Roy Bean, canceling out the power of anything of a magical nature that you, Captain Lewis, have touched in the last few hours,” said Adams.  “Once Mister Gibson spotted what you had done, he let me know and I texted my secretary, who was waiting at Judge Bean’s court.  As soon as he signed the writ, it went into effect,” said Adams.

Lewis folded his lips inward and then smiled.  “I know a bit about the law myself.  That kind of writ is nothing more than a piece of paper; unless I am given it and am informed that I am being served, which I was not.  You’re bluffing, John Adams.  And I’m calling your bluff.”

“I don’t bluff,” said Adams.  “If you check your inside coat pocket you will find a copy of this writ, properly signed.  You
were
served with it.  My associate, Mister Gibson, placed it on your person himself.  He even
told
you that you had been served, as he is compelled to do by law.”

Lewis stared at Adams and Gibson.  “Remember?” said Gibson.  “When you were crossing the room earlier, I bumped against you.  We even exchanged a few words.  I said, ‘You have been served.’  Is it my fault if you thought I was asking you a question about the waiters, rather than making a statement?  Or that you weren’t aware the writ was in your pocket?”

Lewis’s face flushed red with anger.  Without answering Gibson, he pushed away from the table and stalked toward the front of the club.  Several sycophants hurried after him with his coat and top hat.

“Check and mate.  Nicely done, Mister Adams.  Nicely done.” said Crowley.

Disclaimer

By

John Manning

The last thing he remembers is the chatter of an automatic weapon.  Glass explodes from the French doors.  Drywall erupts from the office walls.  Paneling cracks and splinters from the opposite side of the room.  Knick-knacks, pen holders, picture frames rain down on him from his ruined desk.  Warm, sticky, wetness oozes from the soggy carpet beneath him.  Cold numbness spreads inward from his limbs.  Darkness grows, closes him in.

Closes him down.

*

Aaron “Monty” Montgomery awoke face down on a hard laminate surface.  A deep rumbling vibration thrummed throughout his body.  He heard a metallic rattling from somewhere above and behind him.  Slowly, he pushed himself to a sitting position and looked around.  He frowned.  He was sitting in what looked like an elevator car.  From his right he heard a discordant humming sound rather like Muzak played over an old, cracked speaker.  The rhythm seemed familiar.  He turned his head.  Centered in the wall to his left was a pair of closed steel doors.  A rectangular panel was mounted half way up the wall between the doors and the wall opposite him.  Instead of buttons for different floors there was only one.  It made no sense. Instead of a number, he saw just a single word:

THERE.

In front of the panel was a tall, four-legged wooden stool.  His eyes followed the blond wood until he reached a pair of stone-colored taloned feet.  His eyes moved further upward.  On the stool sat…

“Hi.”

Monty crabbed backwards to the opposite wall and tried to keep going.  The
thing
sitting atop the stool could not possibly exist, let alone talk to him.  It sat with its knees folded in front of it.  Monty guessed it was between three and three and a half feet tall.  Gray, stone-like skin covered its naked body.  From between its legs rose a penis that would have made any male porn star hang his head in shame and envy.  Monty guessed that made it a
he
, not an
it
.  Leathery wings the color of dried blood sprouted from between its – his – shoulders and draped his back.  He had arms and legs like a man.  Instead of hands and feet, however, he sported claws and talons.  His face was canine, although the ears were wide, pointed, and hairless.  A tuft of thick, black fur ran up and over the center of its head and down its back like a Mohawk.

“Name’s Rudolfo.”  The creature extended his right claw as if to shake hands.  When Monty just stared at him, he shrugged and returned his attention to the panel before him.

“Wha-what
are
you?” Monty whispered.

“I guess you’d call me an imp.”  The operator looked at Monty and smiled.  His teeth accented his canine appearance.  “Or, a lesser demon, if you prefer.  Just one of hell’s many little annoyances.”

Monty shuddered.  He should probably play nice until he figured out what was going on.  Still, he had to know.  “No offense, but you look more like a gargoyle.”

“None taken.  I been called worse.”

Monty looked around, but the car offered no clues. He could have been in any number of cheap hotels or early office buildings.  Sweat trickled from his hairline and ran down his cheek.  Whoever owned the building really needed to do something about the air conditioning.  He sniffed.  He wrinkled his nose.  Rudolfo needed a deodorant.  Badly.

“Where am I?”

Rudolfo’s face split into a mischievous grin.  “On an elevator.”

“I had that much figured out,” Monty grumbled.  “Where is this elevator?”

“It’s between destinations.”  Rudolfo was enjoying Monty’s rising frustration.

“Okay.  That means it’s going somewhere.  So, where is it going?”

“To hell.”

Monty blinked.  “But, it feels like it’s going up.”

“What it feels like and what it is ain’t necessarily the same thing.”  Rudolfo twitched with repressed glee.  He loved baiting the ‘new dead.’  It made the long elevator ride so much more enjoyable – for him.

 “Shouldn’t it be going down?” Monty persisted.

The imp laughed.  “You new dead always get it wrong.  Up, down – it don’t mean nothin’ here.  Einstein had it figured out.  It’s all relative and dimensional.”  Rudolfo leaned toward Monty, winked, and gave him a conspiratorial poke in the ribs.  “He’s down here, by the way.”

Monty looked around.  The car was austere.  The walls were bare.  Dark splotches dotted the surfaces.  He sniffed again and immediately regretted it.  It wasn’t coming from the demon.

“What’s that smell?”

The imp sniffed.  “Oh, that.  It’s brimstone.  Sulfur.  Goes with the territory.  You’ll get used to it.  No, wait.  You’re dead.” The creature chortled and snickered.  “You’ll never get used to it.  So, get used to it.”

“Dead?”

“Right.  Dead.  Expired.  Recently departed.  Deceased.”  Rudolfo leaned forward and breathed an acrid sulfurous cloud into Monty’s face.  “Dead.”

The demon returned his attention to his control panel and its single lighted button. He began humming the same, discordant, familiar tune.

“What
is
that?”

Rudolfo stopped. “What’s what?”

“That tune.  What is it?”

“This?”  He hummed a few more bars.

“Yes, that.  I’ve heard it before.”

“Oh, it’s just somethin’ I picked up in a bar in Sydney when I was up there doin’ some harvestin’ for one of th’ big boys.  See if this helps any.”  The demon cleared his throat and started singing.  “
Don’t mind you playin’ demon – as long as it’s with me – if this is hell – then you could say – it’s heavenly – hell ain’t a bad place to be.
”  He grinned.  “How’d you like that?”

“It was definitely … interesting.”  Monty smiled.  “That was an AC/DC song, wasn’t it?” 

In truth, it sounded like feeding time at a large zoo.

“It’s called
Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be
.  I’m thinkin’ about singing it for
Demonic Idol
when the auditions come to Sinsunatti next month.  What do you think?  Have I got a chance?”

Monty shifted expressions, using the smile he reserved for when he told his clients everything was fine, no worries, when truthfully all had gone to shit and there was nothing he could do to save the situation.  “I guess it depends on the competition, doesn’t it?”

The ascent was bad and got worse.  Monty had been on high-speed elevators in the past, but nothing like this.  The laws of physics said this kind of speed was impossible, yet he was certain that the car had exceeded terminal velocity some time ago.  Just when he thought the car must burn up from friction, it stopped.

It did not slow down.

It did not ease gracefully to a halt.

It stopped.

While he tried to come to terms with the realization that he was not a puddle of protein jelly on the car’s ceiling, the doors slid open with the sound of fighting – or mating – cats.

Marty looked through the door at the empty vista beyond.  The terrain that stretched before him was totally flat and featureless, devoid of vegetation or creatures.  Black, billowing clouds raced overhead across the garish, red-orange sky.  A bright glow shone through the clouds straight above, but he could not tell if it was the sun, the moon, a star, or a really big spotlight.  The wind howled as it raced across the plain with nothing to retard its progress.  The rotten egg smell filled his nose and throat.  He gagged.  Tears filled his eyes and ran down his cheeks.  The gas mixed with the tears and turned them to acid that burned runnels in his skin.

“Here you go, Mac.”

“But… but…” Monty choked, unable to speak with the burning in his nose, mouth and throat.  He doubled over.

“Hey, a smart lawyer like you oughta come up with somethin’ better than motor boat sounds.  Step on out there.”

Monty turned to Rudolfo.  “You said … this … is hell.  There’s … nothing … here.”  He choked the words from his raw throat.

“You been listenin’ to too many religious stories.  Some people say that everyone builds their own hell when they’re livin’ back on Earth.  If so, this is the one you made.” Rudolfo sighed.  “Look, Mac. I don’t make the rules and you ain’t the only soul I gotta pick up.  This one is all yours.  You own this bit of real estate.  Now, get out there and claim it.”

Rudolfo gave him a firm shove and propelled him, unresisting, through the doorway and spinning him around as he did so.

Monty caught his balance and looked up.  An elderly woman stood before him.  No, not elderly-geriatric –
ancient
.  For the first time in his life he fully understood the meaning of the word ‘crone.’

Her liver-spotted scalp shone beneath the thin, lank silver threads that cascaded down either side of her head in limp curls.  Her seamed and leathery face bore more cracks than a dried riverbed.  Pale, bleary blue eyes sparkled from below a thick, snowy unibrow.  Her nose was a hooked wedge of flesh stabbing knife-like from between her eyes.  Cracked, flaking lips opened in a leering grin as spittle dribbled from the corner of her mouth.

“Well, well,” she cackled, exposing cracked and yellowed teeth.  She leaned toward him for a better look.  “Ain’t you the pretty one?”

Unable to stop his natural, ingrained male inclination, his eyes continued downward over her naked flesh.  The skin hung in sagging, wrinkled folds.  Her breasts – dugs, really – lay flat against her chest.  On the right breast the word WELCOME was branded in angry, brownish-red letters.  On the left, the word was WOMAN.

Monty’s glanced continued downward to her crotch.  Her right hand partially covered her pubic hair in an obscene parody of modesty.  Her fingers rapidly worked the protruding and sagging lips of her ancient slit.  He saw more movement within the thicket of gray hair nestled between her legs – motion other than that of her fingers.  He shuddered.  A scream grew within his mind.  Something was twisting and writhing down and out and reaching toward him.

This can’t be happening,
his brain screamed even as his legs tried to push him away from the squirming flesh.  He first thought they were tentacles, but he soon realized his error.  They were worse.  They were tongues – two twitching, reaching, grasping, bifurcated, blue-black appendages.

And, they were reaching for
him.

“Welcome to hell, Darlin’.”  She raised her arms and stepped toward him. “I have so many wonderful things to show you.”

The old woman pressed herself against him, her sagging breasts surprisingly firm against his chest.  Her left hand slid up and behind his head as she tilted her face up to him and his down to her.  Her lips parted.  Her pustule-covered tongue darted over their flaky surface.  Despite his struggles, he felt his head pulled inexorably closer.  His nostrils filled with the stench of shit and rotting flesh.  Her lips pressed against his; her tongue stabbed into his mouth.

Monty screamed around the invading flesh and tried to push himself backwards into the car.  The doors were already closed.  He pushed helplessly against the steel panels as he felt his zipper pulled slowly down.  His erection grew to a tumescence he had never experienced in life.  The slippery tongues reached into his boxers.  As the black muscular flesh enveloped his engorged member, darkness claimed him.

*

Monty awoke face down on a hard laminate surface.  He frowned.  The last thing he remembered was being raped by an ancient hag on a flat plain under a red-orange sky.  The pain of his chafed, abraded organ told him it wasn’t a dream.  He also had the worst case of “blue balls” he had ever experienced.  His scrotum felt swollen to ten times its normal size and it ached like it had been used for field goal practice by an NFL place kicker.  His body screamed for release, but he was afraid to touch himself.

 A deep rumbling vibration thrummed throughout his body.  He heard a metallic rattling from somewhere above and behind him.  Slowly, he pushed himself to a sitting position and looked around.  He frowned.  He was sitting in the elevator car again.  A feeling of déjà vu washed over him.

Not again,
he thought. 
If this thing takes me to that old woman I’ll kill myself.

“Goin’ down.”

Monty shuddered.  “Rudolfo, right?”

“Afraid not,” the creature on the stool growled.  “What, we all look alike to you?  You racist or somethin’?”

“Um, no.  N-nothing like that.”

“ Oh.  So you think we only got one elevator, then.  You think this is sticksville or somethin’, don’tcha?  Listen, Bud.  This was a heavy duty, high class operation long before you came along.  Modern guys like you an’ Howard Hughes an’ all th’ rest think just cuz youse is th’ newest deads that nothin’ else before you was any good.  You don’t know it, but we hadda huge marble staircase that worked just fine.  Yeah, it was slow.  Yeah, all you newly-deads kept bleedin’ an’ pukin’ an’ pissin’ an’ shittin’ all over it, but, hey!  That only gave it character, y’unnerstand?”  The demon poked a blackened claw into the middle of Monty’s chest.  “There’s so many of you dyin’ up there and comin’ down here we’d never handle it with just one car.”

A cold dread filled Monty.  “You’re not taking me to that old hag again, are you?”

“Dubbayah, Dubbayah?  Nah. Fun time’s over.  Time t’get t’work.  Th’ Undertaker’s released ya back t’full duty status.”  The creature extended a green, scaly, black-tipped claw toward the panel and pressed a button.  The car halted.  “You’re overdue for orientation.  You musta had a real good time with the Welcome Woman.  I unnerstand she gives some great tongue action.”

Monty felt the acid burning in his throat as his gorge rose.

The doors rumbled open revealing a massive foyer.

“Hall of Injustice, hell’s Law Library.  All out!”  The demon kicked Monty forward.  As he pin-wheeled to keep his balance, the doors closed behind him.

He managed to keep from falling on his butt – barely.  As he smoothed his coat and shirt and brushed the ever present sprinkling of yellow dust from the lapels, he saw a little Greek-looking man wearing a gold-trimmed white robe hurrying toward him.  He was followed closely by an Egyptian-looking kid dressed in a crimson smock, gray slacks and gray sandals.  The boy wore heavy black eye makeup and there was no mistaking the adoration on his face when he looked at the older man.