Lucifer's Lottery - Edward Lee [108]
Signing his name was harder than he thought.
“There.”
The deaconess looked awed at the sheet of paper. “You’re so, so privileged . . .” Suddenly she fell to her knees, hugging Hudson’s hips. “Please, I beg you. In my own Damnation, recruit me into your harem! I would be so honored to serve a Privilato! Please!”
“Sure,” Hudson agreed, “but . . . where’s that six million?”
Her smile seemed drunken now from what he’d just granted her. She kissed his crotch, and pointed behind him.
Two Samsonite suitcases sat on the other side of the room. This can’t be possible, he thought, but when he opened them, all he could do was stare for full minutes. Each hefty suitcase had been filled with banded one-hundred-dollar bills.
“There are six hundred bands, ten thousand dollars per band,” the deaconess told him.
Hudson grunted when he hefted each case. “It’s a good thing these suitcases have wheels.” But then another thought came to him. “Wait a minute. I can’t roll two big-ass suitcases to a bus stop in a ghetto, at night. I’d get mugged in two seconds.”
The deaconess’s bare skin glittered in the candlelight. “Lucifer guarantees your safety, not just in Hell but here also. From this point on, nothing can ever hurt you.”
“Really,” Hudson replied, not terribly confident.
“Oh, yes. In fact, you’ll be protected by not one but two Warding Incantations, which are quite similar to the occult bridle which protects Manse Lucifer from any anti-Satanic endeavor.”
“That’s hard-core . . .”
“I’ll demonstrate.” The deaconess wielded the ice pick.
Hudson’s heart skipped a beat.
“Any object turned on you as a weapon will be repulsed—” The deaconess threw the ice pick hard as she could right at Hudson—
“Shit!”
—but as it flew directly for his face, it veered harmlessly off and stuck in the bare-wood wall.
“Wow!”
“And any person who might attempt to assault you with his bare hands”—the nude woman smiled more mischievously—“will instantly have his blood removed from his body.”
Hudson recalled the bold but luckless insurgents’ attempt to bomb the Manse, and how their blood had been magically sucked out of every orifice.
He looked at her, at the contract in her hand, then at the suitcases. “I guess . . . all there is for me to do now is—”
“Go home, and enjoy the rest of your life here with your riches, knowing that many more riches await when you die and rise to the glory of Lucifer.”
So. That’s it, I guess. Hudson scratched his head. “What are your plans?”
“I will rise to that glory now, Mr. Hudson,” she said. “As your Senarial Messenger, I have but one more duty to perform: the execution of your contract.”
Contract in hand, the deaconess walked demurely to the chair, then stood on it.
“Hey! You’re not going to—”
“But I must, Mr. Hudson.” From a rafter she pulled down a previously prepared noose and calmly put it around her neck. “I’ll see you at your castle in the future.”
Hudson froze.
The deaconess rolled the contract into a ball, put it in her mouth, and stepped off the chair
THUNK . . .
Jesus, Hudson thought. He watched her hang there, the nude body agleam, swaying ever so gently. The rope creaked several times, then tightened to silence.
(II)
“The lake,” Dorris muttered, “is empty.” How sane she was at this time could hardly be estimated. She’d been standing there on the pier for several minutes—six minutes, to be precise—when, sane or not, some modicum of reason began to wriggle back into her consciousness . . .
What happened to my beautiful lake?
Overhead, the white moon sliver beamed. Stars sparkled in gorgeous, deep twilight, and the cricket sounds that had abated so abruptly earlier began to resume. All that she perceived would’ve been normal again, save for one irrevocable fact:
The lake was empty.
She remained there, cockeyed, limp armed, and slump shouldered, her eyes holding fast to the vast black depression that had once held six billion gallons of water.
It’s gone. It’s . . . all gone . . .
A fleeting thought returned again to the young man. Still, his wheelchair remained at the end of the pier, and when