Lucifer's Lottery - Edward Lee [3]
Andeen smirked. “Because it’s perverse and disgusting, the way it’s supposed to be. This isn’t Romper Room, Slydes. This is Hell, and Hell is hard-core. Eternal torment, suffering, and abhorrence is the name of the game. It pleases Lucifer, therefore, it’s Public Law.” She smirked more sharply this time. “Look, go over to that public washbasin and wash the bat crap out of your hair. It’s grossing me out.”
Dazed, Slydes noted the elevated stone basin only feet from the alley mouth. He dunked his head in the water, agitated the rank guano out of his hair, then seized up and jerked his head out when he realized what he was washing in.
“That’s not water! That’s piss!”
“Get used to it,” Andeen said. “Unless you’re a Grand Duke or an Archlock, you’ll never get near fresh water. Only other way is to distill it yourself out of the blood of what you kill.”
Revolted, Slydes flapped the urine off his face, then noticed lower basins erected intermittently along the smoky street. “What are those things? They look like–”
“Oh, the commodes. It’s another Public Law. In this Prefect, it’s mandatory that everyone urinate, defecate, and give birth in public.”
Slydes’s bearded jaw dropped.
“And there”—Andeen pointed—“across the street. There’re the various Surgery Suites.”
Slydes scanned the signs over each transom . . .
RECTO-URINARY TRANSVERSION
URETHRAL-ESOPHAGEAL REVERSAL
UTERO-RECTAL FISTULA
And many, many more.
Slydes could not conceive of any of this.
When he glanced inadvertently between two more spiring buildings, he could’ve shrieked. Far off in the distance, some monumentlike thing stood impossibly high, but it was a figure. He remembered seeing the Statue of Liberty once a long time ago, on a drug run between Florida and New York—that’s what this reminded him of . . . sort of. A giant statue, he thought. But . . .
Andeen caught him staring. “Oh, the Demonculus. It hasn’t been up long. Pretty awesome, huh?”
Slydes peered at her, incredulous, then peered back up at the statue. “A Deeeee—”
“Demonculus. It’s farther away than it looks—that’s actually the Pol Pot District over there. The Demonculus is 666 feet high. Looks like a statue, right?”
Slydes dumbly nodded, noting the pointed crown about the form’s head, akin to the Statue of Liberty. But . . . was it a crown, or horns?
Andeen inspected her black fingernails with tiny white upside-down crosses. “Well, it’s not a statue, it’s a living thing—just another one of the Boss’s obsessions.”
The impact of her words finally registered. Slydes looked pleadingly at her. “Living . . . thing?”
“Um-hmmm. Once it’s activated, it will tear the shit out of whole Districts to root out insurgents.” She smiled at his trauma. “For the rest of eternity, Slydes, you’re gonna be seeing some really wild and really awful stuff.”
Her evilly tattooed hand pulled him back into the alley. “And look, there’s an Abduction Squad. The clay men are called Golems. They’re like state employees, public works, police, security, stuff like that . . .”
Slydes watched with a cheek to the edge of the alley wall as a troop of gray-brown things shaped like men thudded down the sidewalk, each shoving along a handcuffed Human, Demon, or Hybrid. The Golems were nine feet tall and walked in formation. Then they all stopped at the same time, and marched their prisoners into various Surgery Suites.
“And like I said, the state pays more money for Humans, so that’s why we gotta get you out of the Prefect.”
Slydes whipped his face back around, and repeated, helplessly now, “I don’t understand . . .”
“Once you’ve seen what goes on here . . . you will. Oh, and check out this chick.”
Slydes watched as a morose-faced nude woman who appeared to be half Human and half Troll staggered toward one of the street commodes. She leaned over, parted her buttocks, and began to urinate out of her anus.
“See?” Andeen asked. “Oh, wow, and check this out! Here comes a Uteral-Oral Fistulation . . .”
A woman in a bloody smock labored down the street.