Lucifer's Lottery - Edward Lee [47]
“I . . . think so,” you reply through the brutish, demonic lips.
“Your Auric Carrier is quite the top of the line.” Now Howard is cleaning his round spectacles with his shirttail. “You have the mouth of a Howler-Demon, the eyes of an Ocularus, the nose of a Blood-Mole, and the ears of a City Imp. Each represents a superlative. It is with only the greatest acuity that we wish you to perceive everything.”
“But, but—”
“Just relax, sir—if that possibility exists—and give your psyche time to acclimatize to the new environs, as well as the new vessel for your soul. There’s no rush—answers to all your questions will be furnished. Just relax . . . and behold.”
You try to nod. Relax? Good Lord . . . First, you focus on your immediate surroundings. You appear to be sitting in the elevated rear seat of a long automobile—that is, not actually sitting since you no longer possess a rump; instead your Auric Carrier has been mounted on a stick in this queer backseat. The clattering vehicle reminds you of pictures you’ve seen of cars from the 1920s, spoke-wheeled and long-hooded monstrosities like Duesenbergs and Packards. Yet no hood actually forms the vehicle’s front end; instead there’s a long iron cylinder showing bolts at its seams, and a petite pipe where one would expect a hood ornament. It’s from this valve that steam hisses out.
Howard talks as if he can detect your thoughts. “It’s a steam-car, the latest design, an Archimedes Model 6. It burns sulphur, not coal—Hell never enjoyed a Carboniferous Period.” The car rocks over more chunks of butcher’s waste. “The sulphur heats the blood and other organic waste in the boiler; steam is produced and, hence, mobility. Nothing like the motors of my day, I’m afraid, though I never liked them. Awful, soot- and smoke-belching contraptions. But this suffices more than, say, a buggy drawn by an Emaciation Squad.”
You don’t understand how your head—the Snot-Gourd—can turn upon the command of your will—I’m just a fruit on a stick!—nevertheless, it does, and now that you’re getting used to it you find the courage to look upon the more distant surroundings with greater scrutiny.
The street stinks, and then you spot a globed pole that names the street: GUT-CAN LANE. Mottled storefronts whose bricks contain swirls of innards pass on either side. You notice more signs:
SCYTHER’S
PAYCHECKS NOT CASHED
THYMUS GRINDER’S
TOE-CHEESE COLLECTOR
A chalkboard before a café boasts the day’s specials: BROILED BOWEL WITH CHIVES and BEER-BATTERED SHIT-FISH.
When the steam-car clamorously turns through a red light—Abattoir Boulevard—you detect buildings that appear residential, like festering, squat town houses whose walls are impossibly raised as preformed sheets of innards.
“I don’t believe this place,” you finally say. “Everything’s made of . . . guts.”
“Construction techniques differ greatly here from the Living World; where you utilize chemistry, physics, electrical engineering, we utilize Alchemy, Sorcerial Technology, Agonitical Engineering.”
“But how can they make guts and bone chunks . . . hold together?”
“Gorgonization, Mr. Hudson,” Howard replies and points past the vehicle’s rim. “Your masons pour cement into molds and allow it to dry, ours pour slaughterhouse residuum and Gorgonize it with Hex-Clones of the Medusa’s head.”
You see what you can only guess are demonic construction workers emptying hoppers of butcher’s waste into various sheet and brick molds. After which several cloaked figures with purplish auras walk slowly past the molds bearing severed heads on stakes. Each severed head has living snakes for hair. The horned construction workers are careful to look away from the process. Hoods are then placed over the Gorgon heads; then the molds are lifted, revealing solid bricks and wallboards fully hardened.
Impossible, you think. And everything here is made of it . . .
“Fascinating,