Lucifer's Lottery - Edward Lee [51]
This guy really gets off track, you think. “Where are we going?”
“The Humanus Viaduct, which runs from the Dermas District to Corpus Peak, crossing the Styx.”
DERMABURG, reads a skin-toned sign that floats by.
Howard gestures the sign. “This District is made of—as you may have ascertained—skin.” And as Howard speaks the words, your Ocularus eyes remain peeled on the new surroundings. Row houses and squat buildings line the fleshy street, all covered by variously colored cuttings of skin. Some seem papered with dermal sheets as impeccable as the skin of the deaconess, while other edifices suffer from acne and other outbreaks. The car, then, turns right at a perspiry intersection. You glimpse the sign: FASCIA BLVD.
“A whole town made of skin?”
“These days, the majority of it is Hexegenically Engineered, save for the loftier real estate here, south of town, where natural epidermis is procured. Oh, there’s a City Flensing Crew now . . .”
You notice the activities on one corner, where a troop of beastly, slug-skinned things with horns, talons, and terrifying musculatures prepare themselves around a row of Humans pilloried nude. Cuts are made at the back of each victim’s neck, taloned fingers slide in, and then the entire “body suit” of epidermis is sloughed off, leaving the victim skinless from the neck down.
You wince as the beasts go right down the line.
“The attendants are called Ushers, a longtime pure-breed that serve as government workers and police,” Howard explains. “Human skin is much more valuable.”
“Ushers,” you murmur. “So they . . . peel the skin off and then—”
“Stretch it over wall frames.” Then Howard points again.
At the opposing corner, workmen congregate at a corner unit (more of the hunched, implike creatures) to evidently build an addition. But when two of them raise a wall frame, you see that long, banded-together bones comprise each strut rather than two-by-fours. After the frame has been erected, other workmen stretch skin over it.
As for the pilloried “victims,” you see that they’re actually willing participants; when released—skinless now—an Usher hands them some money, then sends them on their way.
“Lucifer prefers Hell’s denizens to choose to sell their skin, rather than merely taking it,” Howard says.
“They sell their own skin?”
“For narcotics. The Department of Addictions has devised delights that make de Quincey’s opiates and Poe’s liquor seem paltry. Few can rehabilitate themselves, but when they do, they’re forced into a Retoxification Center.”
You watch the skinless queues trudge to a nearby fleshy alley, where an overcoated Imp in sunglasses waits to sell them various bags of cryptic powders. When one Human woman—who’d been attractive before her flensing—failed to produce sufficient funds, the Imp said, “A blow job or an ovary. You know the prices, lady,” and then he parts his overcoat to sport a large maroon penis covered with barnacles. “To hell with that,” she says, then sits down, crosses her ankles behind her neck, and sticks a hand into her sex.
You don’t watch the rest.
The Golemess turns onto another road called Scleraderma Street, where some of the structures have hair growing on their roofs; others have collapsed to ramshackle piles from some dermatological disease; one has broken out into shingles, another is covered with warts.
And on another corner, you glimpse another sign: SKINAPLEX.
“What’s that?”
“The motion picture show? They’re rather similar here as in the Living World. And perhaps you’ll be satisfied to know that Fritz Lang and D. W. Griffith are still honing their art.”
Now you can see the marquee, complete with blinking lights: TRIPLE FEATURE! THE SIX COMMANDMENTS—WITHERING HEIGHTS—ALL DOGS GO TO HELL.
“Can we get out of here?” you plead. “I’ve had enough