Lucifer's Lottery - Edward Lee [56]
“Pandemonium in sound and vision,” Howard says, wending down the stained sidewalk with your head-stick in his hand. “Take the opportunity to look around.”
This is the mistake.
As far as “looking around” goes, there’s nothing to see save for horror and revulsion. In no time, you find that when you dare look at something, your psyche is arrested by some adrenaline-packed inner scream—perhaps the sound of your soul rebelling at the wrongness of this place.
A city, a city, you keep thinking in a panic. Hell is a city . . .
You can only look for a second at a time, in grueling snatches that demand an alternating surcease. Each “snatch” shows you something either horrific or impossible:
—blood-streaked skyscrapers rising higher than any building on Earth, each leaning this way or that. When one collapses in the distance, before the churning bloodred sky, hundreds leap off corroded balconies with wizened shrieks—
—street gutters gushing with lumpy muck over which dilapidated Demons and Humans—obviously homeless—hunt for tidbits, while packs of cackling Broodren—Hell’s children—stalk through the sidewalk horde hunting for the elderly or the defenseless to quickly eviscerate so to make off with their organs—
—Arachni-Watchers, like spiders the size of box turtles, crawling up walls and across high ledges. A cluster of eyeballs form the body, ever watching from all directions for citizen behavior in violation of current Luciferic Laws. Psychic nerve sacs at the body’s core immediately transmit real-time hectographs of infractions to the nearest Constabulary Stations—
—streets, gutters, and alleyways aswarm with indigenous vermin such as Bapho-Rats, Caco-Roaches, Brick-Mites, and Corpusculars, all hunting for the unsuspecting to infect, to ensile with larva, or to eat—
—shapely She-Demons—some brown, some black, some spotted—chatting inanely behind a salon window as trained Trolls paint their horns and administer pedicures with their teeth—
—sewer grates belching flame, while beneath the iron grills faces strain, screaming, charred fingers wriggling in the gaps. Over some grates more Broodren roast severed feet on sticks—
—hot-air balloons floating in and out of soot-colored clouds overhead, each suspending iron-bolted baskets from which dog-faced Conscripts dump buckets of infectious waste, molten gold, or Gargoylic Acid onto the masses below. The skin of the warped balloons reads SATANIC NOBLE GAS FLEET—
—more storefront windows passing by. LIVE SEX WITH THE DEAD SHOW! LIVE PULPING SHOW! LIVE EYE-SUCKING SHOW! LIVE HALVING SHOW! When you peer into this latter window, you glimpse destitute Demons and half-breeds being drawn slowly across tables fitted with band saws, while spectators applaud from rows of theaterlike chairs—
—and Broodren, Broodren, and more Broodren—the hooligans of the Abyss—shifting stealthily through the throng with eyes bright and fangs sharp, absconding with whatever they can tear away from passersby: purses, wallets, skin, pudenda. One Broodren runs off with half of a Troll’s face, only to be palmed flat into the sidewalk by a vigilant Golem—
—and a final dizzying scan of the noxious city’s skyline: a sea of smoke, sinking rooftops, and screams; endless rot-encrusted buildings atilt; mile after mile of crackling power lines dipping from rusted towers decorated by corpses hanging from gibbets; evil winged things gliding through the mephitic air, forever and ever—
—and ever and ever . . .
. . . and then the “snatches” end.
“Of course, acclimation takes a while,” Howard mentions. “But you’ll scarcely take in anything with your eyes closed most of the time.”
You’re too afraid to take in another glimpse; it’s all too tumultuous because you know that every impossibility here is utterly real. You open your eyes, then, to slits, careful . . .
“Here’s something you’ll find interesting . . .” Howard approaches a business establishment with a saloon-style swing-door as an entrance. The