Lucifer's Lottery - Edward Lee [70]
You gulp. “So now he takes it out on every drop-dead gorgeous woman in Hell?”
“Yes, and to quite an effect. Remember when I inferred: two birds with one stone.” Howard smiles. “Be patient, Mr. Hudson, and you’ll learn more in due time.”
Metal pots along the corridor sputter with burning pitch. You watch the shadow of your own hideous head bob as Howard leads you down a labyrinth of squalling hallways and, at last, into—
“This is the initial processing point. The consignment we just saw entering? Here’s where they come first,” Howard explains.
You peer in through the ragged metal doorway . . .
All sixty-six women have been laid on a wide conveyor belt, with hip and neck girds to keep them in place. Midway along the belt stand two Imps in white lab coats. One wields a pair of scissors the size of hedge clippers and perfunctorily cuts off a woman’s head while the other places the severed head between the woman’s legs for further transport. At the next work station two more demonic surgeons slip metal tubes into each of the woman’s breasts and the breasts—amid a wailing motor noise—quickly deflate.
“As you can see, first the heads are removed and then vacuum-powered cannulae are inserted into the breasts, to draw out the valuable mammary glands, which are sold to Surgical Salons for implanting—”
They chop off their heads and liposuck their tits, the grueling fact sinks in.
“—after which they’re conveyored to the next available Impoundment Block,” Howard finishes and reembarks down the corridor.
Every so often, as you’re taken deeper into this nefarious network, wheelbarrows full of mongrel newborns are rolled briskly past by more Imp and Troll laborers. You don’t have to ask where they’re going.
“And here,” Howard announces after a long spell of walking, “is a typical Block in full swing . . .”
Your now-numb eyes look in to behold the spectacle: a long, low-ceilinged room containing exactly sixty-six gynecological beds, complete with stirrups. Each bed is occupied by a squirming, decapitated woman, legs forced apart and ankles locked in the stirrups. Most of the occupants display varying stages of pregnancy, and the few who don’t are being vigorously copulated with by a variety of sexually enhanced Demons, Trolls, and Imps. Many possess genitals like veined batons of meat, while others brandish odd, ridged tubules of flesh with nozzlelike coronas. Several even have penises with faces on the end.
“Each Impoundee is subjected to fornication on a fastidious level, until pregnancy shows. Then they merely wait out their term until the process begins again. And as for their heads, well, I’m sure by now you’ve taken proper note . . .”
You have. The severed head of each “Impoundee” is evident, placed atop a pole set back several yards between the subject’s spread legs.
“It simply wouldn’t do to merely use their bodies as production vessels; it’s very important to Lucifer that the conscious head of each woman be forced to watch the entire process; in fact, our Master delights in that particular effect. Not only is each woman forced to watch herself be raped by monsters, she is forced to watch herself give birth to monsters. Over and over and over again.”
“How long . . . do they have . . . to stay here?”
“For sixty-six full terms,” Howard enlightens.
One woman, bloated as if to pop, shudders on her table, while her accommodating head screams in agony. The belly quakes, then collapses; a basket on the floor catches the squalling newborn and afterbirth. Not a minute passes before the viscid monster-fathered infant is tossed into a wheelbarrow, and not another minute before a heavily genitaled Sex-Demon steps up to begin the fornication period anew. Meanwhile, the head of a woman several beds down is shrieking like a machine with bad bearings, the medicine ball–size belly tremoring. When a lab-coated Imp with goggles comes to inspect, he calls out, “Womb-Press, rack forty-nine,” and then instantly a great piston-backed droning is heard. Overhead, on a geared rail, the oddest device clatters along: like