Lawyers in Hell (29 page)

The colossal courthouse slowly came into view.  There were five hundred Doric columns, fifty feet high, marking the perimeter of the imposing building.  Phidias, Iktinos, and Kallikrates had used every spare soul from hell’s massive population to build this monument to Tartarosian justice.  Unlike the stacked-cake approach they designed for the Parthenon’s columns back in mid 5
^th
century BC, each of these towering pedestals was carved as a single piece of black-speckled, white granite, mined from the slopes of the stunted mountain that serves as the courthouse’s foundation.

Alistair rubbed his temples for the fifth time this morning.  He never should have had that eighth drink last night at the Death Rattle, but it couldn’t be helped.  The popular back-alley dive had a two-drink minimum per act, and Alistair had to sit through some atrocious performances before his favorite band, the Ungrateful Dead, started their set.  It was an ear-numbing cacophony and perfect for covert conversation.

Alistair examined his hellpad intensely.  Gefjon’s erotic and highly experienced colleagues (Malfean, Alalahe, and Gemmeul) had done their job well.  Playing the pimp was a new trick for Alistair, but then, much about him had changed since he’d first transubstantiated into existence down here.  Nothing was beneath him now.  He’d always been a survivor in life.  Deep in the Inferno, his instincts for self-preservation had been honed sharp.

Matali stopped his taxi as two security demons gave him and his passenger the once over.  Looking like tuxedoed, upright rhinoceroses suffering from
erythropoietic porphyria,
they motioned Matali onward with pus-covered claws.

*

BIH Departmental Debriefing666

Alistair Chrysler-Smith

Priority 1 Recall

Pandemonium, City Courthouse

Hell Register/Ratings

Alistair sat before the Hell Register ratings department’s review committee – six coldly beautiful female demons renowned for their successes as interrogators, debriefing specialists, and torturers.

Right now, this judgmental sextet did not look happy.

It had taken Alistair a full five minutes of elevator descent to reach this deepest of courthouse sublevels.  Former Truman White House contractor John McShain and thousands of deceased employees from the Laborers’ International Union of North America spent over fifty years in the secret excavation.  Alistair considered it a point of pride that his division of the Hell Register of Preeminently Damned Lawyers merited the most secure of concealed office locales.  The rating of incoming lawyers was a redundantly-secure activity, hidden from all surveillance equipment, eyes, soothsayers, and remote viewers.

“We’ve downloaded your latest statistical analyses, Alistair” Mayet, presiding demon and committee chair, possessed the body of an exotic dancer and a green haired countenance sporting a single, large yellow eye.  “You’ve done more work topside in one year than our entire task force has processed in a decade.  Recent conversations in the higher court’s cafeteria paint you as a real fair-haired boy.”

Alistair swallowed nervously.  He sat in the interrogation chair, a monstrosity of black obsidian and ebonite.  His red hellpad lay upon the wide right arm of the throne.  His fingers rubbed the edge of his tablet computer every few moments.

“So, would a raise be out of the question?” Alistair asked.

Astraea, a multi-limbed demon (renowned for her erotic excesses in Pandemonium’s after-hours scene), took a step forward and displayed a smile filled with dagger teeth.  “The problem, handsome, is your pre-death rep.  We have high standards down here.  We’re sure you’ve heard what happens to those seeking to corrupt the, ummmm, sanctity of our activities.”

Alistair looked up at the far wall, where a startling eight-by-thirteen-foot oil painting was hung.  It was a perfect reproduction of William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s horrifying 1850 painting, ‘Dante and Virgil in Hell.’  The painting depicted the fifth circle of hell, where the wrathful are destined to fight eternally on the surface of the river Styx while the slothful watch from beneath.  The crimson “sky” of hell glowed hot in the artwork’s background.  In the foreground were two naked Caucasian men in vicious combat, one biting the other’s neck vampire-like.  On closer examination, Alistair could see that the victim’s eyes were alive and blinking.  Every now and then the figures of Dante and Virgil would animate for a few seconds and lean forward to whisper in the victim’s ears.  Alistair fancied he heard their hushed message, “…right to remain silent.  Anything you say can and will be used…”

Mayet followed his gaze.  “Mister Moore is the loser in the painting, Alistair,” the demon said.  “Moorie thought he could sell premature ratings data for favors in the higher circles.  Now he suffers his punishment under our watchful eye.”

“Yes, well … point taken,” Alistair said.  He tapped his fingers nervously over his hellpad.  “So, if there is nothing else to discuss?”

Astraea took a step forward and pointed four of her eight arms at Alistair.  “We’re on to you, pipsqueak.  You may not have sold any information yet, and we’re sure our blade servers are sacrosanct, but we got over a dozen off-the-record snitches who think you’re up to something.”

“And you think this will hold up in court?” Alistair asked.  “I protest.  Besides, I’m innocent.”

Mayet stood taller.  “There will be no court review, Alistair.  We police this division.  We’re judge, jury, and … executioner.  Even if you are innocent today, your true nature will eventually come out.  You can’t be trusted.  Besides, I think Mister Moore could use a little company in my favorite painting.”

Alistair’s fingers rubbed the surface of his notepad.  “Then I guess I have nothing to lose by saying you’re a bunch of bloody hypocrites.  I don’t know how you get away with it, but it’s been obvious to me from Day One that you’re all corrupt and have been abusing your oversight of ratings for some time.”

“Nice try, loser,” drawled Mynndie, a petite, naked demon with skin mottled like desert camouflage and a strong West Virginian accent.  Her right hand pointed at Alistair like a loaded gun.  “Nobody knows what we do in here.”

“Then you admit your crimes,” Alistair asked, “that you’re all guilty of abusing your positions?”

The sextet laughed uproariously.

“So what, punk?” Mynndie spat.  “We’re at the top of the pyramid, and we’re here to stay.”

“You’re a fool, Alistair,” Andraea said.  “You think recording us on your little toy is going to save you? 
We
pull the strings from down here.  We’re the real power behind the throne.  There isn’t a lawyer in hell who doesn’t owe their current position to our selective rating system … and they repay us daily with innumerable favors.”

“Andraea’s right,” Mayet said.  “Our electronic and thau-maturgical countermeasures make this the safest of safe houses … the ultimate panic room.  There is no deeper or more secure pit in all of hell.  Your silly little device can’t transmit anything through these walls, and nothing you’ve learned will ever see the red light of day.”

Alistair looked up from his hellpad, but not with an expression of defeat.

“Whoever said this was an electronic notepad, ladies?” Alistair asked.

“A talisman then,” Mayet spat, “no matter.  There is no captured spell or magically charged ‘juju’ that can pierce these barriers.”

Alistair slowly and carefully picked up his device, popped off the false cover, and held up what appeared to be a rectangular slate of polished black rock.

“Oh crap,” Mynndie said, “the jig is up.”

“We repeat:  charms and fetishes will not work here.” Mayet growled.

“I… I was instructed by persons in higher ranks,” Mynndie yelled.  “Besides, this is hell.  I’ve done nothing out of the ordinary!”

“This isn’t a mere talisman, ladies,” Alistair said.  “It is one of the nine black tablets of the Apostasies, Hell’s Supreme Court.  Rumor has it these ebonite slates were carved from Lucifer’s own tears, shed at the end of his great fall, each one crystallizing into a large black diamond upon contact with the fiery lake.  Had one hell of a time convincing Justice Taney to loan it to me.  Seems he always wanted a four-way with two succubi and a seraphim.  And to the best of my knowledge, everything witnessed, heard, or seen by one of the black tablets is immediately known by them all.  A nice function for when the justices need an emergency conference.”

“Liar!” Mayet screamed.

Alistair smiled.  “Your superiors are being contacted as we speak.”

“Boy,” Mayet snarled, “you just bluffed the wrong demon.”

Mayet stepped away from her five colleagues and charged Alistair.  The field agent leaped from his chair and braced for impact.  A moment before reaching him, Mayet raised what appeared to be a small, wood hammer in her right hand.

“Roy Bean sends his regards,” Mayet shouted.

Alistair raised the black tablet like a shield, two handed.  Gavel and tablet met with a thunderous explosion and a roar.

The resulting shock wave floored the sextet.

Mynndie was tossed clear across the conference table to strike the far wall.  Her neck snapped audibly.  According to Alistair’s research, this would make the tenth time she would wake in the hands of the Undertaker, naked, blindfolded, and facing degrading humiliations.

Andraea lay slumped in her chair.  The handle of the gavel had impaled her right eye and now protruded from the back of her skull.  Several spasms ran through all eight of her hands, belying her death.  She too would face a horrific awakening in the Undertaker’s hands.

Her sister demons, Vali, Naru-Kami, and Chantico, were struggling to stand upright, moaning about their bruised and broken limbs.

Shaken, but still standing, Alistair smiled down at Mayet.

“I wasn’t bluffing, Lady Chairman,” Alistair said, “and this all could have been much more civilized.”

Alistair reached down and, grabbing Mayet by one wrist, dragged her toward the wall where the Dante and Virgil painting hung.

“Please,” Mayet begged.  “No!  No … not
that.”

“I personally prefer the Impressionists,” Alistair said, “but I suppose one must make allowances when it comes to taste in art.”

Alistair slammed Mayet’s right hand against the painting’s frame.

There was a blinding flash of white light.

Into it, Mayet disappeared.  In her place crouched a slim, naked man of indeterminate age.

Wide-eyed, he screamed with joy.

“I’m free,”
former defense attorney and Miranda Rights trailblazer Alvin Moore yelled.  Then his eyes fell on Chantico, whose head sprouted red serpents and cactus spikes. 
“You,”
Moore gasped.

Moore launched himself across the room and tackled the wounded demon.  “Everything you’ve done to me will now be done to
you.”
  Before Chantico could protest, Moore’s teeth fastened on her throat.

The demon couldn’t even scream.

The foundation and walls of the interrogation room shook violently.  The black tablet in Alistair’s hand pulsed with a dull, green light.

“I wouldn’t crawl too far, ladies,” Alistair said to Vali and Naru-Kami.  Vali’s zebra-skinned hide and Naru-Kami’s rainbow plumes shivered in terror.  “Your own canvases are on their way.”

Alistair turned away.  He’d thought this victory would be sweet; instead, it tasted bitter.

The exchange of victims removed much of the painting’s original homoerotic charm, but Mayet’s bright green hair and huge weeping eye leant a wonderfully macabre flavor to this new rendering of a fine work of dark art.

*

BIH Staff Briefing:  001

Pandemonium Courthouse

Register Ratings Department

Alistair sat at his new desk and appraised his twelve recruits.  Foremost in the group was Gefjon, among the most seductive of succubi, and yet somehow looking as natural as ever in her Chanel outfit.

“Under direct supervision by the editor-in-chief of the Hell Register of Preeminently Damned Lawyers,” Alistair said, “I have been tasked to revamp this department, rewriting standards as well as official rules and regulations.  We’ll be creating much of this as we go along, but rest assured I plan to make the systematic assignment of lawyer ratings far swifter and more efficient.”

Alistair smiled wickedly at his new staff and waved his hand in the air.  “As the recent redecorating of my office shows, corruption of any kind will not be tolerated.”

Gefjon gulped as she assessed the six huge paintings strung across the surrounding walls, all depicting variants of the same scene.  Each showed one of the former committee who had ruled the ratings department.  In each painting, one female demon’s throat was being torn out by a ferocious, naked man.  The three-dimensional eyes of the two-dimensional female demons bled and blinked.

The staff listened, mesmerized, as Alistair continued.

“But before we begin our planning session,” Alistair said, “I want you each to place every single electronic device in your possession on my desktop.”

The recruits hurriedly obeyed.

Alistair tossed a small sledgehammer onto the pile of notepads, tablets, and personal electronic assistants.

“Now … smash those damned things to bits!”

Island Out of Time

by

Richard Groller

The Oracle at Delphi screamed a scream…

…a scream that could evoke nightmares for eternity.  Nichols stood frozen by her stare, looking into the eyes of a woman who beheld infinity and found it totally mad.

When first approaching the temple of white marble overgrown with moss and ivy, Nichols had sensed no danger in its decrepit splendor.  Even in hell, he put no store in sibyls.  And here he was, about as deep in hell as you could get, in the old dead’s mythic realms.  Nichols trusted only logic and his five senses, first in life, now in afterlife.

His boss, Dick Welch, had sent him to this oracle to determine the source of the time perturbations troubling Satan:  “Go to the oracle at Delphi, Nichols.  She’ll tell you something,” Welch had ordered.

Temple steps.  Brackish water in green and murky pools, barely reflecting Paradise’s ruddy light.  The temple caretakers must not venture out much.

A fresh-faced female acolyte, nubile in her green linen chiton, appeared from shadows and led him through an anteroom, past white marble benches, to a bronze door, ten feet tall, with bas relief scenes from Greek mythology.  Vintage old-dead theatrics.

Doors opened before them, anticipating their approach like sentries, channelizing their progress until they stood in a
big
domed chamber:  hundred foot ceiling; central dais of dead-black marble.  Nice touches.  So were the gold sconces for unlit torches every ten feet.  Very Hollywood, or very Greek, or very overdone – take your pick.  Light shone from behind Corinthian cornices.

On the dais sat a throne, carved from the biggest chunk of rock crystal Nichols had ever seen.  And on the throne sat the oracle herself, mostly naked, too sexy and too muscular by half:  golden nimbus glowing from her skin.

The oracle said in a ringing voice, “You wish to know the Nature of Time.  What you ask is not without price.  What does my lord offer in payment?”

Nature of Time?  Shit, she knew before I asked.

Nichols replied,
“My lord,
Satan himself, requests the information.”

The oracle was staring at him as if his face held the key to eternal salvation, which it sure as hell didn’t.  But he had to say something more, because she was waiting for it….  “Oracle, my lord will allow you a just reward – if you tell us what we want to know.  Something valuable, something relevant to stabilizing time perturbations.”

At this the sibyl raised both hands flat before her, and the lights went out.  All that could be seen was her nimbus and the water atop the altar, bathed from below in a luminous glow.

Silently the Delphic Oracle rose and bent over the water on the altar, staring into it.

She babbled in a hushed tone:  first in ancient Greek, then in a language he didn’t recognize.  He understood some Greek:  fighting in Tartaros beside Alexander and his heroes, Nichols had learned Koine Greek, the lingua franca of the Hellenistic old dead, but he was at a loss to understand this gibberish.  Too bad Welch wasn’t here:  his boss had had lots more linguistic training….

The oracle started calling out numbers and what sounded like equations.  Nichols pulled out his hellphone and keyed the video function for later analysis by linguists because he couldn’t go back to Welch saying the oracle blabbed her head off but he had no idea what she said.

Then something went very wrong.  Her hushed tones turned cacophonous.  She was shuddering, writhing; contorting her body, tearing at her face and eyes; screaming and shrieking.

“Kill me,” she sobbed.  “Kill me, emissary of Satan.  Now.  Please.  Relieve me of these frightful visions, I beg it of you.”

Sure, honey.  Just hold on a sec….
  But then he realized he wasn’t sure if he should kill her.  Welch hadn’t said anything about killing this oracle.

A dull foreboding crept up his spine.  Since Welch hadn’t prepared him for killing the oracle as part of this mission, then killing her
wasn’t
part of his mission.  Her antics turned nightmarish.  She raved and screamed and shook and threw herself at his feet.  She frothed at the mouth.  Her head wagged, her body thrashed.  The acolytes stationed around the room broke formation, put their heads together, and started toward her.

Enough was enough. 

Croesus, king of Lydia, would be pissed, for sure, but Croesus damned well needed a new oracle anyway.  Blood poured from the oracle’s empty eye sockets.  She couldn’t see the acolytes converging on her.  They grabbed her as she struggled.

Nichols knew exactly what to do.

While the acolytes held her head still, he fired two quick shots from his Desert Eagle, hitting her cleanly and perfectly between the eyes.

She slumped like a puppet whose strings had been cut as his gunshots reverberated throughout the suddenly silent chamber, reechoing off the dome above.

*

Back in New Hell, safe and arguably sound, Nichols reported to his boss, tucked away in the deepest recesses of Admin in an unmarked office.  After seeing Nichols’ hellphone video, Welch replied “None of this means shit to me – deliver that video to Zeno of Elea personally and answer any of his questions regarding this incident.”

So Zeno had already been tasked to work the problem.

Nichols had Achilles pick him up in his stealth-equipped Huey Cobra to expedite the rendezvous with the old dead philosopher.  Nichols could soldier on:  it was what he did; but he couldn’t shake the memory of the oracle’s eyes.

*

Pythagoras arrived late at the Infernal Observatory on the snow-covered peak of Mount Sinai.  With a hellpad under his arm, he seemed a thoroughly modern version of the ancient philosopher who had inspired so many sects of Pythagoreans, including the
Mathematici
in whose name Hippasus was drowned for documenting the irrationality of numbers.  Pythagoras was paying a surprise visit to Zeno of Elea, whose
ad hominem
attacks on the technical doctrines of the Pythagorean School still infuriated him:  Pythagoras believed that reality was fundamentally mathematical.

Demons standing guard outside Zeno’s lab at the Department of Apparent Time, were having their obscenely explicit way with a pair of human-looking snowmen.  Something was amiss here.

Zeno was in no mood for company.  “Do you know what He asks of me, Pythagoras?  The fabric of Infernal Time has somehow become unstable, and Satan himself has commanded
me
to fix it or face the consequences.”  Zeno nodded toward the hall where more demons stood guard:  “I can’t work under these conditions!”  Out tumbled details of Satan’s last visit and the effect of the temporal disturbance on Satan’s pet, Michael.  “Satan was toying with me – he showed up in a black robe and powdered wig and pronounced sentence upon me.  There is no justice in hell, Pythagoras.  None.  I suffer undeserved punishment without benefit of even a trial.  I didn’t cause hell’s temporal perturbations.  How does Satan expect me to stop them?”

“Shall I ask the Legal Aid Society to petition the Mount Sinai Appellate Division?” Pythagoras proposed.  “File a Writ of Mandamus against Satan for travesty of justice?  With your august status, perhaps Daniel Webster will defend you.”

“Go up against Satan?  You fool, will you never learn?” Zeno glared at Pythagoras as if about to bodily expel him for suggesting such a thing.

Just then a man named Nichols showed up with a video for Zeno to see.  This was a soldier, big and broad and muscular, and clearly discomfited by Pythagoras’ presence, barely acknowledging him.

Nichols herded Zeno into a corner and spoke with him,
sotto voce,
then left hurriedly.

Once Nichols was gone, Zeno was in no mood for company.  “Please take no offense, but I have no time now for the pleasure of your company, friend Pythagoras.”

“Good frater, time here is eternal!  What else could we possibly have more of here, than time?”

Zeno answered simply.  “Almost anything.  At the moment, so to speak,” Zeno grimaced mirthlessly, “time itself is the problem – it appears to be undergoing increasingly less subtle perturbations.  I’m at a loss trying to quantify the boundaries of the problem.”

Pythagoras, bowing smartly from the waist, said, “Perhaps I can offer some assistance, then?  It would be a pleasure to tackle a real challenge.”  With a wink, he added, “Besides, why should you have all the fun?”

“I must caution you about consequences, since you can’t take a hint.”  Outside Zeno’s window, several demons were performing unnatural acts upon a debauched snowman.  “The problem is serious, its implications not well understood.  Satan himself is very concerned.  He is determined that efforts will be unflagging until a solution is reached.  And His Satanic Majesty promises unending torment to those who fail him, so his man Nichols tells me.”

Pythagoras smiled.  “A joint effort to solve an impossible problem, the stabilization of Time itself?  Sounds interesting.  And, should we succeed, far more ennobling than most hellish pursuits.  Besides what can he
really
do to us?  Kill us and send us to hell?”

Zeno clapped his hands.  “Then, let’s be about taming time itself:  a small feat, for you and me.”

The two old dead turned their attention to the video left by Nichols, Satan’s emissary.

*

The words of the Delphic Oracle on the recording were cryptic but not incomprehensible.  Pythagoras understood her.  She spoke of an island appearing, an island of myth:  “Onogoroshima – a self-forming island, the handiwork of Daikok – The Great Black One.”  And she spoke of something else as well – an opening between worlds, a “Demon Gate.”

So far, no such island or gate had been reported to Authority, or so the devil’s henchman, Nichols, had assured Zeno.

Pythagoras didn’t trust Nichols.

Where was this island, this gate?  Another place, another space, perhaps another time?  “‘Why this is Hell, nor am I out of it,’” Pythagoras muttered absently, a quote from Christopher Marlowe.  Could there be place, space, and time beyond hell … accessible to the damned?

The unknown beguiled Pythagoras.  Thoughts of a new world, perhaps even a new dimension, filled him with hope.  Whatever the risk, he needed to know the truth of it.

First, he must find this island, if it did exist on this plane.  Then, having verified its existence, he must set foot there.  Not so easy.  If he found the island, he could volunteer to join in any ensuing investigation of such anomalous loci.  If he discovered the place, Agency would surely let him go along….

Using Gurgle, Pythagoras found that some of the numbers given by the oracle included a latitude and longitude (49 degrees, 50 minutes South latitude; 128 degrees, 33 minutes West longitude); along with a height, several hundred feet below sea level.  The numbers were given in polar coordinates, reversed and inverted, but this was to be expected:  a good oracle is always inscrutable.

He took his data to Zeno’s monastic cell in the observatory:  “Zeno, consider the possibilities!  An expedition!  We volunteer our services.  Once the existence of a site at these coordinates is verified, we’re the discoverers of a whole new island, perhaps even dimension.  Your friend Nichols can assure us a place on the exploration team.”

The Stoic Zeno was much less adventurous.  Traveling hell’s ocean was perilous at best, suicidal at worst.  Seaworthy vessels and crews foolish enough to undertake such voyages were few; most travelers flew or went by land across the infernal reaches of hell’s multilayered continent.  But even travel by land would be difficult to arrange.

Zeno looked at Pythagoras and said, “You have fun, my friend, chasing ancient gods of the netherworlds – I am chained to my desk, overseen by demonic taskmasters.  And here I shall stay, by order of Satan, wrestling with the nature of space and time.  Studying the paradox of reality in hell is more appealing to me than meeting forgotten gods face to face.”

*

Welch’s instructions to Nichols were explicit:  “Pull together the assets you need, using every resource available.  Determine whether or not a real threat to Satanic authority exists.  Assess the situation and get out – don’t be a hero.”

Pythagoras’ eagerness to volunteer made Nichols suspicious.  But Pythagoras was willing and motivated.  One thing was sure:  Pythagoras’ coordinates were right on the mark.

The SATSATPHORECNET (Satanic Satellite Photographic Reconnaissance Network) confirmed the existence of an island at those coordinates, where no island existed a month ago.  This island was lush and green.  A scant five degrees above the tree line, this island was covered with trees – in the sub-polar region where hardy grasses and other tundra plants should be struggling to grow.  None of this data made sense.

And this diabolical brain-teaser just kept getting better:  the
USS (Underworld Satanical Ship) Arizona,
on a run from Satanic Samoa, had disappeared without a trace, two days past.  Was there a connection?  Although the course of the
Arizona
(through the “Roaring Forties” and “Furious Fifties”) lay within the turbulent ocean storm track, no storms had been reported and no SOS broadcast.  NUDET (Nuclear Detonation) sensors had reported no activity.

Nichols’ head hurt:  he hated data that made no sense.

Nichols pulled strings to berth a team on the
IJN (Infernal Japanese Navy) Yamato,
en route to investigate the disappearance of the
Arizona
.  With Achilles’ tricked-up Huey and a team of four specialists, he’d reconnoiter the island and get out, hopefully without involving the
Yamato’s
crew.

The
Yamato
was big for a ferry but, if push came to shove, Nichols wanted plenty of firepower available.

*

Pythagoras ventured into New Hell’s theatrical district, to find a friend he’d known long enough to trust.  Erik Weisz was small, intense, and accustomed to accomplishing nearly impossible feats.  In life, he’d been world famous as the master showman, Harry Houdini.