Danielle's Inferno Read online

3

  Lust

  A hard wind hit my body the second I got my feet underneath me, and I braced for it to blow me over. Tits over teacup, as my grandmother would have said. Nothing happened. I didn’t fall. When I realized the wind wasn’t going to knock me over, I opened my eyes to see a bleak and gray wasteland speckled with black, sharp boulders.

  There were people here too, but not the silent wanderers of Limbo. These people were naked, or mostly naked, and they were being blown about so violently, no one could stand still for very long. Those who were clothed were dressed in sadomasochistic attire; a sight that was very visibly shocking to say the least in the best of circumstances.

  If that wasn’t bad enough, no one bothered to get anyone their appropriate size as far as bondage outfits went. Everything was too small, pinching in all the places that made billowy overflows of skin and fat. Like wrapping rubber bands around fleshy balloons. The brief image of clown trying to make balloon animals with them entered my brain, and I shook it away with a jerk of my head.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Lust. It’s the second circle of Hell.”

  People ran toward each other, trying desperately to grope one another or embrace, only to be blown away and smashed against a boulder. Limbs flew everywhere along with bondage leather and blood. However, within seconds, their limbs mended, and their blood seeped back into their veins just in time for them to come to and do it all over again.

  “Why doesn’t the wind blow us around?”

  “Because you don’t belong here. You can experience things, but nothing here can hurt you,” Pudding said.

  “Then why…” I started but was cut off by the sight of an older man, wrinkled and saggy, wearing a pink nighty and argyle trouser socks.

  “Hello,” he said in a way that made my skin crawl.

  He looked me up and down like a piece of candy he wanted to lick. I shuddered and wrapped my arms around myself. There was no mistaking the swelling in his thong bikini panties.

  “Bugger off, Senator. She isn’t for you,” said a voice behind me.

  I turned to see what I could only describe as a red and busty demon in a Playboy bunny costume. Her hair was spun up into a bun with little bunny ears poking out. Her skirt was so short most of her ass peaked out the bottom. Her blouse cut so low, only her pointy nipples held it up. In her hand she held up a silver tray with several bottles of beer. The label read “Poors Light.”

  She took one off, handed it to the man, and blew him a kiss. The gesture sent him flying backwards until he landed hard against a rock with a smile on his face. The beer bottle and his skull splatted against the stone in a spray of amber and blood. I winced and then marveled as his body began to regenerate itself.

  “Sorry about that, love,” said the busty demon holding the tray of beer. “The ones who bring their own costumes are always the worst. Sneaky things.”

  “That’s alright,” I said carefully.

  She looked down at Pudding, and they nodded at each other. When Pudding met her eyes, the look they shared was that of friendship. If not that, then at least familiarity.

  “Hey Pudding. Out of body experience? Mostly dead is she?” the pretty demon said.

  “Yep. Full tour.”

  “Too bad,” said the demon wiggling her hips. “She looks like she’d be fun.”

  “Not hardly,” retorted Pudding.

  “Full tour?” I repeated as I looked down at Pudding.

  “We’ve gotta get going. See you, Bettie,” said Pudding as she pushed me along.

  Bettie shot us both an air kiss. We said our farewells, and Pudding and I made our way through the landscape. I kept quiet until we were out of earshot from everyone. I didn’t want the perverts to hear me rip Pudding a new purple starfish.

  “Spiritual bitch animal, huh?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Pudding innocently.

  “If you are my psychic manifestation, why did she know your name?”

  “Ah, the wiz kid catches up,” she said.

  “You lied to me.”

  Pudding didn’t even break stride. She just kept walking along. I tried to get in front of her, to face off for a fight, but she just walked around me. I had no choice but to argue side by side.

  “Yeah, so? I had to lie. Cat from Hell doesn’t normally inspire a sense of trust.”

  “So, you brought me here under false pretenses,” I said.

  She stopped and looked up at me again as though she couldn’t be more annoyed. Pudding wrapped her tail around herself and rolled her eyes.

  “Does it matter?” she asked.

  I opened my mouth and almost said yes, but nothing came out. She had a point when I thought about, even if I hated to admit it. Wouldn’t I be here regardless? I mean, if I was destined to take this tour, I’d be here one way or another. I shut my mouth again without a word. Pudding took my silence as a win and marched forth. I followed silently.

  Everywhere we saw beautiful demons, male and female, dressed provocatively and enticing the poor people around them. Men and women ran to them only to be blown into the nearest rock. Their smashed and smeared guts fell to the ground, only to be resurrected again. All of the demons had trays of Poors Light, and they handed the bottles out freely. Not that the lusty people got to hold them long.

  “What’s with the beer?” I asked.

  “Poors Light is one of the official sponsors of Hell,” Pudding said flatly.

  “Hell has sponsors?”

  “Girl, everyone has sponsors these days.”

  “But why…”

  “Look, say you’re in Hell, thirsty and desperate,” Pudding said. “Then, you are handed a bottle of something. Wonderful! Thank God! You are elated until you take a swig and realize its Poors Light. Think of the disappointment. Imagine the horror of a mouthful of piss water beer. Going thirsty would be better. How could Lucifer say no to something like that?”

  I thought about it for a second and remembered a few regrettable parties in college. The kegs of Poors Light bought because they were cheap. The taste of flat, shitty beer out of a plastic cup. Eventually, I nodded in agreement. Cat had a point.

  “This looks like a good spot,” Pudding said, circling an area and digging another hole.

  “Oh no, not again.”

  “Relax,” she said. “It’s number one.”

  She squatted and peed in the little hole, much to my relief. The scent of cat piss was sharp and disgusting, but it was better than the latter. The portal opened much like it had the last time, and we fell down into it.

  4

  Gluttony

  When the light cleared, we seemed to be in a vast snowy tundra. Freezing rain, hail, and snow bombarded the people here. The snow wasn’t real snow though. It was black like falling flakes of oil. Most of the people were grossly overweight and immobile in large drifts of black snow.

  Demons walked about in chef’s aprons carrying trays of donuts, ice cream, and large vats of processed cheese. They randomly selected an immobilized person and forced food down their throats. The tortured soul screamed under the smothering muffler of sugar and liquid cheese.

  “I used to like that stuff on crackers when I was a kid,” I said shuddering.

  “I used to like the still-beating hearts of mockingbirds, but them’s the breaks,” she said.

  “Where are we now?” I asked.

  “Gluttony.”

  “How many of these do I have to see? I don’t belong here either,” I said.

  “Right you are, but like I said before, you are signed up for the full tour.”

  “This place is disgusting. It’s awful. These poor people,” I said.

  “Well, that former food eating champion that died during last year’s contest doesn’t seem to mind it,” Pudding retorted, motioning toward a commotion.

  There were two blueish demons nearby around a rather thin man wearing his sponsor’s jersey. Surprise surprise – the sponsor was Poors Light. One demon held hi
m down while the other forced hot dog after hot dog down his throat. The man just keeps eating without chewing, swallowing each hot dog without much effort.

  “Keep ‘em coming. This guy has to get full some time,” demon number one said.

  “I am. He just keeps going,” said demon number two. “Even I am starting to find this gross.”

  “I know right? Imagine what damage this guy could do at a gay bar,” said the first demon.

  “Dude, seriously? So inappropriate,” said the second demon with a groan.

  “It’s just an observation.”

  “I swear to Satan, you are so embarrassing sometimes,” said the second demon, sighing loudly as he continued to force hot dogs into the eating champion.

  Pudding and I watched the whole tableau and talked quietly to ourselves. The last thing I wanted to do was gain the demons’ attention.

  “It is kind of impressive. The eater, I mean,” I said, looking down at Pudding.

  “In a nasty way,” Pudding said, screwing up her nose into the feline version of a sneer.

  “How did he possibly die in the first place? It looks like he could do this for hours.”

  “He died in a milkshake drinking contest,” Pudding said.

  “And?” I asked.

  “And… he’s lactose intolerant,” she said flatly.

  “Oh. Wow.”

  We turned away from the demons and walked in silence for a while, passing a section of people not immobilized by food but by drunkenness. The demons poured bottle after bottle into them with no escape in sight. They laid about unable to ever get their footing to run away.

  I rubbed my arms uneasily as I watched person after person drowning in Poors Light. This was all so disgusting, and I couldn’t fathom why my soul had to travel through this place.

  “I’m not a bad person,” I said suddenly. “I never did really bad things. I never even got a traffic ticket. Why are we here?”

  “Hell isn’t all about totally bad people. It’s about people who let some vice keep them from living a good life. Be good to others, love your kids, be nice to animals… stuff like that. Very few people here are all bad. Most just lost a bit of themselves for some reason and filled it with something else until their scale tipped against their favor.”

  “What about people like Hitler?” I asked.

  “Oh, he’s here. People like him are different, they get special punishments. Hitler is doomed to tour several of these levels and experience different tortures every time. We might see him around today. Last time I saw him, he was swimming in the sea of boiling blood with a pineapple stuck up his ass.”

  “There’s a sea of…”

  “Ah, here we are,” said Pudding as we turned a corner.

  I stopped in my tracks as fear trickled down my body like a constantly running faucet. There was a huge, furry mass in front of us up curled up in the snow. The thing smelled like wet dog, and the mass heaved up and down with every deep breath the creature took. It was a mountain of fur. I wanted to run but was immobilized with terror.

  “Hey! Wake up, you lazy, mange-covered, glorified Chihuahua,” shouted tiny Pudding to the giant thing.

  It snuffled and twitched. Two giant paws stretched forth as not one, but three heads rose out from underneath them. The creature was definitely a dog, but unlike any dog I had ever seen. He was huge and each one of his heads resembled the largest Rottweiler I’d ever known. When one of his heads yawned, his breath smelled like an old carcass and his eyes opened with flames behind them.

  The beast looked us over, and I waited to be eaten. My body braced for the violence. Instead, two heads looked lazily at us while the other turned around to gnaw at his hind leg. The flames behind his eyes seemed to simmer to only embers when he recognized Pudding.

  “Oh, hey,” it said with a lackadaisical loll of two tongues.

  “Hey yourself,” she said back.

  “That one yours?” he asked in a deep voice. One giant dog head tilted toward me and sniffed.

  “Yeah. Full tour.”

  “That’s a pity. She smells all scared and warm.”

  I resisted the urge to urinate down my leg.

  “And a little like pee,” he added.

  “You’re not exactly a pleasant site, Cerberus. Ugh! When is the last time you had a bath?” Pudding asked, wrapping her tail around her paws.

  “Oh come on now, don’t give me that cat crap again. I can’t get Delores off me about it either,” he said, looking annoyed.

  “I would say that’s what she said, but is Delores even classified as a she?” Pudding asked.

  “Oh ha ha. What do you really want?”

  “Can we use your portal? I’m all tapped out,” Pudding asked.

  “I told you to hydrate. Cats. I swear,” Cerberus said.

  “Yeah yeah, a big I told you so. I get it,” Pudding said. “Can we use it or not?”

  The massive beast huffed and slumped to the ground heavily, causing the floor beneath them to tremble. Pudding didn’t seem to flinch. I, on the other hand, was about ready to faint.

  “I suppose. It’s a slow day. But don’t say I never did anything for you.”

  We walked past the enormous thing and into his den. I shivered as adrenaline told me to run, but my better judgment told me to walk slowly in pace with Pudding. Blood splattered the walls and bits of bones and flesh piled up in heaps. And of course, in the middle of a pile of dung sat a massive portal.

  “Ugh. It smells like an entire slaughterhouse worth of shit in here!” I said, holding my nose.

  “Come on, best to do it like a ripping off a Band-Aid. Real quick,” Pudding said.

  “Yeah, like a giant, crap cracker covered Band-Aid.”

  Pudding moved behind me and shoved. We both fell into the swirling crap portal. I held my breath and tried not to vomit as we passed into the next level.

  5

  Greed

  My feet hit sand, and I had to shut my eyes to the bright sky. Gluttony had been overcast and dismal. The stark contrast of a sharply lit sky sparked dots in my vision. When I adjusted, I saw we were in a desert smattered with green and blue rocks.

  Strange people moved about a barren landscape pushing boulders for no discernable reason. Some limped around in nude, emaciated bodies while some others were loaded down with too much clothing and bags upon bags of worthless junk. They had huge bodies compared to their thin counterparts.

  Demons with cat-like faces and roamed in couture and fine white robes that blew perfectly in some disembodied breeze. It was as if every one of them were showing up for a fashion photo shoot. They seemed to take pleasure in either adding to or taking away things from the people pushing the boulders.

  “Where are we now?”

  “Greed,” Pudding said.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  Pudding puffed out a loud sigh, obviously not wanting to explain yet another thing to me.

  “The skinny ones are the cheap bastards,” she said. “Well, in life they were cheap bastards, so they get nothing here. The huge ones were the hoarders and the spenders. Everyone has to push boulders, either with too much carry and push or not enough weight to push.”

  “Seems a bit harsh,” I said.

  “It’s Hell,” she remarked with a shrug.

  “So, if you buy too much, or you’re too frugal, you end up here? That’s conflicting, don’t you think?”

  I thought about every penny I pinched, every loan I refused to a friend. Then, I thought about every shopping spree I wrote off as “retail therapy.” Goose bumps sprang up all over my body.

  “No, haven’t you been listening? It’s when you do it too much to where you’re a bad person for it. That’s the balance. If your greed takes over a part of you that should be human but isn’t anymore because of it. That’s when you end up here.”

  I noticed a particularly emaciated woman near to us. Her clothes were threadbare and hanging off her bony frame. The poor thing was pushing an en
ormous boulder as best she could. It wasn’t moving much. She seemed so pitiful, so I made my way over to her, determined to help her with the boulder.

  When I reached her, the woman snapped to attention, and her eyes lit up. She smiled warmly at me, and I smiled back. The slightest brushing of fur on my leg told me Pudding was by my side.

  “Danny, don’t,” Pudding said.

  “Ma’am? Can I help you with this?” I asked the woman, ignoring the Hellcat.

  “My shirt,” the woman said, still smiling at me.

  “What?”

  “That’s my shirt you’re wearing,” the woman said, pinching the bottom seam of my blouse.

  “Danny, step away from her,” Pudding said seriously.

  “What? No, this isn’t…”

  “My shirt!” the woman shrieked.

  She lunged at me, trying to claw my shirt off. I jumped back just as the woman was lifted off the ground by one of the curvy, couture-wearing she-demons. Though she dangled in the air, the woman still screamed and clawed at me, trying to grab my blouse.

  “My shirt, it’s mine! And those shoes! Give them back!”

  “Ain’t nothing here yours, bitch,” the demon said, giving the woman a bored look.

  She tossed the woman aside and pinned her bony body down with the boulder she was supposed to be pushing. When the demon turned back to me, she had a very annoyed look on her glamorous face. The demon bent down and picked up the tray of Poors Light she had put on the ground with one paw.

  “This your pet, Pudding Dear?” she asked with a sassy flit of a tail.

  “That one yours?” Pudding ask, equally as sassy, as she point her face toward the Greed woman under the rock.

  “You best keep the tourist in check,” the cat demon said.

  “I’m getting her out of here. Don’t get your Gucci in a bunch.”

  “Good, you do that, pussy cat,” the demon said with a scornful sniff.

  Pudding’s back arched a little, and the hair stood on end. Her tail fluffed irritated, looking like a bottle brush of fur. I never knew why cats did that. She glared menacingly at the demon.