After awhile the soldier-demons got bored with pulling things apart and began to wander out of the stall. I was beginning to feel I might actually survive the afternoon when a new group stomped into view, looking like nastier and more serious versions of the first thugs, and immediately began throwing slaves and slavemasters alike to the floor of the stall. Then the Commissar walked in.
I swear I felt something like a shock of cold air before I saw him, along with the faint smell of vinegar and something rotting, then the Commissar came into my view and paused before the only employee of Gagsnatch Brothers still standing, namely Riprash.
The newcomer was not one of those demons who waste a lot of energy trying to look like anything human. In fact, at first I could barely tell where Commissar Niloch began and everything else left off, because he was covered with rattling, bone-white tendrils that curled out of his black armor like stray hairs, making him look a little like one of those fancy, frilly seahorses you only see in aquariums. His face was a bit like a seahorse’s too, long, angular, and bony, but no seahorse ever had such evil little blood-drop eyes.
“Oh, my good heart, what have we here?” Niloch was almost as tall as Riprash, but despite his armor and helmet, the rattling bone-tendrils made him seem as fragile as the slenderest branching coral. Still, I don’t think anyone could have looked at the Commissar’s hideous, gleeful face and imagined mere strength would defeat such a creature. “Oh, my charitable works! What is this? A bottom-dweller, a shit-sucker, who does not bow to the Commissar of Wings and Claws, master of all the Meadows and beyond? But why would someone thwart me when all I wish to do is kindness?” He extended an insectoid arm crusted by a whorl of horns. “Why do you insult me, fellow? Why do you hate your rightful master so?”
Even listening to his lilting voice made my stomach turn over. It was as if someone had taken the skin off your favorite grandfather and made a balloon, then let the air squeak out of it in musical bursts. I would gladly have burrowed down into the dung and stayed there forever to avoid that bony, clicking thing noticing me.
Riprash, I guess, was made of sterner stuff. “I waited until you were close enough to show you proper respect, Commissar.” The ogre lowered his vast body to one knee, but I could tell he didn’t like this Niloch much.
“Ah, to be sure, to be sure. And what slave would not risk the anger of the Lord of Wings and Claws to protect his employer’s slaves from being disturbed? What is it you attend so closely here?” Niloch’s jaw, a hinge of horn at the base of his equine skull, splayed to reveal a row of teeth that seemed too different and too long for even that strange mouth. I guessed it was a smile. “What property of your master’s are you so diligently protecting, hmmm?” He took a step forward, his legs creaking and sawing as his tangles of bone rubbed together. “What could be worth keeping even from beloved Niloch? Hmmmm?” Another step forward, until the rattling thing was only a few paces from the cage where I squatted with the other terrified prisoners. Riprash started to get up, but Niloch pointed at him. “Do you object to my inspection? That is a serious matter, slave. Souls have gone into the holes between stars over less.” The fluting voice rose. “Would you obstruct Commissar Niloch at his rightful duties?”
For a moment, against all sense, I prayed that Riprash would do something crazy, run, shout, hit the Commissar in his bony face, anything that might cause enough ruckus to allow Gob and me to escape. Then I remembered that we were locked in a cage. Even if they burned the stall to the ground, we weren’t going anywhere.
Riprash made a rumbling noise deep in his chest, but didn’t say anything. Then his big head dipped. He stayed on one knee. “Course not, Lord Commissar. Our place is yours.”
“Ah, lovely.” Niloch spat a long thread of something onto the ground. “That’s all right then. I’ll just come over and have a closer look at these, shall I?” And so he did, stinking of death and vinegar.
interlude
“YOU NEVER told me what you do for entertainment in Hell.”
She rolled away and lit a cigarette. “And I doubt I ever will. You don’t really care, anyway. You just want to hear all the horrid bits. It’s not like that. At least, not always. Not all of it.”
“Whoa! Peace, milady Countess. Honestly, I just wanted to know. I’m a curious guy.”
She peered over her shoulder at me. I couldn’t tell if she was ready to be nice again or not. She was funny that way, I could tell. Under that perfect, ultra-cool surface she was full of broken places. They say that’s why cats get abscesses—their skin heals so quickly it often heals right over an infected wound. Caz was a bit feline that way.
Still, she looked so fucking lovely when she stretched to flick her cigarette ash into the ashtray, just looking at her made me want to jump her again. Even an angel needs some recovery time, though, so I just stroked her hip as the sheet slid back, then leaned forward and kissed the cold skin.
“Okay, then I’ll ask you,” she said. “What do you do for fun in Heaven?”
I laughed, but then I thought about it, and there wasn’t really much I could say. Heaven is a lot of things, but “fun” isn’t really one of them. “It’s hard to explain. It’s a very happy place, but not really by choice.”
“Enforced happiness?”
“Something like that. Well, no, it’s more like how when you live near a really good barbecue place, it makes you hungry all the time, just smelling the meat cooking.”
“Wouldn’t quite work like that in Hell, Dollar,” she said, sending a jet of smoke up to be obliterated by her ceiling fan. “We’re fairly used to the smell of burning meat.”
Zing. “Okay. But do you get what I’m trying to say? It’s not like you turn into some kind of zombie in Heaven, it’s just . . . well, being there is very uplifting.”
“Boy, does that sound like bullshit, Wings. Uplifting? That’s the kind of thing people say about the folk mass down at the local congregational church.”
“Look, don’t put me in the position of defending Heaven. It’s not like I’m their golden boy or anything.” I reached over and gently squeezed a pink nipple. She made a little noise. It was very sweet. “I mean, you don’t think they’d approve of this do you? Of us?”
Caz smacked my hand away before I could do it again. “Don’t change the subject. You asked what I do for fun in Hell. I’m asking you what you do in Heaven.”
“Try to leave, most of the time. Quickly as I possibly can.”
She gave me a grumpy look. “Come on, sport. I’ve seen you drink. You’ve got nothing against a little happy oblivion. What’s the difference?”
“Because getting drunk in a bar is my choice. Getting drunk on glory in Heaven when I’m only there because I’ve been summoned, that’s different.”
“I don’t know,” she said, frowning. “I’m finding it a little difficult to feel sorry about someone making you feel happy even when you don’t want to. I mean, compared to some of the things I’ve seen—like, you know, people being eaten from the inside out by sawtoothed worms because they didn’t bow fast enough—it doesn’t seem so bad.” She shook her head. “Shit, I’ve seen worse things back in medieval Poland. In church on Sunday.”
It was, even I had to admit, a no-win argument. Of course I couldn’t make her understand what bothered me about Heaven. It was like those things they make fun of on the internet—First World Problems. Except this was an Above The World Problem.