Holy SMOKES! you think.
—a stunningly beautiful nude woman. Hourglass curves rise up to grapefruit-size breasts, which offer nipples distending like overlarge Hershey’s Kisses. By any sexist standard, she’s perfect in every way . . . save for one anomaly.
She’s made of clay.
“She has no name,” Howard explains. “She’s a Golemess. Dis-Enchanted riverbed clay is what she’s made of. Her male counterpart—Golems—are quite larger, while these female versions are manufactured more petitely, and to be sexually provocative.”
The wet grayish clay shines—indeed—as if a centerfold has been airbrushed. Her hair, however—on her head as well as between her fabulously toned legs—bears sculptor’s marks.
A Golemess, huh? you think. That’s a pretty attractive piece of clay . . .
“Quite a comely monster,” Howard says, “though my detractors could hardly conceive of me making such an observation, I suppose. They said I was homosexual, for goodness sake, in spite of my having married a woman! Regrettably, though, love is quite temporary, and I’ll admit, her pocketbook was impressive to a poor artist such as myself. But, more dread luck—barely a year after we were wed, she was dismissed from her lucrative position! We had to move into an absolutely pestilent rooming house in Brooklyn; one could scarcely distinguish between the tenants and the rodents! And forty dollars a month the slum barons charged!”
You hardly hear Howard’s odd aside of petulance, in favor of scrutinizing the Golemess’s astonishing features. She was what Randal would probably call a “brick shithouse,” and . . .
You could literally build one out of her.
“Pardon my digression,” Howard says. “It’s just that I have so much rancor now—a sin, of course: wrath—but still . . .” Howard seems dejected. “I can scarcely believe that Seabury Quinn was the name of the day while I foundered on considerably lower tiers. Gad! Have you ever read his work? Let’s hope not. As for the Golemess, you may be wondering if it’s sexually functional, which I can happily or unhappily asseverate. Quite a lot in Hell is, for reasons that need not be expounded upon. The common veils of empiricism are no less prevalent here than in the Living World. So, too, are the notions of invidiousness. I was an atheist but hardly a bad sort, yet here I am. The circumstances which led to my Damnation are barely even explicable. You, on the other hand, are in quite another circumstance, hmm?”
Your pumpkin-face frowns; at least you are getting the knack of it now. But you barely understand your fussy tour guide. “Because I’m going to the seminary, to become a priest?”
Howard grimaces over a bump and another waft of organic stench. “Miasmal! Ah, but to respond to your legitimate query, you, Mr. Hudson, are more than just a priest-to-be, you’re one who is spiritually well-placed on the—how shall I phrase it?—the plus side of the Fulcrum . . .”
Your furry brow arches. The Fulcrum . . . The deaconess had said something similar, hadn’t she?
The steam-car, at last, pulls off the chunky pavement as the Golemess turns the wheel. A sign floats past: TOLL BOOTH AHEAD. You can’t keep your thoughts straight.
“I just don’t get it. The Fulcrum?”
“Think of the apothecarist’s triple-beam balance,” Howard tells you, “where the weights on one side are godly acts, and on the other side, ungodly acts. Very recently, I’m told, you have tipped the scale to 100 percent Salvation.”
“Howard, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“In spite of your capacity for sin—which all men and women possess—you’ve managed to clear the balance, from 99 percent, to 100. It is that achievement which has enabled you to win the Senary. You’ve tried with much diligence to lead a life that acknowledges God in the utmost, and when you do sin, you’re truly sorry and you make every effort to repent. It’s your own volition, Mr. Hudson, your own—and I emphasize—your own free will. That notion alone—free will—provides the summation of it all.”
The steam of your soul feels hot in confusion. “Free will? A triple-beam balance? Ninety-nine to 100 percent?”
“Your excursion several nights ago? The Scriptures state quite interestingly that ‘a whore is a deep ditch.’ ”
The line rings a bell in your bizarre head. Those two hookers at the Lounge the other night . . . “You don’t mean—”
“You had decided in your heart that you would partake in the delights of two ladies of the night? You even willingly ventured to procure the necessary funds, yet, at the last moment you decided to bestow those funds upon someone else, someone in grievous need . . .”
The redneck woman with the two kids at the Dollar General! you remember.
“And what you hitherto purveyed was what God perceived as the ultimate act of charity, so said St. Luke, ‘Whosoever has two coats must share with one who has none . . . ’ ”
Your jaw, however awkwardly, drops. “I gave the money to the poor woman instead of the two bar whores . . .”
“Indeed,” Howard says, half smiling. “And that gesture suffices. Allow me to convey it this way: if you were to die right now, your soul would ascend to the Kingdom of Heaven in a most instantaneous manner, where you would live in the Glory of God, forever.”
You feel a vast echo in your psyche.
When Howard taps the shapely clay shoulder of the Golemess, the steam-car stops, and he looks right at you, probably for effect.
“Lucifer wants that 100 percent, Mr. Hudson, and he’s willing to pay exorbitantly for it . . .”
Your head seems to quiver. “I—”
“Of course, it’s much to take in, and it’s our good fortune that our previous time constraint no longer exists, so put your multitudinous questions aside for a bit, and enjoy the ride . . .”
You take the advice as the car clatters on, though you have to admit, there’s not much to enjoy. You seem to be leaving the Offal District through an archway in a great fortresslike wall of hardened organic waste via blocks the size of minibuses. Next comes a road of crushed sulphur, which grinds grittily beneath the car’s narrow tires. “Here a toll, there a toll, everywhere a toll,” Howard complains as they idle up to a shack whose single occupant is a man with a face axed down the middle.
“Toll,” the attendant somehow utters.
Howard hands him a canvas sack that contains something the size of a melon. The toll-taker peeks in, nods, then waves them on.
“What was in the bag?” you have to ask.
“The gonad of an immature Spermatagoyle. They sell them to wealthy culinarists and executive chefs who carefully extract the seminiferous tubules. It’s a favorite dish of Grand Dukes, Barons, and the higher Nobiliary, for it’s the closest thing you’ll ever get to spaghetti in Hell.” Howard’s brow raises. “But I suppose you’re a bit of a culinarist yourself. It’s my understanding that you are an oysterman, yes?”
“I used to shuck oysters in a tourist trap,” you append.
“Ah, the fruits of the sea. I grew up in a veritable nexus of shellfish and crustaceans. Oysters as large as your open hand, and lobsters the size of infants.” Then Howard’s face seems to corrugate in aggravation. “And wouldn’t you know it? My iodine allergy prevented me from being able to eat any of it!”